Middle East Violence: Palestinian View
By Ali Abunimah
Co-founder of Electronicintifada.net
Washington Post
13 June, 2003
Terrorism has struck again in the Middle East. A suicide bomber blew himself up on on a bus in Jerusalem Wednesday, killing at least 16 people and wounding nearly 70. Then, an hour later, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles at a car in Gaza City, killing two Hamas officials and at least five other people and wounding 30.
President Bush condemned the Jerusalem bombing and urged all nations to stop financing terror groups and "isolate those who hate so much that they are willing to kill."
What about the road map for peace? Ali Abunimah, co-founder of electronicIntifada.net, a news Web site about Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, will be online from Jerusalem on Thursday, June 12 at 1 p.m. ET,, to discuss the latest Middle East violence and what it means to the peace process.
Abunimah is a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Jordan Times and Haaretz, among others. He has been featured on local, national and international radio and television programs including NPR, CNN, the BBC and others.
Below is the transcript.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York, N.Y.: Do you believe in Israel's right to exist?
Ali Abunimah: Of course. The road map contains the vision -- accepted by the US, the EU, the UN the Arab League and the Palestinians of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. Unfortunately Israel rejects this by continuing to colonize and occupy the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the places in which the Palestinian state must be. No Israeli government has yet recognized the Palestinians' inalienable rights in their own homeland.
At the same time, I am sure you are concerned as I am that the Israeli cabinet today contains prominent ministers who not only reject the Palestinians right to statehood in their own land, but openly call for the destruction of Palestinian society and the physical expulsion of all the Palestinians. This, as you know, fits the international legal definition of genocide.
I referred to this last time I was on, but I have written an extensive article laying out my vision of peace, equality and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians: "Two States or One?"
I invite you to read it.
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Alexandria, Va.: Are you angry that Israel is firing American-made missiles from American-made helicopters at the leaders of the suicide-bombing organization Hamas?
Ali Abunimah: I am very angry that anyone is getting killed, including the victims of the suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem. I am furious that Sharon has killed so many Palestinian civilians in the past week and shows no signs of slowing down.As a taxpayer, I am certainly angry that Israel has used US-made and bought weapons to kill more than 2,500 Palestinians in the past two and a half years, the vast majority of them unarmed civilians, and hundreds of them children. I am also angry that for decades Israel has used US-made and paid for bulldozers and weapons to steal Palestinian land in the occupied territories and hand it over to Jewish colonists. These are all activists that prevent peace and fuel conflict. I am angry that the US, while it says it supports peace, helps to pay for conflict.
Of course the death squad killings that Israel engages in are illegal under international law, apart from being totally ineffective at producing security. As has been demonstrated time and again, such gangster tactics only produce the opposite.
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Toronto, Canada: Do you feel that the PA has attempted to comply with its immediate obligations under the road-map -- namely taking steps to stop the attacks on Israelis? If so, what steps have been taken by the PA -- other than attempting to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas?
Ali Abunimah: The road map calls explicitly on BOTH sides to immediately halt violence, and calls on Israel to halt "attacks on Palestinians everywhere." I feel that the Palestinian Authority was engaged in trying to get other Palestinian factions to agree to a ceasefire. Certainly the US felt they had fulfilled their obligations so far. But Israel was undermining them from the start. If your expectation was that the PA with no effective security forces (because they have been destroyed by Israel) could go out and to the job that the Israeli army is not capable of doing, then you are not being realistic or honest. Everyone understood that the best chance for an end to the violence was through negotiations and that the PA needed some time to do that.
Unfortunately widespread sloppy and inaccurate reporting in the US has given the impression that a 'new round' of violence began only when Palestinian fighters attacked occupation forces in Gaza and the West Bank on Sunday, June 8, killing 5 of them. In fact, there has not been a single day since the Aqaba summit in which Israel has not carried out violent attacks on Palestinians. In the three days before and during the Sharm al-Sheikh and Aqaba summits, Israeli occupation forces attacked and injured dozens of civilians in Nablus and nearby Balata refugee camps. Many of the injured were children. The day after the Aqaba summit, June 5, an occupation death squad murdered two Hamas activists near Tulkarm. It was after this attack that Hamas announced it was cutting off ceasefire talks. And throughout the period, the occupier continued to demolish homes, throwing dozens of Palestinian men, women, and children into the streets.
