The Award for Best News Coverage - CBS

Scanning through various news sites on the web looking for international reaction to the Palestinian elections, I came across many angles on the subject. Perhaps the most thorough was streamed by - wait for it - CBS from America. Yes, definitely the best coverage of the statements made by a Hamas representative among the news sites I found. They showed a press conference held in the street by Mahmoud Zahar, a leading player in the Hamas party. His statements were forthright, his tone was not conciliatory, his objectives clearly stated. "We are not terrorists" was the title that CBS put on the piece and that was clearly stated by Mr Zahar. When asked where he would get funding for Palestine now that the US and Europe had said they would cut aid, he said words to the effect that they would take money from anybody, Islamic or not, who would not prejudge Hamas as terrorists. He also reinforced the Hamas line that talks and interaction would only take place with Israel if they were to cease their occupation and talk meaningfully about an independent Palestinian state which must include Jerusalem. That must be a tough nut to crack. That was the line that the Palestine Liberation Front took decades ago under Yasser Arafat but their stance was softened as reality showed that the best way was to negotiate. Fatah, under a changed Arafat, finally came to some limited agreements which brought forth a Palestinian Legislative Council elected by Palestinian people. Such an election has brought Hamas to power. In the new-found glow of success Hamas is accusing the previous governing body of corruption, of pocketing international aid money for their own ends. I don't know if this is true or not but most of the aid-givers like Europe and the US have stated that aid would be curtailed unless Hamas throws away its guns. Now they are democratically elected, Hamas will have to start to live with reality. I am not saying that they do not have legitimate claim to Jerusalem. Perhaps they have a right to claim the whole of what was, before the war, Palestine - including all the land which was arbitrarily given to create the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s. Whatever happens there will be more bloodshed, of this I am sure. The two parties are so far apart that it's hard to see if there is any common ground over which they could start to talk, let alone agree. The present state of affairs in the region can be traced back to stupid decisions in the past by governments of countries far away from the area. But it is the Moslems and Jews who are still paying the price of those ill-conceived actions from half a century ago. One thing that strikes me as being unfair is the fact that nobody talks about cutting aid to Israel when they use force against the Palestinians - is there some bias or is it that the world is still trying to justify decisions made in haste in the 1940s?