EXCEPT THAT, IN THE MIDDLE EAST, NOTHING'S EVER URGENT:

A rethink on the Middle East (Daniel Levy, July 3, 2007, Boston Globe)

The new urgency is in finally ending the occupation and achieving a Palestine living in peace alongside Israel. Delay has been the enemy, not the friend of achieving a permanent status compromise. The Oslo process has been blamed, but its five-year timetable expired even before we entered the new millennium. It is approaching seven years since the last Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations and the last US effort to frame the parameters of a solution. In the context of today's regional instability, there is an added urgency to moving beyond the occupation toward an agreed and secure border between Israelis and Palestinians. It is more difficult today. It will require deft political management, inclusiveness, and an ability to work several channels at once.

The strategic change that is required is not simple, unpalatable to many, and made all the more so by recent events. Our friends in Fatah, Abbas, Fayad, et al., cannot do it alone. Hamas will need to be on the inside of the proverbial tent. Palestinian politics is going through a phase of post-Arafat transition. Single-party Fatah rule cannot be re imposed, nor should it be. Hamas is a permanent feature of the political landscape that needs to be digested. Admittedly, Hamas does not come in a bottle of milk of magnesia -- its actions and language are often coarse. It is also part of the Palestinian and regional reality -- a mainstream political Islamist movement that rejects Al Qaeda, that is isolated and accepts help from Iran, while trying to reach out to the West. Hamas leaders have given increasingly strong hints of their acceptance of the 1967 lines and the reality of Israel and have both offered and adhered to a cessation of hostilities in the past.

If America and Israel are now pursuing confidence-building measures with extra vim in order to defeat Hamas, then they are likely to get neither. That is the lesson of at least the last 18 months since the Palestinian Parliamentary elections. A peace process with Hamas on the outside is likely to be effectively torpedoed. Having Hamas on the inside will add resilience and stability and perhaps be decisive. There will be efforts, sooner or later, to bring Fatah and Hamas together again in a national Palestinian political accommodation. These efforts might be initiated by Arab states, by elements within both factions, or as happened in the past, by prisoners affiliated to both movements. When this happens, the United States and Israel should accept such initiatives. The policy of encouraging civil conflict and driving to irreconcilability the existing Hamas-Fatah division has been counter productive. A bear hug Israeli-American embrace of Fatah will not be that movement's ticket back to Palestinian popularity and credibility.