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Still No Peace Partner

(Jerusalem Post) Zalman Shoval - David Ben-Gurion realized that our adversaries' concept of peace differed from what he later called "true peace," meaning recognition not only of Israel's de-facto physical and legal existence, but of its moral right to exist. Most of the initiatives to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed because of the refusal of the Palestinians and most parts of the Arab world to recognize the Jewish people's right to a national state in a region that they consider to be an exclusive Arab and Muslim domain. Often their refusal is coupled with the hope that the ultimate fate of the Jewish state will be like that of the Crusader kingdom - it will eventually disappear. The unfortunate but inescapable conclusion is that as long as the Arabs, and principally the Palestinians, do not accept, psychologically and politically, the reality and the legitimacy of the existence of Israel as the Jewish nation state, they will not be true partners for peace. There are those who remind us of the so-called Saudi peace initiative of 2002 - conveniently forgetting that at the later Arab League summit in Beirut, the "initiative" became a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, including in such matters as the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and Syria's demand that Israel withdraw from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
2012-06-29 00:00:00
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