Hamas, Israel vow new focus

JERUSALEM -- New governments began to take shape on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide last week, each promising to take a new approach to the Middle East conflict. And to a large extent, each side plans to proceed by ignoring the other.

Hamas, whose Palestinian Authority Cabinet was sworn in Wednesday, the day after Israel's parliamentary elections, aims to split the international community by playing Europe against Washington, and wants to talk to Israel about daily-life issues while ignoring fundamental political differences.

Israel, on the other hand, wants Hamas to recognize the Jewish state, renounce violence, and respect previous peace agreements or face international isolation. If Hamas does not change, leaders of the victorious Kadima party say the government would either implement a unilateral solution or negotiate directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group headed by the relatively weak Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

With each side vowing to focus on its own internal interests and find ways to exist without the other, there is little chance for negotiations any time soon. But each side offers a paper-thin possibility of dialogue.

The acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, made conciliatory comments after election results trickled out early Wednesday. For the first time in months, he talked positively about the US-sponsored ''road map" to peace, though he still ruled out talks with Hamas unless it first meets Israel's three basic conditions. The road map calls on Palestinians to crack down on militant groups and calls on Israelis to stop expanding settlements as first steps toward reopening negotiations.

Incoming members of the Hamas-dominated Cabinet said in interviews that they would be willing to talk to Israel -- at least about logistical matters such as cooperation on healthcare and education, infrastructure projects, and coordination of movements of people -- despite their official position against the Jewish state.

Independent political analyst Gidi Greenstein said that two hard-line governments, existing ''back to back" without pretending to negotiate, might be able to achieve a stability that previous peace talks never could.

''Hamas on the Palestinian side and Kadima on the Israeli side speak roughly the same language: No negotiations, no agreement, but back-to-back understandings that would create a new equilibrium," Greenstein said.

Greenstein said Hamas and Kadima speak in terms of realpolitik and pragmatism, and propose provisional borders between Israel and a Palestinian state that run roughly along the 1967 borders that existed before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt. Hamas speaks of a ''long-term truce" if Israel pulls back to the pre-1967 lines, while Kadima speaks of pulling out of most of the West Bank and swapping Israeli land for some of the larger Jewish settlements there.

Yet the threat of renewed violence always looms. On Wednesday night, a suicide bomber killed three Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, and a militant offshoot of the defeated Fatah party claimed responsibility.

For now, representatives of both governments are focusing less on what they have in common and more on ways to survive while turning their backs on each other.

The incoming Palestinian Authority planning minister, Sameer Abu-Eisheh, an independent with a doctorate in transportation planning from Pennsylvania State University and no ties to Hamas, said he has been approached by representatives of a European government looking to keep aid money flowing into the occupied territories. Israel and the United States have vowed to cut off money unless Hamas drops its anti-Israel platform.

Finance Minister Omar Abdul Razeq -- a Hamas member who has a doctorate in economics from Iowa State University -- said he wants to talk with Israel. At the same time, he said he is working to assemble alternative funding from Arab states and to guarantee the continuation of humanitarian aid from the United Nations and Europe to keep schools and clinics in the occupied territories afloat.

''I have no problem talking to the Israelis regarding economic and financial matters," Razeq said, sticking to a Hamas formulation that separates ''political" issues, like recognition of Israel or the renunciation of violence, from ''daily life" issues, like humanitarian aid, trade, and economic development.

On the Israeli side, Lior Chorev, an adviser to Kadima, predicted that the government would not carry on any talks with Hamas, even through unofficial channels. He said Israel would not back down from its three demands to Hamas, nor would Hamas accept them.

''Therefore, I believe that there will not be any direct negotiations with Hamas, nor will there be any back door to Hamas," Chorev said. ''Politically and morally speaking, such a back door will not stand."

Chorev said talks with Abbas are also unlikely because they would give a cover of legitimacy to the Hamas government while allowing it to dodge the Israeli demands. ''Our strategy is not to allow a two-headed Palestinian Authority," he said.

However, Kadima, which won 29 of the 120 Knesset seats, will have to rely heavily on coalition partners to form a government, including the Labor party, whose leaders have spoken more positively about negotiations with Abbas. So have former Labor politicians who defected to Kadima.

Meanwhile, a former Palestinian aide is working to create diplomatic back channels between Israel and Abbas. Elias Zananiri, a former spokesman for Mohammed Dahlan, the powerful civil affairs minister in the defeated Fatah government, said the Israeli election results showed that a majority of Israelis are ready to give up most of the West Bank. In doing so, he said, Israel will be better off signing a deal with Palestinians than carrying out another unilateral withdrawal that Hamas can claim as a victory for its campaign of violence -- as it did when Israel left the Gaza Strip last summer.

Zananiri said he is trying to arrange talks between Israeli figures and Abbas, who he said has constitutional legitimacy since he was elected Palestinian president with 62 percent of the vote, a larger popular mandate than Hamas won in January.

But Chorev, echoing the line of right-leaning Kadima members, said Abbas had proved himself to be a failed partner for the Israelis.

Abbas has tried to parlay the Western boycott of Hamas into an opportunity to reclaim his role as a peacemaker and top Palestinian leader. He is officially head of the PLO, which under the 1993 Oslo Accords is charged with negotiating with Israel.

Saeb Erekat, chief PLO negotiator for more than a decade, said that the West should resume talks with the group. ''President Abbas can open negotiations whenever he wants," Erekat said. ''He is ready to resume final-status negotiations with no conditions."

Hamas insists that the new government sworn in Wednesday is the representative of the Palestinian people, even though the Palestinian Authority charter gives responsibility for foreign affairs to the president.

Greenstein, the independent analyst from the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv, said the international consensus to isolate Hamas -- already weakened by Russia's invitation to Hamas leaders -- would fracture even further. Israel would then face a choice: Escalate conflict with Hamas or enter a de facto detente with the Hamas government extending the period of calm as Israel dealt with the internal debate over which parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem to give up.

Razeq said Hamas officials were working to persuade European nations to continue aid to the Hamas-controlled authority, potentially driving a wedge between Europe and Washington. ''We hope that the Europeans will change their mind after they talk to our government," Razeq said.