Hamas HAS agreed to abide by previous treaties and deals, including Oslo. Hamas HAS agreed to tacitly recognize Israel. They ONLY demand withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, just like the REST of the world and the long-agreed upon two-state settlement.
Why does Hamas need to recognize Israel's right to exist when they refuse to return the favor?
As Noam Chomsky points out, who actually cares about a "right to exist" ? No country has a "right" to exist in any legal sense.

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Mr. Fisk has lived and worked in the Middle East for the last 30 years or so and knows what he is talking about. His latest book, "The Great War for Civilization" gives a very good history lesson about the region and is a must read if you really want to understand what is going on there.
We in the West should not shun and ignore Hamas. They are not going away and how do we change things without interacting with them. The Palestinian people did not elect Hamas because they hate the West or individually hate Israel. They voted for Hamas because they hated the corrupt Fatah government. In case you haven't noticed, the Fatah leadership over the years has done a horrible job of representing the Palestinian people. Nobody wants bad leaders and the Palestinian people were fed up with these crooks. How would you like to have been born in a refugee camp and still be there 60 years later? For the West to blackmail the Palestinians by with-holding aid and for Israel to withhold tax monies due the Palestinian people because we don't like who they democratically elected is unconscionable. How would we like some other powers to impose a corrupt government on us. It is bad enough when elect one ourselves.

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....on the part of the west will allow this most instructive hypocrisy to pass unnoticed.

I noticed this watching some CNN and reading some of the Murdoch press that they were describing this as a coup.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. This is a coup for the hypocrites and the murderers of USrael, Fatah and their pathetic enablers in the EU. I won't bother to even mention all those "liberals" in the US that won't speak up and challenge the ethnocide being committed in their name.

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Before AlterNet do-gooders accuse me of being anti-Semitic, as someone who visited Dachau and the Ann Frank House while touring Europe, I used to be an ardent backer of Israel -- when it followed humanistic Hebrew law. Now, sadly, because of the extremist Likud Party, Israel’s version of the rightwing GOP, King David's once righteous warriors have become cowardly neocons like their PNAC and CPD counterparts in America.

Case at point, Israel using helicopter gunships to kill innocent civilians in Palestine and doing the same thing in Lebanon last year with IDF cluster bombs and 2,000-lb depleted uranium bunker busters. How can anyone defend those horrific tactics?

They can't, but President Bush did -- to the point of rushing 100 bunker busters to Israel last summer for use against Hezbollah neighborhoods in Lebanon. Quite cearly he’s a born-again bigot who believes Jews are God’s chosen people while Muslims are inferior.

Consider a Bush-inspired event in 2003. On April 7 of that year, under standing orders from George W., a B1 bomber carried out a decapitation strike on a Baghdad restaurant where Saddam Hussein was eating a late lunch. Reportedly.

Shortly after the mission began, the Ace of Spades, suspecting he had been betrayed by someone on his staff, slipped out of the al-Sa’ah restaurant’s backdoor and fled the scene. Ten minutes later, four bunker busters dropped by the diverted bomber blew the suburban eatery to bits along with cooks, waiters, bus boys, customers, cashier, pedestrians passing by and the occupants of three nearby homes.

Fourteen civilians died in that Baghdad neighborhood on April 7, people who lost their lives simply for being there, including two young children. Yet back in the United States, few Americans protested the barbaric aspect of the B1 mission, not on TV or in the press anyway. Quite the contrary, there was glorification of Bush’s decision to “take out Saddam,” as so many in his administration enjoyed saying.
To excuse our cowboy commander-in-chief, Republicans will argue he didn’t give orders to the B1 crew; someone else did. But that reason won’t wash, either. As our nation’s top military leader who authorized the decapitation strike, he has blood on his hands just like Osama bin Laden.

Here’s the nexus in a nutshell. For the loved ones of 9/11 victims, it’s heart wrenching to hear but must be said. If you believe as I do that human lives are precious, especially those of children who deserve an opportunity to grow up and have kids of their own, then we must face the truth no matter how painful. Other than motivation, the only difference between a B1 dropping bombs on a civilian restaurant from 30,000 feet and someone flying a jetliner into an office building is the number of people that die.

As an addendum to this tawdry tale, in 2004, President Bush was asked during a press conference about a retaliatory air assault against Syria by Israeli jets. The reason for the revenge mission was a Hamas suicide bombing of a crowded Jewish eating establishment that killed 20 people.

When questioned by a White House reporter if the Israeli raid was justified, Bush glowered and replied sternly, “When Hamas blows up a restaurant with civilians inside, that’s terrorism.”

I kid you not. I heard him say that with my own ears. Those were the exact words spoken by George bin Laden.

Now I ask you. In light of Bush’s arrogant superior attitude towards Muslims, can we expect him to deal fairly with the Palestinian territories’ democratically elected government?

The answer should be obvious. Standby for violent, Bush-instigated action by Israel againt Hamas.

