[New York Times] Jeffrey Goldberg - In March, Muhammad Dahlan, a former chief of the PA's secret police organizations and once a tacit ally of the CIA, defended Fatah from the charge, made by Hamas, that it had previously recognized Israel's right to exist. Dahlan said: "For the 1,000th time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather we are asking Hamas not to do so, because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist." Dahlan's comment helps buttress the main argument of Benny Morris's new book, One State, Two States, which says that Arab rejectionism is so profound a force that only the terminally obtuse could believe that Palestinians will ever acquiesce to a state comprised solely of the West Bank and Gaza. Morris sees the culprit as the implacable fanaticism of Arab Islamists, who are unwilling to accept a Jewish national presence in what is thought of as Arab land, a position that hasn't changed since 1920. Subsequent events that seemingly contradict this - most notably the PLO's ostensible recognition of Israel in 1988 - have been staged for the benefit of gullible Westerners, Morris writes.
2009-05-27 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive