Michael J. Totten Commentary of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Michael has a done a very good job of reporting issues from the Middle East and digging into them to find the core of the problem. His latest read is no different. He digs into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and describes it in small enough words that I can even comprehend what he's saying.

Here is a paragraph that sums up his article nicely:

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The “occupation” doesn’t refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The “occupation” refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is “occupied Palestine” according to most. “It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. “From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine.”
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Read the rest of Michael's thoughts here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-mother-of-all-quagmires-14423


I couldn't agree with this thought more. Palestinians, and to some extent many Arab countries, do not recognize Israel's creation in 1948; thus the war in 1948 after Israel's declaration of independence. That is the heart of the problem with the Paestinian resistance movements (i.e., Hamas, etc.). They want Jerusalem. They want Tel Aviv. They want it all from the River to the Sea. The Jewish state has no right or authority to be in Palestine and must be ejected immediately.

All of the issues that Israel constantly brings up during their negotiations for peace, are meaningless to Hamas. They shouldn't be on the table at all in their opinion.

Because of this, I find it interesting that Israel has been so civil with Palestinians at all. All of the restraint showed prior to the last Gaza op, letting humanitarian aid in the strip, phoning civilians in Gaza to warn them of attacks, allowing Palestinians to work in Israel, and allowing arab-Israelis to hold political office in Israel to represent people, etc. These very same people want Isreal destroyed, but yet Israel acts with a moral conscience and tries to be friendly and even overly helpful sometimes. I find that refreshing and actually very uplifting. In the face of almost consistent violence, Isreal still takes the higher ground against a determined enemy bent on its destruction.

I'll be the first to admit Israel has made mistakes and does inflame this situation at times. Expanding settlements in the West Bank, the wall around cities, check-points and road-blocks in the West Bank, etc., etc. These all have reasons, but do tend to incite the locals to commit a violent act against Israel.

I see the coming election in Israel as a huge indicator of what the general Israeli population wants the army to do against Palestinians. If Bibi wins (Benjamin Netanyahu), I predict a much more aggressive posture from the IDF even over what Olmert has done in the last 2 months. Make no mistake, Israeli people know that Bibi will be aggressive if chosen. If they put him in the driver's seat, it will be very interesting to see what happens in the next few months.