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Now that Hamas is in control of Gaza, things couldn't be going better for Israel. Being in control of all the entry points, Israel can just starve Gaza into submission. Meanwhile, on the West Bank, Israel can continue gobbling up the rest of Palestine while Fatah stands idly by. Will the Western powers, led by the United States, come to the aid of starving Gazans? Why would we do that? Since we've already labeled the Hamas government as "terrorists," the humbling of Gaza will be described as a victory in the so-called "war on terrorism."

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Why would you think AlterNeters would accuse you of anti-Semitism. . .? looks to me like AlterNet IS anti-Semitic in the same frame of mind as is Jimmy Carter w/his SAUDI FINANCING exposed by Alan Dershowitz.

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While commending Mr. Fisk for his mastery of the obvious, however posing questions of ethics to the AlterNet readership misses the mark, these ethics anomalies should be taken up with the power that is, corporate America, where a malleable code of ethics is the favored avenue of expedience in their overriding quest for more and more profit. Then also the bought and paid politicians who convert corporate greed, i.e Iraq, into foreign policy, in their effort to create avarice, bolstered by financial gain as the ameliorated Muslim deity.

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Excerpted from June 17, 2007 WAWA BLOG from a report by Ben White, freelance journalist specializing in Palestine/Israel. www.benwhite.org.uk

"But it is Israel, as the occupying power, that has primary responsibility for creating the conditions in which Palestinians have turned on each other. The Gaza Strip is a prison, where the prisoners are hungry, unemployed, and brutalized from 40 years of occupation. Israel's military onslaughts of the Second Intifada – which killed thousands and demolished tens of thousands of homes – have left its inhabitants mentally scarred, bereaved, angry, and reduced to the level of penned in animals...

"...Since the PLC elections, carried out democratically and transparently, the legitimate Palestinian government has been subjected to boycott, sanction and threats, and the US and EU have done everything in their power to undermine and destabilize the representatives of the Palestinian people...

"...together with Israel, the US has been openly working to arm Fatah for a coup against Hamas, moves that the latter – who had been elected on the basis of their resistance to Israeli occupation and their track record of humanitarian commitment to the people – were not going to sit by and idly watch. This came only after the attempt to starve the Palestinians into submission appeared not to be working. This context is strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) missing from most mainstream media coverage, despite the basic facts being widely in the public domain...

"...most of the blame must lie squarely with Israel, the US and EU, for creating in Gaza conditions in which Hamas felt like they had little choice but to act, and where their program can seem so attractive. Starving and imprisoning a population, destabilizing a democratically-elected government; these are the actions of gangsters and thugs, not peacemakers or statesmen.



"...Hamas is already calling for dialogue with Abbas, while the latter talks of emergency rule and elections. Dialogue is the only way forward for the Palestinians, but dialogue based on some fundamentals; respecting the will of the people, resistance to occupation and colonization, and a break from the collaborating political class of Oslo.


"The US, Britain and the EU, meanwhile, must be forced to stop their blood-stained interference in the Middle East, policies that have led to a 'crescent of death and destruction', from Iraq, to Lebanon and Palestine. That is the real threat."


MUCH MORE:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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How often do we hear the refrain, "but the Arabs want to push Israel into the sea"

When it is clear by looking at the new UN map-or the ones on my homepage: http://www.wearewideawake.org/

That the bantustans which make up the occupied territories, clearly show how Israel has "pushed Palestine into the sea!"

Why do we never hear an outcry for Israel to recognize Palestine?

HERE'S WHY:

Excerpted from June 18 WAWA BLOG:

"American support for Israel has hindered international efforts to broker a peace deal in the Middle East, according to a hard-hitting confidential report from the outgoing UN Middle East envoy.

"Alvaro de Soto, who stepped down last month after 25 years at the UN, has exposed the American pressure that he argues has damaged the impartiality of the UN's peace making efforts.



"Mr de Soto reveals that after Hamas won elections last year it wanted to form a broad coalition government with its more moderate rivals, including Fatah, run by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But the US discouraged other Palestinian politicians from joining. "We were told that the US was against any 'blurring' of the line dividing Hamas from those Palestinian political forces committed to the two-state solution," Mr de Soto writes. It was a year before a coalition government was finally formed.

"The US also supported the Israeli decision to freeze Palestinian tax revenues. "The Quartet has been prevented from pronouncing on this because the US, as its representatives have intimated to us, does not wish Israel to transfer these funds to the PA [Palestinian Authority]," he writes. "There is a seeming reflex, in any given situation where the UN is to take a position, to ask first how Israel or Washington will react rather than what is the right position to take."

"Mr de Soto opposed the international boycott placed on the Palestinian government after Hamas won elections last year. He argued that it was wrong to use pressure and isolation alone, and proposed retaining dialogue with Hamas. He wanted tougher criticism of Israel as well, but came up against a "heavy barrage" from US officials.

