Hamas: Return to peace talks would be a national crime

[oberliner]

Gaza – Ma’an – A return to the negotiations with Israeli would be a national crime, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday.

“A return to the negotiating table is a national crime that Palestinians will surly reject,” Abu Zuhri said, reacting to an Israeli announcement of a curb on expansion of West Bank settlements.

He also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of a freeze which excludes East Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital, is “meaningless.”

The official further said the partial freeze amounted to an American capitulation to Israel, and proof that the US cannot be trusted to be an honest broker.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=242931

[Vegasaurus]

1. The question is

will any of the Palestinian supporters on this forum believe Hamas?

Hamas is always quite clear in its goal.

Annihilate Israel, take back the land.

No peace, now or ever.

And yet, some people here seem to believe that Hamas should be trusted, that they are a decent governing body, that they don't really mean those things in their charter or what they say every day.

The question is why those pro-Palestinian "progressives" seem to think they know more than the group themselves.

Answers?

[unabelladonna]

2. crickets............

did you really expect a reply from the anti=israel gang?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Welcome to DU! Who is in this 'anti-Israel' gang?

Yr clearly much more familar with DU than I am ;)

[Alamuti Lotus]

5. When we suss out the leader of this gang, I must entreat this fellow for membership, post-haste!

They sound like a jolly band who knows a smashing good time.

[Violet_Crumble]

6. I feel so left out. I've always wanted to join a gang!

And it took a DUer less than 10 posts to spot this gang when I'd been blissfully unaware of its existance all this time! Looks like I'm going to have to hurry up and get that 'Big Satan, Little Satan' t-shirt printed in order to push my gansta-cred into the stratosphere...

[Violet_Crumble]

3. But you were only recently in another thread telling us to believe Hamas..

I wish you'd make up yr mind, Veggie. You do seem to have a level of inconsistency where if Hamas says something you want them to say, you accept it, and if they say something you don't want them to say (eg offering more moderate statements) you dismiss it as lies. Isn't that just a bit on the selective side?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

8. Israel is actually DOING THOSE THINGS. No peace, now or ever. Taking the land.

and destroying a society.

It has created an open air prison camp in Gaza, and a disgusting system of Apartheid in the WB.

What you is your response to that reality?


~*~*~*~*~listen to what Hamas writes ~*~*~*~*~*~ pay no attention to what Israel does ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ rhetoric matters more than deeds ~*~*~*~*~*~

[Alamuti Lotus]

10. There is that pesky gap between the "talk" of one and "routine action" of the other

Note the interesting choice of words by the Vegabot however:--"take back", implicit admission of some initial act of theft, a rare admission of the reality of the matter perhaps.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

11. Isn't it interesting how the practioners of daily violence are able to convince a sizable chunk of

America that the potential of violence on the part of the oppressed is in fact the most dangerous element of the conflict?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

7. As scholar Henry Siegman pointed out in 2007... The peace process is a scam.

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam
Henry Siegman

When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June, they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’.<*> (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas.

Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory. In the end, what Olmert and his government are prepared to offer Palestinians will be rejected by Abbas no less than by Hamas, and will only confirm to Palestinians the futility of Abbas’s moderation and justify its rejection by Hamas. Equally illusory are Bush’s expectations of what will be achieved by the conference he recently announced would be held in the autumn (it has now been downgraded to a ‘meeting’). In his view, all previous peace initiatives have failed largely, if not exclusively, because Palestinians were not ready for a state of their own. The meeting will therefore focus narrowly on Palestinian institution-building and reform, under the tutelage of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s newly appointed envoy.

In fact, all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam

[pelsar]

9. his theory has to ignore israeli democracy

That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state

whereas israel does have an elitists they don't have full and complete control of the govt...Barak, a kibbutznik, made his way up via the army, as have others. Hence the concept of eternal "consensus" by the elite has a limited shelve life.

israeli democracy is a bit more flexible as shown by past "consensus" that were tossed out as events made them useless.


on the other hand, there is no present peace process...just a continuation of the status quo, which is very bad for the Palestinians in the short run and bad for israel in the long run.