Israel has apparently decided to continue being the ‘bad boy’ of the Middle East. The wisdom that it showed in taking its official position toward Iran - contending persistently that nuclear armament is a global problem and not just an Israeli one - did not come to the fore in the approach it took toward the Palestinians. It is incomprehensible.
With the blood of its children, Israel purchases more and more hatred, which on our side, among the Arabs, plenty will volunteer to sell. And both sides pay, with terrifying generosity.
The government of Israel has decided to lead the global movement of the delegitimization of Hamas, which was elected democratically. One can understand the declaration that conditioned talks with Hamas on its abandonment of violence and terror, because peace is made with one who wants peace. One can understand the firm demand to recognize Israel and respect agreements signed with it. But why put together a plan for military and economic pressure that will bring about the fall of the Hamas government even before such a government is established? Why threaten to choke off simple Palestinian citizens, based on inherently inhuman intentions, thereby causing them to pressure their government until it collapses?
After all, this policy of putting massive pressure on the Palestinians so that they will pressure their leaders has failed in the past. The idea to freeze tax revenues - which is actually Palestinian money and not some sort of Israeli aid, as one may think sometimes by the way this threat is presented - was tried out for about a year. Since the 1967 war, through the first intifada and to this day, Israel's leaders have tried all sorts of pressure: from moderate physical pressure to radical pressure, closures, curfews, roadblocks, arrests, targeted killings, closing the gates to Palestinian workers, offensive operations, the uprooting of trees, the demolition of houses and more. All this has brought about the rise of Hamas rule in the Palestinian territories and the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, because the despair that is planned to be added to the existing despair of the Palestinians only helps the extremists.
Instead of taking an in-depth look at what brought about the Hamas victory, dealing with it and learning its lesson, more reasons for its occurence are being supplied. Instead of letting Hamas run the business of the Palestinian Authority and failing on its own because its way does not suit the Palestinian people - it is being handed the excuses that it will be able to present to them when it is asked to give explanations for its failure.
It is clear already that if Hamas fails, it will be because of Israeli-American pressure and not because it is not suited to run a modern government in our time. Instead of allowing the Palestinian people to settle its accounts in the future with Hamas because of its fire-brand policies, it is being allowed to get away with holding on to the argument that Israel is the one that declared war on it.
One of the main avenues that Hamas used to assume power was citing the contention that Israel only understands force. That is the way it was after the Yom Kippur War and after Lebanon. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said in a speech in Sudan that the Western world, and especially the United States, never forced Israel to carry out the United Nations resolutions regarding the Palestinian problem. ‘Therefore,’ he told the thousands of people listening to him closely in the audience, ‘we have no one to depend on but God and ourselves.’
The hard-line Israeli position will only help strengthen this argument.
The writer is a commentator on Israel affairs on Arab television stations and in the Arabic-language daily Asharq Al-Awsat.