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Engaged to Hamas

[Jerusalem Post] Melanie Phillips - In Britain, the volume of pressure to "engage" with Hamas is fast approaching critical mass. While the official position of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is that Britain will never talk to Hamas as long as it aims to eradicate Israel, the number of voices insistently urging that Hamas be "brought in from the cold" has made such a proposition respectable. The most prominent political proponent of "engagement" is the Conservative grandee and former Northern Ireland spokesman Michael Ancram, who has now met Hamas (and Hizbullah) in Beirut on three separate occasions in the past year. Ancram says he believes that a two-state solution to the Israel/Arab conflict is only possible if Hamas is part of that solution. In similar vein, last month the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee recommended that the British government should now "engage" with moderates in Hamas, along with Hizbullah parliamentarians, Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, the "engagement" rationale appears to mean that we should talk to tyrants simply because they have won power, a doctrine which effectively holds that power confers legitimacy, however illegitimately it has been pursued. It is hard to imagine an argument that hands terror a greater victory.
2007-09-17 01:00:00
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