The New Statesman magazine this week came out against the war in Gaza.

The devastating air assault on the Gaza Strip which began on 27 December, and the ground invasion that followed, are the latest stages in the unequal war between the state of Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by the acronym Hamas. The onslaught has so far led to the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, many of them children, including those killed in an air strike on the UN-run al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Since Hamas’s unexpected victory in legislative elections in January 2006, Israel has been attempting to loosen the organisation’s grip on the Palestinian territories. Although the elections were widely acknowledged to be free and fair, neither Israel nor any of its western allies was prepared to recognise a Palestinian Authority run by what they regard as a terrorist organisation.

Its leading editorial also said the Israeli government must negotiate with Hamas.

Yet it is hard to see how Israel will benefit from its instinctive reversion to force, grotesquely disproportionate in this latest war. It is also hard not to see this invasion of Gaza, as well as the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, as proxy wars in the larger conflict with Syria and Iran. The campaign is unlikely to damage Hamas as much as Israel seems to hope – its military wing need only retain a rudimentary fighting capacity to claim a victory of sorts, and because of its willingness to resist the invasion, it may yet emerge from the conflict with its status enhanced.
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It may be unpalatable to deal with a group that endorses suicide bombing and which is virulently anti-Semitic, but Israel, and its sponsor, the US, must acknowledge Hamas as the democratic choice of the Palestinians and seek grounds for compromise. In the long run, negotiations will provide a more effective and infinitely more humane way of protecting Israeli citizens than attempting to batter the Gazans into submission.

…more on the New Statesman website

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