Al-Masfar: Arab and international efforts to open direct dialogue between Hamas and the International Community

The Qatari writer and academic, Dr. Muhammad Al-Masfar, has expressed his hope that Arab and international efforts which seek to heal the rift in Hamas’ relations with the international community, specifically with the European Union and the U.S administration, arrive at a practical process for achieving a complete end to the siege and to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

In exclusive statements to Quds Press, Al-Masfar, a political science professor at Qatar University, disclosed that parties concerned with forging dialogue between Hamas, Europe and the US administration have gathered for several meetings in various European capitals. They tackled the main points of contention such as the lifting of the siege, prisoner exchange, and facilitating reconciliation between Palestinian factions at loggerheads so as to help move forward the peace process and to achieve completion of these commensurate with the requirements of the Palestinian resistance.

Al-Masfar highlighted what he called ‘a penetration of the wall between Hamas and the international community’ which reflects European and U.S. admission of a fait accompli, and the implicit acknowledgement of the failure of the West’s policy of marginalizing Hamas through war and the siege.
He added that the international community found no choice other than indirect dialogue with Hamas following the failure of all attempts to isolate and marginalize them. They have endeavoured to achieve Hamas’ isolation by several means; by preventing President Mahmoud Abbas from accepting national reconciliation unless it is tied to the international demands of the Quartet and by pushing the Egyptian regime to tighten the closure of its borders with Gaza, including through the construction of the steel wall. They have also continued to encourage the Arab world to boycott Hamas and prevent its political recognition (despite having allowed them to receive Hamas leaders). 

Al-Masfar asserted that such efforts, which involve Palestinian, Arab, and European figures, are liable to succeed in breaking the barrier between Hamas and the international community and thus constitute a genuine gateway to involving Hamas in official Arab society and to ending the protracted crisis. He expressed the hope that such efforts should succeed in convincing the Egyptian leadership of the futility and ineffectiveness of the steel wall prior to the convention of the upcoming Arab summit in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, next March. Al-Masfar asserted that The Wall was intended solely to further starve and humiliate the Palestinians and to force them to give in to the terms of the Israeli occupation.

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