The Current Discussion: 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?

The debate over talking to Hamas tends to miss the point: why talk to someone who says outright that they are committed to your destruction? No one suggests that the US negotiate with al-Qaeda, for instance. It is not just that the latter are terrorists. The more fundamental question is, what is the purpose of talking?

Talking is for when there is room to split the difference, such as in a border conflict. In fact, the whole Arab-Israeli peace process is built on pretending that it is a border conflict -- that is, that two states, Israel and Palestine, are a given so what remains is working out the details.

The problem is that the Arab-Israeli conflict remains what it always was, one over existence -- Israel’s existence -- not borders, or refugees, or Jerusalem. At the moment that the leaders of the Arab world, including the Palestinian leadership, decides that it is time to give up the “struggle” to destroy Israel, then it will be a matter of negotiating the details.

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