How can the US justify talking to radical Islamists in Iraq while boycotting Hamas in Palestine, asks Amr Elchoubaki* Not since the rise and fall of the Nasserism in the 1950s and 1960s has the Arab region been hit with a tremor such as that which Hamas caused when it swept the Palestinian elections. By forming the region's first democratically elected Islamist government, Hamas has become a player in a new game. The movement is now being asked to make pragmatic rather than ideological choices. It is being asked to recognise the delicate regional and international balance of power, and while at it, revise its programme, a programme that calls for the liberation of all of Palestine. So far, Hamas went only as far as proposing a truce, one in which it would recognise the safe borders separating Palestinian areas from Israel. Hamas is in a quandary. The US and Europe have rejected any dialogue with the movement. The US and Europe hope to isolate Hamas from the Palestinian people and the international community. That's why they're imposing a strict political and economic blockade on the Palestinian government. The Americans and Europeans want to prove Hamas wrong by making life harder for the entire Palestinian people. Under attack on more than one front, Hamas stuck to its guns, refusing to reconsider its policies towards Israel and speaking of a "conspiracy" against the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the US administration has made no attempt to pressure Israel to implement international resolutions. For all its rhetoric about democracy, the US is dealing with Hamas not as a movement that has been democratically elected, but as a danger to the security of Israel. Instead of integrating Hamas into the regional and international system, the US administration is pressuring Hamas in all ways. Ironically, the same practice is common in Arab domestic politics. Arab governments often refuse to deal with the Islamists and incorporate them in the process of political reform, claming they are a threat to security. The international community could have accepted Hamas as a partner, even while rejecting its doctrines. That would have helped Hamas develop and rethink its ways. This didn't happen. Why? Because it is easier for Israel and the US to blame Hamas than seek a just peace in the region. An international decision has been made to exclude Hamas from the political process. This decision allows Israel to renege on its international commitments and hold on to Arab territories. As things stand, Israel wants to hold on to nearly one- half of the West Bank and much of East Jerusalem. The irony is that while the US is trying to isolate Hamas, it is eager to open dialogue with various Sunni Islamist currents in Iraq, chief of which being the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a group that is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The US administration has been doing all it can to get the IIP to participate in the political process. The US administration has even been holding dialogue with some of the violent Islamic factions, including groups that had engaged in armed resistance and even attacks on civilians. It is odd to see the Americans insist that Sunni Islamist factions take part in the political process, recognise the role of Shia clerics in Iraq's politics, but refuse to talk to democratically elected Palestinians officials. Hamas is far more moderate than some of Iraq's Sunni groups. The way the US is treating Hamas contrasts with its policy in Iraq and other countries. Obsessed with Israel and its security, the US is reacting to Hamas in a narrow-minded and undemocratic manner. The Americans cannot see Israel for what it is: the world's last colonial power. Their attitude to Hamas is warped by Israel's needs and desires. Had the US acted differently towards Hamas, the latter would have had to reconsider its discourse. A new leaf may have been turned; an era started in which Islamic movements would be forced to recognise Israel. Think of the radical change this would have brought to the region. A new humanitarian discourse would have been born, one based on the respect of citizenship rights in Palestine. A new situation would have developed in which Jews, Christians and Muslims would live side by side in historic Palestine. Progress in the peace process would change the way Hamas and Islamist movements think. New ideas can be born out of peace. New concepts can be developed in the search for peace. Apartheid and hatred would become outdated. Through the search for peace, Hamas would be obliged to abandon the path of war, guns and martyrdom in which it has become so adept. An independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be the beginning of the end of the conventional doctrines of Hamas and other Islamist parties. At some point, a new Islamist discourse would have to emerge, one based on equality and justice, not creed. A democratic Palestinian state could change much, including the dynamic inside Israel. The US is not helping. It is trying to maintain a situation in which the Arabs have no other resort but to fight and even employ terror to inflict pain on others as well as on themselves. Without a just solution of the Palestinian issue, radicalism will continue to prosper. The dualism we have now between radicals and so-called moderates will continue. On the one hand, we have radicals no one wants to talk to. On the other, we have pliant regimes that speak on behalf of the entire region. As things stand, the US administration is talking only to the so-called moderates and ignoring the radicals. This is hardly advisable. The radicals must not be neglected for -- considering their public following -- they can turn fortunes around. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
