Word: israelism
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...right? If you bring Hamas into the political process and it acquiesces in a peace deal, will it abandon its dreams of eradicating Israel or not? Will Palestinian statehood moderate Hamas - by making it invested in the status quo - or - simply whet its appetite for more...
...Israel's strategy has been to keep Hamas-ruled Gaza poor while improving life in the West Bank, which is governed by Fatah and Abbas, in the hope that Palestinians - seeing the contrast - will desert Hamas, thus forcing it to capitulate to our demands. But the strategy has failed for three big reasons. One is Fatah, which is still widely considered incompetent and corrupt. Another is Israel, which hasn't given Abbas what politically he most needs: a halt to - or reversal of - West Bank settlement growth. The final reason is Hamas itself, which has an incentive to foil...
...there's a negative reason for the U.S. and Israel to talk to a government that includes Hamas, the same negative reason the U.S. talked to the Baathists and seems set to talk to the Taliban: not talking isn't working out very well. But that alone doesn't justify a change in policy. Critics point out that dealing with Hamas would break precedent, since the U.S. never publicly dealt with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization until it accepted Israel and renounced violence. They say Hamas must be forced to choose between the ballot and the bullet. They...
...uses to achieve them. Ironically, the Israeli government once considered Hamas quite moderate. In the late 1980s, when the Israelis were primarily concerned with Arafat's secular-nationalist terrorism, they allowed Hamas to hold rallies and appear on television, even as they banned the PLO. So if Hamas, in Israel's view, was moderate once, could it moderate itself again? The group's founding charter - which brims with anti-Semitism and rules out conceding any historically Palestinian land - doesn't exactly fill one with hope. On the other hand, Hamas' leader in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, declared a couple of years...
...control. In practice, of course, Hamas will help decide how the money is spent. But lifting the Israeli blockade - along with doing more to stop the smuggling of rockets into Gaza and returning kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - is crucial to getting a real, long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Once Gaza's reconstruction begins, Hamas will have an incentive not to provoke Israel and blow up the entire process. The happier Palestinians are with what they have, the harder it will be for Hamas to jeopardize that in the name of a kamikaze mission to wipe Israel...