The Problem with Israel

Let’s be honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah, not the Iranians, and not the entire Muslim world. It’s us, the Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single greatest cause of instability, extremism, and violence in our region, is perhaps the simplest conflict in the world to resolve. For almost twenty years, since the PLO’s recognition of Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (the “Green Line” separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza), every Palestinian leader, backed by large majorities of the Palestinian population, has presented Israel with a most generous offer: a Jewish state on 78 percent of Israel/Palestine in return for a Palestinian state on just 22 percent—the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. In fact, this is a proposition supported by a large majority of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. As reported in Ha’aretz (January 18, 2005), Some sixty three percent of the Palestinians support the proposal that after the establishment of the state of Palestine and a solution to all the outstanding issues—including the refugees and Jerusalem—a declaration will be issued recognizing the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state as the state of the Palestinian people … On the Israeli side, seventy percent supported the proposal for mutual recognition. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.