Why The Peace Train Can't Get Started

 

The Nature of Peacemaking - Haviv Rettig Gur
 
Netanyahu's demand for Palestinian recognition of the Jewishness of Israel is the key to understanding his theory of the conflict and his view as to why the Oslo process 20 years ago failed.

The Palestinians cannot bring themselves to end the conflict, Netanyahu believes, because they cannot bring themselves to compromise with an enemy they view as completely evil.
   
They see Israelis as interlopers robbing another people of their national home. Even Palestinian moderates share this basic view of Israel as an evil, but one too well entrenched to remove. Thus, any Palestinian leader who seeks peace with Israel finds himself undermined by the perception among his own people that he is accommodating evil rather than pursuing justice.
   
The Palestinians don't need to become Zionists, Netanyahu believes, but they need to perceive that Jewish demands, too, are rooted in justice. Only then will their domestic constituencies be capable of engaging in peacemaking.
(Times of Israel)
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The Root of the Conflict - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict started in 1921 on the day on which the Palestinian Arabs attacked the immigration hostel in Jaffa. Many Jews were killed in this attack, including the well-known writer Y.H. Brenner. This attack was not about territory or settlements; it was against Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel.

Later there were more attacks: In 1929, the ancient Jewish community in Hebron was brutally slaughtered. It had existed there nearly uninterrupted for close to 4,000 years. After that, there were repeated and methodical attacks against the Jewish community in Israel in 1936 and in 1939.

The root of the conflict was and remains that which has been repeated for over 90 years - the profound objection by the hard core of Palestinians to the right of the Jewish people to its own country in the Land of Israel.

An essential condition for reaching a genuine resolution remains the reversal of the refusal to recognize the right of the Jews to a nation-state of their own in the land of their ancestors.
(Prime Minister's Office)
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