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Siegman: No Peace Possible Between Israel and Palestinians without Hamas

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Henry Siegman, Director, United States/Middle East Project
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

March 7, 2008

Henry Siegman, an expert on Middle East negotiations, says that no peace will be possible between Israel and Palestinians unless Hamas is brought into the process. “The notion that the Israeli government leaders and our own government have that it is possible to exclude Hamas from peace talks and have a successful result from those talks is a fantasy,” he says. “It’s not going to happen.” Because of President Bush’s refusal to deal with Hamas, he says, it is unlikely that any progress can be made until there is a new president in the White House.

There’s a bit of a lull right now in the fighting between Hamas and Israel, which has led to over one hundred Palestinians dead and a few Israelis in the past couple of weeks. Can you see a diplomatic way of getting a cease-fire that would permit peace talks to continue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under Fatah leader, President Mahmoud Abbas?

I don’t see talks between Israelis and Palestinians leading anywhere without finding a way of bringing Hamas—who constitute the government of roughly half the Palestinian people—into that process. You can’t make peace with half the population and remain at war with the other half. The notion that the Israeli government leaders and our own government have that it is possible to exclude Hamas from peace talks and have a successful result from those talks is a fantasy. It’s not going to happen.

The question is, is it possible to persuade the United States and Israel’s government to allow Hamas to participate in this process?

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.