From Bad to Unthinkable
Murderers. Even the Saudis now understand the significance of the damage Mecca has done. "Progress to peace" is not a term that can be found in the Hamas vocabulary. Its purpose is not to create two peaceful states between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River but to transform the Palestinian national struggle into a fundamentally religious conflict that calls for Israel's destruction in Allah's name. The Hamas prime minister, Haniyeh, has made this clear repeatedly. "We are not," he says, "seekers of office but seekers of martyrdom." Now that Hamas is dominant, it will determine that the secular Palestinian leadership will be subservient in a holy war against Israel that sanctifies bloodshed, glorifies murder, and educates children to die as shahids, or martyrs. Abbas holds no sway over the elected murderers in Hamas and instead has shamefully allowed them additional control over the Fatah faction.
Under these circumstances, hardly anyone in Israel thinks that if it decides to give up territory again, it would get peace in return. Tendering olive branches of the kind so often advocated by Israel's critics has borne nothing but bitter fruit. Israel left Lebanon, and Hezbollah gathered weapons, then made war. Israel left Gaza to the Gazans and was rewarded with a more aggressive Hamas and more rocket attacks. Israelis will not become suicidal, as they believe that a religious war against the Jewish state would not end if Israel redeploys, even back to the 1967 armistice line. The land-for-peace concept has, in effect, collapsed.
Nobody in Israel believes that the Palestinians under Hamas will be satisfied with a homeland in the West Bank and Gaza, whatever Israel may do, for Hamas does not accept the right of the State of Israel to exist. Israel will not contemplate excruciating concessions on Jerusalem or on the territories to be given to a Palestinian government led by those who refuse to renounce terrorism or to acknowledge its existence. As one Israeli put it: "Would they give in on the issue of Israel's right to exist? Only after they have converted to Judaism."
Even worse, Hamas is part of the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement that does nothing to conceal its aspirations of fomenting Islamic revolution across the length and breadth of the Middle East, of toppling the moderate regimes allied with the West, and of working with Iran to expand its role as the leader of political Islam—all in service of the goal of an Islamic caliphate that would ultimately threaten even Europe.
Fortunately, the United States, Israel, and the rest of the quartet have adopted an uncompromising position on the Hamas participation. Rice made it clear that the Hamas government does not meet the international qualifications, nor is there "any evidence that this one will."
This is a part of what should be a clear message of Washington and the quartet. Consequently, it would be a terrible mistake to offer any concessions or rewards to this new PA-Hamas government. If the West must now choose between its survival and the survival of radical Islamic forces, we should choose our own survival.
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