Trusting Hamas

Hamas now says it wants a "political truce" with Israel, but that does not include ever recognizing Israel's right to exist. With Hamas' track record, if Israel agreed to any of these concessions, we can expect the "long-term" truce to last a few days at most.

Haniyeh has demanded that Israel make a full withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war, release Palestinian prisoners and the return of several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel.

Israel has rightfully rejected these. Olmert will most likely continue Ariel Sharon's policy of making certain concessions (like withdrawing from the Gaza Strip) for peace, but hopefully he nor any successors will naively believe that anti-Israel Arabs, especially Palestinian terrorists, will ever stop their violence until Israel is completely destroyed.

In the case of Palestinian prisoners, why should Israel release murderous thugs? So they can be free again to break into more Israeli settlements and murder women and children? So they can be free again to launch more missile attacks? So they can be free again to take the next step and blow themselves up for Allah? Releasing these prisoners would in fact kill more Israelis than the suicide bombings and other attacks in "protest" of the Palestinians' incarceration.

And finally, as I've pointed out before, centuries of Arab neglect ruined much of the Holy Land's soil. When the Jews started returning in the 19th century, they planted trees and performed other Bible-based cultivation that restored the land. Then the Arabs suddenly wanted the land back, when before it was desert that they didn't care was "retaken" by Jews.