Democracy triumphs despite the USA, Israel and the EU’s best effort to snuff it out. Of particular interest is Russia’s offer to sell armoured personnel carriers to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authoriity.
As Hamas attempts to downsize the bloated, corrupted, and oversized Palestinian security services, APCs will be useful for the the new government in case the Palestinian Authority gunmen being fired try and turn violent.
Israeli and U.S. hopes of isolating the new Hamas leaders in Palestine are fading fast, as the radical Islamist organization mounts an increasingly successful diplomatic offensive to turn their election victory into international respectability.
Although still denounced by Israel and the Bush administration and the European Union as a terrorist group, Hamas has swiftly broken out of the diplomatic cordon that was supposed to persuade it publicly to renounce terror and recognize the state of Israel.
Hamas leaders have now secured invitations to Russia, Turkey and Jordan, three countries that had been expected to maintain the diplomatic solidarity behind the internationally-agreed “road map” to a peace agreement. Russia was the first and most decisive breach in the wall, as one of “the Quartet,” the four guarantors of the road map along with the United States, the EU and the United Nations.
Turkey, as a candidate member of the EU, had been expected to maintain the EU’s unanimity, but that had already been breached when France declared its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invite Hamas to Moscow in March.
**Russia’s Interfax news agency reported Thursday that the Moscow talks could result in an arms deal for Hamas, to include two unarmed helicopters and 50 armored personnel carriers. **
“This decision must be made with the new Palestinian leadership,” the army’s chief of the general staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, was quoted as saying.
In response to urgent diplomatic messages from Washington, London and Brussels urging that Russia stick with the Quartet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow agreed with the Quartet position that Hamas had to declare a commitment to seeking a peace agreement with Israel if it hoped to win international acceptance.
“We will work toward Hamas accepting the Quartet’s positions. This is not just the Quartet’s opinion but also that of the majority of nations, including Arab nations,” Lavrov said after talks with EU leaders in Vienna.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul met the exiled political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, in Ankara, justifying the interview by saying that Turkey had agreed to meet Hamas “as the representatives of a group which won elections.”
“During the meetings, the Hamas delegation was reminded of the expectations of international society,” said a later statement from the Turkish government. “The importance of adopting a wise, realistic, conciliatory and flexible attitude was stressed.” In return, the Hamas leader declared that: “We see Turkey as a very successful example of democracy in the Islamic world. It is a very good example for us.”
“We’ve received the same support from friendly Turkish authorities as Arab countries,” said Meshal. “We’ve received very useful advice. This is very important advice for Palestine, its people and its future. We’re taking this advice very seriously.”
In Jordan, which expelled Meshal and other Hamas officials for “illegal activities” seven years ago, Prime Minister Maruf Bakheet told his country’s parliament that he would “welcome the visit of a delegation of our brothers the leaders of Hamas in their capacity as Palestinians.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah has separately urged both the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the EU’s top diplomatic official Javier Solana not to close the door on Hamas, nor to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority, but to give the new government some time and diplomatic room to show that it could govern responsibly and is prepared to negotiate seriously with Israel. Cutting funds to the PA, which seems to be the preferred strategy of the Israeli government and the Bush administration, would only hurt the Palestinian population, King Abdullah said.
British officials have also noted that using the financial weapon against Hamas might not work, since Iran and other oil-rich Arab countries were likely to make up any financial shortfall.
U.S. officials maintain that the flow of international funding was not being used as a weapon, but that it was important to hold Hamas to the same conditions that Yasser Arafat’s Fatah government had accepted in the past, in recognizing Israel’s right to exist and renouncing terrorism and violence.
Two senior White House officials, Elliot Abrams and David Welch from the National Security Council, are expected in Israel next week to discuss how to deal with Hamas. But the Israeli government has already accepted that humanitarian funds to Palestine are likely to continue, and hopes now simply to ensure that the funds go directly to non-governmental organizations and aid organizations, rather than to a Hamas-dominated government. Israel does not want to be blamed for international TV images of starving Palestinian children, but thinks that international funding can and should be carefully controlled.
“It’s like a meeting with a dietitian,” the incautiously outspoken advisor to the prime minister, Dov Weissglas, was quoted as saying by the Israeli daily Haaretz. “We need to make them lose weight, but not to die.”
Instead, Hamas seems to be thriving in the new diplomatic environment that has emerged since their victory in the Palestinian elections. Ironically, it is now clear that while Hamas won the elections by getting a clear majority of seats in the PA’s legislative assembly, they narrowly lost the popular vote. The Fatah candidates, an uneasy coalition of the party’s old guard and its young Turks, put forward multiple candidates for seats where Hamas presented but one, thus splitting their vote and paving the way for the Hamas victory that now appears to have broken through the diplomatic cordon the Bush administration and Israel thought they had built to constrain it.
The infamous Rumsfeld picture. Really, how many times will this be posted?