Foreign Policy Leaders Call for U.S. Shift on Hamas

In the New York Times, Roger Cohen discusses a new report by a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts, including Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski among other big names, that calls on the Obama administration to “shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas.” Cohen believes that Obama’s Middle East Envoy, George Mitchell, and his national security advisor, General James Jones, are sympathetic to these ideas. Khaled Meshal, political director of Hamas, has said that, although Hamas will not formally recognize Israel, it would support a peace deal endorsed by a referendum of the Palestinian people.

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