Condi: Hamas a "Resistance Movement?"
January 30, 2007
I've written previously about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's seeming inability to grasp the various harsh realities and maddening complexities of the Middle East. A brilliant woman with impressive credentials, should know better than to make comments like this (courtesy of the Jerusalem Post):
In speaking to reporters in Berlin on January 18, Rice, discussing the situation of Palestinians in the year 2000, said, "You had Hamas, of course, sitting out as a resistance movement, not at all, by the way, involved in the politics at all."
Excuse me - "Resistance movement?" The same Hamas that praised Monday morning's suicide bombing in southern Israel that killed three innocent Israeli civilians as "legitimate resistance?" Thankfully, Rice's follow up comments lead me to believe this was just a slip of the tongue:
She also described then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as someone "who had one foot in terror and one foot in politics," and the Palestinian Authority as "overrun by corruption, overrun by its ties with terrorism." The State Department official said that Rice forgot to use the word terrorist, but that she was merely trying to "make a wider point" in her remarks.
Okay, that's more like it. Plus, the State Department says it still considers Hamas a terrorist group. But Condi needs to remember that in the Middle East, perception is sometimes more important than reality. Indeed, slips of the tongue and misstatements need to be kept to a minimum.
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