BGTO

One can only hope that the Israelis and Palestinians have their frequent flier mile accounts activated. As of last boarding gate count, Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz flew to Egypt, separately. Hamas had been there done that; they have also paid a visit to Jordan. Hamas may be headed to Moscow and perhaps Madrid. Chavez’s Caracas may even plan an “Arabian nights” theme party hosting both Hamas and Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who incidentally also flew to Assad’s Damascus. Even NATO has racked up new route miles with a secretary general flying into Tel Aviv, as there are trial balloons about a NATO-Israeli link. What gives? For understatement, the Hamas victory has destabilized the existing status quo. Not necessarily in the way that the non-Mideast world thinks. The election fallout from Hamas not only affects Tel-Aviv but also Egypt and Jordan. The sight of Shaul Mofaz and Mubarak having a handshaking, smiling photo op in Cairo was perhaps the most telling of all. But, what came after was even more profound. Mubarak reassured the world that the Hamas founding charter plank threat to “push the Jews into the sea” and establish a Wafa Caliphate on Dizengoff St. was just hookah talk. To paraphrase, he said that Nassar used to say the same thing and look how the Egyptians were defeated and what happened as a result. Mubarak has a big problem, as his kidnapped eyeless in Gaza naval attaché well knows. One shouldn’t even ask the question what an Egyptian “naval attaché” is doing in a boatless Gaza with its seacoast choked off against another Karine-A… so don’t. If Gaza turns into Funda-al-Qaedastan he will have a situation like Spain with the ETA separatists in Basque country or the English with the Irish of old. An enemy with land. If Hamas spreads out the welcome prayer mat to Israel’s enemies it won’t be long until they will ally with Egypt’s Brotherhood with their eye on the prize of a Shariah Cairo.

If Hamas successfully attacks Israel from Gaza with Arafat’s bequeathed army of a “million martyrs,” the Israeli response will have that same host trekking across Sinai demanding food, water, and hospitality. This is Bedouin country, similar to Pakistan’s “territories”… nominally outside of the reach of the government. Al Qaeda already has many of these Bedouins on the payroll and a refugee crisis would give them even more cover to destabilize Egypt’s corrupt, incompetent ruling class, which is already tottering and postponing elections, and the inevitable revolution to come. The Egyptians also don’t want to kiss good-bye to the billions that have been poured into the Red Sea resorts from Taba to Sharm-el-Sheikh. A few more beachfront luxury hotel lobby blow-ups that were planned in the Sinai hills, and the Italian and Spanish investors will never realize their dream of a Costa del Sol minaret style.

You have to hand it to Tom Friedman. He nailed it this week calling on everyone to stop fretting about press releases and interviews. As John Mitchell said of his Justice department, “Watch what we do not what we say,” that is ever true for Hamas. It’s about bombs, not sound bites; it’s about imbedded shrapnel, not dreams; it’s about missiles, not missives. The Palestinians have elected a government with an agenda; they did so democratically; they will live or die with the consequences of that decision. You can’t rescind a democratically elected government and have any international legitimacy. You can starve a government with policies that threaten you. You can defeat a democratically elected government if it has declared, waged, or enabled war on you and you have all the international legitimacy you need. Trying to get Hamas to negotiate with Israel on its terms, arm twisting them to cry “recognition” as everyone (including Abbas) is trying to do is a failed strategy from the start. They can have any foreign policy they want as long as it’s not to war with their neighbor. If their goal is to war with their neighbor then they will have to win or lose that war. If they lose they will find themselves in the position that Saddam is in. His country gone, his sons killed, his generals reduced to images on decks of cards, himself ranting and raving from a prison cell. Hamas knows that the Israelis have printed up a deck with all its leaders. They have already eliminated the aces and some kings. The elimination of the queens and jacks is only a policy question of time, military resources, and internal and external politics. Once before in Beirut the Israelis were talked into letting their foe flee and form an exile government in Tunis. It is unlikely that if they invade to crush Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank they will make that mistake again. The Israelis’ Mossad knows where every one of Hamas’s “representatives” lives and where their families reside. They have a detailed organizational chart of who does what to whom. Additionally, you can be sure that just as the Phalangists carried out the slaughter of the Palestinian refugees in that Beirut clash, the disposed and cookie-jar-less Fatah leaders would help the Shin Bet do the same to Hamas. It would be very bloody, very difficult to do so, but as in Jenin the outcome is not in doubt. As the new legally elected government of the Palestinians, Hamas is actually more constrained than when they hid under the skirts of the PLO.

When there is a suicide bombing attack against Israel, we will see the real politics of the Mideast emerge; until then, it’s a lot of words, a lot of hype, a lot of jockeying for position. This makes for endless repetition of Hamas’s position and endless punditry, but ink and video screens aren’t bombs and bullets, and unfortunately that is how every Arab-Israeli conflict has been previously settled. For today only, however, the new alliances are BGTO and that stands for Bordering Gaza Treaty Organization, and for a while this new Egyptian-Israeli alliance may constrain Hamas and force them into a real-world vise of pragmatism.