CEPS Israeli/Palestinian Conflict UPI Analysts

Leading European Think Tank: Defeating Hamas is Not Road to Peace…….

Coming across this commentary at the Centre For European Policy Studies, (CEPS) by three research analysts mulling over what policy the EU should take in a post Gaza War context, the TT couldn’t help but comment as well.
The superficial nature of the report can be accredited to the glaring lack of knowledge and understanding by the analysts themselves, where genocidal supremacist movements are concerned. They fail to discern between political movements that have the capacity to reform, like the IRA, and movements like Hamas, which ceases to exist as a movement once they begin to be serious about entering the political mainstream.
Like the Syrian Assad led government and Hezbollah, the Hamas has no function or reason to continue existing outside the continuous fight against the Jewish state, remove that will or desire and the ideology that underpins the movement will start to crumble.
The CEPS states:Israel had never kept to the deal during its agreed 6-month duration. […] Israel has persistently violated its basic duty under International Humanitarian Law to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded access of relief.”
But a TT colleague observes:

“These people have zero understanding of the Middle East. I like the way they say that Israel cut back on the shipments to Gaza without ever mentioning this was a direct response to large numbers of rockets and mortars being fired! And they attribute the problem in the end to Israel’s policy of wanting Hamas to fall. Presumably, if Israel had let them have whatever they wanted there would be no problem.

They just don’t get what it means to deal with extremist, terrorist-oriented movements. They try to bash Israel but what they don’t understand–these over-paid and arrogant people–is they are destroying any chance of their understanding the region.”

CEPS:Hamas could surely know that it would be pushing Israel into an immediate and devastating response, particularly at a time when much of the Western world is celebrating the holiday season, the new American president is yet to take office and the Israeli authorities are making cynical manoeuvres in the run-up to their elections.”
But that’s just it, Hamas banked on Israel responding, perhaps not as fully as they did in Operation Cast Lead, but they knew some response was coming, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken so much care in preparing their infrastructure for total war (tunnels, bunkers, mining houses etc.). Their main goal was to break the international community’s blockade by gaining sympathy for the loss of civilian lives, that’s why they saved their men from the brunt of the fighting, choosing rather to put young boys in the thick of things, and if these experts have their way, Hamas’ cynical play with peoples lives (war crimes) in both Gaza and in Israel will have succeeded.
CEPS:What we have witnessed in recent weeks is the widely-predicted effect of Europe’s, and the international community’s, imbalanced policies towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The EU now has to restructure its failed strategy, and seek to bring the new US administration to a similar re-appraisal and policy change.”
Like I said, the Hamas is banking/hoping that the polices being promoted by these researchers, to take hold within EU and US policy making organs. It’s the sole reason why they shot rockets into Israel, they want legitimacy for their genocidal movement without changing a spot. Israel had the borders open as long as there was peace and quiet, as soon as the violence was ramped up, the borders became more restricted, especialy when the crossings (and elecrical power station) became targets as well.
CEPS: First, Hamas must be engaged. Not because Europe should acquiesce in the organisation’s more radical formal positions. If it does not engage it cannot hope to positively influence the well-known divisions within the Hamas leadership that have been on display over the last year. On the contrary, its lack of engagement has only strengthened the more hard-line elements within Hamas since the electoral victory of January 2006, as most policy-makers will admit, at least in private. If the EU wants to mediate it has to deal directly with both parties.”
Eh…why should any government engage a radical, religious supremacist terrorist group that will always refuse to moderate itself because it believes it has a mandate from the almighty? The US refused to negotiate with the KKK, and so the international community should refrain from having anything to do with Hamas as well.
CEPS: Second, the EU must give a longer-term and different political orientation to its aid to the Palestinian Territories. This aid has been channelled specifically to avoid the democratically elected Hamas administration whilst bolstering the unelected Fatah administration in the West Bank. In doing so EU aid has concomitantly reduced any Palestinian appetite for internal reconciliation and democracy.”
I agree with Daniel Pipes,Palestinians don’t deserve any additional aid“, To give additional money to the Palestinian Arabs now, ahead of their undergoing a change of heart and accepting the permanent existence of the Jewish state of Israel, is a terrible mistake, one that numbingly replicates the errors of the 1990’s, Oslo diplomacy. Prematurely rewarding the Palestinian Arabs will again delay the timetable of conciliation.”
CEPS: “Third, the EU must recognise that it cannot keep ducking difficult issues within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, European Neighbourhood Policy and now the Union for the Mediterranean.” […] “Palestinian trade with the EU has not taken off, hindered by Israel’s nonrecognition of the EU-PLO Interim Association Agreement; the EU-PA Action Plan has also remained a dead letter and not helped move the Palestinian economy away from its vulnerable dependence on the Israeli economy;”
Again, blaming Israel for the Palestinians inability to accept its Jewish neighbor and to get its own house in order, is pure folly. Instead of restricting Israel, they should continue with building a stronger union with it, something that should stir the average Arab to jealousy and to economic competition. The researchers are looking in the wrong direction once more.
CEPS: “Fourth, the EU must seriously reassess its bilateral relations with Israel. Israel’s war in Gaza should mark the end of the EU’s rewarding of Israel, irrespective of Israeli conduct in the conflict. The EU has never sanctioned Israel for its illegal actions in the Occupied Territories, nor has it attempted to employ positive conditionality to induce Israel to modify its actions in the territories in the context of the Association Agreement, the ENP Action Plan or the myriad of EU programmes of which Israel is part.”
Again more of the same. I must take note of their use of Palestinian propaganda in referring to the “Occupied Territories”, they are actually Disputed Terriories, with the ownership being decided through negotiations with whatever Arab government that wants to end the conflict with Israel. Israel’s actions within these disputed territories is comepletely legal under international law, something of which they seem to know very little of. Why does that not surprise? KGS.

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