Shadow Government

A front-row seat to the Republicans' debate over foreign policy, including their critique of the Biden administration.

Clinton keeps the pressure on Hamas

By Christian Brose Asked today whether the Obama administration plans to engage with Hamas, Secretary Clinton answered pretty categorically that things aren’t changing: [W]e have a very clear policy toward Hamas, and Hamas knows the conditions that have been set forth. They must renounce violence. They must recognize Israel. And they must agree to abide ...

By Christian Brose

By Christian Brose

Asked today whether the Obama administration plans to engage with Hamas, Secretary Clinton answered pretty categorically that things aren’t changing:

[W]e have a very clear policy toward Hamas, and Hamas knows the conditions that have been set forth. They must renounce violence. They must recognize Israel. And they must agree to abide by prior agreements that were entered into by the Palestinian Authority.

We are just at the beginning of this deep and consistent engagement that we are part of, that Senator Mitchell is leading for our Administration, but our conditions with respect to Hamas have not and will not change. It is our hope that the work that needs to be done to move the parties toward an effort to settle many of the disputes that they currently confront will be effective. But Hamas knows that it must stop the rocket fire into Israel. There were rockets yesterday, there were rockets this morning. And it is very difficult to ask any nation to do anything other than defend itself in the wake of that kind of consistent attack.

For now, I’d say that pretty decisively quiets talk in Europe, recently by Javier Solana and Tony Blair, that the West should extend an olive branch to Hamas. This, in additon to Afghanistan, could signal a rough road ahead for the transatlantic alliance. And keeping Europe onboard may require a lot of diplomatic pushing and shoving. But it’s the right position to take.

Kudos to Secretary Clinton.

Christian Brose is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. He served as chief speechwriter and policy advisor for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2008, and as speechwriter for former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2004 to 2005.

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