Is Peace Even Possible in the Middle East?

Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel can’t make Peace with Hamas.

That their philosophy and theology will simply never allow them to make a real peace.

He relates his discussions with Nizar Rayyan, in which the now dead Hamas leader says that the first priority is to "deal with" Arabs looking for peace deals (i.e. Fatah), calls Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, denies the Holocaust, and says that God is opposed to a religious state in that part of the world.

Let's be clear there can be no deal with Mr. Rayyan. With him, the point was mooted when he was killed.

On the larger point, the question is, "Can you negotiate a peace with people who believe as he does?"

The answer is clearly no.

Neither can you bomb them until they give up. They are, to quote Elwood Blues, "On a mission from God."

You can't kill them all, and any attempt to do so is likely to create more radicals.

What you can do, however, is destroy them as a viable political force. I'm not sure how, but you can reduce people like this to the soap box ranters you see now and again in places like the Boston Common, and that should be the strategy.

That being said, I have no idea how to do that, particularly because today the soap box ranters are a rather potent political force in the territories.