Monday, April 23, 2012

WELL, THAT'S IT THEN!

Hamas leader to Jewish paper: No peace with Israel

JERUSALEM - (AP) -- A Hamas leader said Thursday that if his militant group came to power in a future Palestinian state, it would not abide by any previous Palestinian peace deals with Israel.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Islamic militant group's number two figure, said any potential deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, even if ratified in a Palestinian referendum, would be considered only as a temporary truce.

"We will not recognize Israel as a state," he told the Jewish Daily Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper in an interview published Thursday. It was the first such interview by a senior Hamas leader to a Jewish publication. Israeli newspapers reported it on Friday.

Well that's it then. If Hamas in the process of forming a unity government with Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Authority (yes, it is a slow process), we now can fully expect tomorrow's Age to fully explain to its readers that this means no credible Palestinian leadership accepts the concept of a full and lasting peace agreement with Israel. We can expect all of the pundits on the ABC, SBS, Crikey et all to now finally lay rest to the fiction that Israel is standing in the way of peace in this long lasting conflict.

As if they well ... and as if we haven't known about this for a long, long time.

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