Engaging with Hamas and Hezbollah: Who benefits?

Engaging with Hamas and Hezbollah: Who benefits?

It wasn't exactly news last week when John Brennan, US president Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, suggested that the US work to strengthen "moderate elements" within Hezbollah. Brennan has made similar comments before - last year, in fact - and the Obama administration just last month walked back rumors that it was planning to engage with the Lebanese group.

Hezbollah - and Hamas, which despite its differences is often lumped under the same rubric in official discussions - remain difficult questions for policymakers in Washington. The US-led "peace process" does not include Hamas, which controls the democratically-elected government in Gaza; and policymakers have few interactions with Hezbollah, whose coalition controls a sizable minority in Lebanon's parliament.

This status quo has existed for decades, despite what seems to be a growing awareness on both sides that simply excluding Hamas and Hezbollah is untenable.

Robert Malley, the director of Middle East and North Africa programs at the International Crisis Group - and a former adviser to US president Barack Obama - acknowledged today at the Al Jazeera forum that "trying to make peace peace between two parties involves trying to make peace with all parties." At the same time, though, he dismissed the short-term benefits of engaging with Hamas.

"It would weaken the party they believe is committed to a two-state solution, [and] it would further alienate the Israeli public and the Israeli government," Malley said.

The other "party" in question is Fatah, which runs the government in the West Bank. The Egyptian government has spent years trying to broker a reconciliation deal between the two, with little success.

Malley also criticized Hamas and Hezbollah for "their lack of clarity" about the "end-state... they will accept."

From the US perspective, in other words, policymakers don't see the immediate benefits of engaging with either group.

Hamas, on the other hand, insists it has made meaningful efforts towards reconciliation: Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for the group, blamed the "US veto" for overruling a reconciliation deal last year. And he criticized the US government for excluding Hamas from debate about Israel and Palestine.

"The main issue is that the resistance has been excluded," Hamdan said. "There are those who try to exclude the resistance based on the actions of Israel... but what interests do Western powers have in supporting Israel?"

Hamdan - and his Hezbollah counterpart, Ibrahim Moussaoui - both portrayed their groups as reluctant resistance movements, forced to take up arms against Israel because of the limited opportunities for a political reconciliation.

"We do not have the luxury of choices... we could not have any other means but resistance. We don't have the United States guaranteeing our security," Moussaoui said. "We advocate dialogue... but when we face aggression, we have to defend ourselves."

But neither Moussaoui nor Hamdan offered any clarity about the outcome they wanted from that dialogue - the "end-states" Malley mentioned. And while they seemed to welcome the prospect of better engagement with Washington, neither pointed to any concrete benefits of closer ties.

Everyone seems to agree about the benefits of engagement in theory - but nobody can describe what that engagement might look like, or how it might help.