View on Mideast ‘Embarrassing’
Recently former President Jimmy Carter spoke out about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as he visited Texas.
Recently former President Jimmy Carter spoke out about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as he visited Texas.
Killing Hamas leaders wounds the terrorist group, Israeli and Palestinian officials agree.
Since the intifada began two years ago, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert had boasted that Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem had opted to stay out of the violence for fear of losing Israeli social service benefits.
Arab spokesmen regularly complain about what they call \”the Israeli occupation\” of the Judea-Samaria-Gaza territories. But the truth is that there is no such \”Israeli occupation.\” To begin with, nearly all Palestinian Arabs currently live under Yasser Arafat\’s rule, not Israel\’s. Following the signing of the Oslo accords, the Israelis withdrew from nearly half of the territories, including the cities where 98.5 percent of Palestinian Arabs reside. The notion that the Palestinian Arabs are living under Israeli occupation is false. The areas from which Israel has not withdrawn are virtually uninhabited, except for the two percent where Israelis reside.
I have written about Yitzhak Frankenthal before, and I will no doubt write about him again, because the man has the gravitas to say just about whatever he wants about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.\n\nFrankenthal is one of a distinct minority of Israelis and Arabs these days who are engaged in dialogue with their political adversaries.
These days, the dialogue is on hold — though once again organizers are trying to revive what\’s left of years of intermittent effort.\n\nAttempts at creating a viable relationship between representatives of some 600,000 Jews and 500,000 Muslims in Southern California go back almost as far as the 1948-49 war between Israelis and Arabs, and, as the headlines show, have reflected the fortunes of peace and war in the Middle East.
\nWhile violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have captured the headlines in recent weeks, Jewish and Arab leaders in major American cities are working quietly to forestall confrontations between their communities.\n\nTheir efforts are marked by some common guidelines.
There have been a few Israeli films that dealt with relationships between Arabs and Jews (among them the superb prison drama \”Beyond the Walls\”), but rarely do we see an Arab movie that tells the story from the perspective of the \”other side.\”
The all-night sessions, heated confrontations and threats of walkouts that marked the recent Wye Accord negotiations had their parallel 20 years ago, when the Camp David Agreement lay the groundwork for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
What the Israeli right likes to call \”the battle for the Land of Israel\” is in danger of turning into a war of the ultras, Arab extremists vs. Jewish extremists.