Israel's right to exist

I wondered yesterday about the chances of peace in the Middle East when the moderates glorified the murderers of Israeli men, women and children. I also queried the Hamas and Hezbollah views of Israel, saying that they didn't even recognise Israel's right to exist. This claim has been queried by some, so here's some evidence.


Hamas: Extracts from the Hamas Charter (thanks to MidEastWeb

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

"After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."

Hezbollah (thanks to Wikipedia:

"Hezbollah leaders have also made numerous statements calling for the destruction of Israel, which they describe as a "Zionist entity... built on lands wrested from their owners."

"From the inception of Hezbollah to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been one of Hezbollah's primary goals. Some translations of Hezbollah's 1985 Arabic-language manifesto state that "our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated", however neither the original publication of the manifesto, nor those found on Hezbollah's website include the statement. In an interview with the Washington Post, Nasrallah said "I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called 'Israel.'"

"In 1993, during the Oslo peace process, Nasrallah and several other top Hezbollah generals came out staunchly opposed to any final peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians to the point that they accused Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat of blasphemy and treachery to the Muslim people."

"Israel's occupation of the Shebaa Farms, along with the presence of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, is often cited as justification—and invoked as a pretext, according to many—for Hezbollah's continued hostilities against Israel even after Israel's verified withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah's spokesperson Hassan Ezzedin, however, had this to say about an Israeli withdrawal from Shebaa Farms:

"If they go from Shebaa, we won't stop fighting them. ... Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine, ... The Jews who survive this war of liberation can go back to Germany or wherever they came from. However, that the Jews who lived in Palestine before 1948 will be 'allowed to live as a minority and they will be cared for by the Muslim majority.'"

So what do you think, Partners for Peace?