As Northern Ireland, So the Middle East

As Northern Ireland, So the Middle East
by Rami G. Khouri

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Is Hamas' offer of a ten-year truce with Israel sincere? Is it a plausible gesture that should be carefully studied as a possible prelude to a comprehensive peace?

Hamas clearly is sending strong signals that it is prepared to play the diplomatic game, but not at any price -- as did Fateh and Yasser Arafat for years. Hamas' offer of a long-term truce with Israel is neither permanent peace nor recognition of Israel. Those might follow from future negotiations, but only if Palestinians enjoy their equal national rights simultaneously, and this requires rules of the diplomatic game that are more even-handed.

Two pertinent issues are involved here:

One is whether Islamist movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood can be trusted, and taken at their word when they speak of accepting democratic pluralism or negotiating with Israel. Many in Israel, the West and parts of the Arab world view these groups as insincere opportunists and deceitful tricksters who will speak the language of democracy and peace while actually planning to grab power and turn the region into one large Islamic theocracy or Iranian puppet theatre.

The second issue is about the logistics and mechanics of peace-making, about exploring any opening that might lead to a negotiated settlement that replaces the past 60 years of non-stop war.

On the first matter, we cannot conclusively prove if Hamas and other Islamists are sincere or deceitful. They remain exasperatingly imprecise on key issues like the use of military force, coexistence with Israel, relations with Iran, and how they would govern in power. Yet their past actions suggest their likely future policies -- for they have negotiated and adhered to cease-fires, exchanged prisoners with Israel, entered in national unity governments with domestic rivals, and suggested that their domestic constituencies are their primary audience.

On the second matter of Hamas' truce offer, the best way to find out if they are sincere or bluffing is simply to call their bluff. This is the moment when responsible Israelis, Americans and Europeans should stop taking hysteria pills every morning, and instead enter into a calculated diplomatic process aiming for a win-win situation.

Recent history offers a fascinating parallel: the cease-fire declared by the IRA in Northern Ireland in August 1994.

To find out more about this, I spoke this week with John Cullinane, a Boston-based businessman who was actively involved in the economic side of the peace-making process in Northern Ireland. He recalled that American, British and Irish key players had the same doubts about the IRA as key parties do about Hamas today.

"Many people did not know if Jerry Adams and Martin McGinnis were serious about ending the violence and promoting political progress. In retrospect, their offer of a cease-fire was a strong signal that they wanted into the political process. The response to test them on it was as crucial as the initial offer itself," he recalled.

He also explained that, "There is a tendency to dismiss or misread signals like this when they occur, or to create impossible preconditions that become humiliating hurdles. Demanding that one party stop fighting unilaterally, turn in its arms, or accept the other's preconditions in full before any talks occur are only a cover for those in power who do not want to negotiate or share power."

There may be important parallels today between the IRA cease-fire in 1994 and Hamas' offer of a mutual, not a unilateral, truce. Israel and its friends would seem sensible to respond to Hamas by testing its sincerity about shifting from armed resistance to political negotiation, through a carefully calibrated and negotiated series of steps that simultaneously gives both sides important gains.

A series of related moves is critical now:
- reading the meaning of Hamas' truce offer correctly;
- third party mediators working quietly but quickly behind the scenes to achieve a truce of at least two years;
- immediately activating a significant economic development plan that prods both public opinion majorities to choose negotiations over militarism;
- promoting other confidence-building measures (prisoner exchanges, easier movement of people and goods, wider Arab-Israeli links) to expand the truce benefits to touch all sectors of society; and,
- using the existing Arab peace plan as an opening, moving swiftly into final status negotiations that can transform a short-term truce into a permanent peace agreement.

An end to mutual attacks, improved daily living conditions, and new hope for future generations would quickly push public opinion in Israel and Palestine to demand more -- logically leading to a permanent peace agreement.

Impossible? Not at all. Just go to Northern Ireland and see how peace and power-sharing were achieved, starting with a truce offer that was also widely dismissed at the time. Good things happen when people bury their hysteria pills along with their sectarian guns.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Rami Khouri