I've recently finished reading a book of Golda Meir's speeches. Then, even more recently, I've been reading the news about the ceasefire being negotiated in the Middle East. Here's hoping this ceasefire is somewhat more effective than the similarly negotiated ceasefires after the wars in 1948, 1956, and 1967. Said hope is slim, however, while some of the parties to the agreement continue to have the destruction of Israel as their only stated goal (cf. the history of Israeli relations with Egypt and Sadat's actions in 1977, which paved the way to finally making peace between Egypt and Israel).
Unlike Egypt, which had an existence outside its fighting with Israel, groups like Hamas were formed solely to work towards the destruction of Israel, making it harder for them to be parties to any sort of peace process.... Luckily, Hamas has ended up branching out from its primary mission somewhat, putting part of its efforts into the Palestinian community itself (education and so forth). This gives me hope that they could, if they chose to (a big "if") redefine themselves as something other than a group devoted to eliminating the existence of Israel.
Posted by bzbarsky at June 29, 2003 11:19 AM>> Luckily, Hamas has ended up branching out from its primary mission somewhat, putting part of its efforts into the Palestinian community itself (education and so forth).<<
That allows them to launder their money easier as well as hide behind the civil part of the organization more than anything else.
Posted by: mmdle on June 29, 2003 3:11 PMThat may well be (I'm not particularly up on their non-terrorist actions, to be truthful). Nevertheless, this gives them a way to gradually transform into a completely civil organization. The alternative would be to completely disband it (only possible by banning it), of course.
Posted by: Boris on June 29, 2003 3:18 PMwell. there is a point missing, israil is the invader in the area, i do not think "destruction of israel" is the main purpose of those groups. What i believe, both sides has to stop killing innocents.
Posted by: aaa on July 2, 2003 4:56 PM> I do not think "destruction of israel" is the main
> purpose of those groups.
Um... That is the express purpose for which the groups were founded, if you read their charters.
You may wish to engage a little less in believing what you want to believe and a little more in looking at the facts.
Posted by: Boris on July 2, 2003 4:59 PMi said "i think", not "i believe" for that. what i believe is the last sentence and fact is that israel is the "invader". it is certain that groups like Hamas does not help building peace by carrying on suicide bombings and such, but one may not claim their sole purpose is the destruction of a country or a nation by looking at that events. It may be considered as a false and very wrong reaction of people belong to a nation in which maybe each of the family lost one of the member in the last 20-30 years and some groups maybe taking advantage of the situation. if you want to look at facts, look at the number of palestinian and israeli civilian loss of the in the conflicts since all this mess started including Lebanon. However, i am sharing the same wish with you, although it is so hard to believe.
Posted by: aaa on July 3, 2003 9:37 PMhello, although i do not want to carry on this discussion, i would like to make my statement clear by this URL's
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/arccrisis/ispal-casualty.html
http://www.dci-pal.org/statistics/statistics.html
off the topic, i am a very long term follower of mozilla project and i really appreciate your work.
regards.
Posted by: aaa on July 4, 2003 10:31 PMLet's also hope we do better than Great Britain did after WWI.
Posted by: Daniel Brooks on July 8, 2003 5:19 PM