The media is full of conflicting reports about whether or not Hamas is ready to recognize Israel. In some reports, Hamas spokesmen imply that it would. Others reports have them saying "never."
This Ha'aretz story encapsulates this contradiction in its headline: "Hamas accepts 1967 borders, but will never recognize Israel, top official says."
But why does it matter whether Hamas recognizes Israel or not, so long as it agrees to permanently end terror attacks against Israel? Who needs its recognition?
The issue of Hamas recognition of Israel would be valid if Israel was about to enter negotiations with it. Those negotiations would, in fact, be meaningless if Hamas ruled out recognition as an end-result of negotiations, as meaningless as if Israel ruled out withdrawing from the West Bank.
But no one is proposing Israeli/Hamas negotiations. The issue now is whether Israel and/or the United States should consider dealing with a government that includes Hamas. Does the Hamas presence rule out negotiating with that government?
It shouldn't, not when both Fatah and Hamas say that it will be President Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who will be in charge of relations with Israel. Abbas is fully committed to peace with Israel. He opposes all forms of violence. His forces have worked with Israel's to thwart terrorism, earning the Israeli government's praise as a "partner for peace."
In fact, since his predecessor, Yasir Arafat's, death Abbas has made the establishment of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel his number one goal. Why does it matter what Hamas thinks about negotiations when it will be the PLO that will be conducting them? All that is necessary from Hamas is that it pledge an end to violence, and keep it
Hamas' presence in the Palestinian government should no more rule out negotiations with it than the presence of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beteinu party in Netanyahu's coalition makes negotiations with Netanyahu beyond the pale.
Lieberman, after all, opposes negotiations with the Palestinians and favors "transfer," a version of ethnic cleansing, under which Palestinians would be forcibly moved to Arab lands. Unlike Hamas, which would have no role in foreign policy in the proposed unity government, Lieberman is Israel's foreign minister.
But that should not matter, the same way Hamas' presence should not matter. Governments have all kinds of partners in their ruling coalitions; what matters is the policies the coalition adopts -- not the views of its various components.
If Netanyahu and Abbas agree to negotiate, the views of Hamas and Yisrael Beteinu are beside the point, again with the caveat that all forms of violence are utterly and completely proscribed.
That is why both Israel and the United States should drop its demand that Hamas recognize Israel in advance of negotiations. First of all, Hamas is not going to do it. The only card it has in its dealings with Israel is the recognition card and it is not going to play it in advance of negotiations. Demanding that it play it now is like demanding that Israel not freeze, but dismantle, settlements prior to negotiations. It won't happen.
And it doesn't matter.
It appears that the Obama administration may understand this. Asked about the implications of the unity agreement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was equivocal: "There are many steps that have yet to be undertaken in order to implement the agreement. And we are going to be carefully assessing what this actually means, because there are a number of different potential meanings to it, both on paper and in practice."
Congress, of course, responded the way it usually does, with an AIPAC-authored letter warning Palestinians not to unite. No one could expect anything else in the midst of the pre-2012 fundraising season.
But then Congress has never given much evidence of caring whether the Israelis and Palestinians come to terms while the White House has. Besides, it is the President who needs to worry about the implications of a deepening Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the national interest. Maybe Congress should too, but it rarely, if ever, has.
Unfortunately, if past is prologue, the White House will ultimately join the Israelis in ignoring the possibility that Hamas may be ready to live in peace alongside Israel. It will do the same thing both the Bush and Obama administrations did with the unprecedented Arab League Initiative which offered Israel full peace and normalization in exchange for territorial withdrawal. It will ignore it and, with the Israelis, hope that it goes away.
And it will.
The point is that opportunities for peace vanish if the people who matter refuse to seize them. Had the United States expressed serious interest in the Arab Initiative -- and pushed Israel hard to explore its possibilities -- Israelis and Palestinians might be on their way to peace by now, rather than still languishing in deadly stalemate.
