Soccer Dad

Hamas's hudna

Yesterday, I wrote about the NYT interview with Khaled Meshal. Since I blogged about it early, I missed a number of other bloggers on the article.

One aspect that others emphasized was that the Times took Meshal at his word. (I thought that the reporter hinted at his skepticism.) In addition to Elder of Ziyon, Barry Rubin emphasized this.

First, this in the avoiding obvious conclusions' department:

"In April, only six rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Israel from Gaza, which is run by Hamas, a marked change from the previous three months, when dozens were shot, according to the Israeli military....Mr. Mashal made an effort to show that Hamas was in control of its militants as well as those of other groups, saying, `Not firing the rockets currently is part of an evaluation from the movement which serves the Palestinians' interest.'"

Note that the reporters, Taghreed el-Khodary and Ethan Bronner, interpreted this as showing Hamas deserved praise for its restraint and respect for its ability to control its militants and others.

Here's my interpretation: Hamas got badly beaten up by Israel during the December-January fighting and wants a break. As soon as it rebuilds, though, it will start attacking again.

Ed Lasky also writes:

Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the terror group Hamas, said on Monday that rocket fire into Israel will stop for now and reached out to the Obama administration and to leaders of the West, saying it was seeking a state only in the areas "won" by Israel in the 1967 War,

That's the gist of the lead paragraph in a New York Times article by Taghreed el-Khodary and Ethan Bronner. Undoubtedly, the world's peace processors will be transported into rapture by this claim.

They should not be so credulous.

Along those lines, Israel Matzav criticizes the Times for sending reporters to find out that Meshal hasn't chaged after all these years.

Others emphasized that this was simply a matter of Hamas reaching out to the Obama administration. Backspin, for example, has seen Hamas doing this kind of thing before.

Jonathan Tobin goes back to Arafat.

But the main point to be gleaned from this interview is that Meshal has finally understood that if he wants Western pressure on Israel, he has to tell the Western press what it wants to hear. That's what Yasser Arafat did during the Oslo era when he popped off about a "peace of the brave" in English to the foreign press, while at the same time repeating the ultimate goal of "jihad" against the Jewish state when speaking in Arabic to Muslim audiences. For those who followed and believed what he said to his own people, Arafat's refusal to accept peace or cease support for terror was no surprise, even though true believers in peace in both Washington and Jerusalem spent the 1990s in denial.

Contrary to Meshal's claim that Arafat's talk about peace gained him nothing, it brought the PLO back to the territories. The Hamasistan in Gaza is an indirect result of the Israeli concessions that were purchased cheaply with such insincere words.

Max Boot hopes that the administration knows that it is being played.

That's not news except insofar as the interview is an indication of how eager Hamas is to court the new American administration. I only hope that President Obama doesn't use these faux concessions as an excuse to extend a helping hand to this noxious terrorist organization.

Clearly Meshal is looking for an extreme makeover.

Please also see Daled Amos and Israelly Cool.