“It is increasingly clear that Israeli and Palestinian members of the moderate mainstream, who long for peace and accept each other’s right to statehood, must stand together against extremists on both sides. These peace partners must marginalise the rejectionists – some of whom will stop at nothing to sabotage a settlement that will require pragmatic and painful compromises. While realignments are taking place in Israeli and Palestinian society, let there be no mistake: a crucial dividing line runs through both. It is the line between those with the vision to work together for peace and the blind ideologues who will never see that the human costs of their conflict are simply intolerable.”
“Every Western pundit or official who pontificates about Palestinian terrorism”, wrote Edward Said in 2001, “needs to ask how forgetting the fact of the occupation is supposed to stop terrorism.”