On the eve of the Simhat Tora festival, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert showed Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas around his sukka, the makeshift booth Jews build every year to commemorate the biblical Children of Israel's nomadic wandering in the Sinai dessert. As Olmert explained the various religious rites, Abbas smiled, showed interest and asked polite questions. But the easy rapport between the two leaders could not hide deep differences on the substance of their early October meeting in Jerusalem: defining an agenda for the American-sponsored Annapolis peace parley in November. While Olmert sought a loose non-binding declaration of intent, Abbas wanted a detailed declaration of principles for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace and a timetable for implementation. And even if Olmert and Abbas were able to bridge their differences, Hamas would almost certainly move to undermine them. Complicating the situation is the fact that the West Bank-based Abbas speaks for only half the Palestinian people and controls only part of its territory. Hamas, which controls the other part, Gaza, is likely to launch terror attacks to scuttle the process before it gets off the ground. Indeed, the split in Palestinian ranks and the radical nature of the Islamist Hamas, which persists in its refusal to recognize Israel, raise a host of questions about the current peace process's chances of success. How can Israel prevent Hamas from using terror to scuttle the process? Will Abbas be able to implement a deal without Hamas's approval? Or, alternatively, will he be able to get Hamas's tacit support for a deal? Can Israel's policy of ostracizing, isolating and pressuring Hamas work? Can the radicals be weakened to the extent that they will not impede Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking? Is the split between the secular, moderate Fatah and Hamas really in Israel's long-term interest? How should Israel deal with Hamas in the longer term? The defense establishment tends to see the peacemaking and Hamas-instigated violence -such as the continuing firing of Qassam missiles at Israeli communities - as two separate, even unrelated issues. Hamas terror, the generals say, must be dealt with irrespective of the peace process. But there are different schools of thought on what should be done - ranging from launching a massive ground operation to smash Hamas's military infrastructure and reoccupy parts of Gaza to taking Hamas up on its offer of a long-term hudna or cease-fire. Civilian experts on Hamas are also divided. Some argue that Hamas rejectionism makes a deal impossible and that all Israel can expect from the Palestinian side in the foreseeable future is growing radicalism and more terror. Others maintain that Hamas has a pragmatic streak and that there are certain kinds of an agreement with Israel it could accept. Members of this school contend that, contrary to government thinking, a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation that brings Hamas into the process is very much in Israel's interest. The military men, naturally, focus on the security aspects of the Hamas challenge. Major Generals (Res.) Ya'akov Amidror and Doron Almog agree that blunting Hamas terror should be higher on Israel's list of priorities than trying to make peace with a militarily weak Abbas, who, when the chips are down, won't be able to deliver. But while Amidror, a former head of research in military intelligence, urges a large-scale ground attack and a long-term reoccupation of parts of Gaza, Almog, a former head of the Southern Command, says Israel should seek a 10- or 20-year cease-fire with the radicals. Amidror argues that the upcoming peace parley should have no bearing on Israel's policy towards Hamas. "The radicals try to carry out terror attacks whenever they can, irrespective of any peace process," he says. "Moreover, any sane person can see this process is not going anywhere." In his view, there is just one answer to Hamas terror: a massive land invasion of Gaza, after which Israel would retain key territories, creating a buffer zone against Qassam rocket fire in the north of the Strip, and holding onto the Philadelphi Route to curb arms smuggling from Egypt in the south. Amidror's model is Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002. In that operation, the IDF overran the parts of the West Bank that had been handed over to the Palestinian Authority, leaving ground forces and intelligence gathering units in place to keep up the ongoing fight against terror. "No army in the world has found a way to fight terror without control of the relevant territory," he asserts. "In Gaza, we lost control of the territory partially after Oslo in the 1990s and completely after the unilateral withdrawal in 2005. And by leaving Philadelphi, we enabled Hamas to smuggle in the weapons and other war materiel they are using to build up their military capabilities." Amidror is adamantly opposed to any long-term hudna, or cease-fire with Hamas. He says the radicals would simply exploit it to bring in longer-range rockets and pose the same