1. Hamas is like the Nazis. I am sure that Rudolf Hess was more pragmatic than Adolf Hitler, but both needed to be defeated through force, not appeased.

 2. Adam Lebor proposses to split Hamas. Why is that different from splitting the Palestinian movement in two (between Fatah and Hamas) that it is being tried right now? This other solution has the benefit of

a. Fatah doesn't believe in Jewish conspiracies.

b. You don't weaken Fatah by supporting the presence of the lunatics of Hamas.

c. You can always try splitting Hamas later if this fails.

3. The IRA never wanted the destruction of England, like Hamas wants of Israel. You forget that. You always forget that. Therefore you reach absurd conclusions and present nonsense propossals. You always forget that.

4.  I have a better propossal to make: lets send Adam Lebor to Gaza to try to reason with Hamas's "moderates". No loss for Israel in that.

The IRA were brought into the political process in Northern Ireland because its leadership realised that they had no chance of winning with the bullet or the bomb. When they realised that the British state would not crumble  the ballot box became the new weapon of choice.

Hamas have not reached this point so the IRA analogy pointlessly muddies the waters.   

I am somewhat disappointed with your post Adam.Whilst I am sure you write it with good intentions, it seems somewhat naive. Surely it would be better to keep Hamas out in the cold and for the Palestinians to therefore realise that that is the case. I would hope that following the farce with Hamas terrorists taking over Gaza by the use of the gun would lead to the Palestinian president calling for new elections. The Palestinians can then be given a chance to vote again.

According to this weeks Economist magazine, the majority of Palestinians realise that a 2 state solution is the only solution for peace. If this is the case then the election campaign can be run for or against peace.

Maybe here, it is me that is being naive, but I hope that the Palestinians would vote for a party that has at least a chance of delivering peace. If they continue to vote for Hamas after this, then they will have no one to blame but themselves. If there were not the infamous "three nos" in 1967, there may already have been a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. 40 years on there is still no Palestinian state and a Hamas government committed to the destruction of Israel and to terrorist methodology.

The time has not come to invite Hamas to peace negotiations given them credibility, but for the Palestinians themselves to vote for a peacemaker. Of course, the Israelis also should be paying attention to who they vote for as I am under no illusions that certain political parties in Israel have a programme that will never be acceptable to the Palestinians.

In today's Ha'aretz Peace Now took out a half page ad dedicated to identifying who is against negotiating towards a resolution of the conflict. At the top of their ad was a photo of the Orthodox settler contingent praying at the Wailing Wall for the collapse of the Annapolis process while at the bottom was a photograph of Hamas supporters in Gaza (Aza) protesting against the Annapolis process. Nowhere in the Peace Now advert was any mention made of inviting Hamas (and then why not also invite the Gush Emmunim and Settler organizations to Annapolis?) Instead, the Peace Now ad exposed both Hamas and the Settler bloc as stolid opponents of any peace process.

So I wonder why Adam Le Bor's position is so much at odds with Peace Now's reading of the situation?

Secondly, where does Adam Le Bor find support for his poorly argued and ultimately ludicrous position? Uri Avnieri?, The Irie?

Third, I wonder whether Adam Le Bor would defend senior representative of the Nepalese Maoist Party, C.P. Gajurel's admission that "the decision to participate in the parliamentary process was not an abandonment of the 'armed struggle', but the opening up of a new front. While conceding that the Maoist influence in parliament was amplified by the threat of violence by their "people's army", he admitted (or rather boasted) that the aim of parliamentary participation was to sow chaos and division. He then outlined some bills his party had introduced for the purely strategic reason of dividing the other parties. He claimed that a revolution requires a "dynamic situation" which presents opportunities to exploit in furtherance of the revolution, and that negotiations and compromise cause the opposite effect."?

And if Adam wouldn't, then why is he advocating a party with the same outlook as Gajurel's be invited to Annapolis?

I also want to understand why Adam wants to extend an invitation just to Hamas and not to the representatives of the Settler bloc? Surely if Adam wants to extend an invitation to pragmatic Islamist taqfiri jihadists why not at the same time extend an invitation to pragmatists in the religious Settler organizations. Why the double standard?

I can't wait for Adam Le Bor to pen another article this time arguing that Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Hilltop Youth and Kach be invited to Annapolis, along with Hamas. Go for it Adam. 

