Earlier this week Khaled Meshal a leader of Hamas gave an interview to the New York Times. There have been a number of commentaries written about the interview. Now Charles Krauthammer weighs in.
Just as Jonathan Tobin noted the other day, Krauthammer writes (or here) that Khaled Meshal learned very well from Arafat.
Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.
With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel — universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In an excellent and wonderfully titled essay, We fooled you, We Intend to Destroy You. So Now What Will You Give Us? Barry Rubin describes the pattern Arafat followed to build that capacity.
This small incident was a metaphor for everything that happened later. Arafat had shown that his word could not be trusted. Time after time, he begged and demanded concessions from others without ever really giving any himself. Yet a belief repeatedly prevailed that the next time he would do better or that once the two sides made a comprehensive deal everything would change.
Rubin concludes:
We shouldn’t forget that except for the fact that Arafat himself is dead, the leadership of Fatah and the PA today is exactly the same as it was in the 1990s. Hamas is worse. When someone who is trying to fool you now brags about how they did so in the past, attention must be paid.
And if Hamas won’t explicitly forswear terror, its words are worthless.
But didn’t Meshal say that Hamas wasn’t firing rockets at Israel for now? As M J Rosenberg wrote the other day, accepting, at face value, Meshal’s claim that Hamas wouldn’t fire on Israel:
Here is an opportunity to bring Hamas into the peace process while simultaneously preserving a key role for the Fatah moderates.
If stopping the rockets from Gaza was so significant a priority that it was worth going to war over (and taking the lives of 1,4000 Palestinians, mostly innocent), it should be important enough to take a chance and explore what Meshal may be offering.
Or is taking risks for peace been ruled out in favor of more war. Anyway, there is no risk involved. Exploring a peace feeler is risk-free.
But the next day, Hamas attacked Israel.
The Hamas terrorist organization proudly claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on western Negev communities Wednesday morning, a day after the United Nations officially released a report criticizing Operation Cast Lead.
The attack also came one day after The New York Times published an interview with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal, who claimed that the group had ceased its rocket attacks on Israel after the military operation ended.
Five mortar shells exploded near the security barrier adjacent to the Sha’ar HaNegev region. The Gaza Belt community of Sderot, which has been a frequent target of terror rocket attacks, is located in the area
Hmm. Do you think that Rosenberg will criticize Hamas for being insincere about its “peace feelers?”
Actually Meshal denied that he had ordered a halt in attacking Israel, and Hamas was offended that anyone suggested that they were fighting terror.
(To enhance his credibility in the future Rosenberg should stick to making smug remarks that have shelf lives of mroe than one day.)
In other words, there was no need for Israel to ignore the “peace feelers” from Hamas, there were none to begin with.
While history doesn’t prove that Meshal wasn’t making a substantive statement, history certainly suggested that his remarks were superficial posturing so that he’d look good in a West that is so enamored of visions of lambs and lions lying down together that it doesn’t pay attention to see if another lamb is fed to the lion each day.
Meshal isn’t a born again peace maker. He’s still a terrorist monster. Same as it ever was.
Earlier Krauthammer: Hamas’s extremism can’t be dismissed. Most Palestinians supported it!
(This post is slightly different from its original form. It has been edited for clarity.)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad
