Hamas Comes Out of Hiding
. Mishal?s calendar is so full that he might soon need a parking lot for the vehicles bringing foreign delegations to visit. My most recent appointment with him, on March 18, was pushed far into the night because Mr. Mishal was busy greeting a group of Greek lawmakers, who were then followed by an Italian delegation. In the preceding days, visitors had come from the British and European Parliaments.
But for all this sudden openness to the world, Mr. Mishal now confronts a problem, one that hangs on the remarkable persistence of two men in a region where leaders are easily marked down ? often by a bullet, sometimes at the ballot boxOn the crucial question of rewriting the Hamas charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, he was unbending: ?Not a chance.? Khalid Mishal is not Yasir Arafat ? he is not looking for a Nobel Peace Prize. Among the Hamas articles of faith is a belief that in renouncing violence and in recognizing Israel?s right to exist in 1993, Mr. Arafat sinned against his people. (Nonetheless, others to whom he speaks have told me that Mr. Mishal has said that ?when the time comes,? Hamas will make some of the moves demanded of it by the West.) |
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