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Global Security (Middle East)

Does the hon. Lady agree that, although things are now very serious and the implication is that some of the more hard-line elements in Hamas are now in control in Gaza, there was a massive wasted opportunity between 2005 and early 2007, when Hamas, although not a different organisation to the one it had been previously, was on ceasefire and had offered a long-term truce? The Northern Ireland experience tends to indicate that we should have picked that up to see how far it could be pushed, rather than rejecting it, as the international community did.