FEbruary 23, 2006

How a Hamas-Led Government Affects the Peace Process

Caroline Glick serves as deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post. In addition to her bi-weekly columns, the award winning Glick is also a senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Some consider Glick to be one of the most insightful Middle East analysts in journalism today. CBN’s Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell spoke with Glick about how a Hamas-led government will affect the Middle East peace process.

CHRIS MITCHELL: In a nationwide speech in June 2002, President Bush said the Roadmap for Peace required the Palestinian Authority (PA) to disarm the terror groups. Four years later, a terrorist organization has been elected to head the PA’s government. What happened?

CAROLINE GLICK: We have to bear in mind that the Palestinian people had to choose between two terrorist organizations—Fatah and Hamas. They chose Hamas. Fatah, which is PA Chairman Abu Mazan’s [Mahmoud Abbas] party, has conducted more terrorist attacks against Israelis over the past five years than Hamas, so in terms of making war against Israel, there’s very little distinction between the two.

MITCHELL: President Bush seemed to have a resolute stand against terror when the war on terror began. Has that been subverted?

GLICK: The U.S. policy in the war against terrorism, particularly as it relates to Israel, has been completely subverted by the U.S. State Department, which has been operating under a land for peace paradigm for more than 20 years.

In July 2000, at the Camp David Peace Summit, Arafat rejected land for peace in its most expansive definition and went to war against Israel. He showed that the Arabs simply don't want peace with Israel.

Palestinian society is more suffused in genocidal terrorist ideology than any other people on the face of the planet, including the Afghan society under the Taliban. Palestinian polling data shows overwhelming public support for continuing the terror war against Israel.

The only way to stop Palestinians from being a terrorist society is to defeat them in war. But the whole peace plan disallows Israel to defeat the Palestinians, and that's why it's unworkable.

MITCHELL: That's the bottom line, isn't it? There's supposedly no military solution to this.

GLICK: Israel proved there is a military solution during our counteroffensive in 2002. And when we went on the offensive in the Gaza Strip in 2004, and the military killed Ahmed Yassin and other major terrorist commanders, Israel essentially forced Hamas out of business.

But the minute Israel was victorious in its war against terrorism, in came the suits from the U.S. State Department, the European Union, and the Israeli left. The U.S.-led international community essentially reinvigorated the terrorists.

The Israeli pullout from Gaza last summer was one of the greatest victories for international jihad in the past five years. Nothing could be a more stunning victory for terrorism and for the ideology than that it’s possible to destroy Israel.

MITCHELL: Do you think most people in the West fail to realize that we’re in a global jihad?

GLICK: There doesn’t seem to be an understanding in Washington of the absolute connection between the Palestinian jihad against Israel and the global jihad against Western civilization.

MITCHELL: Is there a parallel between the West’s failure to understand the ramifications of global jihad and the buildup of Nazi Germany in the 30s?

The total denial in many ways parallels the situation in Europe between 1933 and 1939, when Nazism and Fascism were ideological forces.

In Germany, everyone thought Hitler was just a German problem. It was really about making the trains run on time and giving people jobs. People thought he didn’t really mean that Germans would dominate Europe and murder the Jews.

We have the same thinking here. If we give the Palestinians more aid, apply more pressure on Israel, and the United States disengages from the Middle East, they'll leave us alone. It wasn't true in the 1930s, and it's not true today.

MITCHELL: How do you see the U.S. and Israel responding to the election of Hamas?

GLICK: They’re responding incompetently by setting conditions for Hamas: if you recognize Israel, if you disarm, if you forswear terrorism, if you say you're willing to recognize the agreements the PLO signed with Israel, then we'll talk to you.

Making conditions for Hamas is counterproductive for two reasons: first, they stand opposed to the whole notion of Israel's existence, so they're not going to meet these conditions. And second, regardless of the fact that land for peace has proven unworkable, we’re willing to talk with the devil himself to pretend it's possible to reach an agreement.