"The effect of the boycott was to seriously damage the Palestinian economy and promote radicalism. It also lifted pressure from Israel. "With all focus on the failings of Hamas, the Israeli settlement enterprise and barrier construction has continued unabated," he writes.

"The report criticises the Palestinians for their violence, and Israel for extending its settlements and barrier in the West Bank. But he also argues that Israeli policies have encouraged continued Palestinian militancy. "I wonder if the Israeli authorities realise that, season after season, they are reaping what they sow, and are systematically pushing along the violence/repression cycle to the point where it is self-propelling," he writes.

The link for de Soto's "End of Mission Report" PDF File is too long to post here, but it is posted on WAWA BLOG June 18:


http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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thus far. I do believe Israel must engage Hamas in negotiations. This they are owed after Israel's routine rocket attacks, IDF redeployments in Gaza, and targeted assassinations particularly of Sheik Yassin. It is clever to ask how can one respond to a coup by an elected government. If the west bemoans the lack of moderates to talk to let them look at the history of their own foreign policies in the region. The answer is contained therein.

Hamas is a fundamentalist group with the kind of inherent hostilities to Israel that Fatah doesn't bear. Let it be known that Israel is only reaping what it has sown after years of refusing to deal seriously with Fatah including the unnecessary sinking of the OSLO accords in 2000 by allowing Sharon to go to the Haram al Sheriff. The corrupt nature of the PLO worked well for Israel as it was hoped that the PA would become the managers of a string of disconnected bantustans that were viable only as cheap labor reserves for Israeli and Jordanian business. It was further hoped that the PA would sustain their role and fervently defend it as personal beneficiaries of taxes, rents, and licensing fees for the planned industrial parks that were to form a string of Industrial free zones, the Palestinian version of maquiladors. For a full disclosure google PIEFZA, the bureacracy created by the PA in 1998 which invites all manner of direct foreign investment to generate job creation. The illegal Separation Wall, though opposed publically by the PLO, does serve as a latter day "commons enclosure measure" which directly proletarianizes palestinian labor and reduces the independant middle class traders, farmers, and manufacturers to a vast dependant labor pool for global capitalism.

Hamas was a stern rejection of this strategy of the US/Israeli/Fatah elite. And rightly so. Let negotiations begin so a viable state can emerge. Hamas can be practical and eschew violence under the right circumstances. In fact, only the US can bring all the relevant parties to the peace table.

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... you think the US actually cares about democracy AT ALL????

You must be joking.

We didn't care about it in Guatemala or Chile. We don't even care about it here.

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Of course, if peace were the actual goal of Northern Hemispheric policy, sane voices like Mr. Fisk's would be heard from every pulpit, podium, and media outlet in the industrial world, but it's not. The goal of the Northern Hemisphere is as it has always been to exploit the resources of those south of the equator to feed its indolence and appetite for luxury. A truly democratic world would not be nearly as plush for those who would be compelled to share rather than horde. The sad irony is that our selfish over-consumption could ultimately detonate the Northern world like some Monty-Pythonesque fat man. What we need, after the Metamucil, is a healthy diet and a good twelve-step program. "Hi, we're the United States, and were over-consumers."

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The bushies are on the case. They'll handle this situation with the usual excellence and aplomb that they've become deservedly famous for, worldwide. A brief perusal of their dazzling accomplishments over the last six years is all that's needed to put all our minds at ease.

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Robert Fisk is a well-known writer who should be able to get his well-informed views into the mainstream press. But all I've seen there is bias, warp and cant.

NPR's coverage of the situation just about made me barf yesterday. Sometimes, their biases really show. Sometimes, it really is NJR -- National Jewish Radio. Shameful. Disgusting.

We say we want to spread democracy in the Middle East -- that is the reason for the occupation of Iraq, remember? But when we actually SEE some democracy, as in when the Palestinian people have the effrontery to elect the people they want, we and Israel withhold their OWN tax revenues, creating massive distress and trauma and then stir that up into a civil war by arming the party which lost.

We pour weapons in for Fatah and then our media airs stories complaining that the democratically elected government of Gaza arms itself (by smuggling? Is it smuggling if the duly elected government of an area is doing it?) against our thugs.

Our media twists the entire story to the point that the average person, even the average NPR listener, gets a completely distorted view of what is going on -- we fomented a civil war in Gaza by backing democracy's losers because we don't want to negotiate with the actual Palestinians. We insist on "negotiating" only with our own puppets and propped-up yes-men.

That's not negotiation. That's occupation.

That's cramming things down people's throats against their will.

And then we just can't figure out why it doesn't work.

Gaza is Aushwitz on the Mediterranean. The justification for our continual rehashing of the Holocaust is the cry "Never Again" but the Jews themselves are DOING IT AGAIN.

We need to wake up. We are thinking about this in a totally wrong-headed fashion and the media is full of bias against the Palestinians.

Jan VanDenBerg

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