Israel, in particular, needs to recognize that it needs peace to become everything it is capable of being, and that time is not on its side. While the Palestinians are unifying and preparing to declare a state, Israel is now more isolated than ever before in its history. With Mubarak gone, Turkey no longer friendly and the ever-cautious Assad regime on the brink, Israel needs to recognize that the best time for a deal is right now. Ignoring any peace feelers, from anyone, is just plain dumb.
Follow MJ Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjayrosenberg
Israel policy, actions and life is for Israel's citizens to decide not for you or the UN, or the US, or the EU......
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" [quote "adorning" the Covenant, as motto]
"Hamas is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine" [Art. 2]
"The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' [Art. 7]
"Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." [Art. 8]
"Hamas believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. [...] This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force [...]. [Art. 11}
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad." [Art. 13]
"It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem [sic!], and should be dealt with on this basis." [Art. 15]
"The Muslim woman has a role no less important than that of the Muslim man in the battle of liberation. She is the maker of men." [Art. 17]
"[...] Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs." [Art. 17]
"For a long time, the enemies have been planning, [...] for the achievement of what they have attained. [...] With their money, they took control of the world media, [...]. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others [...]. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries [...]. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate" [Art.22]
"Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people." [Art. 28]
"It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region" [Art. 31]
"Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence source ... said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose: "To help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."
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Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.
But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official .
"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with," he said.
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According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, "the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism." ...
Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth the waters," he said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10456.htm
Get it into honest perspective and maybe Israel and fellow Palestinians have a chance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJcfJTELmoM&feature=player_embedded
(Must watch)
he concept of Jewish nationalism, Israel notwithstanding, the young American Jew finds laughable. The leftist Jewish student scrapes along ashamed of his identity and yet is obsessed with it. “
“The miracle of 1948 was that the Jew did it alone, with the guns he could smuggle and the iron will that is the legacy of Auschwitz… This makes it so imperative that we ensure that which was won by Jewish heroes on the fields of Palestine will not be lost with the aid and connivance of Jewish moral cowards.”"
-MJ Rosenberg
For those honestly interested in the state of conditions and the heinous exclusions and laws intended to completely disenfranchise a people (and illustrating why Israel is not a democracy, regardless how gay friendly the IDF may be). This illustrates why we have a Hamas:
Israeli Inequality Sustained By Citizenship Laws
http://www.vimeo.com/22011304
Why does the United States support and fund this? How can it be in the interests of the Middle East and the world?
"Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel ..."
What is the "Land of Israel?" Sounds mythological. The state of Israel has not even declared borders. This is why it cannot even have a formal alliance with the USA.
Do not forget Israel funded the foundation of Hamas. Look it up.
>>>"The “loyalty oath” to which Cook refers to in the video was taken out of a law passed in the Knesset on March 28, 2011, a week after the interview."
In fact, although proposals for introducing a "loyalty pledge" have been discussed by the Israeli government, no such proposals were approved (or even presented for approval) by the Knesset.
THAT's how "reliable" Arab hate propaganda is. And based on such "information", haters conclude that Israel is not a democracy... although it is the only country in the Middle East where Arab citizens can vote in free & fair elections!
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=386772
And, most guys who live there voted democratically for the parties that form the present government of Israel!!
I suggest the poster listen to that government leaders!!
242, while calling upon Israel to withdraw its armed forces, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from territories captured during the defensive June 1967 Six-Day War, expects it to do so to "secure and recognized boundaries", to be reached with the "warring parties".
Also, 242 doesn't call at all for the setting up of an additional state in the region, nor does it even mention or hints at concepts such as "Palestinians", "Palestine" or a "Palestinian state".
And, let us note: 242 was designed, as one of the finest resolutions of the UN, to resolve the Arab Israeli conflict. It passed unanimously and has been accepted by all relevant parties to the conflict, and served as the basis for all peace talks and actual agreements to date.
It is time to implement it as is.
Gaza's port is the only one on the Mediterranean closed to shipping as a result of the Israeli blockade.
It is also the only coast in the world where its people have no access to fishery.
Gazan students have no access to higher education--they cannot travel to university.
THat's just for starters.