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The Fantasy Middle East
(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - In the fantasy Middle East there is a robust Palestinian peace camp eager for a two-state solution. In the real Middle East, the real Mahmoud Abbas spurned Israel's offer of a Palestinian state in 2008, then refused for years to take part in talks with Israel, confident that Washington would pressure Israel into making more concessions. Yet instead of negotiating in good faith at last, Abbas wants still more up-front concessions, a demand he repeated on Monday. What drives the conflict is not a hunger for Palestinian statehood, but a deep-rooted rejection of Jewish statehood. Palestinian leaders heatedly insist that they will never agree to any such thing. PA negotiator Saeb Erekat complains: "When you say, 'Accept Israel as a Jewish state,' you are asking me to change my narrative." Just so. That narrative - that Jews are aliens in the Middle East, and Jewish sovereignty over any territory is intolerable - is precisely what must change if this conflict is to be resolved.