Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"... a microcosm of what Palestine's Arabs had in mind for Israel as a whole."

Via Mick


At the end of his 1988 essay, Morris suggested that "what is now being written about Israel's past" might "in some obscure way serve the purposes of peace and reconciliation." The intifada had just erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, pushing the Palestinian issue into the center of Israeli politics. Since then, a peace process with the Palestinians began and failed, and a second, more violent uprising has erupted and burned out. By now, as Morris wrote recently in a Newsweek column, he has "come to a much bleaker opinion about the possibility of reconciliation."

The change in his views, he asserts, is strictly the result of his continuing research—the work that underlies his new book, 1948. In Israeli archives, he says, he studied statements of Arab leaders in Palestine from the 1920s on, and discovered how unwilling they were to accept either a binational state or partition between Jews and Arabs. He says he found that the Arab side had regarded the conflict with Zionism as not just a national struggle but also a "religious crusade against an infidel usurper," and that on the eve of the invasion of Palestine in 1948, Arab League Secretary General Abd al-Rahman Azzam spoke of "sweep[ing] the Jews into the sea." The new material led him to conclude that the Jews were the underdogs in 1948. It lessened his surprise when, in Morris's words, Yasser Arafat "rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's two-state proposals at Camp David in July 2000," and it made him regard each Palestinian suicide bombing as "a microcosm of what Palestine's Arabs had in mind for Israel as a whole."

4 Comments:

At 3:52 AM EDT, Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

Keep an eye out on Obama in Dresden on the anniverary of D-Day. Stupidity, Holocaust trivializtion, validation of German pathologies and anti American historical revisionism may be on the agenda.

The Next Europe Trip: Will Obama Apologize for WWII?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-next-europe-trip-will-obama-apologize-for-wwii/

 
At 9:05 AM EDT, Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

This is worth reading, too, though on another topic:

http://www.tnr.com/talkback.html?id=ec910325-4dc6-4ec6-b290-f55edee42d01

 
At 2:02 AM EDT, Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

Remember the full page General Betray-us add in the NY Times?

These (moveon.org) people (Soros funded) won the last 2 elections in the US.

Well, that is a bit overstating it, as many of those Dems elected were Blue Dogs. But overall its true.

 
At 2:06 AM EDT, Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

A point I would like to make, is that it may be that Iraq had to descend into the bloody chaos that it did, in order for the Pheonix to rise from the ashes. Or that the Sunnis wouldnt come willingly until the depths of their position were mined and they in their despair had no where else to turn, but the Americans. And lets face it, losing a war to the Americans isnt a bad place to be.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home