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Why Abbas Can't Sign a Permanent Agreement with Israel

(Gatestone Institute) Harold Rhode and Joseph Raskas - Palestinians say that, based on Muslim doctrine, Palestinian land reaches "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea" - that is, over all of what is now Israel. In their view, Tel Aviv is illegally occupied territory just as much as any of the settlements in the West Bank. Americans seem to believe that all problems are solvable; if there is no solution, it simply means one has not tried hard enough. Americans generally are prepared to compromise on particular points to attain other points that are more important to them. But in the Middle East, the concept of compromise is inconceivable in the winner-take-all culture of that part of the world. For many in the Middle East, perceived wrongdoings are never in the past and the past is never over. Wrongs - such as the Christian conquest of Muslim Spain, regardless of when they occurred - must be righted. Given the choice between war and shame, Middle Easterners will often choose war, even if that choice will result in both war and shame. Today, any Palestinian Muslim leader who would sign a final peace agreement recognizing as Jewish any part of what had once been part of the Muslim world would be violating a core tenet of Islam. And any Palestinian leader who agreed to surrender land held in trust by the Muslim waqf would not only be humiliated, but very likely assassinated. Muslims cannot ever, under any conditions, cede territory regarded as rightfully belonging to Muslims to non-Muslims.
2014-05-14 00:00:00
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