Man, I remember last time Jon Chait was talking about "lefty foreign policy types," he was hating on them for opposing the Iraq War. Now it's just for thinking that the attitudes of politicians towards negotiations with Hamas might possibly be influenced by the coalition of loud, politically aggressive, enormously well-funded interest groups that organize around this issue. Well, I guess it's an improvement. Though if we're going to consider the popularly elected government of much of Palestine a "terrorist" group who can't be in any way negotiated with, security for Israel is going to be a vanishingly unlikely. But then, that's just what a "lefty foreign policy type" would say, isn't it? Maybe Jon has some solution he's not telling anyone about. On a slightly more constructive note, I agree with Matt that you don't need to negotiate with Hamas per se. But you need to push Israel to do so, and be willing to host or otherwise involve yourself in multilateral negotiations with Hamas. Put another way, our constant attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the legitimately elected government of Palestine don't make any sense. We wanted elections, we pushed for elections, the people of Palestine chose who they chose, and whether or not we want to sit down and chat, our interest was, and continues to be, in pushing for a peaceful sentiment. What's frustrating about Obama's comments is not that he won't invite Khaled Mashaal to the White House, but that he's continuing with this policy of pretending this group is outside the conversation, when by any objective measure, they're going to have to be among the key parties if a settlement is to have any weight. If we want a role as broker in that eventual conversation, it would be best if we didn't spend a lot of time demonizing the participants beforehand.
