The Mid East Negotiating Quartet is Unfair to Hamas.

Today the Quartet of Mideast Negotiators met in Washington DC, they in the end they came out with a pronouncement, that repeated what was said before....They want peace.

One of their statements though is very unfair to Hamas. This quartet of babbling diplomatic rodents insist on keeping any aid away from Hamas until it renounces violence, accept Israel's right to exist. If that's the condition they place on Hamas, why don't they place the same conditions on Abbas and his Fatah Party?

The Fatah party is just as violent as Hamas they just are better at "looking moderate"

"The Al Aqsa Brigades is the military wing of the Fatah and the President Abu Mazen (Abbas) is the chairman of the movement. We are committed to our leadership, to Abu Mazen. All our activity is in accordance with the political line of Fatah, which consists of fighting the occupation until the creation of a Palestinian state. The rocket shooting is part of this vision," Abu Ahmed said.

All rockets fired from Gaza have been launched from the northern part of the territory, which falls within Abu Ahmed's jurisdiction in the Brigades.

Asked why Abbas distances himself from Al Aqsa's rocket firing, Abu Ahmed told WND, "Listen, we are aware of our president's (Abbas') declarations but we are also aware of the international political system that brings the president to adopt this position."

The terror leader said Abbas never asked his group to halt the rocket fire.

"We know what is Fatah's general political line and we act according to this line and I can say that we were never asked to stop shooting rockets. Therefore, the rocket shooting is not in any way harming our loyalty and our commitment to [Abbas] and his leadership."World Net Daily

The murderous Aqsa Brigades, however, put the lie to Fatah’s charade rather embarrassingly. They were officially designated by the United States government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2002 after executing a series of atrocities conjoined to Arafat’s orchestration of the second Intifada, which began in late 2000 and has never officially ended.

There is no question the Brigades are part and parcel of Fatah. Documents seized by the Israeli Defense Force established that Arafat was paying them directly. Moreover, in a 2004 interview with the Arabic daily, Asharq al-Awsat, Fatah’s Ahmed Qurei, then Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, proclaimed: “We have clearly declared that the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are part of Fatah[.]… We are committed to them and Fatah bears full responsibility for the group.” Qurei maintained that they “will not be dismantled,” and that each of the Brigades’ members had “the right to play a political role within the framework of Fatah.”

The Brigades are brazen about their intentions. They have, for example, expressed their “[i]dentification with and overall support of the position and declaration of the Iranian President [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad], who called with all honesty to wipe Israel off the map of the world[,]” adding: “We stress our support of the Iranian president's position toward the fictitious Zionist state, which will disappear with the help of Allah.” Not One Thin Dime for Abbas, National Review Online

The following article from JPost Reports about the pressure on Hamas. There is no mention of pressure on Abbas...he is given a free ride, tons of money and of course...lots of guns.

World won't back down from conditions for Hamas gov't

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(JPost 2/07) World powers that met Friday for a strategy session on Middle East peace will not back away from the conditions they set for the Hamas-led Palestinian government to receive vital overseas financial aid and international political recognition, a US spokesman said.

The gathering of would-be peacemakers comes amid renewed fighting between Hamas and security forces loyal to the former ruling Fatah Party that has raised new alarm about a possible Palestinian civil war.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia are expected to reaffirm a strong statement they signed a year ago, days after Hamas won a surprise victory in Palestinian elections. That statement would require Hamas to renounce violence, accept Israel's right to exist, and stand by commitments made by the previous secular Palestinian government.

Hamas has refused to meet those terms, leading to a cutoff of direct international aid and a breakdown of services and order in the Palestinian territories. World powers have largely abandoned hope that Hamas radicals will drop the anti-Israel positions and are looking for a new approach.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Middle East peace talks should resume despite an outbreak of violence among Palestinian factions.
"It doesn't help to talk about a timetable, but it does help to talk about a commitment," Rice said after meeting with world powers for a strategy session on the Middle East.

Despite that violence, "There's simply no reason to avoid the subject of how we get to a Palestinian state," Rice said after a meeting at the State Department with foreign ministers from Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that in helping to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "Syria could play a constructive role."

Rice expressed little enthusiasm for such a prospect. "I hope that it (Syria) will in fact try and play a positive role rather than a negative one," she told reporters.

The meeting convened by Rice risked appearing irrelevant in light of the internal Palestinian disarray. Any eventual political accommodation with Israel would require a Palestinian government unified and capable enough to negotiate lasting terms.

McCormack said the internal divisions are issues for the Palestinians alone to resolve. The United States is looking for ways to revive peace efforts partly as a way to reassure Arab allies that it wants to improve the Palestinians' plight and solidify those allies against Iran. Shiite Iran has close ties to Hamas, which the West considers a terrorist organization.

Friday's peacemaking session will "try to exploit the possibilities that we think are before us now," McCormack told reporters. "There's going to be a good bit of discussion about how to coordinate our various practical, on-the-ground efforts to improve the situation among the Palestinians in terms of the ability to govern and build up institutions."

A goal of the session is to demonstrate tangible support for secular Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas through increased money, training and other aid for his Fatah security forces. Abbas is the only senior Palestinian official the US and much of the West will engage.

"This is a very important date," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said before the meeting. He attended the session because Germany currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

"We are going to send out a signal that the international community is going to do everything it can to settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians," Steinmeier said through a translator.

The Bush administration has asked Congress for an additional $86 million (€66 million) for Abbas' forces, although the money would not go to buy weapons. European diplomats said their governments are considering a separate effort to train and equip Fatah, the party Abbas heads.