You have to admit though, Reuters stringer Nidal al-Mughrabi is definitely getting more subtle. In May 2004, was all but openly celebrating Palestinian ambushes of Israelis. By March 2006, he had learned to be a little more careful, and stuck to raising sympathy for Palestinian terrorists by referring to them with vaguely doting affection. Within the last couple of months he's become almost professional, limiting most of his bias to tried and true mainstream anti-Israel rhetoric - things like referring to Palestinian human shields as "protesters" and declaring that Palestinians firing at Israeli schoolhouses was part of a "ceasefire" (although in fairness, just about everyone was doing that last one).

And now he and Reuters have taken the last step toward really good and efficient anti-Israel journalism - the "technically true but totally misleading fact" approach to misinforming readers about the Middle East situation:

Why is this so misleading? Because the agreements were not just signed with the PLO - they were signed with the PLO leaders who were the elected representatives running the Palestinian Authority, which is the elected Palestinian government. The obligations are not incumbent upon the PLO - they're incumbent upon whoever happens to be running the Palestinian government at the time. This would be like saying that the Soviet Union signed "various arms control agreements" with "the Democratic Party". Well yes, in a way that's true if there was a Democratic President - but the whole point is that this President was acting in the name of the United States, and future Presidents were bound by those treaties.

Why is this so important? Because the entire problem of land-for-peace is that Israel gives up something tangible, and in return a couple of Palestinians (let's call them the PLO) - whom the international community insists "speak for the Palestinian people" - promise to make peace. But then a bunch of other Palestinians (let's call them Hamas) exploit Israel's concessions - releasing prisoners, withdrawing from territory, etc - to murder more Israelis. And then the first group of Palestinians comes back and demands more concessions, in order to somehow placate the second group. They move the goalposts, demanding ever more tangible concessions in return for the intangible peace that they're supposed to deliver on.

Hamas refusing to recognize their treaty obligations is merely the most recent method of moving the goalposts. Now - after all that Israel has given up and been promised - the Palestinian government, which is bound by international agreements, is officially unwilling to live up to its promises. This is a qualitatively new demonstration of how useless land-for-peace is, since it demonstrates that the Palestinians don't really have a government - what they have are a bunch of armed gangs that take turns pretending to act like a government. If Israel can't rely on the idea that concessions in 2005 will matter in 2006 if there's a change in government, then giving up tangible resources becomes worse than reckless - it becomes the very definition of useless.

Nidal al-Mughrabi's mysterious failure to mention that the interim agreements were with the Palestinian government, which Hamas is supposed to be leading after an ostensibly orderly and democratic election, helps to hide that fact.

Previously: Moving The Goalposts On Israel's Withdrawal From Lebanon, Moving the Goalposts on Israel's International Obligations, Moving the Goalposts on Israel's Withdrawal From Gaza