Talking To the Enemy.(World Affairs)

Byline: Kevin Peraino; With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem

The United States says Hamas is a terrorist group. But increasingly, Israelis want to reach out to them.

I n the United States, the notion of face-to-face talks with Hamas has long been a political third rail. The State Department classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and politicians who even broach the idea of talking would be pilloried. But in the Jewish state, even as violence flares in Jerusalem--a terrorist shooting at a yeshiva last week killed eight people--a growing chorus of security officials and academics have begun calling for direct negotiations with the Islamists. Ordinary Israelis are also beginning to see the potential of talks. In a Haaretz-Dialog poll last month, 64 percent of Israelis said they supported direct talks. That includes members of the dovish Labor Party, where 72 percent favor negotiations. But, surprisingly, it also includes 48 percent of those surveyed from the hawkish Likud Party.

The numbers are a reflection of the Israeli public's growing frustration at what they see as a failing Gaza policy. Since the Islamists won power in parliamentary elections two years ago, Israel and the United States have enforced an embargo on the coastal strip, hoping support for Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate West Bank allies could help turn world public opinion against Hamas. Yet the Islamists have learned to effectively play the spoiler, sabotaging Abbas's peace talks with a few well-placed rocket barrages. Meantime, Israeli military raids into Gaza have backfired. After Israeli troops killed more than 50 Palestinian civilians in Gaza operations last week, international public opinion turned sharply critical. "Hamas is not going to disappear," says Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli military chief of strategic planning. "They're not Al Qaeda; they're a national political movement." Brom, who favors indirect negotiations with Hamas, says he believes a dialogue could help moderate the Islamists. Damascus, Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told NEWSWEEK last year that his organization would also be open to direct talks, as long as there are no preconditions.

But for now, the fragility of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's governing coalition makes any high-profile contacts unlikely. ...