You’re answering questions I never asked, bringing up rebuttals to points I never made, and making it seem like that’s what my post is about.

I was responding directly to two comments in your post.

The PLO was never tamed. To this day, PLO members infest the PA and work with terrorists to destroy Israel.

If the PA is an organ of the PLO (as it was in the first instance), it’s nonsensical to say that PLO members “infest” the PA. Likewise, saying that “PLO members . . . work with terrorists,” while true in the sense that the PLO works with non-PLO outfits like HAMAS and PIJ, glosses over the point that the PLO itself is nothing more than an umbrella group of terror outfits like the one that the US openly supports, FATAH, whose charter I quoted from in my first comment.

You also wrote that

It is utterly unbelievable to me that people refuse to take these [HAMAS] words at face value.

These same people refused to take the equally vicious and equally clear words of Arafat and other FATAH and PLO officials at face value.

Is their posture vis-a-vis HAMAS dispiriting? Yes. Depressing? Yes. Unbelievable? Emphatically no. Past actions are usually the best predictors of future actions.

I’m doing what I can to spread the word. The local paper has an online edition that allows comments, and I’ve linked this blog post of yours there (and done a real hatchet-job of paraphrasing it — sorry!)

The article is here, and the comments are linked from the bottom.

–Howard

You’re answering questions I never asked, bringing up rebuttals to points I never made, and making it seem like that’s what my post is about.

I hope you don’t think I intend to get into the discussion you’re having with yourself.

Second, the PA’s formal jurisdiction extends only to the territories. Because the PLO is the only recognized representative of ALL of the Palestinian Arabs, including the refugees, it had long been held that only the PLO has “standing” to negotiate final status issues with Israel. This is noted in the above chart, and is also consistent with the fact that the PLO, not the PA, maintains a Negotiations Affairs Department.

Because, in this view, the PA deals only with local matters in the territories, what do HAMAS’s long-term objectives matter? If matters of water supply, electricity, transport of goods and movement of people are to be discussed, why is it less acceptable to speak to HAMAS-niks than to FATAH-niks?.

Note, however, that the PA created its own “foreign ministry” and in recent months has been working to wrest control over the embassies from the PLO’s Political Department. This might have seemed like a good thing when the PA was viewed as more “moderate” than PLO Foreign Minister Farouk Qaddoumi, but after today’s elections, who knows?

However, the final and most important point is that your argument proves too much. As Israeli author Hersh Goodman explained to Margaret Warner Tuesday on The News Hour,

Frankly, Fatah has its own Al Aqsa Brigades which are terrorist organizations with suicide bombers. It’s hypocritical of us to say, “We’re going to speak to these blokes and not to these blokes.” So for the first time there’s a growing body of opinion here that’s saying, you know, “Maybe Hamas,” you know, maybe have them like involved in the process rather than underground, and have them constructively engaged.

I might add that the the constitution of FATAH is just as clear as the HAMAS Charter in terms of the movement’s ultimate aims. For example, Art. 19 states:

Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People’s armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.

There’s just no principled way for Israel to say “We will talk to FATAH but not to HAMAS.” Frankly, I don’t see how Israel has ever “constructively engaged” with the PA, or for that matter with the PLO, but if it was possible before the latest elections than it ought to be just as possible now.