"There will be a hudna in our time." - Hamas makes it easy

You would think that the Hamas leadership would know how to be cute – they read the papers, don’t they? – and get (at least some of) what they want. But when I read the roundup of their first parliamentary decisions on Joe’s Dartblog, I decided the only papers they read were Iranian. The Hamas-cides are just not interested in playing the political game to buy a little time and money. Joe Malchow has the necesssary links for this, but this one on Ynetnews – Hamas: Zionist don’t scare us – is perhaps more revealing than it should be. That’s the kind of remark that would raise the eyebrows of any schoolboy. Why would they feel it necessary to say that… unless the Zionists really did scare them? What will be interesting to see is who, going forward, will put pressure on Israel to provide funds to a group that doesn’t recognize it. Whoever it is, I doubt they will be very successful.

UPDATE: Countering (minutely) what I have just written, the Jerusalem Post has a “exclusive” on Hamas writing a new charter:

At closed meetings in hotel suites in Beirut and Damascus, Hamas has been developing a new charter that is designed to showcase a more moderate and non anti-Semitic face, one of those advising on its content has told The Jerusalem Post.

Yet this new document, acknowledged Dr. Azzam Tamimi, 51, the Hebron-born director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, would still call for an end to the Jewish state and the creation of a Palestinian state on all of mandatory Palestine.

It would, he said, provide for the possibility of a long-term hudna (cease-fire accommodation) with an Israel limited to its pre-1967 borders.

A long-term hudna? Just how long did they have in mind? Six weeks? Six years? How can anyone take that religious psychosis seriously?… Here’s a slogan for a new Neville Chamberlain – “There will be a hudna in our time!”