Middle East Planning: The Next Step

June 18, 2007 — -- ABC's Dean Reynolds was previously stationed in the Middle East for nine years.

The United States policy, hammered out in accordance with Israel, of isolating the Hamas-led government of the Palestinians has failed in the view of many observers. It is now time, they say, to engage Hamas -- however indirectly -- to deal with the humanitarian issues first, and any hope of a peace settlement second -- if not tenth.

"We have to begin to come to grips with the reality that this is not going to be a problem that is going to go away and it cannot be framed in simplistic terms: terror, not terror. You're with me. You're against me," said former negotiator Sen. George Mitchell.

Hamas is the reality. After routing the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, it now controls Gaza totally and is making incremental inroads in the West Bank, where Fatah -- the secular Palestinian movement -- is believed to hold sway.

Ironically, Fatah prevails largely with the help of the Israeli Army, which is still occupying the West Bank and has more than 400 military checkpoints dotting the landscape there.

Because Abbas supports a peace process and acknowledges Israel's right to exist, the last thing he wants to see is a West Bank in support of the fanatical fundamentalists of Hamas who reject the existence of the Jewish State.

But he and the new Palestinian Emergency Government he has just appointed need help. And on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said they are going to get it. "We intend to lift our financial restrictions on the Palestinian government, which has accepted previous agreements with Israel and rejects the path of violence," she told reporters.

But Hamas leaders point out that they won the elections in the territories a year and a half ago and they say the new government is illegitimate. Moreover, it will be very hard to open the financial spigot to the territories without helping Hamas at lest indirectly.

"Hamas is going to be able to show that whatever actually reaches people is what they are responsible for. And what doesn't reach people is what the West and Israel are responsible for," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.