Some points worthy of consideration:
- Hamas was elected to be the government of Gaza in 2006
- There hasn’t been an election since
- Hamas is basically an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood
- Since coming into power in Gaza Hamas has gone to war with Israel, Egypt, and Fatah
- Hamas’s unwillingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist has been the primary impediment to Palestinian statehood
Hama is not popular even in Gaza. The most recent polling data suggest that the overwhelming majority of Gazans would like the Palestinian Authority (basically Fatah) to assume the leadership of Gaza.
Did Hamas have a rep at earlier peace talks? Not that I remember. I recently read back through the past negotiations, particularly the 2000 one and according to participants the main sticking point was the 3% of the West Bank with settlers. The Palestinians insisted on having the entire West Bank and the Israelis on keeping the 3%. There were some minor issues about East Jerusalem but those were thought resolvable. So depending upon how you look at it the Palestinains could have had peace if they were willing to give up 3% or the Israelis could have had peace if they were willing to give up the settlements.
Of course that would be just for the West Bank. In Gaza Hamas is the problem. Israel needs to either decide to effectively deal with them or else take the security issue seriously. They cant pull the IDF out to sit on the West Bank. As Exum notes in his piece dealing with Hamas would mean large losses like what we saw with fighting ISIS. Israel has opted to just occasionally lose a few people but kill 15 times as many Palestinians, maybe even a few Hamas, in return. Then this big security lapse and they lost a lot of people.
Steve
There’s a pretty good timeline for 2006 to 2018 here.