Talk to Hamas like in the good old days

Sam Kiley, who left Murdoch's The Times newspaper in disgust at the antics of the Israel lobby and Murdoch's minions pandering to it, has an article in today's Observer (online anyway) in which he suggests that Israel should do what 64% of Israelis want it to do and talk to Hamas.

Ahmed Yusef, senior adviser to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, (who is in hiding from Israeli attack) said Hamas wanted negotiations with Israel. Although it is committed to the destruction of the 'Zionist entity', he said 'we could put that to one side for five or 10 years and see how peace worked out'.
This is hardly an olive branch. Hamas has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK, and most of Israel's backers. Yusef said: 'So what? Negotiations are between enemies, not friends.'
But Hamas's desire for negotiations does offer Israel a way out of Hamas's doomsday trap, and, according to a recent poll in Israel's leading daily newspaper Ha'aretz, 64 per cent of Israelis agree. They said what was until recently unthinkable - that Israel should talk to Hamas.

The interesting thing about both his suggestion and the fact that he walked out on Murdoch on principle is that pro-zionism oozes from almost every word. He's very fond of the bogus "drive the Jews into the sea" thesis and he had that tricky zionist habit of transposing cause and effect. Also, talking to Hamas isn't quite as unthinkable for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel as Kiley makes out.

Here's Jonathan Cooke:

Israel experimented with various methods of undermining the secular Palestinian nationalism of the PLO, which threatened to galvanize a general resistance to the occupation. In particular Israel established local anti-PLO militias known as the Village Leagues and later backed the Islamic fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would morph into Hamas.

Not so unthinkable then. Doable actually. So go on Israel, talk to Hamas, it might save lives.