Israeli President Shimon Peres said today that Israel will not agree to a truce with Hamas. The White House has been pushing for peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel to resume.
Israel has had several discussions with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. These peace talks do have a possibility of leading to a good agreement, however, who is the agreement with?
Abbas represents Fatah, the former political party of past PA Chairman Yasser Arafat. Fatah has made recent moves toward peace, becoming slightly more moderate in an extremist region. Any peace forged with Abbas, however, will lead nowhere.
Hamas, the current majority “political party”, controls the Gaza Strip, the source of a large portion of the terrorist attacks on Israel. Hamas is a terrorist group, sworn to the destruction of Israel. There is no prospect of peace with Hamas, and as long as they control the legislative body of the PA and act unchecked in Gaza, there will be no peace with the Palestinian people.
Before Abbas is truly able to negotiate a peace, he must first have a sovereign control over his people. Until that happens, there is no possibility for peace, as the Israelis are negotiating with a lame duck leader. It would be like negotiating a political agreement with a popular actor, they are respected and well known, but have no true power to control the situation.
The US government should refocus peace efforts in Israel to a sustained peace inside of the PA, only that will lead to possibilities of peace. For the mean time, Israel must act in self defense and work to end the rocket fire into Sderot and other Israeli cities and continue to fight the extremist terrorists in the disputed territories.
This post was written by
Eric – who has written 1527 posts on The Israel Situation.
Eric is the founder and editor of IsraelSituation.com. You can follow him on Twitter as @DenverEric and read his personal blog at EricJRosenberg.com
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