Super Solana Spin

Your challenge: keep a straight face as you read this excerpt of an article in the Jerusalem Post titled 'Hamas doesn't want to destroy Israel':

Hamas wants to "liberate the Palestinians," not to destroy Israel, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Steady ...

In an interview following his talks in Tel Aviv with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Solana insisted that it was "not impossible" for Hamas to change and "recognize the existence of Israel."

Almost as not impossible as the UN treating Israel to be like any other country and allow it to be on the UN Security Council. Consider that Fatah couldn't bring itself to ratify the changes to its charter in the 1990s, mainly because it didn't want nor have to. And they are allegedly more moderate than Hamas.

History had shown that people and nations "adapt to reality," he said. "I don't want to lose hope."

Mr Solana should marry his hope to reality by migrating to Israel with his family. And then reflect on his words.

Pressed as to whether he was underestimating the fundamentalist religious imperative at the heart of the Hamas ideology, Solana said, "I cannot imagine that the religious imperative, the real religious imperative, can make anybody destroy another country... Therefore that is an abuse of religion...

Mr Solana's imagination seems to have been cryogenically frozen on the 10th of September 2001. Arguably a long time before that.

"I don't think the essence of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. The essence of Hamas is the liberation of the Palestinians," he added. "The liberation of their people, not the destruction of Israel."

Enter stage left: the Hamas Covenant.

Solana, who said he saw himself as "a good friend of Israel,"

... as they say, with friends like these ...

also said that he was concerned that, given the various demographic, security and other considerations, "some of the positions of some leaders of Israel may not be the best recipes to guarantee the security of Israel."
He said, for instance, "I never thought the construction of the security wall was a good idea."

I presume it wasn't because it saved Jewish lives, as a French diplomat has realised.