BECAUSE, AS ARIEL SHARON UNDERSTOOD...:

Shalom, Hamas: Tweedy, unapologetically hawkish ex-spymaster Efraim Halevy may just be the only Israeli capable of legitimizing talks with Hamas. (Laura Rozen, July 01, 2008, Mother Jones)

At first glance, Efraim Halevy seems an unlikely champion of the virtues of engaging terrorists. The former chief of the Mossad, perhaps the world's most paranoia-inducing intelligence service, Halevy helped negotiate Israel's historic 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, but also had a role in developing his country's policy of targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. Reserved, with some of the British formality of his youth—his family immigrated to Israel when he was a boy—Halevy, 73, brings to mind John LeCarré's George Smiley. And a tweedy, unapologetically hawkish ex-spymaster may just be the only advocate capable of legitimizing a notion effectively ostracized in US politics: talking to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. [...]

Beyond Halevy, Israeli hawks arguing in favor of engagement include former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Perry, who along with three other former top Israeli security officials urged the government to pursue peace with the Palestinians in 2003. ("We should talk with Hamas on issues that are hurting Israel," Perry told me. "Not negotiations, but talks.") Former top diplomat and Mossad official David Kimche has traveled to Washington to suggest that the administration pursue engagement with Syria, and former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami visited DC in March to promote talks with Israel's adversaries. "We need you to do diplomacy, because the military option does not work," Ben-Ami said at a private dinner. "We need a benign superpower who is able to engage."

There was a palpable urgency to his words, and for good reason. "Look, I am a Zionist," Kimche told me when we met in a Tel Aviv shopping mall. "I believe very strongly we need to have a state here. And I believe strongly that the only way to thrive is by reaching peaceful relations with our neighbors and reaching a two-state solution. If we have one state for two peoples, it will be our doom. It will have to become an apartheid state, an anti-democratic state."

...pro-Hamastan is pro-Zion.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2008 9:14 AM