No word on whether they particularly appreciate the the FBI's outreach to Hamas-linked groups or if it has something to do with the downward spiral of the US-Israeli alliance or if they just have a general warming feeling:

The leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas says he welcomes President Barack Obama's new approach to the Middle East, but is waiting to see action. In a televised speech Thursday, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal pointedly avoided any mention of the recent turmoil in Iran, even though Hamas is backed by the Tehran regime. Hamas, which controls Gaza, has increasingly tried to reach out to the Obama administration in recent weeks. The militants are trying to bring an end to an international boycott of Hamas and a two-year border closure of Gaza.

This is developing into something of a pattern: Jimmy Carter holds a tete-a-tete with some intransigent, genocidal lunatics and assures them that the world has changed. He then announces that they're softening, an observation that is quickly contravened by (a) said lunatics' explicit public denunciations and (b) said lunatics' behavior. Instead they harden their negotiating stances. That's what happened with Assad and it's what's happening with Hamas. But they want to be very clear that they nonetheless appreciate the outreach and would welcome more!

He's been making himself useful to them for years, from accusing Israel of apartheid to lying about the history of U.S. policy towards Hamas to insisting on national television that the group can be trusted to literally embracing their scumbag leadership and finally to blithely asserting here that Hamas's leaders "want peace," based on what evidence I can scarcely imagine... Oh, and he also wants them taken off the State Department's terror list, naturally.

Even better: it looks like the EU is going to drop the conditions on Hamas that they promised they would never drop. An elegant bait and switch: Israel is given assurances that they can take risks for peace because if the Palestinians become more violent the EU will support Israel; Israel takes those risks and the Palestinians become more violent exactly as predicted; the EU waits a while and then abrogates its assurances. And people wonder why Netanyahu is loathe to accept security guarantees.

References and previously after the jump...