The hoped-for breakthrough I wrote about earlier today (here and here) has been announced, and the way I’m reading it, Israel accepted it because in addition to a cease-fire, there’s an implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas (at least that’s why I would have accepted it if I were the Israelis: it’s good enough as the basis for a negotiation, and it may be all they’ll ever get as far as recognition from Hamas is concerned).
Here’s the bottom line:

we [all the Palestinian factions, in a signed document] agreed on the national accord to establish a Palestinian state, with the June 4, 1967 borders,”

The story is all over the wires. Here’s how the Jerusalem Post leads:

Israel accepted a Palestinian cease-fire to go in effect Sunday morning, and will stop military operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling, and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Saturday night.

The dramatic announcement followed a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

I am deeply suspicious of Meshaal, who is beholden to both Syria and Iran, so this isn’t exactly a building block to peace—which fanatic Islamists don’t want anyway, because then they won’t have Israel to kick around anymore.

Let’s hope that this very fragile agreement holds, and that it doesn’t inspire certain players (Iran, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, for starters) to derail it.

I will be very, very curious to read the stories behind this very dramatic turn of events, which follows on the heels of the Gemayel assassination in Lebanon.

And I will be curious to see the reaction of the diehard politicos, talking heads, pundits, and bloggers on both sides of this conflict—all of whom tend to lag behind events when they comment, because too many of them lead with their ideology.

update: LFG is using the spin from Reuters and is reacting to this as a threat, rather than as an offer, from Hamas.

After I hit “publish” on my previous post, I decided to check out how the story was being covered and immediately discovered what I should have known: that nothing is ever so simple as it appears. (For the record: I still think there has been some kind of progress and that Hamas has been moved off its “final” intransigent position. Indeed, that’s the reason for all the spin—they’ve been so intransigent and so vocal about it in so many forums that it’s very hard to climb down without losing face.)

Anyway: I had just posted that I, a pessimist about the Middle East, detected a straw in the wind about a possible breakthrough between Hamas and Israel. I’d drawn that conclusion, after months of following the details, from the two stories I’d read earlier this morning—Steven Erlanger’s in the New York Times [dead-tree] and an AP story which was the top link on Google News at the time, both of which presented this as an okay from Hamas for Abbas to negotiate with Israel—a step forward).

Now I see that this story is being presented in very different ways by the BBC and Reuters. (The two organizations have very different spins and at the same time still present it differently than the AP and NYT present it—i.e., as progress.)

Here’s the BBC, presenting a warning from Meshaal:

The exiled political leader of the Palestinian radical group Hamas has warned of another uprising (intifada) by Palestinians.
Khaled Meshaal said it would happen unless there was international agreement on a Palestinian state within six months.

Mr Meshaal said Israel would have to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.

He was speaking in Cairo amid talks with Egyptian mediators on forming a Palestinian national unity government.

Also on the agenda was a possible prisoner exchange with Israel.

Mr Meshaal said Hamas would be prepared to co-operate on a ceasefire - including an end to missile attacks on Israel - if there was an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Most heroically, here’s Reuters presenting this as Meshaal’s “challenge” to the West to work for peace. It’s a “historical opportunity,” he says [emphasis mine]:

CAIRO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Saturday challenged the United States and Europe to work for Middle East peace based on 1967 borders or face a third uprising by Palestinians losing hope of an end to occupation.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference in Cairo that there was a historic chance for peace and that Western politicians had six months after the formation of a national unity cabinet to seize the opportunity. He based his challenge on the consensus between Hamas, rival Palestinian group Fatah and all Arab governments that the basis for peace should be Israeli withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas and Fatah agreed to that in a national consensus document in June. Israel rejects the 1967 borders as the basis for a settlement but the government of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak came close to an agreement with minor border adjustments in negotiations which ended in early 2001. Meshaal said: “We give them six months and the real political horizon will open up. There is now a historic opportunity.”

Whoa. They want to go back to Taba?

Maybe it’s just me, but I find this intrigue pretty interesting—not least for its implications for the political scene back here at home, which has been stuck on “Israel is difficult to defend” for a while now.

Taba was, of course, a Democratic—a Clintonian—undertaking. Hmmm.

I hesitated a couple of times before titling this post, because I have been deeply pessimistic about the situation between the Palestinians and the Israelis, as any regular reader knows. Still, a couple of things make me unexpectedly if very cautiously hopeful that something may have changed.

From the AP:

Hamas’ leader said Saturday his group was willing to give peace negotiations with Israel six months to reach an agreement for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, but threatened a new uprising if the talks fail.

Try to forget about the threat for now (Hamas is always threatening something) and look beyond it to what he’s offering: peace negotiations with Israel, a nation that previously didn’t exist (in his mind). I consider this to be a tiny sliver of good news. Read the whole thing.

Even better—in a way—is Steven Erlanger’s brief piece in today’s New York Times. Whereas other news outlets (including, ironically, another AP story) chose to say that Israel had flatly rejected the Hamas offer, Erlanger (who is notably cool toward Israel) indicates—with a supporting headline (”Palestinians and Israel Say They Are Open to Truce“)—a softening in the Israeli position.

Israel called the offer a media presentation, but said it was open to a more serious, formal proposal. “It’s not a question of, ‘You go first,’ ” said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “It’s a question of, ‘What are we talking about?’ ” A halt to all Israeli military operations in return for a halt to rocket fire alone would be unacceptable, she said.

Then Erlanger gives “moderate” Fatah leader Abbas a chance to acknowledge some culpability on the part of the Palestinians***:

On Thursday night in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, said that since the summer, Palestinians have been “victims of a barbaric Israeli offensive that has left more than 400 dead and 1,500 wounded while thousands of homes have been destroyed.” But he added, “All that on the pretext of homemade rocket fire, and unfortunately we are giving them such a pretext.

Since both sides have given an inch, Judge Erlanger now deems it safe to tell the facts about the present impasse:

In fact, Israel re-entered Gaza in late June in response to the capture of a soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by a group of Palestinian militants that included Hamas. Hamas said that they were responding to Israeli shelling that had killed civilians; Israel said the shelling was in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Since Israel pulled its settlers and troops out of Gaza in September 2005, at least 1,100 rockets have been fired from Gaza, and four Israelis have died — two of them in the past 10 days.

Mr. Abbas, aided by Egypt, is negotiating with Hamas over a national-unity government that could meet the conditions for ending an international freeze on direct budget aid, as well as Israel’s withholding of tax and duties collected on behalf of the Palestinians. The government is also held up by disagreements over the release of Corporal Shalit and different demands about the number of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for him. Israel wants the corporal back before releasing prisoners. These issues are holding back the prospect of a meeting between Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

We’ll see what happens, but for me this is a straw in the wind. I take this news to mean that in some way that is imperceptible to us but significant to the shrewdest players in the Middle East—the Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis—something has changed.

Let us hope that our politicians and commentators stay on top of current events, pick up on the hint of something positive on the horizon, and not pull their usual lagging-indicator act and act as a drag on progress in the Middle East.

——

*** For a different take on “culpability,” see what perversely interesting things UN Human Rights commissioner Louise Arbour has to say in this article [emphasis added]

Israel could be considered deserving of more blame for its actions in the Lebanon war than Hizbullah, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

Asked by the Post if there was a distinction under human rights law between missile attacks aimed at killing civilians and military strikes in which civilians are unintentionally killed, Arbour said the two could not be equated.

“In one case you could have, for instance, a very objectionable intent - the intent to harm civilians, which is very bad - but effectively not a lot of harm is actually achieved,” she said. “But how can you compare that with a case where you may not have an intent but you have recklessness [in which] civilian casualties are foreseeable? The culpability or the intent may not sound as severe, but the actual harm is catastrophic.”

Aargh. More on this another time.

But I really wish I didn’t have to hear all this shit about culpability. I am sick to death of the sick urge to punish. It is everywhere I look.