Tony Blair To Recognize Hamas?

Anybody remember this Mark Steyn article? It opens with this line:

WHAT would happen if "al-Qaeda" (for want of an easier shorthand) produced a Yasser Arafat figure?

Seems nuts, right? I mean, nobody's going to let these guys go mainstream, are they?

You can see where I'm going with this; we may be about to find out. From the Guardian:

Tony Blair yesterday offered a spur to the deadlocked Middle East peace process by offering to recognise a future Palestinian power-sharing government, even if it includes ministers from Hamas.

Oh good.

Several times on the visit Downing St has drawn parallels with the Northern Ireland peace process, which it believes shows how progress can be made in unlikely circumstances. Mr Blair's spokesman drew a comparison between Hamas and Sinn Féin, which he said had not yet recognised Northern Ireland as a separate entity: "The time to judge the importance of this trip will not be next week, it will be in the weeks and months to come."

Remember that, because it's going to become the new excuse for legitimizing these guys. Granted, the jihad has considerably less modest aims than the IRA ever did, but let's not ruin the fever. The peace fever.

Here's my question: When Al-Qaeda-backed candidates start getting elected somewhere, does Britain recognize them too? And if you say "no", then why not? If they're craven enough to regard Hamas as equals, why would they stop there?

I think we've been looking at the whole Middle East "peace process" all wrong. It's not like beating a dead horse; it's like cracking open a pinata. A pretty, colorful pinata filled to the brim with fresh fruit and more kinds of candy than you can count.

You just have to let all the dead Jews and such fall out first.

posted by AndrewR at 11:44 PM

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