Well, Then There is Reality

Jennifer Rubin

Contentions/Commentary

06 October 09

In case you were feeling all warm and fuzzy about the “peace process” and thought the photo of Obama, Netanyahu, and Abbas shaking hands looked promising, you might want to reconsider. Belatedly, even the mainstream media have woken up to the reality: it’s all pretty meaningless so long as Hamas digs in and the Palestinian “negotiators” don’t really have the authority to reach binding deals with the Jewish state on behalf of the Palestinians.

And Hamas is digging in. The Washington Post reviews Hamas’s record of eradicating competing clans, solidifying control of Gaza, and weathering a war with Israel, concluding:

That combination of durability and unwillingness to compromise has created a deep-seated stalemate that has left top Israeli intelligence and political officials perplexed about what to do, and posed a steep obstacle for U.S. peace envoy George J. Mitchell. While Mitchell’s work in Northern Ireland in the 1990s included intense negotiations to bring the most militant parties into the process, his eight months of talks about Israeli-Palestinian peace have so far avoided any obvious effort to do the same with Hamas, and have been conducted, in effect, with only half of the Palestinian political leadership.

Translation: The “peace process” is a charade, conducted in a vacuum without regard to the parties or circumstances on the ground. There is no “peace” so long as the Palestinians negotiate without full authority to reach a “deal” — and without the will or ability to enforce any such deal. Mitchell would rather carp about settlements, a red herring unrelated to the central barrier to peace (i.e., Arab refusal to recognize a Jewish state) and the ongoing threat of terrorism. But if he admitted that there was nothing more to do so long as Hamas remains firmly entrenched, he’d have nothing to do, right?
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