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Israel Still Has No Genuine Peace Partner
[The Age-Australia] Daniel Mandel - The Arab desire to dismember Israel, expressed in several wars launched by Arab states, has accompanied Israel from the moment of its birth in 1948. Israeli occupation is a symptom, not a cause, of Arab belligerence. In the 1990s, many Israelis preferred to believe that Arab determination to dismember Israel had given way to acceptance, making a land-for-peace deal possible for the first time. It was a seductive hope, yet despite Israeli flexibility, American diplomatic enthusiasm and European largesse, it failed dismally. For Palestinians, non-acceptance of Israel trumps statehood. To this day, PA maps and atlases pretend Israel does not exist, PA-salaried clerics call for the murder of Jews, TV and radio broadcasts, popular songs and poetry extol the glories of suicide attacks, textbooks teach that Israel is unfit to live, and streets and colleges are named for suicide bombers. Why the studious avoidance of the abundant evidence of Palestinian intentions and conduct? Because it is apparently difficult to accept that when people say they mean to kill Jews and eliminate Israel, they actually mean it. The writer is a fellow in history at University of Melbourne.