Hamas - Time for a dialogue?
 

Should the U.S. extend the policy of "no recognition, no dialogue, no aid" with respect to Hamas?

to start a dialogue with a bunch of terrorist is unthinkable. to lend 30 or so blackhawks is more in line.

What slow eddie said.

Hamas should be made into hummus.

Just to play the devils advocate, imagine if we were all told that we had to move off of your property and be forced to live in a large comunity and controlled like cattle??

Have any of you people taken the time to think about what the palestinian cause is about???

hamas is a terrorist organization randomly attacking and killing civilians while hiding amongst civilians. these are the most cowardly of people and should be eliminated now...anyone who sanctions their actions is not much better.

Lets take a little trip back in time.

Doesn't seem so long ago when the PLO was squating in Jordan and King Hussein basically said get out and Arafat and his minions said no.As the PLO was marching on Amman,who saved them,those cattle controlling dreaded Jews ya'll seem to not to like all of sudden.

Devils' advocate my ass.As the grandson of those who were slaughtered by Muslim Turks in the Armenian Genocide how do you justify playing "devils' advocate" to someone like me or for that matter my father who witnessed it first hand?YOU CAN'T!!!

Have I taken the time to think what the Palestinian "cause" is about? You obvisiously have not.How does death to Jews sound?Its what Palestinians and most of the Arab world want.

In the end the motivating factor for all the death and destruction in the Middle East is religion and at this point in time that religion would be Islam.Another 50yrs it could be scientolgy,another 50yrs after that it could be something we've never heard of.

Piece is easy to obtain...stop fighting.But as long as people take sides there will always be a side to take and that my friend equals killing and destruction.

Actually i agree with everyone here.. I was thinking about the greater plight of the palestinian cause and not just Hamas..

my bad fellas.. :tm:

the palestinians elected these people to run their state.how many times do you get stung by a bee before you decide to knock out the nest?

exactly Saltfly- its like Afghanistan electing in Al queda to run the show..

The problem with Hamas is that they were able to get a lot of much needed money from outher countries to help build infrastructure...Probably from Iran... but this had a lot of pull with the Palestinian people.

Hamas isn't just a terrorist organization, they are the primary provider of many basic services that the people can't live without.

To say we're "not going to negotiate with terrorists" is absurd and bad policy. Guess what? We do it all the time...it just makes us look stupid to the people we need to influence.

Hint: 3rd parties work pretty well.

We're fighting a proxy war with Iran and have been for some time. Let's actually admit it and start fixing the issues and perhaps we'll see some real improvement. 1) Place our own interests first and 2) work to end the dependence on Syria and Iran for aid.

Yes, Hamas provoked them this time and fired rockets, yes Isreal has the right to defend it's people...blah, blah, blah...

Doesn't change the fact that you have an entire generation of Arabs, most of whom are so full of rage towards the Occupation they see no other option but to fight.

That is the real problem.

-spence

perhaps in 1948, after the founding of the jewish state, the other arab states had taken these people in we would not be having this debate.
after they take back the holy land, what's next.
we do not think like these people. never will. our way of life sticks in their craw. they will do everything in their power to bring us back to the 7th. century along with them.

It was easy for Hamas to control Gaza. They had more guns and gunmen than Fatah. If you didn't cast a vote for Hamas you received no aid.

I think a little history is needed here.

Before the end of British rule Arabs and Jews lived together in relative peace. Seems that they didn't get the memo that they didn't "think alike".

The Brits (when in control) assured Palestenians they would help them create their own state, then flipped on their promise when Zionists started to lobby for Palestine as the new home of European Jews.

From what I've read, the first recorded acts of "terrorism" in the area were Jewish attacks on the British as Zionists tried to assert themselves.

Certainly there was a real problem Europe, but from an Arab perspective they were wronged and have continued to get the shaft in terms of less land and fewer rights since even before WW2.

While I wouldn't argue that surrounding Arab states have been right to attack Isreal over the years, to ignore the history of the region is foolish if we ever want to find a solution.

This is primarily a political, not religious problem...but the more people want to make it one, it will over time continue to go down this road. For all the Muslims who wish Isreal was gone for religious reasons, there's a Christian on the other side thinking along the same lines.

-spence

But from the Jewish perspective, all they did was go home in 1948!

Not all Jews believe in the right of return, and not all Zionists are Jewish (in spirit at least). It was really a pretty small (but very influential) group pushing to create the new state in Palestine.

But to your point, if your neighbor is evicted unfairly, he doesn't have the right to kick you out of your house just because his relatives lived there in there past. This may be over simplification, but it somewhat is the issue.

-spence

Most everyone thinks that there are no political, diplomatic, or economic options - only military.

There are places in this country - Dearborn, Michigan is probably the best example - where Jews and Palestinians live very closely and in peace. The major distinction here is economic, people are less likely to embrace violence and radicalism if there is economic opportunity.

And yet, much like a terrorist organization the Israeli regime is mindlessly bombing Palestine and killing hundreds of civilians.

