Vladimir Putin has given Hamas legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve. Not that the Russians care.
MOSCOW (AP) – Hamas’ leader said his visit to Russia “opened the door to the entire global community,” claiming in an interview published Monday that the international isolation of the militant Palestinian group was coming to an end.
Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas political chief whose three-day visit to Moscow ended Sunday, also said that “Russia’s position is completely unlike that of the West” and praised Russian officials for understanding Hamas’ stance.
He was quoted as telling the daily Vremya Novostei that the visit “broke the blockade which Israel and the United States have been trying to impose on us.”
“At the Russian Foreign Ministry we felt that we were being understood,” he said.
So gee, do you think this means that Hamas is going to “moderate”?
In interviews with Russian media, Mashaal did not mention a promise to extend the cease-fire, and in a separate interview with Al-Jazeera television, he indicated the group had made no such promise.
“Is it reasonable to pressure the Palestinians to renew the truce? No. Go to Israel, exert pressure on it. It is the reason for the problem,” he told Al-Jazeera.
Thanks, Vlad. They couldn’t have done it without you. Well, yes, they could, but they wouldn’t have that extra tinge of credibility the Russian meeting with Hamas gave them.
There is nothing Israel can do to advance a resolution of this conflict. The initiative is all on the Muslim side. They are the ones making the war. If they chose to stop the war would stop. No pressure on Israel can bring peace any closer. It will just prolong the war, by convincing the Muslims that they can yet persuade others to help them destroy Israel and annihilate its Jewish inhabitants, which is what the Muslims mean when they talk of “peace in the Middle East.”
I suspect the Palestinian Arabs will someday deeply regret following first Arafat then Hamas over the cliff. However, I will shed no tears for them. They lost, long ago, any claim to compassion for any misfortunes they suffer. When they embraced the goal of genocide they sank themselves into a satanic death cult, and are going to reap bitter rewards from it.