Palestinian Violence Overstated, Jewish Violence Understated

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

Time to Change the Story

The Israel Project hired pollster Stanley Greenberg to test American opinion on the Middle East conflict -- and got a big surprise. In September 2008, 69% of Americans called themselves pro-Israel. Now, it's only 49%. In September, the same 69% wanted the U.S. to side with Israel; now, only 44%.

How to explain this dramatic shift? Greenberg himself suggested the answer years ago when he pointed out that, in politics, "a narrative is the key to everything." Last year the old narrative about the Middle East conflict was still dominant: Israel is an innocent victim, doing only what it must do to defend itself against the Palestinians. Today, that narrative is beginning to lose its grip on Americans.

Well, to be more precise, the first part of the old narrative is eroding. Nearly half the American public seems unsure that Israel is still the good guy in the Middle East showdown. But the popular image of the Palestinians as the violent bad guy is apparently as potent as ever. The number of Americans who say they support Palestine remains unchanged from last September, a mere 7%. And only 5% want the U.S. government to take such a position.

Those numbers reflect the narrative that President Obama recited in Cairo on June 4th. He chided the Israelis for a few things they are doing wrong -- like expanding settlements and blockading Gaza. To the other side, though, his message was far blunter: "Palestinians must abandon violence." Of Israeli violence he said not a word.

The president's speech implicitly sanctioned the most up-to-date tale that dominates the American mass media and public opinion today: The Israelis ought to be reined in a bit, but it's hard to criticize them too much because, hey, what would you do if you had suicide bombers and rockets coming at you all the time?

That view is a political winner here. In the latest Pew poll, 62% of Americans say Obama is striking the right balance between Israel and Palestine; of those who disagree, three-quarters want to see him tougher on the Palestinians, not the Israelis. A Rasmussen poll finds even stronger support for a pro-Israel tilt.

There are, however, two things wrong with his narrative. First, though it's somewhat less one-sided than the story that prevailed during the George W. Bush years, it is far from impartial, which means the U.S. still cannot act as an even-handed broker for peace in the region. Since no one else is available to play that role, it's hard to see how, under the present circumstances, any version of a peace process can move forward.

The second problem is that the popular narrative just doesn't happen to match the facts. In reality, unjustified violence is initiated on both sides -- and if anyone insists on keeping score, Israel's violence, official and unofficial, outweighs the violence coming from the Palestinians.

Coming to Grips with Jewish Settler Violence

Israeli violence is often overlooked here because so much of it is done by official order of the state. Americans are quick to side with the man who wears the badge. Even when he lets loose the kind of violence that recently devastated parts of the Gaza Strip, the reigning assumption is that his gun is a force for law and order.

But what about the kind of violence Palestinians are so often accused of, the unauthorized civilian-on-civilian kind -- what the experts term "non-state-actor violence" and the rest of us simply call "terrorism"? Though you may not know this, much of it these days is done by Israeli Jews.

"Palestinian civilians bear brunt of settler violence," Agence France-Presse recently reported: "Nestled amid rolling hills and with an eagle eye's view to the Mediterranean coast, Nahla Ahmed's house has all the elements of Eden... if it weren't for the Molotov cocktail-throwing neighbours. 'We put bars on the windows after the first attack, three years ago,' says the 36-year-old mother of four. 'Now they come each week.'"

The attacks aren't always with Molotov cocktails; sometimes Jewish settlers throw tear gas canisters, simply spray a Star of David on a wall, or cut down trees owned by Palestinians. In other incidents, settlers have shot and killed a 16-year-old boy, fractured the skull of a 7-year-old girl with a rock, set a dog on a 12-year-old boy, and shot dead an Arab man but let his companion go when he identified himself as Jewish. These are not egregious, isolated cases of mayhem; they're just a few random examples of what's happening all too often on the West Bank. To see how depressingly common such violence is, just Google "West Bank settler violence" for yourself.

It's easy enough to see what the violence looks like too, since a lot of it has been captured on video. And this is just violence against people. The violence against property is far too common to begin to catalog.

Last December, Jewish settlers in Hebron went on a rampage, shooting at Palestinians, setting fire to homes, cars, and olive groves, defacing mosques and graves. Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister at the time, said he was "ashamed" of this "pogrom."

Yet few such settler crimes are seriously prosecuted by the Israeli authorities. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din has documented this in an extensive report, which, the group carefully notes, is merely one more in a long line of similar reports:

"Since the 1980's many reports have been published on law enforcement upon Israelis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. All of the reports... warned against the failure of the authorities to enforce the law effectively upon Israelis... who committed offenses against Palestinian civilians... Yet the problem of attacks against Palestinian people and property by Israelis has only grown worse, becoming a daily occurrence."

Assessing Hamas Violence

Jewish settlers who commit violence claim just what the Israeli government claims when it directs state-sponsored violence at Palestinian areas: Self-defense -- it was nothing but self-defense. And it's certainly true that there are incidents of individual Palestinians venting their frustration violently. After all, they've been living under an arbitrary, demeaning, and sometimes brutal occupation for 42 years.

According to the common Israeli and American narratives, however, the real culprit and chief roadblock to peace is the constant violence -- suicide bombings and rocket attacks -- planned and carried out by a well-organized political party, Hamas. Again, as it happens, this popular version of events is simply not borne out by the facts.

Consider suicide bombings. In 2003 Israel's premier newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that Hamas had decided "to stop terror against Israeli civilians if Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians." Though it's not clear that Israel did stop its own killings, Hamas soon halted its devastating suicide attacks. There were two in 2004 and not a single one in the nearly five years since then, according to the Jewish Virtual Library run by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (a source hardly sympathetic to Hamas).

The same source counts no "major attacks" on Israeli civilians by any Palestinians since 2006. Though there have been other attacks since then, their frequency has dropped dramatically, and none have been carried out by Hamas itself.

Israelis generally know what most Americans still don't: Suicide bombing, supposedly the trademark of "Palestinian terrorism," has virtually ceased. As a result, Israel's chief complaint has switched to Hamas rocket attacks. How can we let them have the West Bank, the argument goes? Look what happened when we pulled all our settlements out of Gaza and got nothing in return but thousands of rockets. That's why we had no choice but launch our full-scale assault on Gaza in December 2008: to put an end to them.

In fact, though, Hamas rocket attacks had ended in July 2008, when Israel agreed to the ceasefire Hamas had been asking for. That agreement held for four months until Israeli troops killed six Hamas operatives -- shortly before Hamas and Fatah were scheduled to create a unified government. It's a familiar Israeli tactic: block Palestinian unity and then complain of "no partner for peace."

Hamas was also moved by the plight of its people in Gaza, growing increasingly short of food, medical supplies, and other basic goods due to an ever-tightening Israeli blockade.

Yet all this is lost in the story that most Israelis tell, and most Americans believe, about why Hamas began shooting rockets (which, compared to the massive Israeli onslaught in response, did relatively little damage). Equally lost is Hamas's return to its moratorium on firing rockets after the recent Gaza war, formally confirmed by the party's leader, Khaled Meshal, in the New York Times.

Occasional rockets do fly out of Gaza, provoking the usual Israeli demand that Palestinian authorities must prevent every single incident of violence before there can be any talk of peace. That's something like holding the U.S. government responsible for the recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington or the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

A Mirror Image?

Still, the Palestinian governments in both Gaza and the West Bank could do more to control the private violence of their people, just as the Israeli government could do more to control Jewish settler violence. Yet none of these governments act vigorously because they risk alienating a small but significant portion of their political support.

As the Times's Ethan Bronner recently wrote: "There are striking parallels between the hard-core opponents of a peace deal on each side. They are generally driven by a belief in a law higher than any created by human legislatures; they are exceptionally motivated; and they are very well organized... Many Israeli governments have fallen over the issue."

For the risk of offending hard-core groups, neither side sees obvious countervailing political gain. While a minority on both sides condemns the violence of its compatriots, the majority seems to accept it as an excessive, unfortunate, but understandable response to provocations initiated by the enemy. So neither Hamas, nor Fatah, nor the Israeli government see any clear advantage in bending over backwards to stop attacks by non-state groups.

