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Hamas Left Israel No Choice But to Strike
(New York Times) Michael Oren - Israelis have never abandoned the vision of peace. Still, we came to understand that the cause of the conflict with the Arabs was not borders or even refugees but the same hatred of Jewish statehood that drove them to invade us in 1948. We understood that our enemies required periodic reminders of the prohibitive price they would pay for murdering our families. We also understood that defending ourselves incurred economic, diplomatic and human costs, yet there was no practical or moral alternative. Our strategy is survival. Negotiations leading to peace can be realistic with an adversary who shares that goal. But Hamas, whose covenant calls for the slaughter of Jews worldwide, is striving not to join peace talks, but to prevent them. It rejects Israel's existence, refuses to eschew terror, and disavows all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements - the terms established by the U.S. and the other members of the quartet of Middle East peacemakers. We hope some day to persuade the leaders of Hamas to make peace with us, but until then we must convince them of the exorbitant price of aggression. The writer is Israel's ambassador to the U.S.