Into the sewers with Hamas
The BBC reported a genuine scoop on the Today programme (0732) this morning. In the wake of last month's victory by Hamas in the local election, reporter James Reynolds went to see the new acting mayor -- only to bump into two medium-ranking British diplomats leaving a meeting with said Hamas apparatchik. Thus the BBC stumbled across Britain's dirty little secret -- that despite the fact that it has declared Hamas to be a proscribed terrorist organisation, it has quietly started to treat it as a legitimate political party and deal with its representatives.
Here's the story as it appeared in the Guardian:
Straw confirms British contact with Hamas
Israelis pressure Straw over UK contacts with Hamas
And a leader article saying that both Britain & Israel are being hypocritical in their latest pronouncements:
1 comment:
Yup, as that Guardian leader makes clear, we must all beware that scheming untrustworthy bastard Sharon. Clearly his Gaza move is just a big trick, and we're his dupes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1501434,00.html
Part of the solution too?
The suspicion must be that the real Israeli objections to Hamas are not that it is a terrorist organisation or that they do not trust its reformulations on Israel's right to exist, although anxiety on both scores is understandable. If Ariel Sharon does not want a West Bank settlement worthy of the name he may see Hamas as the most formidable obstacle to imposing one that is manifestly unfair. That it would also constitute an excuse for refusing serious negotiations suggests that statements about Hamas will continue to need careful decoding.
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