Taliban Redux? The Americans may one day have to negotiate with Hamas too

(Photo: Getty Images)

It would be worse than naivety to assume that the fight between Israel and the Palestinian group, Hamas, is one of good versus evil, right versus wrong, with each side believing that it is good and right, and that the other side is evil and wrong.

In the mind of the Palestinians and their friends in the Arab world and beyond, the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine is equivalent to original sin, and many of them know that it cannot be undone. Hence the solution of the two states of Palestine and Israel.

And even if the principle of co-existence is accepted on both sides, that of Palestinians and Israelis, there are some Palestinian groups who are unable to forget and accept the original sin of Israel’s birth, and there are the Israeli groups who believe that it would not be able to survive unless it beats down the Palestinians groups and their sentiments that Israel is an immoral interloper.

This is the underlying theme of the Palestine-Israel conflict, with peace, without peace.

The Imperatives On Both Sides

Israelis enjoy the upper hand because the European Jews who came back and led Israel carrying the memories of the Nazi-inflicted Holocaust were determined to make Israel and Jews as safe as possible, through economic development, military might and American and European aid.

The Palestinians and their Arab neighbours – mainly Egypt, Jordan and Syria – were quick to see the political and security affront that the state of Israel is to their regional dominance. This is at the root of the 1948, 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel wars. The October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel follows the logic of the preceding wars, to gain a military advantage to bargain from a position of strength.

So Hamas not only kills civilians in its October 7 onslaught, which is a heinous crime and there can be no ifs and buts about it, but also captures 229 Israeli civilians including dual US citizens, to be used as a bargaining chip. This is a guerrilla tactic of a militarily weak group, and the words and deeds speak it out loudly and clearly.

But Hamas feels no moral guilt about it. It feels that it has no other option but to resort to these unjust and inhuman ways. Israel, on its part, thinks that it has no other option but to attack the whole of Gaza to destroy the Hamas because Hamas is using the territory as its shield – residential neighbourhoods, utilities, and mosques, and even hospitals.

It does not want to kill civilians, though it wants to cow them down, but if they get killed in its hunt for Hamas, it cannot help it. These indeed are the ruthless imperatives of war on both sides.

A Taliban-Like Dilemma For The West

Hamas’s October 7 attack was a strategic move. It may or may not be what US President Joe Biden believes it to be – to break US-mediated Israel-Saudi Arabia rapprochement. But what is evident from the nature of the Hamas’s attack was to tell the West Bank Jewish settlers that their aggressive and fanatical settlements are never safe, and the Israeli security cover would not be able to protect them though the Israel government allowed the settlers to be the squatters.

Second, Hamas wants to be the negotiator with Israel and the West as the Al Fatah of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat was the negotiator in the early 1990s. Hamas wants its place at the negotiating table.

The US, Israel, and some other countries including India, are of the view that Hamas is a terrorist group, and they think that the October 7 attack only proved the terror credentials of Hamas. But as in the case of the Taliban, Hamas has political roots and legitimacy of a limited kind.

The fact that Taliban has been able to assume power in Afghanistan after the ignominious American retreat in August 2021 was an acknowledgement of this fact. In the case of Hamas, it had defeated Al Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas in the elections held in 2006 in the Palestinian territories, and Abbas has not held elections since then because of the fear that Hamas will win once again. Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, which had been vacated by Israel, was after armed clashes between Al Fatah and Hamas.

A High Stakes Power Game

America may have to negotiate with Hamas as it did with the Taliban, and in both cases Qatar is the mediator. Israel does not want to deal with Hamas because of its Iranian connection. It is indeed a matter of curiosity as to the ideological position of Hamas.

Is it still committed to the Muslim Brotherhood tenets of imposing a puritanical Islamic rule? There is no clarity. The moot point of whether Hamas accepts the state of Israel is not important because in terms of strategy Hamas is only too ready to deal with Israel when the ongoing battle ends.

Both Hamas and Israel are playing a high stakes power game and they are sacrificing civilians, Israel has exposed the West Bank Jewish settlers to Hamas, and Hamas has exposed civilian Palestinians to Israeli bombardment.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is a New Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.