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Is peace between Israel and Hamas possible?

Is it a fair assumption that Hamas regime would eventually topple if peace is reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under terms it doesn't accept?

  • For Israelis looking forward to a possible future solution to the conflict, the Hamas regime is a big question mark. When talking to pragmatic Israelis about future peace possibilities, the prevailing prediction seems to be that an agreement can be reached with the PA but never with Hamas. My question is very hypothetic, but I'm interested in getting a glance into what Gaza citizens might feel under these conditions.

  • Answer:

    How much authority does PA have outside of West Bank, in Hamas-controlled areas now? An agreement with one faction would not make the other faction/s disappear. The fatal flaw of the "peace process" is that theocratic totalitarianism has been the accepted norm, by wide swaths of the Palestinian population, for so long. This extremism will never work because you can't roll back time and pretend that the state of Israel doesn't exist. Unfortunately, that is the mindset that drives a number of powerful Palestinian factions. Whatever the political and historical context is, people just want to raise their children in peace and live their lives without constant threat (on both sides). There has to be a mechanism or force that changes the culture, where violence and extreme positions are no longer accepted by the people (and that is a tall order). At that point, you can begin to discuss a political system that would be sustainable in the Palestinian territories. Of course, this is the other challenge, because there is a tendency for governments in the Middle East to oscillate between theocracy and totalitarianism and utilizing various forms of unsustainable socialism. And people are ultimately responsible for shaping their own nations. External intervention can only go so far. So, the larger question is, will there be an agreement that is TRULY accepted by the majority of the Palestinian population? Or, will there be factions that find any negotiated settlement unacceptable? Honestly, under current conditions, I don't foresee any agreement that would be acceptable to all the competing factions. A civil war would have to crush resistance or a massive cultural shift would have to take place.

Sam Morningstar at Quora Visit the source

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Plainly speaking, Hamas is a dictatorship. Nothing will topple it outside of foreign intervention or rebellion by the population of Gaza. Both seem remote at this time. Like all dictatorships, Hamas is ensconced for the long run. They will claim that the peace deal is a betrayal of Palestine and lock up or worse people who won't agree. Without having any more information than what I read in the press, it appears that Hamas is quite successful at repressing any form of popular opposition to its rule. History teaches us that it's when dictatorships open up and become more liberal that people move into mass resistance.

Eric Vicini

The same people who are saying that there can never be an agreement with the extremists of Hamas used to tell you that there couldn't be an agreement with that extremist Yasser Arafat's PLO. Which, of course, became the basis for the PA that the Israelis now think are the reasonable pragmatists. Anyone who pays attention to international politics knows that no-one is beyond bringing in to diplomacy. When people say "X is so irredeemably mad / evil, that we'll never talk", all they're really doing is posturing for political reasons. Part of this is just human biology : angry, testosterone driven, young men grow older, calmer and more willing to compromise. And if they keep control of their faction, that faction matures with them. That's largely what happened with the provisional IRA. And it happened with the PLO / PA. There's no reason it can't happen with Hamas.

Phil Jones

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