Thomas Friedman gets the Gaza war only half right. He writes:

In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. Now its focus, and the Obama team’s focus, should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?

But that requires diplomacy. Israel de facto recognizes Hamas’s right to rule Gaza and to provide for the well-being and security of the people of Gaza — which was actually Hamas’s original campaign message, not rocketing Israel. And, in return, Hamas has to signal a willingness to assume responsibility for a lasting cease — fire and to abandon efforts to change the strategic equation with Israel by deploying longer and longer range rockets. That’s the only deal. Let’s give it a try.

Ah, you say the second paragraph bears no relation to the first? You’re right. Whether Hamas is destroyed or de-fanged (in Friedman’s parlance, “educated”) remains to be seen. But even if the latter comes to pass, it does not follow that Hamas becomes the recognized ruler of Gaza or that in any nearby millennium it will attend to the “well being and security of the people of Gaza.” As so many others insisting that there really is a peace process to be worked out, Friedman pines for a “signal” that Hamas will abandon its raison d’être — that is, Israel’s destruction and the death of Jews en masse.

What would that signal be — a repeal of its charter seeking Israel’s destruction? A halt to the use of children as human shields? The end of brain-washing to preach hatred toward Jews? One can’t even imagine what Friedman thinks “Hamas 2.0″ would look like.

Based on all available evidence, and even with some wishful thinking thrown in for good measure, Hamas will not, regardless of what “educational methods” Israel experiments with, undergo the transformation envisioned in Friedman’s second paragraph. For Israel, the war is not premised on some idealistic view of a reformed Hamas. Rather, Israel proceeds under the assumptions that the daily violation of its sovereignty must be stopped, Hamas must be bloodied, and its sponsor –Iran– must be chastened.  Achieving these goals buys time and quietude, but not peace. That may need to wait until Fatah, Egypt, or some other Palestinian entity steps forward to provide normalcy for Gaza’s people. Then we might get closer to the “deal” of Friedman’s longing.

Friedman would do well to read Jeffrey Goldberg’s column, which also appears today in the Times. He finds talk of a moderated Hamas “false and dangerous.” He explains:

It is true that Hamas can be deterred militarily for a time, but tanks cannot defeat deeply felt belief. The reverse is also true: Hamas cannot be cajoled into moderation. Neither position credits Hamas with sincerity, or seriousness.

The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.

With “change” in the offing, it’s time we all got realistic — to borrow the Bush critics’ favorite catch phrase — about what is and what is not reasonable to expect from Hamas.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 1:39 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.