What's more, as Uri Avnery, the grand old man of the Israeli peace movement, explains: "On both sides, the overwhelming majority want an end to the conflict but do not believe that peace is possible -- and each side blames the other." Each side blames the other because so many on each side believe that those who perpetrate the violence represent the entirety of the other side. We could have peace, the universal complaint goes, if only "the Palestinians" or "the Israelis" would stop their violence.

The tragedy is that, on both sides, those who inflict violence gain little of practical value from it. Indeed the motives that keep the conflict boiling may have little to do with any hope of practical gain from it. When researchers asked nearly 4,000 Israelis and Palestinians what it would take to make peace, few focused on tangible benefits like gaining more land or resources. Most on both sides wanted see "their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures." They agreed that they would be willing to make concessions, but only if "the other side agreed to a symbolic sacrifice of one of its sacred values." The violence done by non-state actors is perversely satisfying, even if ultimately useless, because it's the most visible way to win little symbolic victories.

A New Narrative

Palestinians can argue, with good reason, that treating the two sides as mirror images creates a false equivalence. After all, one side is the occupier, constantly inflicting symbolic defeats through the use of state-sponsored violence that dwarfs the violence of its private citizens, or sometimes even more powerfully just by using its ability to re-organize the landscape. The other side is the occupied, a people with virtually no tools of state violence to wield even if they want to, struggling every day just to survive. In the U.S. and around the world there is growing pressure to reverse the traditional narrative of these last decades and turn the Israelis into the bad guys.

Given the tiny fraction of Americans who identify as pro-Palestinian, it's fruitless to think that a majority of us would ever adopt such a reversed narrative -- nor would it be very helpful, regardless of the facts. If the Obama administration really intends to be an even-handed broker, forcing the two sides to move towards genuine compromise at the negotiating table, it needs to represent a nation that tells an even-handed story.

Old narratives don't die out simply because they fail to fit the facts. They die out when a more appealing story comes along. The eroding support for Israeli policies in this country signals a growing appetite for a new, more even-handed narrative, one that says this:

The crucial conflict is not between Israel and Palestine. It's between peace and violence. Violence comes from both sides. But there's also the possibility of fostering a strong push for peace on both sides. Here in the U.S., we should urge our government to stop taking sides in the blame game, condemn all the violence -- including, for the first time, Israeli violence -- and support all forces of peace that exist or arise.

It is hard for many of my fellow Jews to accept the painful truth that we are as capable of violence as the Palestinians, or anyone else. But this new narrative is gaining ground rapidly in the American Jewish community, where groups like J Street and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom are making well-organized efforts to promote it and act upon it.

As non-Jewish Americans become aware of that change, they are likely to feel freer to adopt the even-handed narrative as their own, too. When enough of them do, the political winds in this country will change. Then the White House will feel safe enough to tell Israel, as well as Palestine, to stop both state and non-state violence. That's a necessary first step for an even-handed broker who hopes to open a path to peace.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be reached at [e-mail].

 

 

Comments

[bobb108]

It's about land:
Part of the new narrative -- the very core of it -- should be that two peoples lay claim to one land. It began and continues as a real estate issue (with many other issues billowing around it, obscuring it). Until this is addressed directly and fairly, there can be no peace. In order to be addressed fairly, the issue has to be looked at historically and on the ground now -- straightforwardly and honestly.

Manipulation and abuse as policy:
A second core issue is self-determination. No one group is put here to be used and abused by another group. We try to teach our children how to play fairly and peacefully. But, as adults, on the national and international scale (as well as, all too often, in business and religion), we behave like selfish, out-of-control children. Where are the adults?

Become "Them":
Can we imagine ourselves as the "enemy -- in very real and graphic terms? How have they experience "our" side's actions? This is an existential matter. There's been far too much talk and blaming and far too little "walking in their shoes." Most of our leaders aren't fit to lead because they have no empathy, compassion. If these qualities continue to be un-exercised, the situation is bound to end in disaster. Let's wake up, grow up, and realize that we're all in this (all of this) together.No one is "them." Everyone is "us." ...We're running out of time.