Nobody told me that it was idiot week at Jewcy. I can't wait for the next instalment. First the jerk who wanted to get rid of Thanksgiving and now this moron who wants to invite hamas to the peace conference.

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows but I'm beginning to think that the partnership between the fundamentalist left and islamic activists is not so strange. For both of them, the unaltering truth is that Israel and the U.S. are in the wrong. All else follows. After seeing Hugo Chavez ally himself with crusaders for human rights such as Assad Jr. and Ahmadinejad and reading pundit after leftist pundit defend or promote one thug after another, I find it surprising that leftists actually think they are true to some sort of principles other than being anti-US and zionist.

Everytime I read an opinion piece like this I get a kick out of counting how many times the blame for some party's indefensible position is blamed on Israel or the U.S. In this case Mashal's politics are not his responsibility but are doubtlessly a result of Israel's mistreatment of him. Let me introduce a word to the leftist lexicon "accountability". What
that means is that you are responsible for your own actions. Mashal
is a big boy. He's not some child who doesn't know better. It is the ultimate form of racism to think that some people aren't
accountable for their actions. That's the mentality of a British
colonialist. The apple hasn't fallen far from the tree here.

It makes me wonder when the child of a leftist does something naughty
and claims to his parents "he made me do it". Does the leftist tell his child
"that boy is an oppressor and oppressor's make you do things so you
aren't responsible."? I know what I tell my kid. I tell him "nobody
made you do anything, you did it yourself".

Let me put it in simple terms so that you can understand. If Mashal is a leader of an organization that states it won't rest until every square inch of the middle east is Islamic then he bears responsiblity for holding that position. The Jews don't. Neither do the Americans.

Let me tell you another thing. If there ever is peace it's going to be made by moderates. When Eurotrash such as yourself support extremist groups and their positions you are not promoting peace or reconciliation. You are supporting war and violence.

You need to ask yourself whether you stand with protesters who claim "We are all Hezbollah now!" or do you have the courage to make a stand and say that you are not.

You raise an interesting point about Hamas and Mashal being accountable for their actions, but unfortunately it gets rather lost in the personal abuse. I am neither a moron or on the fundamentalist left. I nowhere said in my article that it is all Israel's fault or the US's fault. I think you must have been reading something else and got muddled up.

I do not support Hamas or Hezbollah. I want to see a secure Israel living side by side in peace with a viable Palestinian state and I am interested in thinking about different ways to get there.

I am well aware of what Hamas stands for, and just to labor the point, outline its role in terrorist attacks in paragraph three of this article. My central argument is that eventually Israel will have to talk to Hamas (and do you really believe that there is no back-channel diplomacy now?) a viewed shared by some Israeli diplomats. So why not accelerate that process now?

visit: adamlebor.com

Adam is far too generous in his reply to simpleliquid (emphasis on the first two syllables, I'm guessing.)

I've pointed this out before, but I guess it bears repeating. Likud's charter still talks about Israel including Judea and Samaria. Yisrael Beiteinu and the collection of riffraff assembled under the National Union banner call for the transfer of Palestinian Israelis to...well, to anywhere but Israel. I believe these beacons of enlightenment comprise about one third of the Knesset-a hefty percentage of racist thugs, don't you think?

Sadly, these are the louts that the Palestinians must come to terms with. Likewise, Israelis must come to terms with Hamas, despite the fact that at least a segment of that group espouses similar retrograde attitudes towards Israelis.

Finally, let it not escape our collective notice that, while Hamas may look forward to an ideal world without Israel, their fantasies remain imaginary. Israel, on the other hand, continues to make actual progress towards its dream of an Arabrein Palestine.  

Wow,  reductio ad
hitlerum in the very first post.  I
thought I was low by resorting to personal insults in my first post but that
last post far outdid me.  (Kudos by the
way to Lebor for responding maturely.)    
By Godwin’s second corollary, this thread should now be closed and
Ismail declared the loser (what he lost I don’t know but those are the rules).  I’m going to respond anyways.

Ismail, I don’t see how anything you said is a critique of
what I was saying and, except for that arabrein comment which I’ll address
later, I think I agree with you.   If Lebow
had written the same article but it was about the Yesha Council, it would have
merited a similar response.   Hamas and
Yesha have about as much reason to attend the Annapolis
conference as the KKK has to attend a conference dedicated to the mending
white-black relations in the south.    The big difference is that nobody is saying
that the Annapolis negotiations are
doomed to failure because the Yesha Council isn’t involved.    

