Hamas: Wishful Thinking is No Basis for Policy Making (Huffington Post) 

“‘If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.’ C.S. Lewis

Is the Palestinian Islamist organisation Hamas about to give up its strategy of armed resistance? Hopes were raised when Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told Al Jazeera on 26 December 2011 that “all forms of resistance, especially armed resistance [i.e. the path of terrorism], are our right, but now, during the Arab Spring, we prefer the popular resistance and to focus instead on a unified strategy of popular resistance.”

I would be the first to dance a jig if there was a genuine rethink on the part of Hamas. A ‘new Hamas’ would indeed bring comfort. It would open the way to Palestinian unity and the extension of the West Bank nation-building strategy to Gaza. And it would boost the search for a two state solution, as well as encouraging other Islamist movements to give up violence. These are all glittering prizes, to be sure.

But it’s all ‘a bit previous’. And in the Middle East, as in life, it’s all about the timing. If European politicians get the timing wrong and drop the ‘no-contact’ policy too soon they could put back the clock on progress, inflict tremendous damage on the peace process and the undermine moderate politics throughout the region.

For four reasons, now is not to time bringing Hamas in from the cold.”

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