Hamas is an Islamist, pan-Arab terrorist group. They see al-Qaeda, the Chechins, and all terrorist groups throughout the world as part of the same army. That includes Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi, and all the major terrorists the United States is fighting.

MITCHELL: Do you see this diplomatic wall that Israel has tried to maintain around Hamas crumbling?

GLICK: There was never a wall. Israel is in the midst of an election. The ruling party is Kadima, which was formed last fall and never elected. We have an acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who barely made it into the Knesset because he was so unpopular.

And we have Tzipi Livni, who is now our justice minister, immigration minister and foreign minister, who until two years ago had never been a minister in her life. While they're trying to run the country and pretending to deal with Hamas, they're also out to win an election.

So they tell the Israeli people, “We want a wall around Hamas.” But President Bush legitimized the election between two terrorist organizations and inferred that under certain conditions, the United States will speak to Hamas.

Russia has already recognized Hamas, and the French are dying to do the same. The European Union has been negotiating with Hamas in Cairo for the past five years. And Israel has failed abysmally in responding to Hamas and the challenge it presents to Israel's national security.

MITCHELL: What's the logical outgrowth of this lack of recognition of what's happening?

GLICK: When we’re trying to assess what's going to happen in the future, we base our conclusions on present realities and patterns of behavior over time.

Anytime the Arabs have had the ability to launch offensives against Israel, whether by terrorism or by regular armies, they’ve used it.

In the wake of the Gaza withdrawal and with a prime minister talking about expelling 150,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria and partitioning Jerusalem, Israel is definitely projecting weakness.

They will attack ruthlessly and intelligently, centering their efforts in Judea and Samaria because the people who live there have been demonized by the Israeli government and the international community.

If Israel doesn’t defend itself, why should the United States bother? But the U.S. will support Israel’s attempt to appease jihad terrorists. It's going to be a mess.

MITCHELL: Do you see a connection between the election of Hamas and the rise in rhetoric from Iran?

GLICK: Absolutely. Before the elections, Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas, spent two weeks in Iran. He met with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and with the heads of the revolutionary guards units. He visited terrorist training camps around Tehran.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is simply an Iranian front organization and for the past five years, the Iranians have been funding not only the Islamic Jihad, but also Fatah terror cells and Hamas.

MITCHELL: How do you see the U.S. and Israel responding to the nuclear threat and what do you think should be done?

GLICK: America’s policy for dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program is dangerously similar to their failed attempt to build a “coalition of the unwilling” regarding Saddam Hussein before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

They're going to the U.N. Security Council to seek an agreement for sanctions on the Iranian regime. But China has already said it will veto any sanctions. And Russia is negotiating continued nuclear assistance to the Iranians though they’re talking about wiping Israel off the map.

The U.S. has locked itself into the U.N. at a time when they need to move independently regarding Iran. Unfortunately by bringing it to the U.N. Security Council, they’re asking Kofi Annan for his permission, and that’s very disturbing.

Israel is right in saying it isn’t just our problem. Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capabilities is a threat to the entire world. The United States won’t have the independence to do anything effective against global terrorism, and U.S troops in the Middle East will constantly be at risk of being bombed with nuclear weapons.

The Iranians are building the Shihab 4, a ballistic missile capable of reaching all the European capitols. When you put it in that perspective, you understand why action has to be taken.

MITCHELL: Do you see a possible military strike after the Israeli elections? It seems there’s been an increase in rhetoric, even in the US, about using military force.

GLICK: Given the radicalization of the Iranian regime and the fact that the mullahs and Ahmadinajad seem to be going for broke to plant fear in the international community, I don't see any way to convince them not to continue with their nuclear weapons program.

Some people say there's no way to destroy their entire nuclear program because so many of their installations are underground, but we know where their reactors are and without them, their acquisition of nuclear weapons will be postponed.

While you can’t obliterate this threat, you can buy time, years in fact, during which you can support the Iranian people who are desperately waiting for the international community to help liberate them from this oppressive regime. A military strike has to be part of it.

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