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MJ: Sacking of Washington Mid East hand points up growing rift between Washington ideology and Israeli pragmatism:
... In a previous interview, Malley explained his position on Hamas. "It is not an issue of whether the US should talk to Hamas," Malley told me. "That is not in the cards."
"What I do think is, we need to question a policy that has been in place for two and a half years which by any measure, including the measure the [Bush] administration set up to assess its policy, has been an outright failure," Malley continued. "It has not gotten Hamas to accept preconditions [of recognizing Israel]. It hasn't stopped violence or deterred Hamas from launching violence. It has not weakened Hamas' hold militarily or politically. It hasn't strengthened moderates whose credibility is hemorraghing and who are viewed as being on the side of Israel and the US. It has not advanced the peace process."
"By any standard, and I am even prepared to accept the administration's own measure, this has been a bankrupt policy," Malley concluded. "At a minimum, that warrants an honest discussion on alternatives."
Here in Israel, Malley's position--that the current Israeli-Hamas stand off warrants an honest discussion of alternatives--has been advocated by many former Israeli security and diplomatic veterans from the right and the left. Chief among them is former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy.
"We have to reckon with Hamas as an element in the equation," Halevy told me recently. "Now whether this has to be done by direct talks with Hamas is a question of methodology, mechanics -- not the principle. The principle is we have to engage them. ...At the moment, neither side wants to speak with the other. But every side wants to engage the other...Hamas is willing to act as an element in the equation." [...]
Halevy also points out that it was the Bush administration that pushed both the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority leadership to allow Hamas to run in Palestinian elections which Hamas won. "This [Bush] administration, which says it has a principled approach [of not talking to terrorists], is the very administration that in 2006 twisted the arm of the Israeli government and of the Palestinian authorities and forced them both to accept Hamas as a participant in the elections," Halevy told me. "When the result of the election was a surprise – by the way to Hamas itself – the immediate reaction was, 'Okay, We don’t like this result, so we’ll change the rules.' They are inconsistent. The administration is inconsistent in its approach."
And not only inconsistent, the former Mossad chief says, but ineffectual: "If this administration believes it is possible to bring about the end of Hamas as a political or military force, then okay. But this is not what is being said today. If you ask in Washington, 'Can Hamas can be destroyed?' No one in Washington says that....I don’t hear either from Israeli hawks or American hawks any message that they have a solution in hand." ...