furiously spinning in the Middle East

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.