Isolating Hamas Should Not Mean Isolating the People of Gaza

June 15, 2010
“The history of blockades by free nations is an honorable one. Israel’s blockade of Hamas-run Gaza—a blockade that … permits the delivery of humanitarian and civilian aid—stands in that tradition. It preserves a tenuous peace in the short run. And it may result in the liberation of Palestinians from Hamas’s dictatorship, and prevent their exploitation by a terror-supporting Iranian regime, in the longer run.”
—William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard, op-ed, “In Praise of Blockades,”
  • “Well, it's precisely the limitations of that [Gaza] policy that are now apparent. And what people like myself have been arguing for, now for the best part of two years, is that it is, of course, right that we make huge progress on the West Bank … but it's always been a mistaken belief that you push ahead in the West Bank and leave Gaza completely isolated. In the end, what you have to do is, even with the problems there with Hamas, you have to bring people in Gaza to understand that there is an alternative, it is a better way forward. But if they become completely isolated, the danger is not that they turn then towards a more sensible, more moderate path. The danger is then that extremism grows.”
    —Tony Blair, representative of the Middle East Quartet and former British prime minister, interview with Fareed Zakaria, CNN, June 6, 2010 


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