Questions and inquiry methods in research

¶ … Politics [Foreign Policy Questions and Answers

Both Hamas and Fatah continue in their struggle for political control of the Palestinian Territories and economic control of the support that comes from outside. This has led to open fighting along factional lines. What impact do you think this will have on the region and on the efforts to find peace with Israel?

The present Hamas vs. Fatah political and other factionalism in Palestine clearly will not and cannot help the peace process. Palestinians must be united and sincere in a desire for peace; and (at least in my own opinion) this has not ever happened and is clearly not happening now. There has been much more (albeit always-evaporated, at least so far) hope for peace in the area in the past. During the Oslo peace process of about 1993 through 2000, it seemed that peace among Israel and the Palestinian factions, with whom Israel has been at war six decades and counting, might actually finally occur. It did not.

After that in 2006, before Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke leaving him comatose and his political heir Ehud Olmert succeeded him, it seemed Sharon's peace plan might work. Recently due to horrendous military decisions of Olmert's government during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict that again infuriated the Arab world and much of the rest of the world, the peace process is stalled again (and this is very, very far from being the first time). With Hamas and Fatah literally at each other's own throats and both hating Israel equally; and with so much international attention, especially but not exclusively among Arab states again focused on Israeli military ruthlessness; and with Hamas having won the 2006 Palestinian election but Mahoud Abbas of Fatah remaining President, it is difficult to portend future progress toward peace in the region. Moreover, for peace to ever truly happen, the Palestinian leadership must truly want peace. Before his death in 2004, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat had written a groundbreaking letter stating the PLO's recognition of Israel's right to exist. This was an enormously encouraging sign; since 1948, when the then-new state of Israel declared its independence, Palestinian Arabs have felt their territory to have been encroached upon by Israel, and have therefore vowed since then to destroy Israel. But Arafat did not ever truly want peace; and it seems even more unlikely that either Fatah or Hamas, or most unfathomably, both together, would work earnestly for peace in the future.

2)This week's topic requires you to examine the origins of conflict between Israel and Palestine. Who and what is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and what is its primary role today compared to its early years of operation?

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in Egypt (originally it was controlled by Egypt's government) in 1964 with the goal of destroying Israel with arms. The PLO's first Charter included the goals of destroying Israel and returning original Palestinian territories (before Israeli statehood), e.g., West Bank; Gaza, to the Arabs of Palestine. Later on, the PLO also set the goal of statehood for Palestine but that was not in the first PLO Charter. In the 1990's especially, as I recall, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat spoke diplomatically very often about Palestinian "liberation," an unclear term but perhaps a euphemism for statehood (this is just a guess).

Arafat, writing for the PLO, recognized Israel in a 1993 letter, and in that same year Israel (Yitzhak Rabin was prime Minister at the time) recognized the PLO. That was probably the high point of Palestine-Israel relations so far.

Before that, though, the PLO was also considered to have been responsible for planning and carrying out the 1987 Achille Lauro (a cruise ship) terrorist attack. It was then and is still today considered a terrorist organization. The PLO (along with Israel's Yitzhak Rabin) signed the Oslo Accords at Camp David in 1993, but since then neither side has felt satisfied with the actual results of those accords, which obviously have not brought peace to the region. The Al-Aqsa Intifadah (which began, I believe, in about 2000 when the Camp David talks were then stalling) was begun by PLO and still exists today (much less actively than from about 2000 to about 2004, roughly) under the PLO umbrella.

3) Democratic nations including Great Britain and the United States have long called for democratic elections in Palestine. Now that Hamas was the unexpected winner of the first elections, should it be recognized by the United States?

No; at least not officially, since Hamas has been from its 1987 outset, and clearly is today, an overtly, aggressively and ruthlessly terrorist organization recognized internationally as such. Still, Hamas should definitely be talked to by the United States, as horrendous a prospect as that might well seem (and is). And unfortunately, it has become almost risible in today's world that Great Britain or the United States could still even semi-seriously think Palestinians care what sort of elections they would prefer to see there. This is the West's blind spot.

Hamas's longstanding complaints against extreme Israeli aggression against Palestine should also be seriously listened to; and Israel should cease with its brutality. American (and Israeli) bullying of Arab or other Islamic states and nations has not and will not win friends; but I can think of no foreign situation, now or in the past, in which dialogue, rather invited or accepted by America, ever did harm. Hamas is convinced Israel (and by association the United States, which supports Israel) are evil infidel invaders of Palestinian territory; and in the strict Islamic sense (i.e., of encroaching physically on Palestinian territory) Hamas is right.

Under George W. Bush especially (e.g., one might consider the President's recent refusal to talk to Syria), the United States has developed, especially in recent years, the bad habit of disregarding the ancient Chinese general Sun Yat Sen's timeless advice within his military classic the Art of War: "Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer." There is no doubt Hamas is our enemy.

4) Do you think that terrorists in African states whose governments have failed pose a threat to the U.S. And the European Union? Explain your position and support it using what you have learned from the unit resources.