Israel is ignoring the compromisers

In my opinion column of Jan. 29, about Hamas offers to negotiate peace with Israel, I predicted that someone disagreeing with me would rest their case on the Hamas Charter. Sure enough, that’s precisely what Dick Lentz did on Feb. 9.

But, he left out the crucial sentence of that 2017 document: “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, along the lines of the fourth of June 1967, to be a formula of national consensus.”

“The lines of the fourth of June 1967” separate the West

Bank and Gaza from Israel proper.

So Hamas is asking only for what President Biden and a growing international consensus are asking: a two-state solution. Hamas political head Khaled Mashaal made that clear when he announced the charter seven years ago, saying, “We are open, we are changing.”

Lentz cites the differences between Mashaal and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, as if that were evidence that my argument was mistaken. But my piece acknowledged that there are differences within Hamas leadership, as in the leadership of any political party. That’s precisely why the charter is an ambiguous document. Like a party platform, it has to satisfy a wide variety of views.

The Israeli government can choose whether to respond to, and thus strengthen, the more compromising faction of Hamas or the hard-liners.

It has consistently used its words — and all too often, as now, its guns and bombs — to respond to the hard-liners while totally ignoring the compromisers.

So Israel’s leaders have, in effect, made themselves partners with the Hamas hard-liners to create the tragedy unfolding in Gaza today. It’s a shame that there are so many Americans like Dick Lentz who cannot see this sad truth.