The images simply baffle the imagination: armed gunmen storming government offices, tearing down portraits of President Yasser Arafat, looting his home in Gaza, invading President Mahmoud Abbas’s office (and bedroom), and executing members of Fatah. Masked and armed gunmen roam the streets of Gaza, which has fallen to the Islamists, waving the Holy Quran and doing their religion a great disservice by showing the world a distorted image of Islam. They (and Fatah) have brilliantly projected barbarianism, tribalism, and ignorance by letting themselves get dragged into this nonsense.

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"Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that Hamas is doing all it can to torpedo the Mideast peace process -- but Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad, thinks it's time to include the Islamist group in peace talks. Who's right?" This is the question posted to panelists by PostGlobal.

I think that it is now too late to talk peace with Hamas. 2005 would have been good. 2006 would have been perfect. But not anymore. Not in 2007-2008.

One reason is that Hamas is no longer interested. When elected with a sweeping majority, the Gaza-based Hamas leadership was dying for international recognition -- not as guerrilla warriors but as statesmen. The same thing had happened back in 1974 to Yasser Arafat, where he went to the United Nations to market himself as both a peacemaker and war-maker, raising the famous, "I come to you carrying an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Don't let the olive branch fall from my hand."

Arafat never believed that sentence, not for a single moment. This is what he needed to say, however, to restore bits and pieces of Palestine. Arafat was fighting for a just cause, and sick and tired of being treated like an A-class terrorist by the international community. He knew he could never destroy Israel and return to the Palestine of 1948. He raised this slogan right after the War of 1967 to legitimize himself in the eyes of ordinary Palestinians, and then to negotiate something more reasonable with Israel. He couldn't do the latter without war medals: He needed to show the Israelis that the Palestinians existed, were under his leadership, and were willing to go to dramatic means to get themselves heard outside their own borders.

This is the period that produced the Karameh Battle of 1969, the Dawson Airfield hijackings of 1970, the Munich massacre of 1972, and the war of attrition through South Lebanon. Arafat succeeded in attaining getting recognition for the Palestinians and went on to the UN in 1974, but was unable to come across as a peacemaker until after the Madrid Peace Conference (to which he was not invited because of his support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War).

Much of the Arafat story applies to Hamas. When Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, many criticized his wisdom. But nobody in the Palestinian street questioned his nationalism. Nobody said that he was a traitor -- and with time, people accepted what Arafat had done out of helplessness rather than conviction. He would famously tell his aides, "See this hand? (while waving his right hand)...Only this hand can sign peace with the Israelis!" That became all the more clear after his death in 2004. Nobody in the Palestinian street had the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat except Hamas. They had fought, suffered, led, and preached the most for Palestine since their inception in the late 1980s.

Abu Mazen (current President Mahmud Abbas) had absolutely no war medals to boast of, just his signature on the much hated Oslo Accords. The same applied to then Prime Minister Ahmad Qurai (Abu Alaa) and other Fatah celebrities like Saeb Erekat, Nabil Shaath, and Yasser Abd Rabbo. The only Fatah heavyweights who had the legitimacy to talk and sign peace then get away with it were Marwan Barghouti (who was in jail) and Farouk Qaddumi (Abu al-Lutf), who was in exile in Tunis.

Hamas's leaders on the other hand were uncorrupted. They had an unblemished record (even finer than Arafat's when he went to Oslo). They had plenty of war medals.

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At this stage, the talks can be seen from different angles. From the Saudi point of view, or that of the March 14 Coalition, these talks are a threat that the Syrians are back on their way to re-establishing themselves in the Middle East. Many in Lebanon are not comfortable with that, thinking that any peace deal with the Israelis would also mean eventual normalization with the US as well. This normalization, they believe, would be at the expense of Lebanon, the Harriri Tribunal and the Syrian Accountability Act. But except for the lip service offered by Condoleezza Rice to Foreign Minister Mouallem, the United States has offered little interest in the talks. This plays nicely into the hands of the Saudis and Lebanese who do not want Bush on board in the talks; because as long as the Americans do not support the talks, they will never materialize.

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The Current Discussion: What's the most likely outcome of Israel's invasion of Gaza? A wider war? A Hamas defeat? Just more of the same?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seemed to be living on another planet when he recently said, "We have never agreed that anyone decide for us if we are allowed to strike at those who send missiles into our kindergartens and schools, and we never will."

One week ago, Israeli President Shimon Peres appeared on Al-Jazeera TV, saying that no Palestinian civilians were being targeted in Gaza, and asking the anchor, Mohammad Kreshan, "Why are they doing this to us; why don't they want us to live in peace? We are not targeting children; they are!" The Doha-based Arabic channel--running the interview live on air--immediately sliced the screen in half and showed footage of blood-stained Palestinian children, some blown into pieces, challenging the Israeli President's argument.

The President of Israel and his Prime Minister were seemingly not watching the news to see whose kindergartens and schools were being hit by missiles. As of the afternoon of January 11, the death counter in Gaza has reached 919, including 275 Palestinian children. Olmert added, "No country in the world, even those preaching morals to us, would have shown the tolerance and restraint that we have!"

What restraint, the Arabs were loudly asking? Israel was using absolute and unacceptable force, violating every law there was to break in the Geneva Convention. As of this weekend, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have perished, as compared to 13 Israelis, in addition to 4263 Palestinians wounded. Of the Palestinians killed, nearly 225 died on the first day of the offensive, December 27, 2008. A total of 46 were killed--in cold blood--in one strike on an UNRWA school in Gaza, and on January 3, the IDF attacked the Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque in Beit Lahiya packed with 200 Palestinian worshippers during evening prayer. Thirteen people, including six children, were killed.

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The Current Discussion:What's the biggest mistake Barack Obama could make in his first six months in foreign policy?

PostGlobal asks what mistakes Barack Obama should avoid during his first 6 months in office. The answer seems crystal clear to observers from Damascus. Ask any ordinary Syrian, and he or she would reply: turning a blind eye to Israel's war machine in the Arab world would ruin Barack Obama's image in the eyes of ordinary Arabs.

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