Jerusalem, December 02: Israel is currently in the middle of talks with Hamas over a possible prisoner swap, but it has held fast to its pledge not to sit down with the organisation, as presently constituted, for what are called “final status” negotiations. Some pundits huff that this shows a reluctance towards finding a “two state solution.” This is nonsense. It would be impossible to list in this limited space the many reasons why such official recognition would endanger Israel — and everybody else in the world. But here are a few of the most obvious reasons:
Hamas has been defined as a terrorist organization by the EU, US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan because it is unapologetic about it strategy of targeting civilians. It apparently does not understand the concept that leaders are supposed to try to protect civilians — their own or others. In the Arab-language press and other places Hamas leaders have crowed about the strategic brilliance of using their own women and children as human shields. Residents of the UK usually point to the transformation of the IRA when the Hamas-is-terrorist point is made, but terrorist status should be considered along with other factors.
Hamas’s raison d’etre, as defined in its founding charter, is the destruction of Israel, as expressed many times in many different wordings in the sprawling document. On its first page, for instance, as translated by Yale University, it states its goals is “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” (That would include Israel.) Several paragraphs later there is the declaration:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.
–Agencies–