Quote Originally Posted by JamesWales View Post
There are reasonable if extremely difficult conversations to have over the west bank and Gaza etc but how do you deal with people who don't recognise your right to exist?
The main conversation about the West Bank and Gaza should be around ending the occupation and enabling a route to a two state solution to the conflict - but that seems impossible for now with the current Israeli leadership and the aftermath of the bloodbath in Israel and Gaza.

Hamas is fanatical certainly and has terrorists and murderers amongst its members and supporters - although it is a very complex and evolving organisation, or set of interlinked organisations. But that isn't the whole story.

Israel has used Hamas historically to subvert Fatah/PA and to justify its periodic bouts of mass murder in Gaza - and to deflect from the reality of its occupation, annexation of West Bank Palestinian lands, imprisonment without trial, murders by settlers/IDF and daily humiliation of non-Jews.

Hamas however, has still made approaches to Israel for truces and has published an amended Charter in 2017 that accepts the 1967 borders. It hasn't been adopted - but it is out there. Hamas claims that it will accept the results of a referendum on a future two state solution.

It will get worse before it gets better - but there are people on all sides (including elements of Hamas and parts of the Israeli military and intelligence services) that have tried to steer away from hopelessness and all out war. There are certainly brave people in both Israeli and Palestinian civil society that could be part of a solution.

But Dorcus is right. If the governments of the West that give Israel funding, arms (it was Russia and the Czechs who armed Israel in the early days!) and diplomatic cover to enable them to break international law on a daily basis, don't change direction, there will be no hope. Hamas is reviled and about as isolated as it can be (only Iran and Qatar give support - and China stays quiet), but Israel is being encouraged to use this window of shock and sympathy to take its expansionist and racist strategy to its logical conclusion. Those same western states claim to support a two state solution and compliance with international law, then hypocritically ignore that when the chips are down.