I have documented Israel's campaign of violence against Palestinians since the Aqaba summit and the media's failure to cover it in an article entitled, US media ignore Israeli violence after Aqaba summit. You can also read meticulous accounts of the Israeli violence during the period June 5-11 from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza (PCHR). To summarize their report for the week of June 5-11, 20 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 4 women and a child were killed. More than 40 homes were destroyed and indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian residential areas continued unabated.
Why does no one ask Israel to fulfill its obligations as well?
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Baltimore, Md.: Your website encourages Americans to serve as Human Shields in the New Age Conflict being conducted against the Israeli people.
What is the international standing of human shields and how does the totalitarian Palestinian Authority treat the New Age Warriors?Ali Abunimah: We have never encouraged Americans to serve as "human shields." We have reported on Americans who have chosen to go to Palestine and engage in non-violent resistance to the military occupation, and we have told the story of Rachel Corrie, a brave American murdered by the Israeli army as she, completely unarmed, tried to block the demolition of yet another Palestinian home. We have also told the story of Tom Hurndall, a 21 year-old Briton shot in the head by the occupation army as he, unarmed, escorted children to safety in Gaza. We have also told the story of Brian Avery, another American, shot in the face at close range, as he too stood with Palestinians, unarmed. Americans need to know these stories, and they need to know how little value the occupying army puts on their lives and the lives of the Palestinians they are trying to protect.
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Baltimore, Md.: If you were in the Israeli government and there were over 10,000 attempted and successful terrorist attacks against the people of the country, what would you do to protect your people?
Ali Abunimah: For a start, I wouldn't maintain tens of thousands of foreign troops and hundreds of thousands of colonists in someone else country, where they have no business whatsoever.
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Holtsville, N.Y.: Why is it that the West Bank & Gaza have to be totally free of Jews in your view? Can't there be a minority Jewish population in a Palestine just as there is a minority Arab population in Israel?
Ali Abunimah: The settlements are wrong not because the people living in them are Jews, but because they are living on someone else' land in violation of international law -- land they seized by force.
I have no objection whatsoever to Jews living in a Palestinian state, providing they live there under the same laws as everyone else, and obtain their homes lawfully, not through colonialism.
If you want a situation where any Jew can go and live lawfully anywhere in the Palestinian state that is absolutely fine as long as any Palestinian, especially refugees, can return to live anywhere in Israel. That after all is only fair.
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White Plains, N.Y.: When Hamas uses the terms "Occupier" or "Occupation", this means the end to the State of Israel. Do you think that all of Hamas (and other such terror groups) have to be completely eliminated or can they be co-opted into the political process such as done with the IRA in Ireland?
ThanksAli Abunimah: While I have said before that I consider Hamas' attacks on Israeli civilians to be reprehensible, it is not clear that Hamas means the end of Israel when they say occupation. If you listen to their statements carefully, it is clear that there is a pragmatic wing in Hamas that considers a settlement along the 1967 lines possible. This is certainly what I heard during Ted Koppel's interview with Hamas spokesman Ismail Abu Shanab on ABC's Nightline last week. Nevertheless, right now, for practical purposes, Hamas have made a strategic partnership with Sharon against peace.
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Allentown, Pa.: If Hamas repeatedly commits violent acts, and repeatedly expresses its desire to commit more acts of violence, why on earth shouldn't Israel attack them?
Ali Abunimah: There is a consensus across the US press, from many in the Bush administration, and even within Israel that Sharon's attempted murder of the Hamas spokesman Abdul 'Aziz al-Rantisi on June 10 was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the road map and derail it. It did not escape notice in Washington that the murder attempt came AFTER Hamas had announced that it was going to resume talks with the Palestinian appointed prime minister Mahmoud Abbas about a ceasefire. This is what angered Bush so much. It is clear that the prospect of a ceasefire and indeed of peace terrifies Sharon. But if it is clear that Sharon wanted to provoke Hamas, it was stupid, indeed criminal of Hamas to respond to that provocation with the suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem. That attack, like all violence directed at civilians is morally reprehensible. That suicide bombing served only the interests of Sharon, who is using it as an excuse to intensify the violence that he began.
I think the attack that Sharon ordered earlier today in Gaza, which killed 7 more people, including two children, one of them a baby with a bottle, puts it beyond question that he has no desire or intention to allow the peace process to work. Time and again, whenever there is a glimmer of hope, Sharon or Hamas do something to sabotage it.
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Washington, D.C.: Do you think if Israel did not retaliate after a terrorist attack that Israel would build a better standing in the world and might get support from Arab/Moslem countries to stop terrorism?