kind of threat to southern and central Israel as the Lebanese-based Hizballah militia does to the north. "Anyone who wants Hizballah in Gaza should go ahead and have a hudna with Hamas," he declares. Amidror warns the Olmert government against making concessions to Abbas in Annapolis. "Since Oslo, the synonym for 'progress' in the peace process has been Israeli concessions. That has to stop, even if it means a never-ending conflict. Israeli concessions won't end the conflict either, just put Israel in weaker position to fight from," he avers. Almog takes a very different tack. He says years of close experience with Hamas have taught him that the radicals can be very pragmatic - especially when it comes to strengthening their hold on power. Therefore, he argues, for Israel to set a political goal of a long-term cease-fire with Hamas is very realistic. The way to achieve this, he says, is by combining the "stick of military power" with the "carrot of economic rehabilitation" - with one reservation: no more smuggling of weapons and war materiel into Gaza. Almog says Israel should put the hudna idea - which Hamas leaders have alluded to from time to time - on the table now, and announce that it can be achieved immediately, without further fighting. But, if the Hamas people do not come through - and Almog is fairly certain that initially they won't - he says Israel should launch a major military operation to bring them to their senses. Under Almog's plan, Israel would launch an intensive month-long attack on Gaza, employing all the relevant means at its disposal. There would be targeted assassinations of leaders and operatives on a grand scale; pin-point attacks on Hamas centers of power all over the Gaza strip; and, in a large-scale ground operation, the IDF would capture land to create buffer zones and prevent arms smuggling. "The series of powerful military blows must end with Israel occupying key areas in the north and south of the Gaza Strip. Then we could again put the long-term hudna idea on the table. We would tell them they can have 10-20 years of quiet to strengthen Gaza economically," he says. After Israel withdraws in the context of a long-term cease-fire, Almog says it could work with Egypt and the U.S. to seal the southern border against arms smugglers. And even if that fails to keep the weapons out, he believes the long-term cease-fire could create conditions under which both parties would have an interest in keeping the peace. Almog does not believe Israel will be able to make much progress in the peace with Abbas. "Militarily, he is very weak. He fled from Gaza. And I don't see him undertaking action that will prevent terrorist attacks against Israel from the West Bank," he says. Paradoxically, Almog thinks Israel can get further with Hamas in Gaza, because it, at least, has the power to impose its will. Like Amidror and Almog, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has indicated that he, too, has little faith in the current peace process and has said that a major land incursion into Gaza is only a matter of time. The Amidror-Almog debate clarifies his options: If, despite the peacemaking with Abbas, he does send the IDF into Gaza, will he prefer to hold land indefinitely to fight terror, the way Amidror does, or temporarily, in order to pressure Hamas to agree to a cease-fire, as Almog proposes? Israeli experts on Hamas differ over whether any deal with the radicals, including a cease-fire, is possible. Moshe Elad, an orientalist who served in senior IDF positions in the West Bank and Gaza, argues that nothing Abbas can negotiate will be acceptable to the radicals. He sees the history of the conflict in terms of growing radicalization on the Palestinian side and describes the Oslo peace process as an aberration. In his view, there is absolutely no chance of a peace deal any time soon. Elad, however, strongly opposes the government's plan to weaken Hamas's hold on power by imposing civilian sanctions on Gaza. He sees the mid-September cabinet decision to define Gaza as an "enemy entity," with the accompanying threat to cut off electricity and fuel supplies in retaliation for Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, as counterproductive, merely accelerating the processes of radicalization. "If I look back at the past 40 years, I don't remember a single successful case of this kind of punitive action against civilians. It always results in the people uniting around the leadership," he says. In his view, growing radicalization is a given; and the only way the escalating conflict can be contained is by what he calls "smart" military means, like targeted assassinations of radical leaders, which keep the terrorist militias off-balance. Other Hamas watchers are less pessimistic. Yohanan Tzoreff, an expert on Palestinian society and government at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, maintains that a meaningful agreement with the Palestinians is only possible if it gets Hamas approval. But, unlike Elad, he believes that is not out of reach. "If the conference produces a timetable and agreed outlines on how to solve the questions of borders and