Last week Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas's Political Bureau, gave an interview to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam. The choice of venue is significant, since Al-Ayyam is a pro-Fatah paper, linked to the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah, and Meshaal is the presumed leader of Hamas, whose breakaway government rules Gaza since last June.
The interview should therefore be read as an act of public diplomacy. In the West, though, it has hardly been read at all. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz ran a short item, which was translated into English, and the Italian news agency AKI published a version of the interview.
Ignoring Meshaal is a mistake, especially given developments I'll describe in a moment. So I asked a Palestinian journalist to translate some key excerpts of the Al-Ayyam interview. They appear here. Pay particular attention to the last paragraph. First, though a bit of context. (For more background, see my new American Prospect column.)
In the interview, Meshaal reiterates his commitment to the Palestinian unity agreements of 2006, which were the basis for the short-lived unity Hamas-Fatah unity government last year. On the face of it, he's suggesting willingness to return to a unity framework. Under the 2006 agreements, Hamas agreed to let Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas negotiate with Israel on a final-status agreement based on the June 4, 1967 lines, Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem, and the right of return. Meshaal is saying he still stands by that, though he's not willing to recognize Israel formally. In the final paragraph of the excerpt below, the interviewer is essentially asking Meshaal if he isn't still committed to the Hamas Charter of 1988, which leaves no room for Israel. Meshaal's answer is: In my heart, of course I believe all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. But practically speaking, our political position is a de facto two-state solution.
Let me be clear: Meshaal is still stating a considerably more hardline position than that of Fatah. This isn't an offer on which any Israeli leader could just sign. Meshaal's stated conditions for two states falls far short of the Clinton parameters or the Geneva accord. On the other hand, pay attention: The leader of Hamas is saying that the Charter has no practical relevance. He really wishes Israel would vanish, but that's not his political program. He'd rather take a couple pills against nausea, and accept reality.
I also stress that I'm not ignoring Hamas's long record of terror. My mental map of Jerusalem is marked with the places where Hamas blew people up, including the places where I've heard the blast and the screaming and seen the blood. These are nasty people.
Yet given the current stalemate, the question is whether it is in American, Israel, and moderate Palestinian interests to continue with the policy of isolating Hamas, or to prefer a Palestinian unity government in which Hamas would have a stake in compromises.
In answering that question, take into account:
- The Bush administration's refusal to deal with Hamas is based in part on regarding the group as part of global jihad, a partner of al-Qaeda. But Reuven Paz, head of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM) in Israel, says that al-Qaeda harbors "the deepest hatred" for Hamas, which it sees as representing "nationalist jihad" instead of "Islamic jihad." Yet for Bush, as Paz says, Islamic groups are "all the same thing, the axis of evil." That's a misreading of Middle East dynamics - much like John McCain''s persistent confusion of Al-Qaeda and Shi'ite extremists.
- A recent Vanity Fair investigation fills out an earlier International Institute for Strategic Studies study on the Bush administration's bid to overturn the 2006 Palestinian elections by force - a plan that backfired and led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza. The administration's attempts to push Hamas off the stage have had precisely the opposite effect.