Ali Abunimah: The way for Israel to have a better standing in the Arab world is for it to make a strategic decision for peace, for it to end the occupation (to use Sharon's term) of the Palestinian people.
The Arab League unanimously adopted an initiative to to live in peace and normal relations with Israel if Israel ends its occupation and allows Palestinians their freedom -- real freedom in a real state free from colonies and foreign control. Despite everything, Israel today has peace with Egypt and Jordan, and Lebanon and Syria have repeatedly declared their readiness to make peace once their occupied land is fully returned. From Morocco to Oman, Arabic countries opened their doors to Israelis when they thought the peace process was making progress. Unfortunately, despite these far-reaching Arab peace initiatives, there is no Israeli partner to speak to. Only Sharon, who wants to do nothing but continue to expand the colonies.
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Arlington, Va.: Do you think the Israeli government would be carrying out operations today had there been no suicide attacks against Israeli civilians?
Ali Abunimah: When did suicide attacks begin? Sometime in the early 1990s? Let's say 1993. Okay, so from 1967 until 1993 Israel carried out devastating attacks against Palestinians in the occupied territories.
During the first Intifada from December 1987 to September 1993 Israel killed more than 1,400 unarmed Palestinian civilians. In the same period Palestinians killed 100 Israeli civilians.
Let us repeat, Israel is not stealing Palestinians' land, demolishing their homes and handing it over to settlers who openly declare that they are God's 'special people' (and therefore superior to other humans), because there is violence. Rather, there is violence because Israel is stealing Palestinians' land, demolishing their homes and handing it over to settlers and using extreme violence to do this. Everyone in the world understands that as long as occupation exists, there will be violence. And this, unfortunately, is what the Americans are learning now in Iraq.
You can hide from this reality as long as you want to.
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Belmont, Calif.: Dear Mr. Abunimah,
I've followed your columns with interest for several years now. In your opinion, what is the most important thing that American supporters of Palestine can do to advance (or preserve) the peace process in the region?Ali Abunimah: It is important to continue to press the message that peace based on equality between Israelis and Palestinians is possible. We must continue to stress -- as we have more and more successfully -- that as long as one group of people rules another group by military force and occupation, there will always be conflict. We must explain they by providing unconditional military and economic aid to an Israeli government that includes avowed ethnic cleansers, we are helping neither Israelis nor Palestinians who desperately want peace.
I believe this message is getting through, which is why the message of Israel's apologists is becoming more and more desperate and incoherent.
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Baltimore, Md.: You seem to feel that people like Ariel Sharon are incapable of change. Do you feel the same way about Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen both of whom spent most of their lives as terrorist leaders?
Ali Abunimah: I do not believe that individuals are the problem. AS you would know if you read any of my articles, I have no love for Arafat or Abu Mazen, and much to say against them both.
The problem is structural. Between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea -- historic Palestine, or Eretz Yisrael or whatever you please to call it -- there are roughly equal numbers of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. The problem is that while Israeli Jews hold a near monopoly on military, economic and political power, Palestinians are completely disenfranchised and subjugated. The 3.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories are not even citizens of the state that rules them by military force. They are, in fact, the world's largest group of stateless people.
You can transfer this unjust and untenable situation anywhere in the world and to any two groups of people, and the result will be conflict and violence. If Sharon wants to change and like South Africa's FW De Klerk dismantle the system of oppression that is in place, then he too can be a peacemaker. It doesn't seem likely though, does it?
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College Park, Md.: Hamas targeted largely military units in days before Rantisi's assassination attempt. If Hamas does begin to attack clearly military targets, would this undermine Sharon's attempts to derail the path to peace?
Ali Abunimah: I speculate that by attacking the military units on June 8, Hamas wanted to make the point that it would never accept an equation between attacks on civilians on the one hand (which are unacceptable), and attacks on soldiers in occupied territory (which are legitimate resistance) on the other.
They felt that the Palestinian PM, MAhmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) had equated the two.
Had they been wise, they would not have fallen into Sharon's trap by responding to the murder attempt on Rantisi by killing Israeli civilians. But they are not wise. Their behavious in this regard is criminal and stupid. And it is precisely what Sharon was aiming to provoke. Sharon is the only beneficiary of the horrible bombing in Jerusalem, just as Hamas benefits from the carnage that Sharon is perpetrating now in Gaza.