By the way, for those of you who are challenged on the Middle
East conflict:  If you flip
the argument around (replace Israelis for Arabs and vice versa) and the
argument no longer makes sense then the argument doesn’t hold water.    Here’s an example from an article in the
Guardian the other day that said that the Palestinians have no choice but to
hate the Israelis because they only see them as the occupier.   Flip it around and listen to how ridiculous
it sounds that  Israelis have no choice
but to hate the Palestinians because they only experience them as suicide
bombers.    Both statements are a load of
crap.     

Anyways Hamas is the current flag bearer of Arab
rejectionism and the Yesha Council is the flag bearer of Greater Israel.    Both
policies have been shown by history to be utter failures and, if you really
want to work for peace, you should be working towards marginalizing the groups
that support them.   Somehow the left repeatedly unfurls the banner of
Arab rejectionism and waves it vigorously (as the non-leftist Lebor did above) so much so that it is now being adopted
as their own flag.      

About Ismail's arabrein comment. 
 First of all, it’s a hateful
word.  It’s purpose is to demonize Israelis
by claiming their actions are the same as those of the Nazi’s.  It’s roughly equivalent to demonizing Palestinians,
Arabs or Muslims by saying that they are child murdering terrorists.   It’s
not a word yielded by anyone who has a desire to resolve the conflict or work
towards it’s resolution.   Besides that, I
never understood what fantasy world people who use that word to describe the
modern middle east live in.   It’s
certainly not one where history or facts play a role.  The only thing I can imagine is that it’s
some sort of pre-emptive propaganda strike that if they uses Arabrein then the
accusation of the arabs having a policy of judenrein won’t be made.   If you look at the last century, arab
populations have exploded and jewish populations have disappeared across the
Islamic World.   Look  at Iraq,
Morocco, Egypt,
Tunisia, Lebanon,
Algeria, Yemen,
Syria, Gaza,
Hebron, etc…  How can anyone see this and claim that what’s
really happening is that the jews are enacting a policy of arabrein?  I just don’t get it.  How exactly are the numbers lying here?   The argument must rest on some sort of
convoluted logic that because some people say it should happen then it is
happening.   Jewish populations under Arab and Islamic rule
have  either vastly diminished or
entirely disappeared and Arab populations under Jewish rule have
increased.  In fact, most of the Arab
countries have succeeded in making their lands effectively, if not entirely Jew
free.   There is not a single example of
a country of an arab or Islamic country where the Jewish population has
actually increased over the last 50 or 100 years.   Even now,
the so called moderate arabs (even the ones at Annapolis)
are calling for the expulsion of every Jew from Judea
and Samaria after already having Gaza
made Judenrein.   I have to say that if indeed it is the Israeli plan to make Israel, Judea and Samaria Arabrein then they sure are tricky since their plan to reduce the population actually increases the population so that it seems like they are not actually decreasing the population.  

fabian -- fatah doesn't believe in jewish conspiracies?  abbas' senior thesis was on the myth of the jewish holocaust. 

simpleliquid -- the difference between yesha and hamas, is that hamas is the elected government of the palestinian people.  thus far moishe feiglen is not so much as likud party chair.  it's true, yesha represents the jewjihadeen, but האם עים תל אביב.  yesha stands no chance of being the governing power in israel. conversely, hamas took 40% of the vote, fatah had a little more than half that. it is the government of palestine. that is an inescapable fact.  that they're being isolated, while the minority is given preference -- it's certainly led to a lovely civil war, hasn't it? we all love a good humanitarian disaster now and then, don't we?

the entire point of negotiating is to resolve conflicts with those you're at odds with. 

i know jews who have met with hamas.  religious ones.  secular ones.  americans.  israelis.  they described the hamas representatives they encountered as being very reasonable, if dogmatic, and in so being much like their yesha counterparts -- frum yids. my impression is that they're happy to speak to you if you're not there to kill them or dispossess them.

annapolis was like kicking them while they're down.  bush, olmert and abbas put forth a proposal that none of them have the power to implement. it was a p.r. stunt for the lot of 'em -- the most unpopular leaders in each of their countries' histories.

if israel and the u.s. were negotiating in good faith, they'd be talking to hamas and trying to resolve the crisis in gaza, not enforcing an embargo that is strangling the most densely populated place on earth to death.

that would be true peace. this is smoke and mirrors. 

adam--your post is the first thing i've read on annapolis that i actually agree with.  yasher koach. 

today's news: 

As Israel marked the 60th anniversary of a U.N. vote approving the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in what was then British Mandate Palestine, Hamas called Thursday for the 1947 General Assembly Resolution 181 to be rescinded.

