Negotiating with Terrorists

ERRATA: In this podcast I confused Tulsi Gabbard, lately US Director of National Intelligence, and Kristi Noem, lately US Homeland Security Secretary. It was Tulsi Gabbard rather than Kristi Noem who maintained back-channel relations with the IRGC. In the video I imply that the negotiations between the US and Hamas are being conducted in Cairo; they’re being conducted in el-Alamein. Alamein is a railway halt in the Western Desert which is otherwise little-known. Norwegians were having talks with Hamas in 2021, and I gather I’m supposed to view that as a bad thing. An American private citizen, accompanied by a Brit and a Bulgarian, had talks with Hamas just now, and I think that’s meant to be a fine thing. There’s a world in which an American private citizen negotiating with a US-designated foreign terrorist organisation might risk a brush with the Law. In this case, Jared Kushner appears to be unconcerned. Arranging an agreement whereby Hamas, a terrorist organisation, achieves an incremental goal by getting the Israel Defence Forces out of Gaza probably isn’t ‘material support’ in the meaning of 18 US Code Chapter 113B. Sometimes people bring up the Logan Act, which forbids American private citizens from negotiating on behalf of the United States; but nobody’s ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act so Kushner won’t be losing any sleep over that. The UK was abominated until recently for not treating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards as terrorist in UK law, while at about the same time the US Director of National Intelligence was keeping up back-channel contact with them. It’s not that having back-channel contact with people you’re fighting is wicked. During the Second World War, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler knew how to get hold of the British government to ask for penicillin. The reason it’s worth mentioning is that a reason to differentiate between terrorists and non-terrorists is to tell us with whom we should and shouldn’t sit down for a dicker. Most significant, though: when he was finished his session with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, Mr Kushner got on a plane to Jerusalem to talk with the Israeli government about exchanging Israeli withdrawal for Hamas disarmament. That is exactly the sort of shuttle diplomacy the US might have considered before agreeing with Hamas an Israeli withdrawal without consulting the Israelis. The PLO/Fatah/Palestinian Authority renounced terrorism, and now they’re nominally in control of parts of the West Bank, but largely marginalised. I don’t think they’re getting any high-level delegations jetting to Ramallah to update the ancient Abu Mazen on the progress of making Gaza an independent country. It’s fairly clear that the intention of creating the ‘technocratic’ government of Gaza is to extend its writ to the West Bank as soon as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retires from active politics. Hamas have been practising terrorism fairly consistently since 1989, and they’ve got a high-level delegation checking in with them to ensure they’re happy with America pushing Israel back out of Gaza. How’s that as a rationale for practising terrorism? That article I referred to:Neumann, Peter R. “Negotiating with Terrorists.” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 1 (2007): 128–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032216. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe