Uhh... When Did the Washington Post Start Letting Terrorists Publish Propaganda?
You know what's arguably the most annoying thing about the rant that the Washington Post let Hamas arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh publish in its pages this morning? It's that it barely even qualifies as dissembling or propaganda:
Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.
He's not even trying to pretend. Hamas will not recognize intrenational Israeli-Arab agreements. They will not move the discussion past the Palestinian obsession with passing the keys of houses that no longer exist from father to son. They demand their own state, and they demand that Israel effectively be destroyed anyway.
Oh, and do notice that he is unequivocal on unity between Hamas and Fatah. Given that Fatah is, you know, organizing battalions of suicide bombers - and that this organization was not exactly unpredictable, given the less than subtle Palestinian terrorist division of labor policy - we fully trust that international diplomats and journalists will do their best to ignore these obvious organizational, tactical, and strategic links.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention one other thing: how is it that normal people are still letting slightly-to-very-fanatic people get away with dropping phrases about Zionist expansionism (see inter alia: Cole, Juan). Every single strategic decision that Israel has made this century has been to reduce the land that it controls. In fact, wideeyed anti-Zionist conspiracy theories aside, that was true for most of the end of the last century too. So the question arises: when "Zionists" (not "Jews", of course) are accused of cunning and shadowy conspiracies meant to sow discord among otherwise peaceful neighbors, is this the product of a linguistic habit borne of a rhetorical comfort zone that plays on certain, shall we say, unsavory registers? Or are some of these people so far gone that they actually believe those mysteriously predictable conspiracy theories? We think we might know the answer.
Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.
He's not even trying to pretend. Hamas will not recognize intrenational Israeli-Arab agreements. They will not move the discussion past the Palestinian obsession with passing the keys of houses that no longer exist from father to son. They demand their own state, and they demand that Israel effectively be destroyed anyway.
Oh, and do notice that he is unequivocal on unity between Hamas and Fatah. Given that Fatah is, you know, organizing battalions of suicide bombers - and that this organization was not exactly unpredictable, given the less than subtle Palestinian terrorist division of labor policy - we fully trust that international diplomats and journalists will do their best to ignore these obvious organizational, tactical, and strategic links.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention one other thing: how is it that normal people are still letting slightly-to-very-fanatic people get away with dropping phrases about Zionist expansionism (see inter alia: Cole, Juan). Every single strategic decision that Israel has made this century has been to reduce the land that it controls. In fact, wideeyed anti-Zionist conspiracy theories aside, that was true for most of the end of the last century too. So the question arises: when "Zionists" (not "Jews", of course) are accused of cunning and shadowy conspiracies meant to sow discord among otherwise peaceful neighbors, is this the product of a linguistic habit borne of a rhetorical comfort zone that plays on certain, shall we say, unsavory registers? Or are some of these people so far gone that they actually believe those mysteriously predictable conspiracy theories? We think we might know the answer.
