Reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah began Thursday morning (February 26, 2009/2 Adar 5769) in Cairo, Egypt. The negotiations are being handled by Egypt. In addition, just as Israel does before it seeks

What exactly is the goal of these talks?

concessions by the Palestinian Authority-PLO, Fatah released 42 Hamas prisoners in Judea and Samaria on Tuesday.

What exactly is the goal of these talks? According to the politicians involved, the intended goal is to form a unity government. In the end, that means it would end up being like the one that was formed by the democratic Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. The problem at that time, however, was that Hamas won that election by a landslide and, despite its demands for the election, the leaders of the world would not stand for a Hamas-led government. Despite the fact that no one disputed that the elections were held democratically, the nations of the world, led by US President George W. Bush, voided Hamas' victory and placed the Fatah terrorist organization in charge of the PA.

It was thought at that time that Fatah could lead the Arab people in Israel and successfully negotiate a 'peace' agreement with Israel. However, as time as shown, that was not to be. Despite massive amounts of monetary aid from many different nations, and the physical training and arming of Fatah-led PA-PLO troops by the United States military, Hamas proved to be a much more formidable foe than was previously thought. In the end, Hamas drove the PA-PLO 'military' out of Gaza and took away all of their US-supplied weapons. (It has been feared that Hamas would eventually do the same thing to Fatah in Judea and Samaria.) Since then, Hamas has continued its rocket attacks on Israel, even in spite of the recent IDF defensive actions in Gaza. Although the IDF has crippled Hamas to some degree, the terrorist organization continues to launch missile attacks on Israel on a daily basis.

Hamas has a large following in Gaza due to its implementation of social programs, schools and other government-related activities. The Hamas terrorist organization funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens and sports leagues. In regard to these type of government-related activities, Hamas is much better at it than Fatah. In addition, although it is a terrorist group, the Islamic beliefs of Hamas cause it to look unfavorably on government corruption, in contrast to Fatah, helping to increase its popularity among the Arab population in Israel. As the nations have finally learned, these facts make it hard to ignore Hamas in any kind of solution to divide Israel.

Over time, the nations of the world have come to discover that they must also bring Hamas "into the fold" in order to take land away from Israel to form another Arab terrorist state. Hamas is being drawn into the fold of the peace process because the United States, the European Union and Israel falsely believe they will never be able to divide Israel without it. These nations won't do it directly, because negotiating with Hamas is against the law in those countries. Instead, they choose to let Egypt handle it. That way, in the end, everyone is happy and gets what they want: Egypt gets the glory and the nations get a divided Israel with its sworn enemies in its midst.

In order to appease those Arabs that support Hamas, the US (and other nations will soon follow) recently announced it is providing $900 million in aid to rebuild Gaza after the recent defensive actions of the IDF to protect Israeli citizens. The money is supposed to flow through the Fatah-led PA-PLO, but given the reconciliation talks

Some people may say that it is not about the 'peace' process; rather, it's about helping the people of Gaza.

that just started, Hamas will also become part of the PA, if not its ruling party. That's $900 million from a nation who recently suffered the worst economic disaster since the 1930s (if not even worse than that). Millions of people in the United States have lost their jobs and their homes, public schools are being forced to close their doors, state and local governments are seeking ways to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from their respective budgets, yet the US government feels it is more important to support a failed 'peace' process than to help its own citizens.

Some people may say that it is not about the 'peace' process; rather, it's about helping the people of Gaza. If that were true, then why hasn't the US "helped" other nations rebuild on that scale? It does help in disaster situations, but generally not when the destruction has come by war (unless it caused the destruction itself) and certainly not on that grand of a scale.

So, as was done back in the early 1990s with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas will soon become a respectable, peace-loving humanitarian organization. Sounds a bit crazy, doesn't it? I have stated several times over the past years that this would eventually happen. Unfortunately, it seemed too far-fetched for most people, even though the same exact thing happened with the PLO. Let's not forget that master-terrorist Yasser Arafat even won a Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps one of Hamas' leaders will soon follow his terrorist brother in that reward.

Who knows, in this world today, if he plays his cards right, Osama Bin-Laden may even be able to make Al-Qaeda look respectable. Sounds crazy? Yeah, right.