Talk, but No Peace

There are a few certainties when it comes to the Middle East. One is that Hamas militants will do anything to sabotage Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Another is that Israel will retaliate against serious assaults on its people. And a third is that without measurable improvements in the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, a few spectacular acts of terrorism can derail even the best-intentioned peace talks.

The latest violence, coupled with the Palestinians' bitter political schism, could doom President Bush's peace initiative. Giving up is not an option. That would guarantee even more mayhem and perhaps wider war.

If there is any hope of salvaging the effort, the United States, Europe and Arab states must move quickly to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and give serious thought to a new strategy for dealing with Gaza.

This is the editorial view of the New York Times. HAMAS, to the 'progressive thinker's society' at the Times, has as their goal in what they do an effort to "derail even the best-intentioned peace talks"

First of all, Abbas couldn't bring peace even if he wanted to, and he can't. Second, Abbas knows full well that any peace which doesn't include the EXPLICIT wink wink that it's just a way station to NO ISRAEL to his people, who have been lead to expect only this goal since 1919, means his death. Third, HAMAS is not trying to derail anything.

If Abbas signed tomorrow for a Palestine in return for peace on the borders of 1967, HAMAS would cynically laugh with glee and NOT A THING would be different. HAMAS's goal has nothing to do with derailing peace talks. HAMAS doesn't care about any of that. If they take note of it at all it is with inner glowing contentment because every time it comes up, THEY KNOW it deligitimizes further the UNELECTED FATAH, and moves FATAH another step towards being cleanly identifiable as Zionist collaborators, by the freely elected majority HAMAS government which reflects the true will of the Palestinian peoples, until they decide differently.

The New York Times' editorial staff is delusional. They simply cannot conceive that either HAMAS can really be serious, or that there can be people on earth who can be so unreasonable as to prefer permanent war to reasonable peace.

This is the absolute pinnacle of arrogant western thought.

HAMAS' vision is based on the Quran. Let the 'progressive thinker's society' at the Times consider carefully how to decouple that Quranic promise of the waqf and the uselessness of conferences as they see them, from what the PALESTINIAN PEOPLES THEMSELVES WANT. On the day the Times can solve that puzzle, we will have a poltical problem which can be negotiated and not a religious war in which peace talks ... well..as HAMAS (and the people of Palestine say) ...

Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors