The Centre For Social Cohesion

These three principles require that all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict publicly commit themselves to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between Israel and the Palstinian Authority.

To date, Hamas has been unwilling to recognise Israel or to renounce violence against it. Indeed, its founding charter commits it to Israel's destruction.

In consequence, the Quartet has not been willing to deal with Hamas or with any Palestinian Authority government containing Hamas members. This is something that the Palestinian Authority government briefly did contain between January 2006, following its success in the elections then to the Palestinian legislative assembly, and June of this year when Hamas staged a military take-over of the Gaza strip.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee claims the unwillingness of the Quartet to have dealings with Hamas, or with any Palestinian government in which there were Hamas members, whilst Hamas refuses to recognise Israel and renounce violence, has impeded the peace process.

It claims this because, notwithstanding the direct humanitarian aid that has continued to flow to the Palestinians during all this time, the Select Committee maintains that the economic boycott of Hamas by the Quartet has exacerbated tensions between it and Fatah, and thereby has been indirectly responsible for the military takeover of Gaza by Hamas in June of this year.

The subsequent split between Hamas and Fatah, so the Committee claims, has made any peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians much more difficult. It claims this because it holds that no viable peace settlement is possible without Hamas, given its current popularity among Palestinians, and the inclusion of Hamas in a peace settlement has been made more difficult, not easier, by its current isolation.

There are several striking features about the report and its principal recommendation that have not been picked up in press reports about it.

The first is its very heavy reliance on the ‘evidence’ supplied by one of the witnesses who appeared before it. This was that of a Dr Nomi Bar-Yaacov whom the Committee portentously describes as a ‘Foreign Policy Adviser on Middle Eastern Affairs’ without saying of whom she is this advisor. As her ‘evidence’ consisted almost entirely of unsubstantiated opinion and conjecture, it carried no persuasive force to anyone not already predisposed to accept her prescriptions.

The second notable feature of the report is the refusal of the Committee seriously to entertain the idea that the current split between Fatah and Hamas might actually offer a golden window of opportunity for peace in the Middle East.

Why is not peace between Israel and the Palestinians best secured by means of an initial peace agreement between Israel and a West-Bank based Palestinian Authority prepared to recognise and renounce violence against it? Why not such an incremental approach to a settlement?

Either an ever more isolated Hamas will in time come round to doing what Fatah eventually did and to renounce violence, or else its support and authority will eventually drain away in Gaza as the inhabitants there see the benefits of a peace settlement in the West Bank. After all, what can be voted in can also be voted out. And there seems no inherent reason why the Palestinians in Gaza must forever remain in thrall to Hamas and to what it stands for.

As to Hamas itself, the likelihood is that its support among the Palestinians will drain away before it ever recognises Israel. For what animates it is a militant ideology that antedated the creation of Israel. This is the political Islamism first espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is but the Palestinian wing.

It is a pity that the Foreign Affairs Committee was not able to take into accounts in its deliberations the contents of an article published on a liberal Muslim Moroccan website just two days before it sent the report to the printers and of which an English version was published by MEMRI last Thursday. For it puts the true nature of Hamas into perspective when it points out that:

‘It is true that the Hamas organisation rose to power in a transparent, democratic, manner. It is also true that a significant portion of the Palestinians voted for Hamas, supposing that it could solve their problems with Koranic verses… and through hadiths.

‘[But] if the same atmosphere of transparency and democracy were present in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would be able to reach the [Presidential] Palace. And if the path of the Islamic Salvation Front had not been blocked in Algeria, … there would have been a catastrophe. …

‘If all the peoples of Ignoranceland were given the choice betweens secular democratic regimes and a rightly guided Islamic Caliphate led by Osama bin Laden and [his deputy] Al-Zawahiri, they would choose the latter, by more than 90 per cent.

‘The flaw is not in the regimes, but in the conceptual and doctrinal make up of the herds [of people who]… do not consider things as they really are, and do not look out for the good of coming generations….

‘Hamas rose to power because it does not believe in Israel’s right to exist, and [because it believes] that the Palestinian state must encompass not just the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but all parts of Palestine, from the waters [of the Mediterranean] to the waters [of the Jordan].

‘The Hamas leadership believes in this, and they cannot deny it; if they deny it, they are two-faced.’

‘The reason for the popularity of bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri Al-Zarqawi, and the brigades of the green banner [of Islamism] is … the filth on which the tamed herds feed and for which they have developed as grievous addiction.

‘The best way to rehabilitate these sick people and to treat their addiction, is to force the regimes of Ignoranceland to undertake democratic reforms, to reform school curricula, … to try to universalise secular, modernist, enlightenment thought, and to keep religious establishment out of politics….

‘This is a large-scale international project … with the aim of remoulding the nation of Ignoranceland and stripping it of the sword of stupidity, so that its future generations will be free to occupy themselves with building, development, and useful sciences, instead of thinking about plundering, looting, [and] killing…

‘If humanity succeeds in this great human project, it will have effectively shattered a tremendous idol … and saved millions from a pernicious and lethal disease.’

By it central recommendation, the Foreign Affairs Committee reveals just how foreign these affairs remain to it. As such, its recommendations deserve to be ignored, as I am confident they will be.