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Silver Spring, Md.: Your continual drum beat is for Israel to abandon the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. I agree that Israel should -- but I do not think it should do so without any guarantee that Israel will live in peace. What can you point to that indicates Israel can live in peace within its own borders if it did what you insist it do?
Ali Abunimah: Well, everyone has agreed to this. The Palestinians, the Arab League, the EU, the UN, the US. Don't you think there is some guarantee there? Apart from this, Israel is obviously strong enough to defend itself.
What is the alternative? Is it for Israel to say to the Palestinians 'we will keep colonizing your land and brutalizing you until you show us that you love us." This is nonsense!
Israel has had peace with Egypt for decades, with Jordan for a decade, and defacto calm on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights since the mid-1970s. Peace is possible, but you can;t have peace before you end the occupation, because the occupation is fuel for the conflict.
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Washington, D.C.: What is the difference between a bomb carried by a human and detonated in the middle of an innocent crowd and a bomb carried by an airplane and dropped on an innocent crowd? Why is it that one is called terrorism and other is not?
Ali Abunimah: To the innocent victims, there is no difference. The difference is purely political. The powerful always get to decide who is called a "terrorist" and who is not.
Israel complains about "terrorism" but doesn't like us to remember that the original Middle East terrorists were its future prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who in the years before Israel's establishment carried out atrocities against Palestinians, the British and UN officials.
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Ann Arbor, Mich.: When a Palistinian detonates himself, killing Israeli civilians, Palestinians celebrate the new "martyr" and are pleased. When Israelis kill Palestinian civilians, no Israelis celebrate; instead, they debate how best to avoid such deaths while pursuing those that would kill Israelis. What should we conclude from this?
Ali Abunimah: I have seen film of Israeli standing on rooftops in the settlement of Gilo cheering as Israeli shells rained down on Palestinian homes in the neighboring town of Beit Jala (on whose stolen land Gilo is built).
I have also seen pictures of Israeli children carrying signs given to them by their parents which say "Mavet la 'Aravim" (Death to the Arabs) and I have seen pictures of Jewish settler parents dressing their children up as the murderer Baruch Goldstein on Purim.
All of these things have their mirror image on the Palestinian side, and I think these sort of distortions and phenomena are produced by the conflict. When we end the conflict on just terms, I am certain these things will go away.
If you prefer to believe that Jews somehow are naturally better, more noble human beings than Palestinians, then you are simply adopting a racist position.
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Bethesda, Md.: It has been often noted that the Israeli public would be more than happy to reach a return virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza and support a contiguous and vital Palestinian state, Sharon or no Sharon. How comfortable are you that the Palestinian people would be really willing to reach a peace that does not upset the current demography of the Jewish state inside the Green Line?
Ali Abunimah: I have answered the latter part of your question earlier. But obviously Palestinians are not going to be persuaded that Israelis truly want peace, when every single day Israel is out there building new settlements. This is why Phase One of the road map requires Israel to immediately freeze all new colony construction. So far Israel has refused to do that, and has in fact announced plans for major new settlement construction.
So we will know that Israel is serious about peace when it stops building colonies on Palestinian land.
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Montreal, Canada: Isn't it true that this situation would never have been created had the Arabs not rejected and attacked Israel in 1948?
Ali Abunimah: No it isn't. The UN partition plan of 1947 awarded Jews 54% of Palestine even though they comprised less than a third of the population (and almost all recent arrivals) and owned only 4% of the land.
Palestinians, the indigenous people of the country, were to be given less than half of their own country even though they owned more than 90% of the land and were a vast majority.
Moreover, the "Jewish State" delineated by the partition plan would had a huge number of Arabs in it, which led to fears that if Palestinians accepted the partition, the Palestinians in the borders of the "Jewish State" would be forced out of their homes.
As it happened, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes, and most of these occurred between December 1947 and May 1948. As you know, the Arab states did not intervene in the conflict until May 16, long after much of the ethnic cleansing had already occurred, and their intervention did not change the outcome.
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Washington, D.C.: Israel's defenders suggest the 2000 pullout from Lebanon was seen as a sign of weakness by the Arabs and, as I understand it, rocket attacks from Lebanon on Israel are continuing today. They say a pullout from the West Bank would result in the same, are they wrong?
Ali Abunimah: You have your facts wrong. Lebanese are not firing rockets into Israel today even though Israel continues to violate Israeli airspace.
There have been a number of Lebanese resistance attacks in the Shabaa Farms area which lies on the border of Lebanon and Syria, and is by no account in Israel.
