US-Hamas dialogue is historic, if it contains Zionist militarism

The Trump administration’s confirmation that it recently conducted secret talks with Hamas on the possibility of releasing US hostages being held in Gaza is potentially a historic development – or a trick to divert attention to find new ways to support the Israeli genocide against Gaza and its Palestinian population.

The evidence from Washington, typically, is inconclusive either way — since President Donald Trump’s social media post last week threatened to kill all Hamas members if they do not immediately release all the hostages they hold.

The White House acknowledged that US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler in recent weeks in Doha held direct talks with Hamas, which Washington designated as a foreign terrorist organisation in 1997.

The contacts are very significant — but also were likely to happen soon, similar to how the US in Vietnam and Afghanistan, South Africa’s apartheid regime and the ANC, and the UK in Northern Ireland, among others, eventually negotiated with those groups they had fought and saw as terrorists.

Long-running conflicts between indigenous and imperial-colonial powers, such as Israel’s occupation of Palestine, tend to reach a point when the main protagonists recognise the need to negotiate a solution rather than fight to the death.

The contacts in Doha might have focused narrowly on the hostages, but I suspect they could presage wider diplomatic engagements linked to a gradual process of Israel-American-Palestinian diplomacy that seeks a negotiated and permanent resolution of the entire conflict.

Boehler added in media interviews last weekend that he explored with Hamas their bottom line and desired outcomes. He should have known these from the dozens of Hamas statements and overtures to negotiate a permanent truce with Israel that the group has made since the early 1990s.

If movement beyond releasing detainees on both sides moves gradually a few years down the road to exploring a wider, permanent, Arab-Israeli peace agreement, it would have to include other key international parties, Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Europe, for the required security guarantees and political solidarity both sides would seek, and the economic revitalisation of Palestine and the region.

Hamas most probably engaged Boehler because it felt they could lead to important gains beyond the immediate issues of ceasefires, hostages, and prisoners – which, in fact, was an important aim of the October 2023 attack that sought to unfreeze a regional situation that saw Gaza and its people permanently attacked and under siege.

Shifting from permanent war to a negotiated peace accord in such situations usually takes years to bear fruit, as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and South Africa all showed.

Why is the US engaging with Hamas?

The most important new development now is that the US is the key player in this arena — having been the primary enabler of the Israeli plausible genocide, and a non-credible mediator between Israel and assorted Arab resistance groups in Lebanon and Palestine.

Its direct, active, role in shaping the diplomacy underway influences how Israel, Hamas, and others act in the short run. But Washington under Trump is a fickle leader – as its abrupt changes on Ukraine indicate.

It is not fully apparent if Trump prioritises being the Middle East’s kingmaker/peacemaker, or always supports every Israeli desire, including extending its genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. Negotiating with Hamas while giving Israel billions of dollars of new military aid only makes this riddle more pungent.

The US move to engage Hamas makes clear, though, that Hamas is the critical actor to partner with in order to end the hostages/prisoners situation, as Israel recognised in late 2023; an agreement with Hamas to end the war is also likely to open opportunities to explore wider moves towards a permanent Arab-Israeli negotiated peace.

I recognised this more clearly from the work Helena Cobban and I did in the last eight months to produce the new book, Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters.

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Whatever spurred the US to speak directly with Hamas and ignore Israel’s objections will be clarified in time. More significantly, though, several structural and political reasons explain Hamas’ popularity and endurance, and the imperative to engage it in short- or long-term diplomatic efforts. Here are five key ones.

First, it is the major Palestinian and Arab party that can and does resist Israel politically, militarily, and in other ways, and has pursued a consistent strategy over decades that fights Israel but also offers coexistence possibilities.

It sends the message that Palestinians will always refuse and resist the dehumanising status that Israel and Western imperial powers try to impose on them.

It remains the dominant force in Gaza because its credibility and persistence in reflecting Palestinian national goals are unmatched, regardless of one’s opinion of its behaviour and use of force, which should be open to discussion in the same way that Israeli and US-UK use of force in Palestine must be assessed simultaneously. 

Second, it represents more fully, accurately, and consistently than any other group the Palestinian national consensus on waging war-or-peace with Israel. This is because it has always stressed the centrality of the Palestinian national political consensus on the issues that matter to all, which it played a major role in crystallising while its leaders were in Israeli prisons over the years. That consensus comprises: ending the occupation of 1967, freeing Palestinian prisoners, implementing Palestinian self-determination, creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank-Gaza-East Jerusalem, and, resolving Palestinian refugeehood in various ways.

Third, these are really hard issues for Israel to accept, but they are the price for a permanent peace and Israel’s acceptance in the region as a Jewish-majority state. Such a negotiated peace would require defining, limiting, and taming the runaway and predatory Zionist militarism that now threatens half a dozen Arab parties.

Hamas has repeatedly indicated it is willing to negotiate on these issues if concessions or adjustments are made mutually and simultaneously by both Israel and Palestine. Hamas will make big decisions like coexisting with Israel only when Israel simultaneously reciprocates and accepts to coexist with a Palestinian state.

It is not deterred by its power imbalance against the Israeli-American combined militaries and widespread Arab official apprehension about its ways; instead, it demands to be treated equally with Israel, not as a subservient weakling like Fateh was treated, pacified, and humiliated. The ongoing ceasefire talks over the last months confirm how it makes concessions only if Israel also does the same.

Fourth, Hamas grasps the Palestinian weakness and suffering that resulted from Israel manipulating and deceiving Fateh, Arafat, and the world for decades, and forcing the Palestinians into unilateral concessions.

It understands and accepts the painful price of resistance, and holds out for the principled rights/goals of the Palestinian national consensus, despite its weaker position before the US-Israeli militaries. Engaging it on the hostages could be a critical opening for bigger issues that can positively impact the entire region and the world.

Finally, Hamas has repeatedly expressed its willingness to peacefully negotiate a resolution of the conflict with Israel — via letters to Israeli and American leaders, public statements and interviews by its leaders, its revised political program, and other ways.

Israel and the US have never responded, and the Western mainstream media routinely ignore Hamas’ overtures, because they contradict the prevailing Israeli propaganda line in the West that Hamas wants to destroy Israel and kill Jews.

These and other factors hold out the possibility that a US-Hamas dialogue on hostages could lead to addressing the bigger, underlying, issues that created the conflict in the first place, going back a century in many cases.

Hamas’ position in these talks will likely strengthen pan-Arab support for the coming phases, and lead to more flexibility among many Israelis who would expect the US to guarantee their security — while the main point of all these possibilities is that Israeli security can only be guaranteed if Palestinian rights are implemented, and Hamas is the most important actor today that can lead the Palestinians into such a trajectory.

If that happens, Hamas, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority will magically mesh into a new governing body that is credible and legitimate to Palestinians, and acceptable to the world. This would allow a broad Palestinian consensus to prevail, while also seeing strategic decisions made with the approval of all key Palestinian groups, including itself. 

Rami G Khouri is a Distinguished Fellow at the American University of Beirut and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center Washington. He is a journalist and book author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East.

Follow Rami on Twitter @ramikhouri and subscribe to his Substack

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