As a journalist specializing on Middle East history, I urge you to refocus on the goals you brilliantly outlined on June 24, 2002. We must not ask Israel to negotiate for a Palestinian State until the renewed terrorist attacks stop and the terrorist infrastructure is dismantled.

Hamas is not at war with the Palestinian Authority, despite a PR campaign to the contrary. The PA has worked actively with Hamas for years. In 1995, it wrote a pact with the Islamist terrorists in Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas’ protests are evidently for show. On March 3 of this year, Abbas urged that violence continue.

A draft of the Hamas-PA pact, appended below, ran on Sept. 20, 1995 in Egypt’s Al-Ahram government weekly. Article 12 requires the PA to cease all preventive security and let Hamas operate without PA interference. The agreement gives Hamas a role in the PA government, which Abu Mazen fulfilled by naming a Hamas partisan as education minister.

Indeed, PLO political chief Farouq Al-Qaddoumi confirmed on Jan. 3, 2003, Fatah was “never different from Hamas… Strategically, we are no different from it.”[...]