"Palestine is one indivisible unit and we will not cede one inch of its soil," the Palestinian Islamist movement said in a statement, referring to what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"Palestine is an Arab and Muslim land, from its river to its sea, and there is no place in it for the Jews."

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105616.html 

I have no love, and not a shred of real respect for Hamas, Hezbollah or any similar organization or group. But George W. Bush pushed for elections in that region even when all interested parties stated they were not ready and it was not the right time. But Bush pushed for democratic elections and got them, then he declared the results null and void for all intents and purposes. The Palestinians elected Hamas as their government, whether we like it or not. We cannot claim to love Democracy and then not invite the elected government of one of the parties involved in these important negotiations to the table.

Didn't Israel create Hamas in the first place? To counter the PLO? Why the crocodile tears about Hamas now?

pointless debate about things that don't exist - (so enough already about my phd) but really - why do Jewciers give a toss about these bunch of stupid freaks anyways? Isn't this just a big waste of time?

Let go of Israel - let go of the past - let go of suffering - let go

I've given up caring about a strip of land where everyone is committing suicide in one way or other.

It's not that I don't care about people - or Jewish people or humanity etc.. but when there is a culture of death - in all parts of the country - on both sides of the conflict - then - I've got to say - just for the record - this has nothing to do with me or Judaism. 

As the bible says - it's a 'land that eats - consumes it's inhabitance' - and that if you don't live a life of love and peace then 'you will be quickly ejected from the land'. 

my point is this: giving emotional/mental power to this conflict only creates more conflict - the best thing we can do - is let go and start to live in peace - withinourselves and within our lives. Only then will we discover teh true land of Israel - is in fact under our very feet - wherever we are.

Only then - living in peace and absolute love - can we step foot in that strip of land that God has promised to be - a Holy Land - and a House of prayer for ALL PEOPLES!

May we all start looking within ourselves for the peace we long to see outside of ourselves.

And may the era of redemption become revealed to all - and let us say Amen! 

I know this is probably a violation of all sorts of internet etiquette rules, but I'm not as grand a soul as many of the generous commenters here who advise giving folks the benefit of the doubt. And I know that Jewcy is the grandest of tents, accommodating everyone from The One True Hummus partisans to IQ fascists to latex-masked advice rabbis to scowling Brit Islamophobes. And good for you. The thing is, this guy Kohanzad really gets on my nerves.

There are people here who take the time to educate themselves about the pedestrian  details of the issues they discuss, who embed their thoughts within a general worldview which they are able to defend, who have respect for the rules of inference and related logical formalities-who, in short, show respect for their ideological adversaries by inhabiting the same epistemic planet that they do. This allows us to agree or disagree with one another in a sensible manner.

Friend Max, on the other hand, prefers to issue pronouncements about the temporality and contingency of our little quarrels, and promote his expansive and noumenal apprehension of the True Reality, which we, hobbled by our silly Western cognitive blinders, fail to see.

"Find the peace within yourself"-the perfect Perlsian formula for late capitalism, which privileges the most atomized, autistic notions of the self and has no use for social relatedness. If you don't care about the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, just say so, but I won't mistake this for an argument; I'll see it for the expression of indifference that it is.

I used to teach undergraduate courses in both philosophy and psychology. Invariably, each class would contain one or two folks whose seminar contributions resembled Max's interplanetary musings. That is, while everyone else based their comments upon careful readings of the texts and defended their points of view with reference to such mundane notions as syllogism and its fellows, these guys would give the rest a look of amused tolerance, deliver koan-like aphorisms and consider their work done. Their papers were similarly improvisational and tangential to what I requested. I was delighted to fail their sorry asses.

