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Obama Prepared to Talk to Hamas

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Tags: Barack Obama, foreign-policy

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 5:11 PM and is filed under Mideast Peace, Politics & Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Obama Prepared to Talk to Hamas”

Truthiness says:

January 9, 2009 at 11:40 AM

NOT
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/09/report-obama-advisers-urge-talks-hamas/

“The President-elect has repeatedly stated that he believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and that we should not deal with them until they recognize Israel, renounce violence, and abide by past agreements”

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- Richard Silverstein says:
  
  January 10, 2009 at 12:15 AM
  
  Gee. I didn’t know that FOX News was now the arbiter of what Obama’s Middle East policy would be. Sure, Obama has said lots of things during the campaign. But now he’s governing & it’s common for politicians once elected to have their paths diverge fr. campaign rhetoric. And in this case, thank God if that’s the case because his campaign rhetoric about Hamas was woefully unrealistic, though it did please Aipac, which was the purpose I suppose.
  
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Walter Ballin says:

January 9, 2009 at 4:48 PM

Well I’ve been saying that Obama will do this. As far as this goes, “First, let’s not overstate things. He’s not recognizing Hamas. He’s not renouncing Israel. He’s merely establishing initial low to mid-level contacts to determine whether Hamas is a party with which it can engage more seriously down the line possibly leading to full-fledged peace negotiations (if Hamas is still running Gaza and/or the PA), Obama is going about this the right way in view of what you said here “In fact, memos and phone calls are probably flying as a type this. Watch for denunciations and warnings from the likes of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents. Israeli politicians will warn how dangerous such a policy change will be and how it will only encourage more terrorism. There will be blowback. I just hope it doesn’t derail these hopeful developments.” However the majority of American Jews above all want peace and don’t go down the line with AIPAC. As mentioned here before, Obama has met with Jewish peace organizations such as Brit Tzedek V’Shalom.

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