Hamas and Bibi playing the same game
“Recognizing Israel is completely unacceptable.”
So says Hamas after meeting with Jimmy Carter this week. They praised his concern, asserted their enthusiasm for a state for the Palestinian people, and refused to offer Israel any concessions on even a right to exist. A shame.
They could use engagement transform themselves into something other than a violent terrorist group, something that has the best interests of the Palestinian people at heart, but they won’t. One can only hope this continued hard-line will only make them more and more foolish in the face of continued outreach. Bibi Netanyahu’s failure to offer anything new in his own remarks suddently looks generous compared to the rigidity of the Hamas fundamentalists. And that might have been Netanyahu’s plan all along. If the Obama administration finds no partners for peace on the Palestinian side, then the status quo is all that remains, in spite of the American President’s best efforts to save Israel from its politicians. And the status quo means ever more death and suffering, and more likely every day, the end of Israel as a Jewish state or as a democracy.
