NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN AT THE WASHINGTON POST

BOTW points out that today's the Washington Post, Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, who worked on the Middle East in the Clinton administration and the State Department respectively, weigh in with a fatuous op-ed urging "accommodation" between Israel and Hamas:

Can these strange bedfellows find an acceptable accommodation? That depends on
whether they and others are prepared to recognize certain realities, however uncomfortable these might be. First, Hamas will not accept the three conditions put forward by the international community (recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, acceptance of past agreements). . . .

Second, U.S. efforts to starve the Palestinian government of funds may be a principled position, but they are certainly not a workable policy. The result would be humanitarian catastrophe, political chaos and domestic mayhem among Palestinians--as well as resumption of full-scale violence. Instead (and parallel to Hamas's meeting the new benchmarks, particularly cessation of violence), the United States, without altering its own practice, should allow donor countries to engage with the Palestinian government and pay its employees through an international trust fund.

These warnings about the consequences of refusing to do business with Hamas are reminiscent of the arguments made in the 1980s by opponents of sanctions against South Africa--yet those sanctions surely hastened the end of apartheid. The moral case for sanctions is even stronger in the Palestinian case. Apartheid entailed the subjugation of South African blacks; Hamas seeks the elimination of Israeli Jews.