My political boggle for today...

[pyrephox]

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she found it "hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace."

Um. Y'know. Well. Just /possibly/, that whole 'talking' thing, it might, y'know, have an effect on them being an impediment to peace. I mean, hey, crazy idea when you've got nukes, I know, but give it a shot.

Comments

[patpandahat.livejournal.com]

A representative of Hamas was contacted in response, and said that he found it "hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Condoleezza Rice about peace when the U.S. government has in fact been an impediment to peace."

But hey, I'm not the one working as a shill for warmongering bastards, what do I know.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

In State's defense, Hamas has not shown itself to be a good faith negotiating partner and it does not seem that there's much room FOR negotiation when they start with "Israel's an illegal occupier and should be driven into the sea."

Unfortunately, Israel's trying to have their cake and eat it. If they're an occupying power, they ought to damn well act like it; and if they're not, and they're ceding the territories, then they ought to do that as well; then they can promptly treat the next round of rocket attacks as an act of war, and simply level the Gaza Strip to a small flat pile of rubble.

[tearraws.livejournal.com]

In my ideal world, talking about problems would solve everything. It's how I try to approach all of my problems in my own life. To talk about them, to work them out. To empathize with each other. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes that's because I didn't express myself properly, but a lot of the time, it's because the other person isn't interested in talking to solve their problems.

In the end, I've sadly had to sometimes give up on talking to the people who have problems with me, because it was just making things worse, or more often, because it was damaging to me to keep trying to talk it out. They'd put more and more demands on me, until I was hobbled by my lack of ability to even address my point, due to promises made or emotions trying to be respected, while they ignored their own end of things and insult me and refuse to abide by their own promises.

Your response, and the response of many others I see here, seems to suggest a context as if the USA - or, really, anyone else - has ever talked to Hamas, and the 'talk to them' solution has never been tried.

There's been a lot of negotiations with Hamas, one has to remember, and they regularly break all promises they make. They destroy anything Israel tries to give them, and in recent history, they get their most violent when there's about to be a peaceful resolution for them to get the land that they say that they want. Throughout history, it's been shown that all they had to do to get half of what they want - self government - is to give up the other half of what they want - the destruction of Israel. And the latter is too important to them to give it up for the former.

I'm not saying anything about the intent of anybody involved, I'm not saying anything about good guys or bad guys, or anything like that, because it's far more complex than any storybook type of consideration like that, but I'm just pointing out the historical context - the things that they, themselves, have stated and done - that we're working with here.

We have tried to talk, but I fail to see what sort of compromise we're supposed to be working towards, here? If you have an idea, I would really like to hear it, but just saying 'talk to them' isn't really sufficient - it's already been tried countless times, and has led to more death and betrayal and lives uprooted.

I, too, want us to talk to them and work it out. The problem is less that anyone doesn't want to talk to them, and more that everything we'd say has already been said. What more would you suggest?