Inside the paper is a slightly different story, as a couple of pieces make more of a mash of logic. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley (a Clinton adviser) write all about Hamas in Hamas steps into a complex landscape without actually saying very much, but this bit jumped out:

Got that? Violence "came to" Hamas, who becomes through this rhetorical trick something of a passive player. Violence was visited upon them, rather than they being the visitors. Note also how its targets were "soldiers and settlers," and only later it was civilians who were attacked -- as though settlers are something different than civilians, as though it is somehow OK to target them as they are in the same class as soldiers (not that soldiers are fair game, either, but they certainly count differently). Also note the implication that it was Israel who was being unreasonable for not accepting a draw-down in violence, not Hamas.

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