debkafile: Olmert and Livni continue to duck clear action on Hamas’s rise to power

After the first day of a broad-based consultation in Jerusalem on the future of funds to a Hamas-ruled government, Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni indicated that Israel would not transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority, but would not object to international moneys reaching Palestinian charities and humanitarian organizations. debkafile‘s Palestinian sources point out that Hamas hides its terrorist operations behind one of the largest Palestinian charity networks. Therefore her statement says two opposite things at once and the Olmert government is still slaloming. The lack of a coherent Israeli policy on Hamas is also symptomized by its government’s failure to protest the fund-raising mission undertaken by the international economic coordinator James Wolfensohn on behalf of the Palestinian government to the Gulf emirates. As a Washington appointee, his trip to collect handouts to make up for frozen Israeli transfers must have had the blessing of the White House. While denigrating Hamas as a terror group, the Bush administration now appears to be doing its best to make the transition of government from Abu Mazen’s Fatah to the Hamas Islamic terrorists as smooth as possible, as Olmert and Livni stand by and watch the international anti-terror front cave in. At the same time, Tuesday night, Olmert pledged not to negotiate or deal with a Palestinian Authority that is dominated, wholly or partly, by a terrorist organization.”
So what will the final word be from Jerusalem?