Trump talking directly to Hamas can be a positive milestone (assuming it won't turn into a "divide & conquer" strategy).
Tony Blair once allowed 2 Hamas leaders to quietly visit the UK in 2006, meet MPs, tour Northern Ireland & learn from the experiences of the IRA & Sinn Féin.
The visit was very "enlightening" for those 2 leaders & helped tip the power of balance inside Hamas towards the moderate wing that advocates for greater diplomatic engagement.
One of those two leaders, Ahmed Yousef, who was Ismael Haniya's advisor, then formulated a peace proposal that was too generous to the extent that president Abbas rejected it & thought it conceded too much to Israel.
The other leader, MP Sayed Abu Musameh, said after the visit Hamas won't object to Israel being a Jewish state. He did a long interview in which he recognized Jewish suffering in Europe & their contributions to civilization in Muslim countries.
Israel & the US pressured Blair to never invite any Hamas leaders again & he bowed to the pressure. (Israel always fears what it calls "Palestinian peace offensive", when Palestinians become too moderate, rise to international respectability, & in turn mak Israel look bad).
The movement was afterwards isolated, defunded & boycotted. That isolation has always only empowered hardliners who advocated that only "might makes right", & that diplomatic engagement is pointless.
The Western practice of choosing partners; conferring legitimacy on one Palestinian party & withholding it from another fuelled the intra-Palestinian division & obstructed repeated reconciliation attempts.
Blair would later remark in 2017 that it was a mistake to boycott Hamas after its 2006 electoral victory.
As I once wrote in ECFR, engaging with non-state armed actors can - if done right - moderate their politics. It depends on how it's carried out, who is being talked to in these groups, for what purpose, what the end game is & the incentives being offered.