refugees, Abbas will have something he can approach Hamas with," he insists. The formula would be this: Hamas doesn't take any active part in negotiations, because it doesn't recognize Israel, but is a full partner to the negotiations in the sense that Abbas keeps its leaders informed at all times, and, behind the scenes, the organization is in a position to accept or reject any new proposals. "If that happens," says Tzoreff, "then maybe something will come of this peace process." Unlike the government, Tzoreff does not think the split between Hamas-Gaza and Fatah-West Bank serves Israel's interests, arguing that Israel will need Hamas to get wider Palestinian support and legitimacy for a peace deal. "Ultimately there can be no peace deal without Hamas's approval. And if Hamas does approve, the chances of any such agreement holding up will be much greater than anything we have had in the past," he declares. Tzoreff says he discerns signs of moderation in Hamas and that the attrition of the past seven years has had an effect. He argues that the fact that Hamas ran in elections in 2006 and that it signed the Mecca Agreement last February, giving Abbas the authority to conduct negotiations with Israel, show just how much the organization has changed. He points to major differences within the Hamas leadership both inside Gaza and abroad. In Gaza, the clash is between pragmatists like Ismail Haniyeh, the former prime minister, and the extremist wing led by Mahmoud al-Zahar; in the Damascus-based leadership, there is a rift between the radical leader Khaled Mashal and his more moderate deputy Moussa Abu Marzouk. There are even rumors that Jibril Rajoub of Fatah is trying to form a Kadima-style party (which in Israel brought together politicians from the left, the center and the right) on the Palestinian side, which would include people like him from Fatah and relative moderates like Haniyeh from Hamas. The bottom line, says Tzoreff, is that it is high time Israel recognized the reasons for Oslo's failure: It was an agreement with only half the Palestinian people, and the religious forces on both sides destroyed it. "Therefore, we mustn't make another agreement with only half the Palestinian people and we mustn't ignore the religious forces on either side," he maintains. The Palestinians will not remain divided for long, according to Shaul Mishal, a Tel Aviv and Yale University specialist on Hamas and Islamic radicalism. Mishal, who together with Avraham Sela coauthored "The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence," calls the split between Hamas and Fatah "illogical and unnatural." He maintains that "there is not a drop of Palestinian legitimization on either side for all-out war between them." According to Mishal, the situation will start getting interesting around February-March of next year, when he expects Israel and Abbas to reach a set of initial agreements. "Then I think a significant dialogue between Hamas and Fatah will be opened. Israel will have to swallow that bitter pill because, without Hamas's approval, no agreement with the Palestinians will be possible. It won't be easy for Hamas either. There might be internal friction, violence, even organizational splits," he predicts. To produce an agreement Hamas can accept will take a great deal of creative thinking, Mishal says. Hamas would never agree to a final peace deal with Israel, therefore, the proposed agreement would have to hint at permanence, while containing elements that could be interpreted as temporary. "To get Hamas in, you will need a lot of ambiguity and a lot of help from third parties, major players in the Sunni world and the international community," he says. But how could Hamas subscribe to any agreement with Israel when its religious dogma contains an imperative to destroy the Jewish state and set up an Islamic caliphate in its stead? According to Mishal, if it gets a good agreement and a modicum of third party support, Hamas would be able to produce dialectical formulas to rationalize its backing of a deal with Israel. "They can find religious arguments to explain the apparent deviation from dogma. There are also institutional ways of doing this, for example they could say that they were not part of the leadership that made the deal," Mishal asserts. Mishal argues that instead of trying to destroy Hamas militarily, Israel should be preparing to deal with the radicals. "We should ask ourselves, if we keep on hitting Hamas hard militarily, how long will it be productive? Instead of Hamas, we might get the international brigades of radical Islam, that is extreme extraterritorial ideological terrorists from all over the Muslim world. At least with Hamas we have a territorial conflict," he maintains. The interlude in Olmert's sukka, as the prime minister explained the significance of the "Four Species" to his Palestinian guests, suggested an idyllic Middle East of mutual respect and coexistence. But will that surrealistic scene prove a harbinger of things to come, or will this latest chance of reconciliation crash, like others before it, against the unbending fanaticism of Middle Eastern rejectionism?
