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Getting Past "Normalization"

[Jerusalem Post] Ray Hanania - Palestinians are too focused on the past. Progress is impossible because Palestinians have chained themselves to what they call "normalization" - in reality a commitment against genuine normalization. Palestinian activists use "normalization" to keep Palestinians in line like sheep. During my latest trip I worked closely with many Palestinian journalists. All said they wanted to attend a journalism conference in which editors and reporters of several prominent Israeli newspapers were also scheduled to speak. But they said they were pressured to stay away. "Normalization," they said, means Palestinians are not yet ready to deal with Israelis as regular people. Only as enemies. To my Palestinian compatriots I say: Why not just be honest and tell the truth. You don't want peace. You want revenge. Palestinians are suffering from several layers of occupation, and one of them is a self-imposed oppression that has become an excuse for their failings. They say they want peace with Israel, but many deep down can't accept the damage to their pride that compromise would entail. They can't accept that their efforts over the past 60 years have been futile - because of their own leadership. The ability of Palestinians to establish their own state continues to erode. That the people driving this erosion are Palestinians themselves is most troubling to me. Imprisoned by a wall of ignorance constructed by their own foolish failure to see through the rhetoric and the hatred of the past to the reality of today, Palestinians have only one option: They can either start living in reality or they can disappear in the past. The writer is a Palestinian American columnist.
2007-12-19 01:00:00
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