Trusting Abbas

When I saw PA leader Abbas’ claim last week that Israel and Hamas were holding secret negotiations, which both Israel and Hamas immediately denied, I couldn’t help being amused. The only possible benefit of Abbas making such a claim is that he might be taken more seriously as a leader if he decided to tell the truth while Israel and Hamas continued to lie to the public.

Truth is, I expected such negotiations might be going on (as did many other writers) but when Israel explicitly denied such talks, one of two outcomes were possible. Either Israel was in fact not negotiating with Hamas, or the government was so politically inept as to believe that it could actually stop people from finding out the truth.

So, when I read this morning in the JPost that negotiations are in fact taking place, and that “Israel is demanding that a formal calm with Hamas be preceded by a 30-day “feeling the pulse” period,” I couldn’t help but smile a little.

Now, I disagree strongly with Israel holding such negotiations without the presence of Fatah and the Egyptians. True peace needs to be done as a package deal, and Fatah is still a political factor in Gaza and true peace cannot exist without Egypt taking an active role in the process.

Secret negotiations serve only to make Israeli leaders look like they’re trying to appease terrorists. We will never be able to convince Hamas to stop the attacks in the long run without true negotiations, and until that point Israel is just making itself look weaker, Hamas look stronger, and Abbas look more honest than anyone else involved.

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An update to my earlier post regarding Abbas’ comments about a proposed cease-fire. It looks like he wasn’t lying after all…

An Egyptian-brokered truce has been reached between Israel and Hamas, a senior Israeli security official said Tuesday.

The official told AFP that Hamas agreed to stop firing rockets as long as Israel ceases its military operations in the Gaza Strip.

According to the unnamed official, Cairo played an active role in the deal, in an effort to reach a ceasefire which would eventually lead to the removal of the Israeli blockade imposed on the Strip.

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More details here at Haaretz:

A deal being formulated between Israel, Egypt and Hamas involves deploying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ troops at the crossings with the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources told Haaretz Tuesday.

According to the sources, Israel and Hamas have agreed to the Egyptian proposal to deploy Palestinian Authority Presidential Guard members along the Karni, Sufa and Kerem Shalom crossings, where cargo is transferred between Israel and Gaza, as well as at the Erez crossing, a passageway for people and goods.