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Israelis Have Stopped Believing Peace Is Possible Anytime Soon
(Commentary) Evelyn Gordon - Not so long ago, the peace process was Israel's top voting issue. But in a poll published last month, self-identified centrists and rightists both ranked the peace process dead last among six suggested issues of concern. Even self-identified leftists ranked it only third. There are many well-known reasons why Israelis have stopped believing peace is possible anytime soon. They range from the failure of every previous round of negotiations, to Palestinians' refusal to negotiate at all for most of the last decade, to the fact that every bit of land Israel has so far turned over to the Palestinians - both in Gaza and the West Bank - has become a hotbed of anti-Israel terror. Israel's ostensible peace partner, the Palestinian Authority, educates its people to an almost pathological hatred of Israel. Peace can be made with people who want peace. But it can't be made with people who think that working with Jews to improve the Palestinian economy is a "betrayal of the homeland." As long as this is true, prospects for peace will remain nonexistent.