I failed to report one important statement that Mustafa Barghouti made at Columbia the other night. He specifically addressed the new neoconservative claim (championed here by Peter Berkowitz in the Weekly Standard) that Israel can't talk to Hamas because Iran is supporting Hamas.
Barghouti said, "They are trying to find an excuse for the ongoing problem… Twenty years before, the PLO was the problem. They said, 'Your problem is that you are allied with the Soviet Union.' Well the Soviet Union is gone and the problem is still there. The PLO has accepted Oslo and become kosher, and the problem is still there. Next we will hear that the problem is the relationship to Azerbaijan. You can always look for excuses. The problem is there. It's called occupation, it's called oppression, it's called injustice."
(Phil Weiss)
