Dr. Bassam Tibi is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the University of Goettingen and has served as Director of the Center for International Affairs established there in 1988. He also served as the A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University.
In 2009, he gave a lecture “The Islamist Challenge to America: Anti-Americanism and Antisemitism” for the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism . Within his lecture he gives an amazing, and very sobering, anecdote that is not well known.
He says that the EU was paying Gaza a half billion Euros per year before the Quartet said that Hamas must adhere to certain principles in order to be included in negotiations. But the Eu really, really wanted to continue to give this money to Hamas- run Gaza. So a top EU official EU asked Hamas to mouth the three principles at a press conference, adding "whether you comply with them or not, it's not our business": recognize Israel, accept the Oslo agreements and renounce violence.
If they did this, within a week, the money would resume.
Hamas replied that they can't do that. "They referred to their charter, they said that Palestine is property of God and (part of the Islamic waqf), we have no competence to negotiate over the property of God, therefore Israel has to go."
Tibi concludes, "People involved in appeasement are either naive or they don't know".
This little story illustrates that the EU was more interested in funding a terror group than they were in peace, even telling Hamas to pretend to be peaceful - something that would have made Israel look like the intransigent party, a clear pro-Hamas tilt. It proves that those who believe that Hamas can be appeased, or even be part of a peace process, are deluded. And it proves that the antisemitic Hamas charter, which many pretend is not really relevant today, is still the guiding document of the terror group.
