abunimah.org
<<< The excuse has always been the claim that Israel is surrounded by states that want to destroy it. Yet for more than twenty years Israel has had a peace treaty with Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, and since 1994 with Jordan, the country with the longest shared border. Syria has declared repeatedly its intentions to make peace once its occupied territory has been returned, and Lebanon has said it will follow suit. The PLO explicitly recognized the right of Israel to exist within secure boundaries in 1993, a decision ratified at the behest of the United States and in the presence of President Clinton in Gaza in 1999. From Morocco to Qatar, other Arab states took great political risks to establish trade and diplomatic relations with Israel opening the region up to Israelis as never before.
In short, Israel is entirely surrounded by states that have recognized it, made peace with it, or declared more than reasonable terms for doing so, and yet Israel has still not recognized that the Palestinians have national rights or indeed any rights at all and still continues its policy of expanding on and colonizing occupied Arab land while refusing to negotiate. >>> |
