MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA
  • Kerry the clueless

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    The talks also undermined Egypt's cease-fire proposal, which Israel had accepted and Hamas rejected. "Kerry tried through his latest plan to destroy the Egyptian bid," charged a senior Palestinian official quoted in the Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat - a peace plan that the PA itself had supported.
    It gets worse. Kerry did not just trample an Egyptian initiative. It was backed by the entire Arab League and specifically praised by Saudi Arabia. With the exception of Qatar - more a bank than a country - the Arabs are unanimous in wanting to see Hamas weakened, if not overthrown. The cease-fire-in-place they backed would have denied Hamas any reward for starting this war, while what Kerry brought back from Paris granted practically all of its demands.
    - Egypt cut it off - indeed blockaded Gaza - because of Hamas' support for the Muslim Brotherhood and terror attacks on Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.
    Kerry seems not to understand that the Arab League backed the Egyptian cease-fire-in-place, which would have left Hamas weak and isolated, to ensure that Hamas didn't emerge from this war strengthened and enhanced.
    Yet America's own secretary of state doesn't see it. Speaking of Hamas-run Gaza, Kerry actually said in Paris: "The Palestinians can't have a cease-fire in which they think the status quo is going to stay." What must change? Gazans need "goods that can come in and out ... a life that is free from the current restraints."
    But the only reason for those "restraints," for goods unable to come in and out, is that for a decade Hamas has used this commerce to import and develop weapons for making war on Israel.
    Remember the complaints that the heartless Israelis were not allowing enough imports of concrete for schools and hospitals? Well, now we know where the concrete went - into an astonishingly vast array of tunnels for infiltrating neighboring Israeli villages and killing civilians.
    Moreover, the fire from which Hamas will not cease consists of deliberate rocket attacks on Israeli cities - by definition, a war crime.
    Whatever his intent, Kerry legitimized Hamas' war criminality. Which makes his advocacy of Hamas' terms not just a strategic blunder - enhancing an American-designated terror group just when a wall-to-wall Arab front wants to see it gone - but a moral disgrace.
    Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
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