So Max, maybe you are, as some folks here have insisted, an internet troll, in which case the worst thing I could have done is to nourish you with my outrage. Or maybe you're an honest guy whose perspective was tired in 1975 and is positively dessicated now. Or maybe you're something else that I haven't even begun to imagine. But here's what I think: using your hands when you play soccer isn't bold; it's misunderstanding what soccer is. Writing a blues tune that sounds like Schubert isn't adventurous; it's not getting what a blues tune is. Writing a haiku with 138 syllables isn't pioneering; it's not caring about haiku.

Likewise, if you want to contribute to this sort of discussion, you've got to put down the bong and come up with reasons, facts, parallels, metaphors, etc., and tie them together with logic. Boring, isn't it?

But coming up with these late night dorm room gotchas of yours isn't daring; it's just a misconception of what an argument is. 

Negotiating with Hamas merely gives them credibility, without receiving anything in return. The core Hamas beliefs, which they are remarkably upfront about, is that all of Palestine is Islamic Waqf, Jews have no historical claim to the land, and all Jews should leave Palestine. Violence is an acceptable tool to make this happen. If we negotiate with Hamas, we legitimize these views. The democratic election of hamas shows that these views are held by a majority of the  Palestinian people. Since before Oslo, a "peace industry' has grown up, including Yossi Beilin, Ami Ayalon, Aaron Miller, Shimon Perez and others including Adam Lebor, that use a peace agreement to advance their own positions. Since the two positions- sharing the land vs national suicide are irreconcilable, more gimmicks must be brought into play, like negotiating with Hamas. If this were an academic exercise, it would be just a waste of time, but since Oslo, Israel's position has been seriously weakened and thousands of Jews have been killed. They have turned Israel from a victor to a thief in the eyes of the world. I hope all these peaceniks consider a long sabbatical to Saudi Arabia, where they will find madrassahs congenial to the "peace industry" 

But my approach to conflict resolution (in real life) is equally as 'stupid' - the Alter Rebbe once sung a song to his apponants instead of arguing with them point for point.

I'm Jewish, I was born in Israel i was educated in the UK in Zionist Schools till I was 17 - (ie. aware of some primary school facts about Israel) but i realise that either side can hold their head up and say we are right, we have done no wrong.

The problem is that I'm not attempting to argue the points the pros and cons of talking to this or that group. I'm not attempting to argue FULL STOP.

I believe that in many ways the adversarial position of two sides, or goodies and badies is it'self the underlying problem.

The problem is that I'm naturally one of these stoned hippies - not because I can't think in a clear liniar and logical manner - but I believe that the very parameters of language and logic are flawed.

I'm not always right - in fact i'm almost always willing to be wrong - however, i personally feel that a real resultion to the conflict, cannot be found through dealing with the nitty gritty of the conflict it'self.

Getting involved with the arguemnt - just makes it more of an arugment - I'm sure that you've experienced this within your own life?

the alternative to the conflict is to focus our attention on our commonalities, on things that we argee on - our shared humanity -

conflict however justified - only leads to more conflict.

the Romeo - Juliet situation of two tribes fighting righteously for their tribe - leads endlessly into more death.

I believe that the only real way to overcome conflict is to first rootout the deep down human cause - that of egocentricism and lack of empathy

innerpeace as cheesy a term as it is - is ultimately (in my world view) a very effective resolver of conflict -

deep happiness - is also just a cheesy - but when you feel deeply happy - independantly of your external situation - then peace outside of yourself - conflict resolution is much easier.

I other main point is that - what can people in the diaspora do by focusing all this mental and emotional energy on conflict ? all it does is increase the problematisation of the situation, rather than actually looking for solutions that will work.,

Have you not ever noticed in your own life that when you relax, unwind and give up trying to find the answer to something - that an answer an alternative solution comes to you that you would have not discovered if you just focused on the issues at hand?

I believe - and you're entited to think what you like - that we are all in some way connected - all of our thoughts effect each other - 

I can completely understand how I could frustrate that Fcuk out of you - and I'm sorry that you react like that to my slightly condesending - interplanetary pomas psudo-(misspelt) spirituality.

In many ways - you might want to call my ideas - Monistic Idealism? 

Ismail - unfortunatly for you - i'm re-embracing -non-logical circular logics - allowing myself to free flow - without worrying if it makes sense or not.

Again - you'd find this annoying - but i'm not asking you to mark my essay - i'm not asking you to do anything - do nothing! you might be more effective!?