At his new blog, South Jerusalem, Gorshem Gorenberg writes that including Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations seems to have reached a tipping point in its progression from radical idea to conventional wisdom:
The right, and many generals, would like to solve the problem of Gaza with force. The most obvious hole in that plan, as one very nameless source told me, is called “exit strategy.”
There are all sorts of reasons to think talking to Hamas, or to a unity government, won’t work. We know how diplomatically paralyzed Israeli unity governments have been. Reliance on tanks and drones alone is working even less. When everything else fails, human beings consider peaceful solutions as a last resort.
If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it would seem to be that everything else has failed. The image of peace as a last resort seems fitting.