Barry Rubin writes about a recent Washington Post article about Hamas:
Here’s a good article on Hamas and how it’s a barrier to peace, with no illusions about the group moderating or being misunderstand. The article also points out how Hamas is responsible for continuing sanctions on Gaza and is uninterested in trying to improve the living standards of is own people.
Perhaps I’m nitpicking but I wasn’t so impressed with the article. There were two paragraphs that bugged me.
First, in the middle, there was this:
Hamas, which was founded as an Islamist alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, is considered a terrorist group by the United States for its sponsorship of suicide attacks and the launching of thousands of missiles and mortar shells from Gaza into Israel. The group draws financial and material support from Iran and Syria. Hamas says its attacks on Israel are defensive and a legitimate tactic in Palestinian efforts to establish a homeland.
“[I]s considered a terrorist group?” It is, by definition, a terrorist group for precisely the reasons stated. Second, when the reporter uses the term “legitimate tactic,” he allows that claim to stand unchallenged.
At the end of the article we read:
According to officials from Hamas and analysts of the group, those conditions are unlikely to be accepted, cutting as they do to the core of the group’s ideology and strategy. Just as there is no sense that the language of Hamas leaders has come close to meeting those requirements, despite talk of a possible compromise, there has been no obvious effort by Mitchell’s team to try to reshape the conditions.
What does “reshape the conditions” mean? And why does the article seem critical that Mitchell won’t? I’d understand the term to mean “water down the demands” and I see no reason for Mitchell to do so. And why should Mitchell “reshape the conditions?” So Israel will be forced to deal with an unrepentant terrorist organization?
Finally, the reporter, Howard Schneider compares Mitchell’s work here with his work with the IRA. There’s one important difference. The IRA wanted England gone from Northern Ireland; Hamas (and Fatah, for that matter) want Israel gone. Period.
I can’t disagree that Schneider hit on the points that Barry Rubin emphasized. I still find his packaging problematic.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad
