The Martian Perspective   [Victor Davis Hanson]

A person from Mars reading the latest communication from the Hamas/Fatah summit in Saudi Arabia might conclude there is something very wrong with the West that would inspire the Palestinians to say such crazy things.

Reuters ran the  account of the agreement by its reporter Mohammed Assadi. In it, we are told by Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad, thanks to Saudi talks with the Americans and Europeans, there is a good chance to "market this agreement" in order to "win back Western aid halted because of Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel."

But then the Hamas spokesman warned, "They cannot ignore this agreement and impose their own conditions."

Of course immediately Nizar Rayyan, "a senior Hamas leader" is reported as assuring that "Hamas would never recognize Israel and that the deal on the government does not change the movement's position." In his own words, "We will never recognize Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination."

And what is the source of the internecine killing on the West Bank?  The Reuters article goes on to announce that the sanctions, in the mind of Palestinians, "were partly to blame for the violence that has killed 90 people since December."

Consider the logic of the Palestinian position: A group dedicated to destroying the only stable democracy in the Middle East announces that it wishes to "market" an agreement to restore American and European handouts, whose cutoff is supposedly responsible for their own civil war on the West Bank.

We should ask the following:

What has America done to suggest to a terrorist organization that it has an inherent right to American taxpayer money because it has found a way to market or soft-peddle its intention to destroy a democracy? The money quote of Hamas is the key phrase "they cannot..." Only in the Middle East does the recipient announce to the benefactor the conditions of the hand out.

Why would any Arabs want any money from the US, when the latest Zogby poll, we are told, reveals that the United States is the least popular country in the Arab collective mind?

Surely a proud people would logically announce, "We do not wish one cent of tainted American money"? And surely they would not suggest the lack of such tainted American money leads them to kill each other.

And why, with $500 billion in excess petrodollars floating around the Middle East, is a few hundred million from the US, that is pouring money into Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, seen as the make or break subsidy that either ensures peace or leads to war?

Couldn't Hamas simply instead ask Iran, to cut back a little on the rockets to Hezbollah, and send it instead a few million for groceries?

And if impoverished, where does the money for all the machine guns, rockets, RPGs, and explosives come from?

And does any Reuters reporter grasp the irony that it is precisely the US cut-off of this subsidy that at last has made Hamas pay any lip-service at all toward reconciliation?

This bathos summarizes what infuriates Americans the most about the Middle East-a sort of infantile, passive-aggression, in which America is alternately blamed, then shaken down for cash, libeled and simultaneously beseeched.

Worse still, is not just the fact that Fatah and Hamas act in such a bizarre manner- but rather what is it about us that has led them to believe  that it will work?

And what would be so difficult about something like the following request to the Palestinians: please issue a statement recognizing Israel as a sovereign nation and renouncing terrorism, and then the  US and Europe will consider aid in a degree commensurate to that offered by the Arab League? Period.