It was the summer of 1982. Israeli forces were besieging the Palestinian Liberation Organization with its leader Yasser Arafat in Beirut. The city was cordoned off and the situation for the PLO inside the city was hopeless.
Then came the American mediation and the agreement. Under the agreement, the terrorists and specifically their leader were guaranteed a safe passage and relocation to Tunisia and other Arab countries.
More than 40 years have passed since those tragic events. Yet those echoes of history remind us of today – the Gaza situation and the political drama around it. The escape from Beirut was a military defeat for the PLO. It was forced to leave the battlefield under foreign protection.
But it turned out to be, as irony usually plays itself, a huge strategic victory for the organization. The mediation created the first real direct contact between Washington and the PLO. It was a de facto recognition that set the path for the actual one toward the end of the decade when president Ronald Reagan issued a waiver to allow contact with the PLO. The Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accords followed. Hamas is counting on the same dynamics.
The US has already engaged directly with the leadership of Hamas. During the negotiations of the Gaza ceasefire in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, US President Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met at least once with the Hamas negotiating team. That meeting appeared, based on publicly available information, to be a clever ruse instigated by the intelligence services of Turkey and Qatar.
The short version of that story is that the negotiations were “deadlocked” and Ankara and Doha “felt” that the only way to salvage the negotiations from their inevitable collapse was to have a direct meeting between Hamas and the American envoys where Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner would vouch for the seriousness of their intentions.
A repeat of Beirut in 1982
Turkey and Qatar were absolutely capable of “convincing” Hamas of its hopeless situation, but Hamas, Turkey, and Qatar wanted a repeat of Beirut 1982. Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner likely recognized the ruse, but decided to go along with the act anyway as they were sent to Egypt by the president to push his agenda no matter what.
The story about a few hundred Hamas fighters trapped in the tunnels of Rafah is not much different. They could just surrender and then be repatriated to some Arab or Muslim countries. But the story is developing along the line of Beirut.
The American administration has been applying constant pressure on Israel to allow the trapped terrorists a victorious march, perhaps even with their weapons, out of the tunnels to freedom. As the result of the “deadlock” around this issue, Mr. Witkoff is about to directly meet Hamas representatives again to discuss possible solutions. Why he needs to meet with the heads of a terror organization directly and not through the “trusted” channels of Turkey and Qatar is explained as the penchant of the president for direct diplomacy.
It is also clear that the legitimization of Hamas, as a serious and recognized negotiating partner, is underway and perhaps has already been completed. That may explain why the president of the United States would personally guarantee the safety of Hamas leadership in Qatar. Those guarantees go beyond what president Reagan offered Yasser Arafat back in 1982. Then, Israel had no direct commitments to the United States and did strike at the PLO in Tunisia later when the situation demanded action.
There will be, in the coming days and months, more and more instances where direct contacts between the US and Hamas are “necessary.” To be fair to the current administration, it does not contradict any postulates of its foreign policy. Trump’s approach to all foreign conflicts, without any exceptions, is to reposition the US from being an ally of one side, where that is the case, to being a neutral facilitator of possible peaceful resolutions.
The peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan was an example of the success of the strategy. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is, on the other hand, an example of how dangerously naive this strategy could be.
The ceasefire in Gaza is still a work in progress. It is already clear that the Arabs have gained from the agreement a lot more than Israel. Israel got much needed breathing space after two years of war. The Arab States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey have achieved an unprecedented status and leverage with Washington. Yet the slow rebranding of Hamas, making it a legitimate partner and presenting it as a representative of the Palestinian Arabs, is the most dangerous strategic development for Israel’s future.
The writer lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.