No Peace in Israel
Once again, Hamas only offers a truce and no real solution for peace between Israel and them.
Hamas is once again offering Israel a cease-fire, but the language that the Islamic movement has chosen reveals a deep reluctance to talk about any real peace with the Jewish state.
Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, on Wednesday proposed a “tahdia” — which in Arabic means a loosely defined period of calm that falls short of a formal cease-fire.
Still, this semantic nuance could well determine the success of Mideast peacemaking. As long as Israelis and the Islamic militants are killing each other in Gaza and southern Israel, a U.S.-sponsored drive to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by year’s end stands little chance.
Israel is formally rejecting the truce talk, and on Wednesday its army killed four militants in the West Bank town of Bethlehem after opening fire on their car. Israel sees a broad Iranian-driven effort to besiege it from the north through Hezbollah in Lebanon and from the south through Hamas, and fears a truce will simply give Hamas time to regroup and strengthen its fighting forces.
I agree with Israel, any truce will just give Hamas more time to rearm. Something needs to be done that will last, and it can’t be in the form of a peace treaty either. Something else has to change (aka Israel has to be recognized as a sovereign country and the terrorist group Hamas has to be disbanded either peacefully or forcefully if neccessary).
