Saturday, January 10, 2009
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Martin Kramer: Richard N. Haass and Hamas - '...Hamas must derive enormous encouragement from our vacillation. We set conditions; Hamas rejects them and continues to practice its "resistance"; so we drop our conditions in the name of some strategic master plan (e.g., "democracy," the "peace process"). This happened during the Bush administration, when Hamas was allowed to run in Palestinian elections without meeting any of the conditions of an earlier Israeli-Palestinian agreement, which banned "any candidates, parties or coalitions... [that] commit or advocate racism or pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful or nondemocratic means." Hamas came into elections strutting guns and preaching incitement—and won. Why should they drop any of their cherished principles, when they see their adversaries seriously thinking about dropping their own? We insist that they reconcile with the PA. What if they don't? Why shouldn't they imagine we'll eventually dump that condition too?