To defuse the threat from Gaza militants to Israel and President Bush's Mideast peace program, the U.S. has decided that the ends justify the means.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is considered a terrorist group by Washington. U.S. law forbids official contacts. Nonetheless, the Bush administration is giving quiet support for Egypt's attempt to broker a deal with Hamas for a truce in Gaza. Under this approach, which U.S. officials and Mideast diplomats confirmed, Hamas would halt rocket attacks from Gaza. Israel would agree not to launch the kind of military incursions that nearly wrecked the U.S.-sponsored peace talks last weekend and would ease its blockade of Gaza. "It's better to have a stable situation right now than to have Hamas doing what Hamas was doing, which was pulling the thread," a senior U.S. official said Thursday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive policy shift that gained momentum when Mahmoud Abbas, the U.S.-backed Palestinian president, canceled peace talks to protest the deaths of more than 120 Palestinians in the Israeli assault.
Any progress is tenuous, as seen Thursday with the fatal shootings by a Palestinian gunman at a library of a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem. It was the first major militant attack in the city in more than four years.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after NATO meetings in Brussels, was asked about Egyptian-brokered truce talks. "I talked with the Egyptians and we fully expect the Egyptians to carry out the efforts that they said they would carry out to try to bring calm to the region, to try to improve the situation in Gaza," she said. |