How Toxic is Hamas?
Robert Malley, a member of a conflict-resolution think-tank, has been in contact with Hamas. Presumably he’s also been in contact with Israel and other interests in the area. He also previously gave informal advice to the Obama campaign on foreign policy. Once the story about him meeting with Hamas got out, he was sacked. I’ll go out on a limb and say there probably wasn’t a lot of deliberation before the sacking—because having even an informal an advisor who meets with Hamas could be a nightmare for the campaign. Politically, any connection with Hamas is toxic.
I’m ambivalent on how negatively we should view Hamas—so I thought I would ask the Internet. Is Hamas a terrorist organization? A resistance organization? A revolutionary group? Once side of a civil war? A political group? A government? Some combination of the above? Under what circumstances would it be okay to talk to them? Right now, I think they’re a little bit of all of these in different aspects and that it would be okay to negotiate with Hamas if the renounced violence against civilians. I think this is a softer line than the our current renounce all violence. We’re not renouncing all violence ourselves—so I think asking that of others is unreasonable.