Word: palestinians
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...Many intelligence professionals eschew torture because they know that it tends to yield the answers that the suspect thinks his interrogators want to hear - not necessarily the truth. In some respects, there may be a similar effect in trying to throttle the Palestinians into submission. It's not inconceivable that at some point Hamas might find a formula for recognizing Israel in order to put food on Palestinian tables. But such a recognition would speak more to the boot on their necks than to any change in their hearts...
...such collective punishment may be as misguided as it is cruel; even if it did work, any "recognition" achieved this way would mean little in the pursuit of peace. An authoritative Palestinian polling organization last week released telling findings on Palestinian public opinion in the West Bank and Gaza. It found 54% of voters dissatisfied with Hamas's performance in government, the figure rising to 69% when it came to financial matters such as payment of salaries. Only 38% would vote for Hamas in an election now. But when asked whether Hamas should submit to the Western demand that...
...question of recognizing Israel is difficult for Hamas or any other Palestinian organization, ultimately, because of the meaning of Israel in the Palestinian national story. In the Western and Israeli narrative, Israel's creation is seen as redress for centuries of Jewish suffering in Europe culminating in the Holocaust. In the Palestinian and Arab narrative, Israel's creation meant the violent displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and another Arab humiliation at Western hands. So, while May 15 is celebrated by Israelis as Yom Haatzmaut (independence day), the Palestinians mark the same day as the somber...
...idea of the triumph of one people being the tragedy of another is eloquently captured in Sandy Tolan's book, The Lemon Tree - essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the difficulty in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tolan chronicles the true story of Dalia Eshkenazi, whose family flees post-Holocaust Bulgaria in 1948 to live the Zionist dream of building a Jewish state in the Holy Land. The new Israeli government provides them with an abandoned Arab house in the town of Ramla, in which she grows up. One summer morning in 1967, she's sitting in the garden...
...clash of narratives described by Tolan that ultimately fuels the controversy over Hamas recognizing Israel. Hamas's dramatic election victory came precisely because the Palestinian electorate judged Fatah to have failed. To simply demand, as Israel and the Western powers are doing, that Hamas now echo Fatah's symbolic recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence is pointless. Fatah recognized the State of Israel only because it had become clear to them that Israel was an irreversible historical fact. But that certainly did not stop Fatah's rank and file from taking up arms during the intifada that began...