Munir Al-Maqdah’s interview was shown on Al-Quds TV on the 17th:

“…Fatah do not recognize the so-called State of Israel, let alone the Jewishness of this state. We do not recognize that artificial entity, the state of Israel, which sooner or later will be removed from the land of Palestine, Allah willing

…During the Al-Aqsa Intifada, it was me who provided the Brigades with money and weapons. I was among the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Palestine”.

So Hamas and Fatah seem again to be united in their intention to destroy Israel -as some have bee saying for a while.

Eg one commentator writes:

‘According to many commentators on al Jazeera, Hamas chose to finish up the “Jund” as a maneuver to lure the West in general — Great Britain and the United States in particular — into “engaging” the organization, lifting its name from terror lists and adding it to the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel. Hamas spokespersons rushed to say “we too are fighting the extremists, the terrorists as you are fighting them and pursuing al Qaeda,” which resonates greatly in Western ears,

The free market anarchists at Mises hold the conflict to be inevitably bound up in the logic of statehood itself and prescribe the abolition of both the Israeli state and Pallestinian state: http://mises.org/story/3285

Unfortunately, no political philosophy can offer a straightforward solution to this conflict.

It’s no good – even setting up an Israel/Palestine thread isn’t going to distract the trolls from Hannan and the NHS. Good idea though

It’s not for lack of trying; I lobbied hard to have this post titled “OMG! Exclusive! Dan Hannan, NHS, Death! Death!”, but the idea was vetoed.

I suppose it’s not possible to know yet whether this shows a trend towards more extremist groups openly opposing Hamas, or whether it’s an abberation which was allowed to flower because Hamas was weakened by Israel’s military actions. Sadly, I suspect it’s probably the former, but haven’t seen anything to bear that out yet.

Moving slightly off topic here, Nick, but is there a libertarian line on this topic? Most of the libertarian stuff I read on foreign policy tends to be more interested in free trade etc, and I don’t recall hearing very much about things like Israel-Palestine, or the broader topic of counter-terrorism in Afghanistan/Pakistan.