Call in the Rotary Club

September 13, 2006 - 11:13 AM by Allison

Palestinian Prime Minister Haniyeh has taken the interesting position that it is fine for Palestinian representatives to hold talks with Israel — just as long as those talks don’t involve his Hamas government in any way. If the PLO/Fatah wants to talk to Israel, then fine, but Hamas doesn’t want any part in these independent activities of its new partner in the unity government. Gavriel responds:

Actually, it’s such a relief he came out and said that. This will make it so much easier now for Ehud Olmert to go ahead with the plan to send a delegation from the Nahariya Rotary Club to the talks, instead of having to roll Shimon Peres out there yet one more time.

It would have been so embarrassing for the Palestinian Prime Minister to have actually sent a group of Hamas (hopefully unarmed) negotiators out there, ready to make real concessions on issues like Israel’s right to spell its name with the ‘a’ before the ‘e’, when the other side was only going to send out a powerless token entity incapable of speaking on behalf of any national authority willing and able to deliver on its promises.

Imagine if Haniyeh’s guys actually conceded Israel could be allowed to exist for, oh, say another 2 years, and then had that concrete concession met by a promise to discuss it after dessert and speeches at the next year’s Rotary awards banquet, presuming a quorum could still be assembled after the bar was closed. Perhaps the Rotarians could then have declared Haniyeh an honory member of the club and granted him a red felt fez for his magnanimity, assuming he doesn’t already own one.

Yeah, that would have been really, really embarrassing. I’d hate to see any prime minister do anything that stupid.

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