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January 27, 2006
Hamas wins Palestinian elections, part II
BBC News is running a follow up piece to the Palestinian election results story. Israeli authorities apparently declared they won't deal with a Palestinian government including Hamas. That would apparently be seen by Israeli authorities as negotiating with terrorists. It's understandable that if you see an organization as existing mainly to threaten you, you wouldn't want to collaborate with its members, no matter how clearly they got elected.
Interestingly, the BBC News reporter doing this story copied and pasted precisely the same quote from Mahmoud Zahar used in the previous article I cited yesterday. In fact a lot of the new article is a rewrite. Reuse is one way to keep your costs down.
The Israeli position does however hold out what looks like an olive branch. From great distance behind the recycled news I've read in the last 10 hours, it looks like Hamas could come out with a formal statement like, "We don't want Israel's destruction, especially not harm to the Israeli people. In fact, we want to live in peace and freedom with our Israeli neighbors. We renounce all violence except the reluctant violence of self defense. We look forward to negotiating with the Israeli people a end to this longstanding conflict between us, an end to the conflict that protects the safety, dignity, and democracratic rights of everyone on both sides."
On the one hand, it might take amazing faith on the part of Palestinian authorities to hope that Israel, the US, and others would be willing to give the results of the election a chance. On the other hand, I wonder if many cool headed people on both sides don't already feel that way.
Update: According to Aljazeera.net, Zahar is already talking about extending a year-old truce with Israel. Hmm, why wouldn't that get reported by BBC News?
Posted by Mark at January 27, 2006 06:46 AM
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