 Hamas could reciprocate Israeli moves toward peace if the Jewish state agreed to withdraw from all lands occupied in 1967 and acknowledged Palestinian rights, the groupÂ’s political leader Khaled Mashaal said in Damascus yesterday.
| They've painted themselves into a corner and now they can't get out. The world, even the Euros who supported them before, are expecting them to act like a government, but they don't know how to be anything but revolutionaries. At this point they're demanding the other side surrender before negotiations start. |
Reacting to the statement, Israeli President Moshe Katsav reiterated that talks with the Palestinian government could not commence unless Hamas renounced violence, recognized the Jewish state and interim Palestinian peace deals with it.
| As a government, they're bound to adhere to the agreements previous governments have made or formally renounce them. If they renounced them, all the concessions that have come their way — and that's been an unending stream — are pissed away and they'll have to start from scratch. |
“If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, acknowledges the right of return, lifts its siege, dismantles the settlements and the wall and releases the prisoners, then it is possible for us as Palestinians and Arabs to make a serious step to match the Zionist step,” he said.
| That "serious step" would be to enter talks with them, to allow what they kept to be negotiated away. |
| Among the absolute deal-stoppers are the return of Jerusalem and the 'right of return'. Any Israeli president who gave in to that would be removed from office the same day, and any Paleo big who didn't get those things would be shot by his own bodyguards. |
Mashaal, who is in exile in Syria, told a packed auditorium at Damascus University that there was “no chance for a compromise” unless Israel fulfilled such conditions and because it was unlikely to do so in the near future, the Palestinians had no option but to resist occupation. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza that “ending the occupation and returning Palestinian rights” was a condition for any cease-fire or peace agreement.
| Meaning they intend to continue Armed Struggle™, but without renouncing their diplomatic gains. They can maybe do that, if the Euros cave on the financing end, but not if they turn out to be vertebrates. |
“What do we have to talk about with them?” Katsav told Israel’s NRG Maariv website. “They do not recognize our right to exist and are unwilling to talk to us.” |