West faces tough choices in dealing with Hamas

WASHINGTON – The United States and its allies face some difficult choices as they scramble to rein in the militant Islamist group Hamas which looks set to take over the leadership of the Palestinian government.

If Western officials are unanimously appalled by the ascension of a movement they condemn as terrorist, questions of what steps to take, when and with what consequences are far from settled, analysts said. The diplomatic “quartet” grouping the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia threatened again on Monday to review Palestinian aid unless Hamas renounced violence and recognised Israel’s right to exist.But days after Hamas shocked the world by sweeping last week’s Palestinian parliamentary elections, the first signs of potential cracks in Western unity on the issue started to emerge.While US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed a tough line against Hamas from the outset, some of her European colleagues were ready to give the group a month or two in power to change its ways.”We have taken a very clear position, and now it is for them to react, but we have to give them some time,” EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in London during a day of hectic diplomacy.Rice and other officials acknowledged the prospect of pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from one of the world’s neediest populations raised delicate humanitarian concerns.Some analysts also wondered whether an aid cutoff would force Hamas further into the arms of countries such as Iran or Syria and ignite an anti-western backlash among the Palestinian people.Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert for the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace, was all for attaching political strings to economic help for the Palestinians as a means of taming Hamas.”The challenge for the US and for other donors is not to make conditionality look too heavy-handed and too negative,” Lasensky told AFP.”Should you be overly punitive, then obviously it will backfire.”Exactly how to tackle a would-be Palestinian ruling party that refuses to disarm and is publicly bent on Israel’s destruction has produced a furious debate within the community of Middle East watchers.Some experts have suggested it was fruitless to expect the radical Islamic movement give up its cause overnight, and a more gradual process was needed to entice it away from violence.They suggested setting a series of benchmarks for Hamas, such as continuation of the truce with Israel and respect for a ban on the public display of weapons, and rewarding it for compliance.”Seeking to engage with Hamas is not an attractive option, but it is the least bad one,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East programme director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).”The key task for Israel, the United States, and their allies, is to shape punishments and incentives that help guide Hamas in a desired direction,” he said in a commentary posted on Monday on the CSIS web site.Other analysts said Hamas could not be trusted, that the group might make tactical concessions in discussions with the Israelis on local matters but would never give up its strategic goal of eradicating the Jewish state.They said the only way to deal with Hamas was to stick rigidly to demands that it renounce violence, acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and disarm, holding out inducements and punishments accordingly.- Nampa-AFPThe diplomatic “quartet” grouping the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia threatened again on Monday to review Palestinian aid unless Hamas renounced violence and recognised Israel’s right to exist.But days after Hamas shocked the world by sweeping last week’s Palestinian parliamentary elections, the first signs of potential cracks in Western unity on the issue started to emerge.While US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed a tough line against Hamas from the outset, some of her European colleagues were ready to give the group a month or two in power to change its ways.”We have taken a very clear position, and now it is for them to react, but we have to give them some time,” EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in London during a day of hectic diplomacy.Rice and other officials acknowledged the prospect of pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from one of the world’s neediest populations raised delicate humanitarian concerns.Some analysts also wondered whether an aid cutoff would force Hamas further into the arms of countries such as Iran or Syria and ignite an anti-western backlash among the Palestinian people.Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert for the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace, was all for attaching political strings to economic help for the Palestinians as a means of taming Hamas.”The challenge for the US and for other donors is not to make conditionality look too heavy-handed and too negative,” Lasensky told AFP.”Should you be overly punitive, then obviously it will backfire.”Exactly how to tackle a would-be Palestinian ruling party that refuses to disarm and is publicly bent on Israel’s destruction has produced a furious debate within the community of Middle East watchers.Some experts have suggested it was fruitless to expect the radical Islamic movement give up its cause overnight, and a more gradual process was needed to entice it away from violence.They suggested setting a series of benchmarks for Hamas, such as continuation of the truce with Israel and respect for a ban on the public display of weapons, and rewarding it for compliance.”Seeking to engage with Hamas is not an attractive option, but it is the least bad one,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East programme director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).”The key task for Israel, the United States, and their allies, is to shape punishments and incentives that help guide Hamas in a desired direction,” he said in a commentary posted on Monday on the CSIS web site.Other analysts said Hamas could not be trusted, that the group might make tactical concessions in discussions with the Israelis on local matters but would never give up its strategic goal of eradicating the Jewish state.They said the only way to deal with Hamas was to stick rigidly to demands that it renounce violence, acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and disarm, holding out inducements and punishments accordingly.- Nampa-AFP