asaris

I tend to agree with you; I'm not sure Hamas would agree to this. Hell, I'm not sure Israel would either, but I think Israel is more likely to. The history here is very complex, and it's as much a mistake to make Israel into a monolith as it is to make Palestine into a monolith. My understanding is that Israeli politicians have some difficulty in dealing with the settlers; the moderates in the Knesset would like to remove them, but there's a lot of political difficulty in actually accomplishing this. And Israel has done far more to dismantle the settlements than I would have predicted five years ago.

I think that a large part of the immediate problem is that Hamas has always remained committed to the destruction of Israel. I think that if upon election, Hamas had stopped calling for the annihilation of Israel, Israel would not have monitored the borders in a (perhaps misguided) attempt to keep arms out of Gaza. Perhaps this is politically naive of me, but I prefer to be overly naive than overly cynical. And the fact remains that Hamas has always remained committed to the removal of Israel as a political entity. This makes it hard to see how any diplomatic solution could possibly have worked.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche