Israel won't talk to government including Hamas
"Israel will not conduct any negotiation with a Palestinian government, if it includes any (members of) an armed terror organization that calls for Israel's destruction," Olmert's office said in a statement.In other news, Robert Satloff, the Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies recently spoke at the the 2006 Herzliya Conference on the Balance of Israel's National Security and made them some excellent points:
Do not mistake tactical flexibility for strategic change. Hamas will be perfectly happy to talk with Israel, to negotiate with Israel. It is willing to negotiate with Israel out of the deeply held belief that it can negotiate you out of existence. If the negotiations do not achieve that result today, they may do so tomorrow, and if negotiations alone do not achieve that result, then Hamas will be wise enough to retain other assets -- or the potential to acquire those other assets -- to do the job by other means. Please do not hand over the keys to the realm to this organization in the belief that it has become domesticated -- in the mistaken idea that because their politicians are not corrupt, that because they can pick up the garbage and fix the potholes, that they somehow are moderate. I believe Hamas's strategy may be to get Israelis so addicted to the tahdiye, the calm, that Israelis will not interfere with the Islamist takeover of the PA. Hamas believes you are fools, and this is profoundly dangerous. Hamas has no reason for being other than the destruction of the Jewish state; if that were not its prime motivation, it would simply revert to being the Muslim Brotherhood, from which it came.
Hat Tip: Vital Perspective on the Near East
In other news, nothing deters the honorable ex President Carter from being himself. Since the Palestinian election was "honest and fair", he calls for funding the Palestinians at this point in time.
"The Palestinian Government is destitute, and in desperate financial straits. I hope that support for the new government will be forthcoming," Carter said at a Jerusalem press conference.
He added that if international law barred donor countries from directly funding a Hamas-led government than the US and the EU should bypass the Palestinian Authority and provide the "much-needed" money to the Palestinians via non-governmental channels such as UN agencies.
"Regardless of the government, I would hope that potential donors find alternative means to be generous to the Palestinian people [even] if the donor decides to bypass the Palestinian government completely," Carter said, stressing that his main concern was to avert the "suffering" of the Palestinian people, which he said could lead to a new cycle of violence.
Ah yes, it is poverty which is going to cause a new cycle of violence, not Hamas doctrine. Which he wants us to fund.
Carter, who has long supported the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, voiced the hope that the Islamic terror group would act "responsibly" now that it had won the elections....
"My hope is that as Hamas assumes a major role in the next government, whatever that might be, it will take a position on international standards of responsibility," he said at the news conference, held at an east Jerusalem hotel.
The interesting question is just what those standards will be...
Perhaps for even more violent confrontations? That's a standard, too.
So by all means, let's fund them now, before we know how they'll act.
posted by Alcibiades @ 4:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home