With the EU foreign ministers' decision on eliminating funding for the PA due on Monday, Hamas sources are now making more insinuations that some day they might work up a plan providing for a procedure that allows the movement to rhetorically recognize Israel's right to exist.
One might wonder why Hamas doesn't just come out and say whatever the EU is demanding to hear, if that's what it takes to retain EU funding. After all, whether the EU demands that Hamas recognize Israel, respect previous agreements, or renounce terrorism, the EU is only demanding that Hamas SAY it, not that they actually DO it.
Well, you have to forgive Hamas for their naivete in believing words have meaning to the EU. This is really Hamas' first experience dealing with EU governments, and it's hard for them to understand that the EU's MidEast policy is geared at maintaining the ILLUSION that the peace process still exists. If there is no peace process, then there is no justification for the EU's massive funding of the PA, which is the centerpiece of the EU's entire foreign policy concept toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The concept is based on the platitude that both the Israelis and the Palestinians want a peaceful solution. This notion, it turns out, is false, as evidenced by the fact that Palestinians freely elected an organization constitutionally dedicated to Israel's destruction. But there is already an incredible amount of bureaucratic inertia behind the EU policy. So instead of changing the policy, it's easier for the EU to perpetuate it by getting Hamas to affirm the policy's false premise that the Palestinians are willing to live next to a Jewish state.
Even if Hamas recognizes Israel and swears up and down that it wants a peaceful two-state solution, I'm not sure why the Europeans believe their strategy will work out any better than the last time they coaxed a genocidal government into promising peace in our time.