The point is that the border between Israel and Lebanon has been largely quiet, and more importantly Lebanese have been freed from a horrible foreign military occupation.
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Minneapolis, Minn.: Since the palestinians are the ones who rejected statehood in '48, the arab nations are responsible for the '67 and '72 wars, and the one who rejected the 2000 peace agreements, Who are you saying doesn't want peace? On one hand you condemn Sharon for having cabinet ministers who do not favor a palestinian state, but then you fault Israel for not trying to work with Hamas and Arafat who seek to actively kill any and all Israelis
Ali Abunimah: You say: "On one hand you condemn Sharon for having cabinet ministers who do not favor a palestinian state, but then you fault Israel for not trying to work with Hamas and Arafat who seek to actively kill any and all Israelis."
What I say is yes, there is a substantial number of people in Israel, including in the government who openly prefer ethnic cleansing to peace. But despite that, I say let's make peace, because we must not give those fanatics and extremists in Israel a veto over the future. And I say the same as far as Palestinian extremists are concerned. The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians want peace, and the vast majority of Americans support a just and fair peace. Why should we allow extremists in Israel or among the Palestinians to stand in the way of that?
________________________________________________Washington, D.C.: If we assume for a moment that the US audience is largely misled by the media and has perhaps adopted a "racist" view of Palestinians, what would you suggest as a means to rectify that? It seems we have very different points of view and sadly, I am not certain the gap can be bridged. However, where life exists there is hope. How would you or what would you suggest as a means to clarify a media-free impression of the Palestinians?
Ali Abunimah: We are trying to do that at The Electronic Intifada. It is our modest, proactive attempt to bridge the gap.
But beyond that, I really believe that the message is getting through. In my experience Americans are generally a fair-minded and moderate people and the message is getting through that peace requires justice for the Palestinians and cannot be bought at the expense of the Palestinians. This is why support for Israel has been dropping and support for a real Palestinian state has been rising.
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Beltsville, MD: I look a Jersalem and lose a lot faith in religion and mankind. The reason is because this is supposed to be a very holy city to three main religions yet it is the heart of violence. Do you ever look at this situation and wonder how all these supposed followers of God (jews and muslims) could blow each other up on a daily basis? I think life is God's test to see if human beings can overcome their differences like race and religion - when I look at modern day Jerusalem, I feel we are failing the test. The two sides have been taking an eye for an eye for so long that everyone is now blind. Everyone has an idea about how to solve the issues - in reality, do you think it's ever going to end peacefully? Sorry for the long winded post - I hope you reply.
Ali Abunimah: I think the worst thing we can do is inject religion into this conflict. This is a conflict, which at its origins is about land and rights. If everyone is free and equal, then who cares who worships which way and how? For me Jerusalem is the easiest part of the whole thing. It can be shared by two people, and those who consider it holy should all be welcome there. Unfortunately Israel is the only party that today insists on exclusive control of the city. That is a mistake.
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Washington, D.C.: Given the fact that under international law the "occupied territories" are exactly that – occupied by an invading army – and that resistance against a foreign occupation force is legitimate under international law; why don't Palestinians limit themselves to attacking legitimate military targets, such as Israeli armed forces and armed settlers?
Killing innocent Israeli citizens is not legitimate under international law, of course, and is counter-productive. Nobody sane can deny that.
So why don't Palestinians police themselves and reign in the factions that are engaged in counter-productive tactics?
I understand fully that after so many Israeli atrocities after such a long period of time, reigning in the militants is not easy. But is it impossible?
Ali Abunimah: I agree with you completely. The right to resist military occupation is well established in international law, and certainly applies to the Palestinians.
Why do they attack civilians? I can only speculate, but probably because civilians are soft targets. If you are weak and have few weapons, it is much easier to hit civilians than take out an Israeli tank or helicopter. If Palestinians were given the kind of sophisticated weapons that Israel has, they could probably resist militarily more effectively.
But I also think that conflict leads to a sort of moral corruption. People start to see only their own pain. So often we hear supporters of Israel complain that 700 Israelis have been killed over the past few years while ignoring the fact that three times as many Palestinians have been killed by Israel. Or if they don't ignore it, they try to justify it. And at the same time you hear some Palestinians trying to use the fact that Israel has targeted and killed so many Palestinians to retaliate in kind. Its morally bankrupt.