[fbr79]

The low support for Palestinians might have something to do with the whole kill them all and destroy everything their leadership likes to repeat endlessly. They use the Arabic speaking media in order to let their people know how they really feel. They don't seem to realize that the rest of the world might have access to their hateful speeches,

Maybe is the the savage infighting, beatings and robbing of it's own civilian people. The widespread corruption that toppled the PA in the election, which is now pervasive in Hamas. Palestinians thrown in jail, tortured by their own people for supporting the wrong faction. Maybe it has to do with the persecution of Palestinian Christians by the PA and Hamas.

It is really great that the Americans no longer see Israel as the only victim and I hope the US will significantly curb the aid provided to Israel. I really hope a two-state solution is still possible. I think the world's public opinion turning against Israel will be bad for both sides, since the one side which was remotely attempting for peace will get more radicalized.

How can you not understand why Palestinians are seen unfavorably? Not thinking of Israelis as innocent victims doesn't automatically grant that status to Palestinians. People are not blind, people are sick of this conflict and of others using this conflict to push their own agendas.

[arle]

The only people endlessly repeating that line are racist Israelis. Nobody's buying your "Pallywood" mythology anymore.

[BackToFight]

Amazing. Hollywood is the voice of Pro-Zionism, and yet they throw around the phrase "Palliwood" as if the Palestinians retain control of a multi-billion dollar industry that impregnates the minds of people word wide with images and opinions..

[greatscot]

The best analogy for Americans to help understand what is REALLY going on in Palestine today is Mississippi circa 1965. Sure, there was "the law" and "judges" , and all the other trappings of civilization, but was it civilized? Yes, if you were white( & naive), no if you were black. It took an outside force to overcome the evil of white domination & racist brutality in Mississipi, and other southern states. It's going to take an outside force to change the Israelis, a couple of generations of whom have grown up with the same sense of entitlement and racist superiority as the white southerner of the day. The Israelis LIKE what they've got, just as did the white South African, or the white American southerner. Israel, in its present state is doomed, and the sooner they realize that, the better, but to actually CHANGE things is going to take a real change agent, just like the National Guard at Little Rock! Obama needs to get serious!

[alexa07]

Yes, it has become an issue of civil rights in Palestine, all of which the world is able to see online & in the international media (even if it isn't being covered adequately as such in the USA by our media). The litany of preferential access to building permits, waterworks including sewage, roads, tunnels & the like is buttressed by video documented actions of the IDF, border guards & settler rampages, all of it looking very organized & with a good part of it being institutionalized when carried out by individuals in uniform. AJE has been covering how a settler ideologue visits Palestinian children at school to lecture them on his point of view, i.e. "You don't belong here." A little different approach from the Southern white mothers who were screaming at the black children trying to attend newly-integrated schools in the 1960s, but the effect is just as chilling & haunting. In the 21st century, a society has to be concerned about the security, education, welfare including sanitation, of every one of its members, not a preferred group who is entitled to what is blocked for everyone else who lives there too.

[thesocialalchemist]

to get this straight: my cousins in '48, living in Iraq who suffered at the hands of arab attackers; who were expelled (note some didnt get out-but were executed because they were Jews) and ended up in Israel do not count. Approximately 800,000 Jews were expelled from arab lands in 48 and their property taken. If you stayed u were executed or lived under severe tyranny ie Syrian Jews. Jordon takes over the West Bank in '48, but doesnt declare that area Palestine but Jordan. Jews living in the West Bank are severely persecuted and jewish graves are used for building roads. In 1922, Palestine is partitioned and more than half is given to the Hashemite arab tribe of Arabia: Palestinians dont care. A huge influx of arabs from arab lands come to Palestine under Ottoman and then British rule as stated by Joan Peters demographic analysis. Arabs living in Israel: vote, participate in its army: cessarian, druse, Bedouin, and work in the country. So called Palestinian arabs in arab lands not allowed to vote, cant own land and are ghettoized. Whose the persecutor again?

[Sentientbeing09]

Modern day Palestinians arent responsible for any treatment Iraqis may or may not have received in 1948 and they certainly arent underwriters and insurers for modern Israeli immigrant settlers from Europe, the US or the Russian Federation.

It is not the responsibility of modern Palestinians to provide plots of land, water resources and 1000-year old olive groves to Westernized immigrants who have no connection with the land, are unfamiliar with any local customs and can barely speak any local languages.

Settlers arent victims. They are brutal, violent, fanatical, thieving oppressors.

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

Joan Peters; you want to quote Joan Peters? You're joking right? For those who don't know, Joan Peters wrote" From Time Immorial", which has the dubious distinction of being the most discredited book on the history of Palestine ever written. As one expert said, "It is hard to argue with the facts in Miss Perers book; since it contains no facts but seems to be made up out of thin air".

[LynMc]

Good article. In my rough survey of history, Israeli murderous attacks on non-combatants is about 10 times that of Palestinians - historical average. Also, Israel is much more likely to provoke the attack although in the "cyle of violence" that's a little hard to estimate - but after all the starting point was the Zionist plan to expel the native people to establish the Jewish state - carried out with extreme violence in 1948. In actual violence, Israel's is probably 100-1000 times more, counting threats, expulsion from homes at gunpoint, torture, confiscation of property at gunpoint, destruction of homes, prevention of medical care by Israeli soldiers, deprivation of water and nutrition and so forth as violent.

There's other things that should be considered when looking at Palestinian violence. For example, many settlers are armed and as noted militant, and frequently terrorize the Palestinians they live near. Yet Palestinian attacks on them are considered attacks on civilians - how does that figure in the image of Palestinian violence?

[sokolof]

Peace can only be accomplished between Israel and Palestine by condemning ISRAEL because they are at fault. The evidence is there.

[soral]

"Israelis generally know what most Americans still don't: Suicide bombing, supposedly the trademark of "Palestinian terrorism," has virtually ceased. As a result, Israel's chief complaint has switched to Hamas rocket attacks."

I don't think the end goal of most israelis in terms of terrorism was ever that successful suicide bombings should virtually cease, but that attacks on israeli civilians of all kinds cease. You could attribute the decrease in successful attacks to palestinian political moderation or to the enormous wall israel built during that precise timeframe.

[arle]

Funny, one of the main demands of the Palestinians is that attacks on /their/ civilians need to cease too. Israelis make the demand, and the rate at which their civilians die goes down; the same cannot be said for Palestinians and their plight. Operation Cast Lead /alone/ maintained a kill ration of at /least/ one hundred children /per week/. That's well in excess of any atrocity Israelis have suffered at Palestinian hands.

[soral]

"Funny, one of the main demands of the Palestinians is that attacks on /their/ civilians need to cease too."

You're absolutely right. attacks on palestinian civilians need to cease.

"Israelis make the demand, and the rate at which their civilians die goes down"

Right, but those results are accompanied by strenuous measures taken to reduce casualties. it doesn't follow that hard-line palestinians have acquiesced to the demands that they stop attempting to attack civilians.

[NYC-Ninja]

It's hard to argue with facts.

[NYC-Ninja]

I should have said it is hard to argue against facts. Ha!

[ModernTimes1]

At no point in time in the last 100 years did Arabs in Palestine EVER abandon the fight of reclaiming all of the land from Mediterranean to Amman.
The Palestinian media, culture, education, civic, religious and oral traditions all obsessively focus on this revanchist narrative.
Is it lack of knowledge of this fact or willful avoidance of this inconvenient truth?
Hmmmm?

[arle]

So you confess that the land belonged to the Palestinians in the first place?

Kind of hypocritical, criticizing the Palestinians for using military force to reclaim their homeland, since that's /exactly/ what the Zionists insist they've been doing.

[JayWilmont]

If by reclaiming land by force you mean legally purchasing land and having a state created and internationally recognized by the UN, then you are correct.

There has been a near-continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years - the only reason Jews left was because other countries kept conquering it and kicking out the Jewish people.

[ModernTimes1]

History lesson.
There were Jews,Arabs, Armenians etc. living in administrative part of Ottoman Empire called Palestine. Which consisted of parts of modern Syria,Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. NO Arabs called themselves Palestinians. Ever. In the post-colonial era several modern states were created. Some Arab, one Jewish. Deal with it.

re."hypocr­itical...c­riticizing the Palestinians for using military force"
Oh, Palestinian Arabs can use all force they want against the Jews and neighboring states. They been doing it for 100 years. And it got them--- nothing but crushing defeats.

[phute]

And of course your views couldn't possibly be an avoidance of an uncomfortable truth?

[ModernTimes1]

Views? These are not views, this is called reality.

[Sentientbeing09]

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2008/12/05/israeli-terrorist-settler-shooting-palestinians-in-hebron/,

The violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers needs to be called out for what is - terrorism, and US supporters of the settler movement need to be identified as supporters of terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032502800.html,

When is the US government going to stop treating these thugs with velvet gloves.

[jestanle]

Anti Israel propaganda.....a truly one-sided argument.

[Sentientbeing09]

Which part of the article do you disagree with.

[arle]

It doesn't matter, you know. They're just going to label it propaganda. If we're really unlucky, someone will regurgitate the same tired talking points that'll force me to go rifling through my bookmark file or shuttling off to Google and the Wiki to gather enough credibility to shoot it down. It's a good thing I actually have fun doing that.

[sokolof]

It has nothing to do with Anti- Israeli vs pro Palestine. That is what the media has been instigating like Bush's doctrine you are either with us or against us. Based on what actions does one support and not the other? When human rights are being abused the worst on people such as the Palestinians, since the fact speaks for itself, it is normal to condemn these human right abuses. As an observer of this conflict I see oppression, indiscriminate killing, abuse going on one group. The victims and the oppressors see it as you versus me, Muslim vs Jews, West vs Arabs, Israel vs Arabs creating and widening the gap of hatred to achieve their goal.

[jordanispalestine]

I guess the security wall IS working...keping out almost all the suicide bombers!! The red meat for the haters is here in this blog. Not ANY info on violence in the last 2 years ,though! Rocket fire from Hamas terrorists ,I guess, doesn't count,huh???

[arle]

You know, the argument you're making is like saying the Warsaw Ghetto was a resounding success. You know that, right?

[phute]

Red meat for haters of what?

[sokolof]

That is one propaganda, we are hated, you are anti semitic, we are the victims, so on. If you are worried about attacks then why don't you settle the issue of settlements then you have your country, Palestinians have their own countries? Done deal. It is Israel's action that is making others criticize. But you are blind to that of course. While you are at it, which no one Israelis have come up with a good explanation that why are they in the territory of Palestine? Why doesn't Israel doesn't respect the UN? t is not politically correct for the world to say Israel wants to colonize Palestine, expel them from their land so that the whole area is Israel land. You are not even accepting to be in one state solution so this means Palestinian will be the majority. So based on this what are you going to do with the Palestinians once you take over Gaza and WB?

[SpaghettyIrish]

Articulate. But how to spread this knowledge? Often in America, one meets people who simply "don't wanna know."

[arle]

I know, it's disheartening. The problem has to do with Hollywood, honestly. Think of the last time you saw a Palestinian depicted on screen -- like, say, in "True Lies?" When was the last time you saw a Palestinian in US media depicted as anything other than a rabidly anti-American terrorist? Which is nonsense -- more Americans have been killed by Israelis than by Palestinians. You can start with events like the USS Liberty, the Lavon affair and attacks on activists and journalists -- Rachel Corrie and Tristan Anderson among them.

[SpaghettyIrish]

I know about the Libert, Rachel and Tristan. But again, see my first comment.

[alexa07]

Of all the hundreds of skits on Johnnie Carson with Ed McMann, did you wonder why ABC chose guess which ones to highlight this week? Of course, Johnnie in his Mid East get up, part Turkish, part fantasy, part whatever. As I have said, Bill O'Reilly a few weeks ago featuring guess what clips from "Mash" & "I Love Lucy" to highlight his viewers' choices of most funny series? Alan Alda didn't make the clip, guess who did? Bill's choice from the apolitical "Lucy" was probably the only skit that might be construed as a spoof against a veiled woman from all the old episodes. Coincidence?

[sokolof]

The reason is that unfortunately most Americans associate to people that maybe similar like them otherwise you are the unknown or stranger. Certainly they identify themselves with Israelis/Jews more than Palestinia­ns/Muslims­. There are more Jews throughout countries who are influential, hold important positions, assimilate more, are hard workers, interact more, Israel is holy land where Jesus lived which the West very much identifies with. Where as Palestinians tend to identify their way of life like any other Middle East countries more towards their religion, they assimilate less and so on. But that does not mean they are xenophobic.

[Theou]

The heart of the Israeli/Palestinian problem is not violence, in the military or quasi-military sense. Rather, the economic and psychological war waged on Non-Jewish Palestinians is massive and ongoing, dwarfing even the horrific depredations of "Operation Cast Lead"
Until people, world-wide and including Israelis and Diaspora Jews, recognize this there can be no possibility of Peace.
As mentioned in the article Americans still under the impression that Hamas is daily dealing death to innocent Israeli civilians and are totally ignorant of the oppression suffered by non-Jewish Palestinians.
With such a false vision of the problem, how can America see to deal fairly with the situation.
Another point.
I find it difficult to understand this statement in the Article: "the Palestinian governments in both Gaza and the West Bank could do more to control the private violence of their people."
What private violence? You have said that the bread-and-butter of "hasbara" narrative i.e. suicide bombings or "rocket attacks" are effectively non-existent and that and that the few individuals who crack under the constant pressure of Kafkaesque Israeli are as beyond government control as was the gunman at the Holocaust museum.

[JayWilmont]

The rocket attacks are very real - the last one was at the end of March.

The reason the suicide bombings stopped is not that Hamas and Fatah suddenly decided to be peaceful - its because the security barrier makes it too difficult for potential bombers to make it to Israel. (One of the major terrorist groups, I believe it was Hamas or Islamic Jihad, admitted this is why they switched to rocket attacks.)

Hamas does seem to have calmed down, but it is a result of the latest Israeli offensive which shook the foundations of the organization (the exiled leadership is as radical as ever, but the leadership in Gaza is suddenly much more pragmatic).

[arle]

From 2001 up until 2008 before the start of Operation Cast Lead, only eighteen Israelis died from rocket attacks. Over seven years.

From January 2007 to December 2008 -- not even two years' time and excluding Operation Cast Lead -- Israel killed 713 Gazans.

Who is the real threat to whom?

[almazza98]

Go check your facts, they calmed down BEFORE the Gaza MASSACRE, I won't dignify such attack with a military name and it definitely was not a WAR.

[thesocialalchemist]

Now I could go into detail about why Ira's case is incorrect, but these pages dont allow a lengthy rebuttal. Suffice it to say, he is. Jerusalem residents who live on the outskirts of town must keep their apartment windows barracaded because of the constant sniper fire from the Palestinian authority--does not sound like they are so peaceful does it.

[arle]

You're just page-spamming propaganda. Here -- let's hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were, about just Gaza.

"The disengagement plan [from Gaza] is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=485929

I encourage people to read the whole article and see what Israel is /really/ saying.

[Garioch]

You never even took the time to read it did you? You can take that and then take the violence perpetrated by the Israeli state and settler groups and you end up where? At the place he indicated in the article but because it doesn't follow the only acceptable orthodoxy to you which is Peaceful Israeli state and settlers and violent Palestinians you didn't even bother reading it.
You're the problem, that's what he was saying and you illustrated it perfectly there.

[phute]

Well surely windows barricaded beats having one's family home bulldozed.
You're doing very well out of other's suffering - be grateful.