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Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2267658/
Hamas Isn't the IRA
(Slate) Michael Weiss - Didn't the British government eventually sit down with Sinn Fein, the IRA's "political wing," after decades of murderous mayhem? But the British refused to negotiate with an organization that was still involved in an active military campaign. The 1993 Downing Street Declaration, a joint initiative by both the British and Irish governments, called for a "permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence" and allowed only "democratically mandated parties which establish a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods and which have shown that they abide by the democratic process" to be admitted to the table. So what would the Hamas equivalent of this scenario look like? Hamas would have to concede that its strategic long-war doctrine of violent "resistance" and its dream of establishing Greater Palestine was a fantasy.