OTOH, when Hamas had a majority electoral victory they said they wouldn’t do any suicide bombings, and until Israel shelled a bunch of people on that beach, they didn’t.

You absolutely can negotiate with people who don’t recognize your right to exist. The IRA didn’t want Northern Ireland to exist when negotiations started – that right to exist was negotiated during talks.

Oslo is so close to a dead letter already that my reaction would be “whatever”.

A good chunk of Palestinians don’t believe in the two state solution anymore – two state when it was negotiated was a compromise on Palestinians’ part at the time – it’s more in Israel’s interest than it is in Palestines.

It won’t be long now before Israel rules more Muslims than Jews. It won’t be long now before Israel is so clearly an Apartheid state, with a religious/ethnic minority ruling over a religious majority, that even the Israeli lobby won’t be able to keep that truth from Americans.

What many Israelis don’t get is that the trend lines at the current time – the demographic trend lines, damn near inevitably, barring massive ethnic cleansing or genocide, lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state in less than 50 years. Given how long this has been going on, as a Palestinian, I might think the best solution is to just keep outbreeding Israelis. What’s another 20 to 50 years given how long this has been going already?

Israel, because it has the stronger military, feels like its in the catbird seat. Israel’s right in the short term, but not in the long term. If Israel wants to survive it better do whatever it takes to make a 2 state solution work.

And if that means negotiating with Hamas, or removing settlers, they’d better do it. Not doing it will mean their end as a religious/ethnic state, probably within my lifetime.

Their choice. I’d prefer they chose the course of self-preservation, since the other path involves a lot more suffering for everyone.

But I honestly doubt they will choose life, unless they are forced to because right now they think they can have peace without making some painful concessions.

Not going to happen.

And again – you can’t make peace with Fatah, because they can’t enforce a peace. Period. And the US plan of giving Fatah money and arms to fight Hamas won’t work even if it works, because it makes Fatah look completely illegitimate.

Through negotiations, the PLO, the recognized representative of the Palestinians, and the Israeli government, committed both parties to such a solution in principle. Hamas has rejected this, and so the current PA government has not unambiguously affirmed this commitment.

Here’s the back to basics part: Because negotiation involves making commitments about future behavior, it’s very difficult to negotiate with a party that reneges on previous commitments. That simply undercuts the basic logic of the process. You have no assurance that they’ll treat the next set of commitments they make with any more respect than the last set.

Finally, here’s a little thought experiment: Imagine that the Israeli government simply disavowed the Oslo and subsequent accords with the Palestinians, and declared that they were now opposed to the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. What would your reaction to that be?

Thank you so much for bringing your voice and wise analysis to FDL.

I can’t wait to read more.

The Israeli governmant is lucky I am not Palestinian.

(role-playing)And you, as a Palestinian, should feel very lucky that I am not Israeli. For, you see, I know that a primary aim of yours is to destroy my country and to kill me and mine. and I know I and mine will be vilified world-wide when we dare to return fire as you continue your quest. (end role play)

why restrict yourself to OUTSIDE the continental US?

there were people living here before new-worlders invaded not too long ago.

none of this is a surprise or is it a mystery to native people what is happening in iraq now.

to us, “xtian civilization” = genocide, what do you think “democracy” means to iraq?

The idea is to keep it really really simple.

It’ll be unusual for us in that the series is written for Westerners — emphatically not an audience we write for normally.

However as it’s just gone 5:30 A.M. here I really need to hit the hay as a matter of urgency. I’m Getting too old for these all nighters. This posting of yours was well worth it – glad I spotted it before turning in. :-) *poof*

Ian, wow what an auspicious debut performance ! Great article !

Question (and I was on about this the other night but I hope Oklahoma Kiddo is still around):

I understand why Hamas was elected (e.g. “street cred” vs. the corruption of Fatah) but if in fact it’s true that they don’t recognize the nation of Israel and it’s borders (pre ‘67 borders), how are any negotiations w/ one’s “enemy” going to prove fruitful ?

TIA,
Tim

There is a bit if irony in Israel’s objections to Hamas. Per the Wikipedia:

However, various sources, among them United Press International,[52] Le Canard enchan, Bill Baar, Grard Chaliand[53] and L’Humanit[54] have highlighted that Hamas’ early growth — before its official founding and the creation of the military branch — had been supported by the Mossad as a “counterbalance to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)”. Furthermore, the French investigative newspaper Le Canard enchan stated that Shin Bet had also supported Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO and Fatah, in an attempt to give “a religious slant to the conflict, in order to make the West believe that the conflict was between Jews and Muslims”, thus supporting the controversial thesis of a “clash of civilizations”.[55]

Eek – sorry to read that lyrebird i don’t have access to a mac and safari is …. tricky. I did take browsercam shots and it looked ok. have you tried firefox?

As to insights I hope Ian will forgive my blogwh*ring one last time.

We’re starting a series this Sunday to run in nice easily digestible chunks about the basics of Islam.

This Sunday is the introduction and examining the first of the five pillars.

I’ll look forward to reading it. I’ve thought of doing something similiar, but have refrained out of fear that I don’t know what I don’t know about Islam, if you, er, know what I mean.

Great post!!! As usual! It’s great to see you over here again at FDL. I read you, Hale, and Stirling (when he posts) at The Agonist since BOP shut down, but it won’t let me comment. I never got a response from the techies over there about why not.

Anyway, it’s great to see you over here, where I can at least say “Hi!”. Keep up the astute observations and analysis!