The UN really, really wants to reward Hamas aggression

Robert Serry, the UN envoy to the Middle East, proves yet again what a complete waste of space the UN is.

In this case, he is doing everything he can to pretend that Hamas is a moderate, peace-loving group:

The United Nations envoy to the Middle East acknowledged in an interview with McClatchy Sunday that he has maintained quiet contacts with the Islamist group Hamas for “years,” despite the international community’s official policy to isolate the group.

Robert Serry described his office’s contacts with Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, as “quiet engagements”...

“Because we are on the ground we have our informal contacts with Hamas. How could we not?” he said. “We also have our quiet engagements with Hamas to work for a calm. In the last years I have been working to pass on messages to Hamas.”

Officially, the international community has no direct contact with Hamas. The U.N., the United States and other Western governments formally renounced any dialogue with Hamas after the Islamist group, which has never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006.

In a statement that year, then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the international community would only accept Hamas if it showed, “a commitment to the principles of non-violence, recognition of Israel and the acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."

Everyone knows that Hamas rules Gaza and that some level of indirect communications must be maintained. Even Israel must communicate with Hamas. But Serry is obviously granting this interview in order to push the idea that the UN should publicly meet with Hamas, and that Hamas shoul dbe mainstreamed as a virtual state, effectively rewarding Hamas for firing over 1400 rockets into civilian areas of Israel.

Serry then goes off into fantasyland:

Serry noted that Hamas has still not met the U.N.’s demands that it recognize Israel and renounce violence. But he said that Hamas officials have recently made statements suggesting that they were willing to moderate their position on some key points.

In an interview this weekend with CNN, Hamas political head Khaled Mashaal said that his group was willing to accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, “or 22 percent of ‘historical Palestine.’”

He also suggested that his group would be willing to recognize Israel once progress was made toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian State.

If you actually read the transcript of the interview, Meshal says:

CNN: you say that you would accept a two-state solution, but that you will not recognize Israel's right to exist.

Is that still the case?

MESHAL: ... I accept a Palestinian state according to 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital, with the right to return.

...The resistance is not a goal. The resistance is a means to an end. The end game is to end occupation but the international community is not enabling us to do this. They are biased toward Israel.

[NOTE: I have proven many times that Hamas calls all of Israel '"occupied,"so when he says the end goal is the end of occupation he means it is the end of Israel. CNN's Amanpour, of course, is too dense to know this.]

...Palestine, from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, it is my land. And the land of my fathers and grandfathers, inhibited by the Palestinians from a long time ago. This is my land, my right.

But because of the circumstances of the region, because of the keenness (ph) to stop the bloodshed, the Palestinians today, and in the past, and Hamas, have agreed about a program, a (INAUDIBLE) program that accepts the '67 borders. But the Israelis don't accept. So it is all about - up to the Israelis.

Nowhere does Meshal say or imply that he would ever recognize Israel. He says, explicitly, that the "1967 borders" are the initial goal, the "right of return" is not negotiable to destroy Israel demographically, and even then he says nothing about recognizing Israel afterwards, with the unspoken assumption that the two Palestines would end up combining (and, eventually according to the Hamas charter, become part of a larger Islamic 'ummah that excludes any Jewish nationalism.)

Meshal throws around words like "peace" but it is obvious he means a world without Israel. Yet Robert Serry, who knows all of this, is working overtime to humanize the Hamas terrorists and to pretend that their idea of peace is similar to what most Westerners say peace means.

One other thing. Meshal didn't say anything about "22% of historical Palestine." This is a standard Palestinan Arab talking point, one that obviously Serry has adopted as the truth so much so that he uses the phrase on his own.

And it is also a complete lie.

Robert Serry shows in this interview that the UN is bending over backwards to reward Hamas - and to accept easily proven lies, as long as they are against Israel.