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New York, N.Y.: Arafat called the bus attack in Jerusalem as a 'terrorist' attack. Do you agree with this categorization? Why did Arafat also call Rantisi to wish him well? Hamas took credit for the bus attack. Why would Arafat care about a leader who's organization admitted to the terrorist attack?
Thanks for your time today.
Ali Abunimah: I call the suicide bombing yesterday in Jerusalem just what it was: a murderous and morally reprehensible attack on innocent civilians.
I do not use the word "terrorism" because it is a political term, not a descriptive term. I prefer to use precise, descriptive language as I did in the sentence above.
"Terrorism" has become a catch-all term, which is used to denote identity not actions, and I do not use it even to describe any of the rephrensible and murderous attacks that Israel carries out on Palestinian civilians.
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Washington DC: Mr. Abunimah, in an earlier answer you said you preferred to leave religion out of the equation. I would suggest religion is the cause of the problem and as such cannot be so easily tossed aside. The Jews feel as though they are in a land promised to them by God, that they are infact the chosen people of their God and the Arab view is not dissimilar. It goes back to Ishmael and Jacob both being sons of Isaac and each side claiming legitimacy as the elder son. How then can you say in total honesty religion should be dismissed? To me that smacks of hypocrisy when we say such a thing and yet make martyrs out of suicide bombers.
Ali Abunimah: This conflict does not go back to Ishmael and Jacob or anything else. It started when a group of largely secular European Jews decided that it would be a good idea to move millions of other European Jews to a country that was already inhabited and set up a state there in which the European Jews would be the ruling class.
Palestinian Jews, who always lived in Palestine along with Palestinian Muslims and Christians never had problems with eachother before Zionism introduced the concept that Arab Jews should be competitors to Arab Christians and Muslims.
Over time the conflict is becoming more and more religious on both sides and that makes a solution much harder.
If I am equal before the law, what do I care what someone else believes?
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Washington, D.C.: You write:
What is the alternative? Is it for Israel to say to the Palestinians 'we will keep colonizing your land and brutalizing you until you show us that you love us." This is nonsense!Flip that around:
Is it for the Palestinians to say to the Israelis 'we will keep blowing up your shopping malls and restaurants and buses full of women and children until you show us that you love us" ? That is also nonsense.Ali Abunimah: We agree!
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Edwardsville, Ill.: If the United Nations and/or the United States forced Israel to abide by the land boundries of UN Resolution 242 would that satisfy the Palestinians and end the violence?
Ali Abunimah: Thatis what the Palestinians and the Arab League have explicitly accepted, and what international law requires.
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Washington, D.C.: You have written that after Oslo, Israel had agreed to move towards the creation of a Palestian state, with only "technical formalities" to be worked out. However, I believe that every attempt to move towards peace, and every plan that has been presented, has ignored key issues such as the final status of Jerusalem and the "right of return" of Palestinians who once lived within Israel's borders. Do you think that a plan, like the current "road map" can succeed when the negotiators continue to leave such critical issues to be worked out at some point in the future? It seems to me that most peace efforts (including the current one) have been little more than political plans to make leaders appear to be peacemakers, when in fact all of these plans have been doomed to fail, leaving future leaders have to work out the really tough issues.
Ali Abunimah: You raise a very good and very tough question. We should have no illusions about the difficulty of many of the final status issues. But my view is that if there is any chance to narrow the differences, then it can come only after Phase One of the road map is implemented in full. Because this will give Israelis and Palestinians the guarantee that they can live without the fear of being killed by the other, and it will guarantee to Palestinians that Israel will not continue to gobble up what remains of their country with settlements while endless negotiations go on. So far, however, Israel refuses to adopt and implement the first phase of the road map, so we are sadly, unlikely ever to know if the gaps can be narrowed.
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Kemp Mill, Md.: You've twice dodged this questions:
Why don't the Palestinian leaders arrest the Hamas terrorists?
Ali Abunimah: I have explained this several times before. The Palestinian Authority cannot launch a civil war among Palestinians, and does not have the means to do so anyway, since Israel has systematically destroyed the security services and murdered their members.
What you are asking is that the decimated Palestinians polcie themselves on behalf of Israel while Israel continues to colonize Palestinian land. This is politically and physically impossible.
The demand that the Palestinian Authority succeed where the mighty Israeli army has failed is a demand designed to guarantee failure and maintain the status quo.
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Ali Abunimah: Well, we are out of time. Thank you again for your attention. I hope that next time we meet it will be to discuss better news, perhaps real progres towards peace that Americans, most Israelis and most Palestinians desperately want.