[Chris Alger]

"Hamas refuses to accept the right of Israel the nation to exist."

There is no "nation" of Israel; Israel is a state. There is a nation of Jews. Hamas purports to be able to live in peaceful coexistence with Jews. It is opposed to a Jewish state. Although Hama supporters themselves might sometimes fail to make these distinctions (its manifesto speaks alternatively of fighting "the conquerors" and "the Jews"), Pipes makes it clearly. He is referring to Palestinian acceptance of an ideologically Jewish state in the former Palestine, not Palestinian acceptance or tolerance of Jews in Palestine or elsewhere.

"While Reagan and US citizens may (or may not) have considered the government of the USSR to have no moral right to exist, neither Reagan nor the citizens of the USA ever questioned the right of the country of the USSR itself, or old Russia, to exist."

Hamas does not want to take the physical country now called Israel and turn it into a lake, nor to exterminate all of its inhabitants in the event the Jewish state is overthrown. Reagan opposed not merely to the current regime in Russia. In fact, Soviet leadership changed hands several times during his administration with no discernable change in Reagan's stance. Reagan was opposed to the ideology of the communist state and would have been opposed to any communist state in Russia just like he (and prior U.S. governments and millions of Americans) denied the legitimacy of every communist state everywhere. Likewise, Hamas is opposed to any Jewish state in the former Palestine. It is a question of opposing a state devoted to a particular ideology as opposed to the people living in it or the particular rulers of the day. By the same token, Bush is obviously opposed to any Baathist state in Iraq, regardless of whether it's headed by Saddam, his sons or their collegues.

Another example is the Pakistan-India conflict. Pakistan is an avowedly Islamic state. Many Indians obviously disagree with that concept. However, you would never hear Pakistan claim that it cannot negotiate peace or borders with India until all Indians accept the legitimacy of an Islamic state of Pakistan.

You still haven't explained why you insist that Israel should not compromise its territorial claims as long as any Palestinians deny Israel's legitimacy, while insisting that the Palestinians compromise their territorials claims even though Israel and many Israelis remain implacably opposed to the establishment of any Palestinian state. Nor have you explained why you believe that Israel's security concerns trump those of the Palestinians.