“The main goal of everyone right now is a cease-fire,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told USA TODAY. “You can’t do anything without a cease-fire − you can’t do humanitarian aid, you can’t treat the wounded, you can’t even remove bodies until there’s a cease-fire.”
“Nothing should get in the way of a humanitarian cease-fire.”
Uh yeah… If people came and stole more than half your land, forced you into slums as they thrived off what was your land going back the Bedouin aborigines, then turned around and offered a consolation prize of giving some of your land back when you deserve it all, you’d be pissed off, too.
The new Hamas charter is the best you’ll likely see. They accept the borders but don’t have to accept Israel itself, and that’s completely understandable. They don’t need to. Doing so would also play into the Israeli religious rhetoric regarding their biblical justification for the land. But here’s the good news: Only Israel needs to accept Israel.
Well not quite. Leading up to the Oslo accords the PLO and Israel recognized each other. We all know how that ended, and that is why Hamas became what it is today (well there’s also a lot of direct and indirect support by the Israeli government). What I’m trying to say is: Palestinians not recognizing Israel isn’t inevitable; just the result of Israeli actions.