Israel Matzav

Who is orchestrating a US rapprochement with Hezbullah and Hamas?

Someone in the White House and/or the State Department is trying to orchestrate a rapprochement between the United States and Hezbullah and between the United States and Hamas. I would expect that the rapprochement will be formally announced after the midterm elections. Let's look at the evidence.

In May, it was reported that John Brennan, Obama's assistant for homeland security and counter-terrorism, and Obama's 'go-to guy' on issues of intelligence, had reached out to 'moderates' in Hezbullah. Earlier this week, it was reported that the United States is talking to Hamas.

Now, there's a report that claims that the US Army's central command (CENTCOM) is talking to both Hezbullah and Hamas. The report might be a little more credible if it came from someone other than Mark Perry. Perry, as you may recall, broke the claim that CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus had accused Israel of placing American troops in danger by refusing to cut out its heartland and hand it over to the 'Palestinians.' Petraeus denied Perry's story and subsequently called Israel a 'vital strategic ally.'

None of that will stop Perry - a former aide to Yasser Arafat and the founder of the Institute for Conflict Resolution Studies - from trying to bring Hezbullah and Hamas in out of the cold. Let's look at what he has to say and then we can try to guess whether he is succeeding. By the way, it's called Red Team, because the way CENTCOM works is that the 'red team' develops policy recommendations that are contrary to current policy while the 'blue team' argues in favor of current policy.

While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like Hizballah* and Hamas in official Washington circles (to say nothing of Israel), that is exactly what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command -- CENTCOM -- has been doing. In a "Red Team" report issued on May 7 and entitled "Managing Hizballah and Hamas," senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial -- and at odds with current U.S. policy.

Among its other findings, the five-page report calls for the integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian security forces led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Red Team's conclusion, expressed in the final sentence of the executive summary, is perhaps its most controversial finding: "The U.S. role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities -- the government of Lebanon and Fatah -- that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively" (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to note that while Hizballah and Hamas "embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies," the two groups are "pragmatic and opportunistic."

The report opens with a quote from former U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land, which notes that both Hizballah and Hamas "have emerged as serious political players respected on the streets, in Arab capitals, and throughout the region. Destroying them was never really an option. Ignoring them may not be either." The report's writers are quick to acknowledge that the two militant groups "are vastly different," and that treating them together is a mistake. Nevertheless, the CENTCOM team directly repudiates Israel's publicly stated view -- that the two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force. The report says that "failing to recognize their separate grievances and objectives will result in continued failure in moderating their behavior."

"There is a lot of thinking going on in the military and particularly among intelligence officers in Tampa [the site of CENTCOM headquarters] about these groups," acknowledged a senior CENTCOM officer familiar with the report. However, he denied that senior military leaders are actively lobbying Barack Obama's administration to forge an opening to the two organizations. "That's probably not in the cards just yet," he said.

It gets worse. Read the whole thing.

Frank Gaffney takes issue with a number of points in Perry's article, although he takes it as a given that the article accurately reflects CENTCOM's views (given Perry's previous misportrayal of Petraeus' views, I'm not sure it's accurate to take Perry's description at face value).

The contention that Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida are “motivated by different factors” is pure Brotherhood taqqiya – dissembling for the faith. Its embrace by anyone, let alone by intelligence personnel and senior military officers, constitutes an appalling dereliction of the “professional duty to know” the facts.

The reality is that all these groups absolutely, positively are the same in one respect, at least: They all share a commitment to the theo-political-legal-military program authoritative Islam calls Shariah.

As adherents to Shariah, they are all pursuing the same goal: the global triumph of Shariah under a theocratic Caliphate. Their tactics may differ from time to time, depending on circumstance. But what is really “stupid” is the notion that such differences or even structural differences actually preclude these groups and many others promoting Shariah (notably, the Taliban) from being kindred spirits – and unalterably our enemies.

Is Perry that naive about the goals of radical Islam?

Then there's Perry's (and CENTCOM's?) astounding dependence on one quote from Nasrallah as summing up Hezbullah's views:

Further evidence of the defective nature of the CENTCOM Red Team analysis can be found in the emphasis it reportedly places on “a quote from Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, stating that if Lebanon and Iran's interests ever conflicted, his organization would favor Lebanese interests.” According to Perry, the Red Team concluded that “Hezbollah's activities increasingly reflect the movement's needs and aspirations in Lebanon, as opposed to the interests of its Iranian backers.”

The notion that Hezbollah can be weaned from its client relationship with Tehran – either on the basis of appeals to its nationalist ardor or because of Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan’s stated willingness to engage with its so-called “moderate elements” – is unsubstantiated by any material facts. Random quotes, particularly those cited out of context, are of course not at all the same thing as an established pattern of behavior on Hezbollah’s part that demonstrates the proxy’s actual independence from its Iranian masters. No such pattern can be discerned. The same dependency on Iran is operating with Hamas, as well, to say nothing of Syria.

That's certainly true. Hezbullah's source of arms and power is Iran. To pretend otherwise is ludicrous.

Gaffney then goes on to describe a ridiculous comparison between Hezbullah and the IRA. Gaffney rejects it because the IRA had been thoroughly defeated by the time negotiations with it began. There's a better reason to reject comparisons between Hezbullah and Hamas on the one hand and the IRA on the other hand. The IRA sought to expel British troops from Northern Ireland; Hezbullah and Hamas seek to end the existence of the Jewish state of Israel.

Read the whole thing.

And in fact, that's the problem with Perry's and CENTCOM's (if in fact it is CENTCOM's) approach. For example, they assume that Hamas can be convinced to renounce violence, when Hamas has time and again rejected calls to renounce violence. They ignore what a 'united Lebanon' or a 'united Palestinian Authority' might do in relation to the United States' most important ally - Israel. Even if one assumes that the Lebanese Armed Forces and the 'Palestinian Authority' have no interest in attacking Israel - a huge assumption, particularly in the latter case - who says those views would prevail in united entities and not the views of Hezbullah and Hamas?

But what's worse is - as is clear from the posts I linked at the top - Perry's article is not written in isolation. Someone is clearly trying to push the Obama administration in the direction of bringing Hezbullah and Hamas in out of the cold. And the Obama administration probably doesn't need a whole lot of pushing to do that.

UPDATE THURSDAY JULY 8 11:37 PM

This post has been nominated for best non-council post by the Watcher's Council.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:05 PM