Words and Intent

Yeah! Andrew Sullivan (along with Josh Marshall, the person most responsible for my RSS addiction) is back from vacation and still his sensible self.

I have already said my piece on the current violence. But I do find the continuing focus on Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel interesting. My brother was a prototypical angry middle child and frequently heard to utter such horrors as "I hate you" and "I wish you were dead" to our mother growing up. He even occasionally punctuated these shouting matches by knocking things over and slapping around our youngest brother. But I think we all recognized these were usually because he was negotiating with our mother to go hang out with friends or buy him a new pair of sneakers or reduce a punishment doled out. Since he never attempted to commit a homicide, we did not actually think he really wanted her dead or gone.

My question about Hamas is this: how much do they really want to "wipe out" Israel and how much is just posturing? I lean towards it just being posturing, but honestly do not know the answer here and am open to being convinced. Clearly there is internal debate within Hamas about when and under what circumstances to "accept" Israel, though whether they would if offered a deal is impossible to know at this moment.

I am also curious about their operational strength. It seems to me that an organization truly dedicated to an apocalyptic fight to the finish would be breaking more things if it had the capacity. Following the death of Nizar Rayyan today they seem to have again called for more suicide strikes against Israel. But what about the last two years? I can't recall a suicide bombing in Israel, though that doesn't mean they haven't been trying.

Of course the flip side of all of this is that if it is just words then Hamas could unilaterally accept Israel's right to the 1967 borders and blunt a serious arrow in the Israeli quiver.