JERUSALEM — Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, spent three decades in clandestine service, sworn to defend the Jewish state against enemies such as Hamas, the Islamist group that overran the Gaza Strip in June.
Now Mr. Halevy is speaking the unspeakable about Hamas: It is time, he says, to negotiate with the movement’s leaders — the same men his former agency and his nation have targeted for assassination.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns here today for the first time since the Gaza rout complicated American ambitions to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Bush administration remains opposed to anyone engaging with the Islamist group. Among Israelis, Mr. Halevy’s words amount to political heresy. Most mainstream politicians don’t speak of negotiating with the group.
But Mr. Halevy, 73 years old, is part of a small band of public figures who now say that, because of Hamas’s growing clout, it is becoming impossible to avoid such a dialogue. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the group in a recent interview with National Public Radio.
For talks to take place, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would have to back them — and members of his cabinet remain vehemently opposed. Negotiating with Hamas would also require Israel to go against the wishes of the U.S., its most important ally.
But the dialogue option is receiving renewed attention amid widespread doubts about the viability of the Bush administration’s latest plan for dealing with the Palestinians. The Gaza takeover effectively split the Palestinians into Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, politically dominated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the more secular Fatah party and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayad.
In response, the White House has rolled out what it calls a “West-Bank-first” strategy. It envisions financial, political and diplomatic support for Mr. Abbas in an effort to improve West Bank life so dramatically that Palestinians will be wooed away from Hamas in both enclaves. At the same time, Washington plans to work with Israel to further isolate Hamas in Gaza, a policy that prohibits contact with the group.
Ms. Rice is expected to emphasize that strategy today and tomorrow in meetings with Israeli leaders and with Mr. Abbas.
But Mr. Halevy believes this strategy amounts to political fantasy, especially given the weakness of Fatah and signs it is fracturing inside the West Bank. “If there is a secret assessment somewhere which says this is going to do the job and is going to turn things around, I salute them,” says the former spymaster, who retired from the Mossad at the end of 2002 and went on to briefly head Israel’s National Security Council under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He has since maintained his public profile as a commentator and author.
Mr. Halevy started advocating talking to Hamas last year, before the Gaza takeover. He now sees no other choice. “I don’t say we should talk to Hamas out of sympathy to them. I have no sympathy whatsoever for Hamas. I think they are a ghastly crowd,” Mr. Halevy says. “But I have not seen anybody who says the Abbas-Fayad tandem is going to do the job.”
Mr. Halevy says defeating Hamas politically is unrealistic, given its enduring popularity among Palestinians. Hamas defeated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections last year.
“The danger is that they will not be defeated, that they will become more despairing…and they will no longer feel constrained by anything, because there is nothing left for them to hope for,” he says.
In the end, he fears, that will mean that the only option for Hamas will be to return to a strategy of larger-scale terrorist attacks on Israel. The conflict currently plays out in almost daily low-intensity fighting between the two sides.
Mr. Halevy says pressure should be used to reach a favorable, long-term armistice, similar to those Israel reached with hostile neighbors after the Jewish state was founded in 1948. Hamas has repeatedly said it is willing to discuss such a deal.
“We signed armistice agreements with all of the Arab world,” Mr. Halevy says, adding that many Arab nations agreed to end hostilities without formally recognizing Israel. The U.S. and Israel have pushed for a formal recognition of Israel from Hamas before agreeing to possible talks.
“We don’t need their recognition,” he says. “We are a sovereign state…They need us to recognize them. The shoe is on the wrong foot.”
The Bush administration’s strategy is viewed skeptically by others in Israel with strong security credentials. Avi Dichter, a member of Israel’s security cabinet and the former chief of its domestic intelligence and counterterrorism agency, says Washington’s plan can succeed “only in Hollywood.”
But Mr. Dichter, along with others, also says dialogue with Hamas is the wrong approach. He advocates a military solution. Now that Hamas completely controls the coastal strip, home to almost 1.5 million mostly impoverished Palestinians, it will be far easier for Israel to stage large-scale military operations to degrade the militant group, Mr. Dichter says, because Israeli officials no longer have to worry that their assaults will wound Mr. Abbas’s government.
Mr. Halevy says the stakes in the debate over how to handle Hamas now go far beyond Israel and the Palestinian territories. He says negotiating with the group is necessary in order to stop the spread of the even more radical ideology espoused by al Qaeda, which he sees gaining adherents in the Palestinian territories.
“We’re dealing in issues which are existential to free society,” Mr. Halevy says. “When you look around for potential allies in this war, sometimes you have to settle for strange bedfellows.”
August 1, 2007; Page A7
Wall Street Journal
