The Palestinian authorities claim to desire peace, yet make inflammatory speeches (rarely reported in the English language presses) and do nothing to prevent terrorist incidents. Odd sort of peace, where one side keeps on shooting, then cries foul if the other side dares to react.
In the United States, if we were to limit where a specific ethnic group was allowed to buy or build houses, we’d call it discriminatory. But in Israel, it is considered a threat to peace by the American government and the Europeans if a Jew decides to live next door to a Palestinian?
If the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel is so evil and the cause of all the problems in the Middle East, then why was the occupation of those same territories by Egypt and Jordan for thirty years (1948-1967) not a similar evil? And if the PLO were really interested in gaining control of those regions, then why, when it was founded in 1964 (3 years before Israel won the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai in a war begun by its Arab neighbors), did it only direct its attacks against Jewish targets?
If Israel didn’t want peace, why was it so happy to give back the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty and normalized diplomatic relations -- especially when one considers that the only oil wells that Israel had then were in that peninsula?
I’m puzzled when I see otherwise reasonable people buying into the propaganda of the groups such as Hamas who are responsible for terrorist acts. Personally, I tend to be very skeptical of the pronouncements of those who have no moral qualms about killing innocent civilians.