Funny thing, politics. Rather than recognize Israel, Hamas is talking of a 10-year ceasefire. Ahmad Yousef, senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, says:
We hope the Europeans will become aware of the concept of hudna, and that it can become a substitute for recognition of Israel[.]There's a clear logic to this, as follows:
Mr Yousef said that there was no support in Gaza and the West Bank for recognition of Israel, and he could not propose such a change at present.However, if the hudna really is a substitute for recognition, you might think of it as being no different from that. Yousef again:"If I did, I would end up like Michael Collins," he said, referring to the Irish republican leader assassinated in 1922 for accepting an Irish two-state solution.
Debate about a political nation's right to exist seems infantile. Israel is a state now, it is part of the UN, it is de facto there, and we deal with it every day.So a kind of de facto recognition then? Well, exactly:
Mr Yousef and Said Abu Musameh, a former Hamas leader and now a member of the Palestinian national assembly, said the ceasefire proposal... would be a de facto recognition of Israel.But what about there being no support for recognition, and what about ending up like Michael Collins? It wouldna (with the hudna) happen? How come? I guess, because even though the hudna would be a kind of recognition, it also simultaneously wouldna be that - not, anyway, in the Michael Collins sense. What, even though this Palestinian delegation have said publicly that it would be? For difference within identity, for dialectical thinking, you couldna do better than a hudna?