[San Jose Mercury News] Victor Davis Hanson - While the names of Palestinian terrorist organizations multiply over the years, the agenda of destroying Israel remains mostly unchanged. There has been no resolution to the last 40 years of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians because Israel after 1967 has decided not to return all of its battle-won territories in the West Bank until the Palestinians there accept Israel's right to exist. Israel has felt that if it gives all the territory back, too many Palestinians will see that not as magnanimity but as a sign of weakness, and we would be back to square one before 1967: Israel inside its 1948 borders - with yet another new generation of Palestinians promising to finish the job and push the Jews into the sea. Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes tried to do the same so-called "land for peace" deal: Israel is supposed to go back to something approaching the pre-1967 borders, and the Palestinians, with their brand-new state on the West Bank, must promise that this time they will really let Israel be. Good luck. The writer is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
2009-02-06 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive