If this is all you are posting it leaves a very incomplete and misrepresenting picture. Please do not equate Hamas with the Palestinian people as a whole. Most Palestinians are not Islamists and just want a home and peace and are not represented by Hamas. Even Hamas itself is not a homogenous group with a single policy. Even its military wing, the radical end, only numbers hundreds, backed by only a section of Hamas. Even the radicals agreed to explore peace and declared a cease fire in 2008, broken by Islamic Jihad in defiance of Hamas, which sparked Israel's strangling of the Gaza strip, raids on Hamas and the subsequent events. Israel, -its successive elected governments, does not want peace. Hamas has on several occasions offered a peace deal, e.g. in 2004, -in return for a Palestinian state in W.Bank, Gaza strip and E Jerusalem (i.e. pre-occupation borders) as a phased liberation, with the question of the right of return "left to future generations". Soon after this offer was made by Ahmed Yassin he was assassinated by Israel. The biggest obstacle to peace is the continually increasing illegal Zionist settlement in the West Bank. At the Taba summit in 2001 a deal between Barak and Arafat was agreed, allowing Israelis to keep a lot of the settlements at the time, but formal agreement it was thwarted by Sharon's march on Temple Mount during the talks, the subsequent election and 2nd infitadah. But it shows it was possible. Since then, Sharon made a tactical withdrawal of the settlements in the deserts of Gaza, but the settlements in the fertile West Bank and East Jerusalem have increased relentlessly. Consecutive Israeli govenments have consistently encouraged them and continue to do so.
Thanks for the response Ddoright. Like I said in our exchange of PMs, your response to my response was a high road and I thank you for that. Brokenbeacon, we see things differently, except I expect you and I might agree that we aren't likely to change one another's minds on the matter. There were several posts I disagreed with and I posted a different perspective. I'm not in it for one of those internet discussions where we take turns riffing on a part of what the other person said, back and forth, back and forth ... basically I said what I wanted to say - and I could have been far more comprehensive, but I'm not here for comprehensive or complete discussions on political or related things. During the day (thankfully part-time now) I'm involved in people's suffering, injustice, and sometimes conflicts. I'm not on this forum to debate or even think about injustice, suffering, pain, and so on ad infinitum (hope I spelled it right); if I were I'd be on a political forum (I DON"T THINK SO!). I'm here to hang out, learn about RCs, communicate back and forth about the high life. And I thank you, too, for a reasonable reponse.
Liquidacrobat, you're right of course that this thread is changing from a lament into a discussion about behavior and politics. If you do not wish to get sucked in by that I would avoid posting inflammatory sentiments like the last paragraph in your post. Nobody can have a problem with you pointing out the irony of the only ME nation to have a hip culture attracting animosity from hipforums. Nobody can disagree with your observations of the reprehensible inhuman activities of Hamas. But I cannot leave your last paragraph uncontested, and want to make sure the Palestinians as a people are not being judged by the activities of terrorist idealogues, and that any past (or present) support for Hamas from non-idealogue Palestinians is seen for what it was and placed in its correct perspective.
