Think Al-Jazeera English is Pro-Hamas? Think Again.

I read an interesting article on AJE's website this morning by Mark Levine (professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine) outlining how the current tensions between Israel and Hamas isn't entirely Israel's fault, and in fact if Hamas continues down its current path of practicing "violent jihad," it was most certainly fail. Certainly no apologist for Israeli, Levine suggests that Hamas look to adopt non-violent approaches of protest, similar to MLK, Ghandi and Desmond Tuto. Levine concludes by calling for a change in the shape and tone of discourse on both sides, expressing hope that the exposure that the last three weeks of fighting has provided to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza will push the international community to encourage both Israel and Hamas to reconsider their options:

If there is a bright spot for Palestinians in the horrific violence of the last few weeks, it is that Israel's deployment of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence in Gaza has revealed the abnormality of the occupation for millions of people who previously had been unable to perceive it.

This revelation offers Hamas, and the Palestinian leadership more broadly, the chance to change the larger terms of the debate over the future of Israel/Palestine.

It could help move Palestinian society (and with it Israeli society, however reluctantly) away from the paradigm of two nationalist movements engaged in a competition over territory and towards a common future.

This process can only begin with the conversion of Israelis and Palestinians to the idea of sharing sovereignty, territory and even identity in order to achieve the greatest good for the most members of the two societies.

It is worth noting that the far left in Israel has long had such a bi-national programme. For its part, the PLO came close to it with its call for a "secular democratic state" in all of Mandate Palestine in 1969.

However, such an idea has never had a chance of being considered seriously as long as terrorism has been identified as the central strategy for the realisation of Palestinian nationalism.

When the two-state strategy epitomised by the Oslo peace process collapsed at the Camp David talks of July 2000, there was an opportunity for Palestinians again to change the terms of the debate.

Hamas in particular could have offered an alternative discourse to Yasser Arafat's supposed 'No' to a generous Israeli final offer.

But the movement had little new to offer.