Taken them in? It was forced upon them.

And lets not forget the military land grabs done my Israel.

you have to protect your people....the cowardly basturds hide within the populace. the israelis let it be know beforehand to the point of calling people, read palestinians, on their cell phones and warned them...

Yeah because people who can barely afford food have cellphones right? :rolleyes:

The IRA used to do the same thing, call in a warning before they'd blow up a pub.

This really isn't about protecting your people as much as it is about punishment. Israel isn't fighting a defined enemy, it's an insurgency of which they are partially responsible for helping to form (I'd note that you could say the exact same thing about our own "war on terror"). Any political solution will require giving something up so every so often they lash out.

Ultimately their actions will do more to build sympathy for the innocent killed and strengthen the position of Hamas who will claim to be defending them. You could say the same thing about Iraq (yea, you saw that coming).

So they level Gaza...to what end? Does anyone really think this will help keep Israel safer?

Or perhaps a better question...

What do you think is a reasonable end state for all of this? Two-state solution? Israel taking everything? Return to the 69 borders?

And remember, there are militants on both sides.

-spence

they knew what was about to happen, ie: stay away from known targets.


a good start would be the palestinians electing a non- terrorist gov't.
i don't like anyone dying for no good reason especially innocents on both sides. only two solutions imho are annilation or deplomacy- i favor diplomacy. only thing in the way starting a meaningful diplomatic progress as i see it is the freekin' terrorists, if they were'nt lobbing rockets at israel this campaign would'nt be happening, just my .02

Same should be said for Israel.

Hmmm, lessea. Dialogue between a Guvment using often justified and just as often heavy handed tactics, and a duly elected terrorist organization that says vote for me or I'll shoot you dog, hmmm.

Yeh, this will be easy. What is worse? Israel? Or the corrupt PLO? Or the hamas terrorists?

Yeh, plenty of blame to go around on this one...

Genocide still resonates with a lot of people.
Kill em' all diplomacy.

You'd think they wouldn't be so quick to bring down the hammer like they're willing to.

I ask again, to what end?

Israel can invade and hold ground for some period of time, there will be a truce and then they will leave.

Hamas will resupply and the whole exercise will repeat in a few years.

During this time the civilian infrastructure has been pretty much completely distroyed and the people will be even more dependent on the militants for basic survival.

-spence

The Iraeli army has been reverse 911'ing the private homes that surround buildings that are going to be bombed before they bomb them.

A war was fought and somebody lost. The losers lost thier land. Why doesn't this dialogue take place when fifty missiles a day were and are being shot into Israel by Hamas. Hamas is only using the residents in Gaza that are injured or killed in the worse possible way. Hamas mistreats and abuses thier fellow Gazans worst than the Israeli army does. The hide among them, fight among them, to turn public opinon against the Jews. Hamas, Iran, Syria are no different than the Nazi's. They want all Jews dead. At least the Jews only want to kill the people who would harm them. If we turned a blind eye to the middle east in the past the Jews would have all been killed many times over years ago.

I had read there were some examples of this but that it wasn't widespread.

Gross oversimplification. The counter argument is that militant Jewish settlers have been illegally taking land with or without war for 70 years. Granted, many of these settlements have been removed, but not without International pressure and in many cases the Jewish settlers have fought even the Israeli government.

Underdogs often get to play by different rules. Go outside of the US Media and the rest of the world reports on the issue with much more sympathy for the Palestenian people.

People in the Middle East also give credit to those who fight the power regardless of their means or methods. Saddam certainly milked this and Bin Laden has been an expert of manipulating these emotions to gain support for his actions rather than methods.

I'm sure a lot of the people are thankful that someone is standing up for them. This isn't a traditional army holding territory, they are in and among the people because that's the only place they can be. If anything it's out of necessity.

Israel is more than capable of defending itsself. And I don't buy the fact that everybody is out to exterminate the Jews. Sure it's an easy political device to stoke the fires and get media attention, and this isn't to say that general anti-semitism isn't rampant among Arabs, but if this was really the case why doesn't Hamas or Iran strike at the Jews of say...New York City?

It is impossible to take a snapshot of the region and make any sense of it. This is a great dysfunction that's grown over time and both sides are to blame.

You could say the same for much of our own policy in the area. We seem to casually forget that there's history there, like things have just sprouted up overnight.

-spence

As far as the Arab world is concerned, there may as well be an American flag painted on the tanks and planes right next to the Israeli - they see no distinction between the policies of the U.S. and Israel.
The Palestinian question and our support of the Saudi regime are at the heart of instability in the region and terrorism throughout the world.
I don't think there is a solution. We're not going to talk to terrorists, the Israelis are not going to concede their land. Eventually the terrorists will exact a bloodbath via a weapon of mass destruction, we'll retaliate, and Gabriel will blow his horn.

I seem to remember a certain Nazi calling it the "The Jewish question" once upon a time too.

Really? Other than the thrunting of an Iranian figurehead with no power, would you like to show us the irrefutable evidence of this?