Among the conditions for ending the boycott of a Palestinian government headed by or including Hamas, the condition of recognizing Israel stands out. This can be expressed either in ideological terms (recognizing its right to exist) or diplomatic terms (recognizing the state and honoring agreements with it). At first glance, such a condition is self-evident: Someone who does not recognize the existence of the Jewish state seeks its destruction, and therefore, it would be wrong to aid this existential enemy, even if holding back humanitarian aid hurts millions of innocents.

Hamas leaders' insistence on not deviating from their refusal to recognize Israel, "regardless of how much the United States and the Quartet pressure us," is not only a position that rests on religious principles. It also reflects a basic Palestinian worldview: Only the Palestinians, the victims of Zionism, are capable of granting the Jewish state legitimacy. Granted, they are an occupied and defeated people, but as long as they insist on the illegitimacy of the Zionist enterprise and maintain that Israel, having been founded on stolen Palestinian lands, has no right to exist, the cloud of guilt over the fact that fulfilling the Zionist enterprise entailed destruction of the Palestinian nation will not dissipate.

Denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state, 60 years after its establishment and its consolidation as a regional power, seems at first glance like a blunt, rusty weapon. And indeed, it has already been said that it is not Israel that needs Hamas' recognition, but the opposite: It is Hamas that needs Israel's recognition. But the fact is that Israel, which is haunted by the nightmare of the "return" of Palestinian refugees and bewails urgings that it "live by the sword," insists on obtaining Hamas' recognition and demands that the Quartet members not concede on this point.

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Some will say that Israel's demand for "recognition of its right to exist" is no more than a pretense, a precondition presented so that Hamas would fail to meet it, thereby thwarting any progress toward an agreement, which would entail concessions. But past experience shows that Israel was willing to pay a fairly high price for Palestinian legitimization: The entire Oslo process was based on the fact that Yasser Arafat - with the support of many activists of the first intifada but contrary to others - decided to recognize Israel in exchange for its recognition of the PLO.

It was not long before this breakthrough - after which both sides began rewriting their histories based on mutual delegitimization - burned up in the flames of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Definitions of the other as "terrorists" and "the Satanic Zionist entity" reappeared. Only tattered scraps of mutual recognition were left, in the form of pathetic meetings between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian Authority chairman. But even these faint echoes are dying away, as can be seen from the adoption of Hamas' formulations by senior Fatah officials and the Israeli retreat from any discussion of final-status issues. In the situation that has been created, mutual nonrecognition has become the stumbling block that cannot be removed because it goes to the root of the Israeli and Palestinian experiences: If you do not recognize me, you are plotting to destroy me. If I recognize you, I will clear you of guilt for the disaster you inflicted on my people.

A long time will pass before the two sides are able to deal with the basic issues entailed by mutual recognition, and meanwhile, it is clear that anyone who insists on making this a condition for negotiations is seeking not peace, but a continuation of the conflict. As for those outside parties that are involved in setting conditions for "recognition," they should stay away from these existential issues because they do not even begin to understand what "recognizing the right to exist" means to both sides. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict revolves around fundamental questions of self-identity, self-expression and a fight over symbolic and tangible assets. It is a struggle over the supreme values of identity and survival. The path of wisdom involves translating all this into rational terms and not dealing with the metaphysics of "recognizing the right to exist."