How Do You "Negotiate" with These People?

Khaled Mashal, a Palestinian political leader and former head of the militant organization Hamas was interviewed recently about Hamas' intentions in the Middle East, and said this:

I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea and from the north to the south has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S. and in Western capital cities, by the American and Western public.

Palestine is free from the River to the Sea—that’s the slogan of the American students and the [students] in European capital cities. The Palestinian consensus—or almost a consensus—is that we will not give up on our right to Palestinian in its entirety, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba.

Why he thinks the Palestinians have a "right" to the land of Israel is a mystery. It has no basis in historical fact, but as Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air.com:

It’s not as if Hamas has kept this ambition a secret. Its charter still proclaims that mission to this day, and its actions ever since its 2006 electoral win in Gaza continually prove it. They didn’t run for election to govern through the Oslo-based Palestinian Authority, Mashal explains, but to use it as a cover for its terrorist war to destroy Israel.

Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Arabs Hamas represents will settle for a two-state solution. They want it all and will continue their war against Israel, encouraged by their supporters in the West, particularly university faculty and students, as long as they survive.

Here's Morrissey again:

It’s difficult for Hamas to make this any clearer. They don’t want peaceful coexistence with Israel in a separate Palestinian state. And just to make that even more clear, Mashal also scoffs at an alternate plan of returning to the 1967 borders to determine the boundaries of a two-state solution.

Why should Hamas accept 21% of ‘the Palestinian state’ when it can have 100%?

This is from the interview Mashal gave:

MASHAL: Why should the Palestinian agree to a fifth of Palestine, and accept it as a final solution?

Q: A fifth of Palestine is the 1967 borders?

MASHAL: The 1967 borders. The ’67 borders are 21%, a fifth of Palestine, so no.

Q: So what you are telling me is that after October 7th we don’t agree to ’67 borders? We want Palestine from the river to the sea?

MASHAL: No [i.e. they will not accept the '67 borders. They want 100% of Palestine].

Morrissey asks why Hamas would accept President Biden's two-state solution when...,

...throngs of useful idiots in America mindlessly chant their genocidal slogans in support of Hamas terrorism? When the streets of London fill with Hamas fellow-travelers in terror to demand Israel’s surrender to Mashal?

When the US and UK keep applying pressure on Israel to stop fighting back against Hamas and give them a sovereign base from which to continue their genocidal actions? Hamas went on a rampage of slaughter, rape, and kidnapping, and while it resulted in punishing losses in war, it has also bolstered their standing in the West.

Mashal’s not inaccurate in that assessment of the political outcome of October 7.

In case this hasn't penetrated the minds of some of the left-wingers demanding that Israel "negotiate" with these people, Morrissey cites Israeli journalist Hen Mazzig who tries to spell it out for "those still under the Hamas spell":

How many times must we tell you [Mazzig asks]: Hamas has one goal and that is the complete and utter destruction of Israel.

When you scream “from the river to the sea,” you are chanting for the genocide, erasure, and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people, the Jewish people, from their land.

You are siding with an evil that would not hesitate to do the same to you.

Morrissey concludes,

Indeed, and that’s literally true about America too. Hamas’ sponsors in Tehran routinely promise “death to America.” Only Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and their Obama-administration minders refuse to take that either seriously or literally.

Why our leadership can't see what's so obviously the genocidal nature of Hamas is a question, I suppose, for psychologists to answer. Meanwhile, as has been said in a different context, negotiations with people like Hamas, or any of the similar groups in the region, is like four wolves negotiating with a sheep about what to have for lunch.