Peace in the Middle East: Possible with a known Terrorist group in Cha

[Filipe]

As you all may have taken notice of lately, the other day the elections in the Palestinean territories were won overwhelmingly by Hamas. Now this bring up the issue of whether or not peace in the region is now possible with that particular party in charge, who has no interest in peace. It is clear that if nothing else this is a major step backwards for the peace process, and essentially if they dont back down from what they want, it puts the entire region in this small predicament. Now that Hamas is in power, this makes them a goverment, thus they have the faults, and responsibilites of one. If they choose to ignore the possibility of peace under the current terms, and they launch attacks again, against Israel, things are going to be different now. Now it wont be just some terrorist organization attacking the Israeli's but the Palestinean goverment directly. This makes any attack by Hamas on Israel whether through some sort of military, or suicide bombers an act of war. War is a completely different story from what has been going on so far, and really any attacks would give Israel the authority by international law, to bring down the goverment by force. The UN could not continue to biasly support the Palestineans as they clearly do now, because by their own laws, Hamas would have instigated all out war with Israel.

Now we naturally have to pick out the problems with this situation, since now this is where Iran could come in, among others. You see the Middle East has been looking for excuses, by their own admission to eliminate Israel completely from the map. This war persay would give them the perfect excuse to put these thoughts into motion, however they forgot one small deal. Israel has one particular ally that could literally do the work for them, and really any war of that kind of scale would be counter productive. In the end, the ball is in the court of Hamas if they are willing to change, since thats really the only option for that matter. If they are not, which I am guessing is definately the situation we could most definately have a major problem on our hands.

So what are all of your views on the situation? Clearly if the Palestinians wanted to have lasting peace with Israel, voting the terrorist group Hamas into power was not the move to make.
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[Hawk Thanatos]

No doubt if he starts something stupid he'll get himself assasinated...or removed from power at the very least.

[Filipe]

Well there is very little doubt about that, since Israel is known for carrying out precision bombings against terrorists. Really if it came to that I am sure justifiably they may have good reason for taking him out personally, however that is by no means the issue at all. It is about whether or not with a group known for bombing innocent civilians, and actively seeking the elimination of the state of Israel has any chance of being at the peace talks table. I suppose that you could take it as something along the lines of instead of the Taliban controlling Afghanistan while Osama Bin Laden was/is there, he took over control of the goverment itself personally. Do you really think any nation under any kind of threat from his group would want to have any dealings with him, just because he was democratically elected? The situation is the exact same circumstances with the Palestinean territories, and Israel now. Do you really think Israel is going to go into talks with them now? Of course not that would be rediculous for them to do so. Can you really blame them after all of the terrorist attacks done by Hamas against them anyway?

Anyways I am not meaning to make this sound like Israel is completely innocent, because they have taken some questionable actions in the name of self defence. I dont by any means condone, or support the result of those actions, however in all due fairness it was in self defence. I guess some could say that the Palestineans shouldnt have cast the first stone, if they werent expecting stones to be cast back.
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[Vextor]

Plus, taking out one Hamas leader won't do that good. The movement is just one pacet of the anger and displeasure of the Palestinians, and if one leader is killed, another one will fill in the spot. It's been repeated over and over.

[Fundertaker]

And killing the leader will only give the Palestinians more reasons to don't have peace with Israel. And if that's the case, I don't blame them. I wouldn't trust Israel either.
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Tinto: Kicking Asses is our Speciality


This post is officially Fundertaker Approved

[Equus]

The last time I heard anything about the formation of a government, Hamas was actually trying to form some sort of coalition with Fatah because of the potential and real problems that have arisen with their election into the majority. Amongst the problems are the financial implications for the PA, since many groups (like the United States) will not send funds to a state being led by a known terrorist faction. Most political observers I've heard said that even Hamas had no clue that they would be that successful and are now scrambling to try to figure out how to actually make things work. I think the pragmatic folks in Hamas realize that they're in trouble right now.
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.