Hamas says peace talks 'humiliating and degrading'

[oberliner]

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — The Islamist Hamas movement said on the eve of a summit on Tuesday in Egypt that the latest round of US-backed peace talks were "humiliating and degrading."

Senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan said his movement remained vehemently opposed to the talks being carried out by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas seized power in June 2007.

"(Abbas) is not authorised to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people and any agreements produced by these negotiations will not be binding on our people," he told AFP.

The militant Islamist group carried out two shooting attacks in the West Bank ahead of the relaunch of direct peace talks in Washington, killing four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman. It has vowed further attacks.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jdCYS9B6UTDNc4n8Mh8mu1cd5ddw

[Jim Sagle]

1. Who doesn't want peace again? TIME said ISRAEL didn't.

I guess TIME lied.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Perhaps the Right on both sides don't want it.

As I've said before, I wish Obama would bang the heads of all the hardliners together, but he would risk getting splinters.

[Violet_Crumble]

4. I suspect they want their own version of peace...

Nutty and his extremists probably have a vision of a Greater Israel where Israelis live a peaceful life, but the remaining Palestinians don't matter when it comes to their peace or security. And Hamas probably have the mirror image vision of a peace where Palestine takes in what was the Occupied Territories, but also Israel and life is a peaceful breeze for fundamentalist Muslims, but not peaceful at all for anyone else, including Israelis...

Neither of those groups are really interested in a peace that involves not only a peaceful existance for themselves, but for everyone else as well. I think Obama should risk getting those splinters and also don some steel-capped boots and start kicking arse, but I suspect he's more interested in his domestic survival and cares too much about howwhat he says or does will affect his domestic audience. Not that he's different from most other politicians in that regard...

[shira]

6. Netanyahu reportedly agreed to honor Olmert's 2008 offer.

That offer is is an adaptation of the Leftwing Geneva Initiative.

Say what you will about Israel's Rightwingers but Netanyahu is going farther than any Left or Centrist Israeli government (eg. the settlement freeze).

At worst, he's probably banking on the fact Abbas won't agree to honor his end of the Geneva Initiative.

[Ken Burch]

7. This doesn't mean that the Israeli government DOES want peace

You can't honestly want peace AND keep building settlements. Even YOU would have to accept that.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Right-wingers on all sides generally find the thought of peace degrading.

[hayu_lol]

5. How can anything be 'insulting and degrading' before...

it begins? Boggles the mind to get around that corner.

HAMAS chose NOT to be at the peace table did they not?

They have further made their displeasure known publicly by shooting a number of innocents, firing rockets and mortars at Israeli territory and at a kindergarten school just a half hour before the kids would have been there.

Seems as if HAMAS does not want peace.