Well, Well!

     Get a load of this:

     A senior Hamas official said the group is open to discussions over a possible truce with Israel, having “achieved its targets.”

     Moussa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that Hamas was open to “something of that sort” and “all political dialogues” when asked whether the Islamist group is willing to discuss a possible ceasefire.

     It seems the Islamists don’t like Israel’s return of service. I wonder why? But then, it’s part of the Islamic pattern:

1. Initiate hostilities;
2. Kill indiscriminately and take hostages;
3. Cry “Peace! Peace! We are for peace!”
4. Blame their victims for “escalating;”
5. Rally “international opinion” behind a cease-fire.

     And the makers and shapers of “international opinion,” being cowards in terror of their own nations’ Islamic fractions, go along with it.

     Not this time, HAMAS. Your pattern is well established and if Benjamin Netanyahu is the man I take him to be, he’s not going to let you get away with it.

     Here’s Robert Spencer on the matter:

     For Hamas to be asking for a truce on Monday evening Gaza time, it must have had an extremely bad Sunday and Monday. For Islamic law only allows for a truce if Muslims are weak and need to gather strength to fight later more effectively, or if they’re fighting non-Muslims whom they think may accept Islam. “If Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud…Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim…” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.16). This idea is founded on the Qur’an itself: “So do not falter and cry out for peace when you have the upper hand…” (47:35).

     That is, indeed, Islamic doctrine. It’s point-for-point an echo of Leninist doctrine:

     “Probe with the bayonet. When you come to steel, halt. When you come to mush, advance.”

     Below is an essay I wrote long ago on this very subject. It’s as relevant today as it was in September 2007.

     Courtesy of Jay Tea at Wizbang, we have this bit of studiedly precious mock-puzzlement from the Arab News:

     IT is hardly surprising that Israel should declare that the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip is an “enemy entity.” Indeed, it is not something the Palestinians in the enclave would deny. If anything, it is a badge they, particularly Hamas and its supporters, will wear with pride….

     The Israelis have declared Gaza hostile before but why again now, just at the start of Rice’s visit when the emphasis is supposed to be on getting the peace talks restarted? It speaks volumes about Israeli bad intentions. A blockade would be a disaster — for the Gazans, for President Mahmoud Abbas and the government he recently appointed and for the peace process. It would play straight into the hands of Hamas, who cares little about the lives of ordinary Gazans, doing nothing to control the militants whose rockets trigger such deadly retaliation. When Palestinians in the West Bank see their fellows in the beleaguered strip suffering as a result of the restrictions, they will not blame Hamas for reaping the whirlwind of Israeli fury, they will blame the Israelis, they will blame the Americans and they will blame Abbas for talking to the Israelis. But maybe that is what the Israelis want — a spanner in the works, and the peace process again off the rails.

     Your Curmudgeon is eternally amused by the term “peace process,” inseparable from the Middle Eastern drama, and always used to the detriment of the one peaceably inclined population in that area: the Israelis. The “peace process,” from the Muslim perspective, is not about the attainment of peace; it’s about the incremental destruction of Israel.

     Ever since the Camp David Accords in 1978, the Islamic states in the Middle East have bent their efforts toward undoing any emerging basis for peace in the region. No armies have attacked Israel, but apart from that the Islamic powers have done everything imaginable to weaken the Jewish state, to undermine its critical alliance with the United States, and to erode the resolve of its people to remain where they are. The principal bludgeon in their hands has been the Palestinian irredentists, now concentrated along the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, whom they’ve supplied with money, weapons, and endless encouragement to assault Israel with every means available. By 2000, the death toll from Palestinian terrorism against Israel was into the thousands.

     After Yasser Arafat’s proclamation of a second Intifada, the Israelis wearied of it all. Ariel Sharon, perhaps the clearest-sighted premier that nation has had since Golda Meir, commenced the construction of the security barrier along the West Bank. The success of that barrier at limiting Palestinian terror assaults and suicide bombings has been considerable. But of course, the Israelis’ right to defend themselves, even by the use of a passive object like the security fence, has never been conceded by any Islamic state. Israel, they maintain, is stolen land, rightfully an Islamic waqf, and therefore cannot be under the authority of non-Muslims. The HAMAS Charter, the animating statement of the group now in political control of the Palestinian zones, makes it plain that no cessation of hostilities against Israel can be anything other than temporary.

     How does one arrange “peace” with an enemy dedicated to one’s destruction at any price? One does not. Against such a foe, it’s victory or death. Such has always been the character of wars powered by religious animosity; God, after all, cannot be expected to accept anything short of complete and final victory over an enemy He has commanded His faithful to conquer.

     How, then, should Israel strive for peace with the Muslim Middle East, a collection of satrapies so depraved and hatred-soaked that by comparison the Third Reich deserves a retrial? Isn’t it just a bit unbalanced to postulate that it’s Israel’s sacred duty to negotiate until eternity, making one concession after another and utterly refraining from defending itself, when its “negotiating partner” is religiously dedicated to its destruction?

     In point of fact, the easiest route toward peace would be for Israel to take Middle Eastern Muslims at their word and respond in kind:

• Expel or exterminate the entire population of the Palestinian zones;
• Destroy every structure therein;
• Chemically or radiologically render those areas uninhabitable for a minimum of two decades;
• Complete the security fence along its entire national border and man it with troops permanently authorized to shoot to kill.

     What would follow?

• The surrounding Muslim states, recognizing that their hand has been called, might do nothing but wail in protest. Ergo, peace.
• Alternately, the surrounding Muslim states might declare war on Israel, which would then be forced — hopefully in collaboration with the United States — to eliminate the militaries of all those nations with tactical nuclear warheads. The Muslim Middle East would be deprived of the capacity to cause Israel any further harm for many generations. Ergo, peace.

     What definitely wouldn’t happen is the continuation of the low-intensity “deniable” warfare characterized by Qassam rockets and occasional suicide bombers. Such a demonstration of Israeli resolve would even daunt Iran and Syria. But the Israelis are too civilized for that, aren’t they? So the clearest and simplest route toward peace will remain untraveled.

     So much for the Middle Eastern “peace process.”