Khaled Mashal Quotes
We are confident that through discussing with Arab and Islamic states, as well as with the League of Arab States, we will be able to reach a common vision towards maintaining the constants of our people and deal with reality.
"Hamas Chief Defends Armed Struggle." Al Jazeera, 28 Jan. 2006.
Kennan was talking about the Russians, but the same principle seems to hold with any autocratic government and in some cases even democracies. However, the tradition of secret diplomacy with no transparency is established even in many democracies. Great Britain and France, for example conduct most of their diplomacy in secret as do less democratic governments and tyrannies. They expect us to keep negotiations confidential, which causes American diplomats to be torn between the American view of transparency and the tradition of confidentiality.
At the time Pakistan was almost a failed state which had nuclear weapons. They took large amounts of American aid (military and civilian) and claimed that they were an ally in the War on Terror. On some occasions they deployed their troops against fundamentalist terrorists. On others they shielded terrorists and provided them with sanctuary from attack, intelligence and allowed terrorist leaders to not only live in Pakistan but operate their organizations from Pakistan. They supported radical Madrassas (religious schools) that taught hate and terrorism, and armed terrorists in the hopes that they could be used against their enemy India while the terrorists themselves killed more Pakistanis by far than the Indians ever did. The civilian government was subservient to the military which itself was subservient to the Intelligence Arm.
At that time the Israelis had been rebuffed after offing several major peace proposals and most were convinced that the Palestinians were so fractionated that no one would dare sign a peace even giving Palestinians their own state and sharing Jerusalem as the capital. So they just organized around security needs and walling Israel off from terrorist attacks while maintaining the occupation until something radially changes amongst the Palestinians. At that time there was little point to most Israelis to debating terms of a peace treaty as the odds of ever getting one in the next couple of years were about the same as their going to Mars.
