• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Cook: No Likelihood of U.S. Breaking with Israel on Hamas Talks

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Steven A. Cook, Douglas Dillon Fellow
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

March 19, 2008

Steven A. Cook, a CFR Middle East expert, says that just as the United States would not break away from Israel and deal directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization before Israel did, so the United States finds itself unable to include Hamas in the Israeli-Palestinian peace dialogue. Hamas controls Gaza, however, and is growing in influence at the expense of the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom both Israel and the United States deal.

In 2006, the United States urged the Palestinian Authority to hold elections. The Fatah party lost its control of the government to Hamas, which was and is on the U.S. terrorist list. Since that time neither Israel nor the United States has had official talks with Hamas. Do you think this policy should be altered in some way?

A number of mistakes were made, including pushing the Palestinians into elections for which they were clearly not ready. Anyone who knew anything about the situation on the ground knew that Fatah was not in a strong position by any stretch of the imagination. Technically Fatah won more of the popular votes, but a quirk in the electoral law gave Hamas a majority of the seats in the Palestinian parliament.

In the aftermath, I think it was a sound policy to try and isolate Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to wiping Israel off the map. Its founding covenant is explicit on this issue. Hamas has been responsible for any number of Israeli deaths through terrorist activities. But that was only half the policy.

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.