If you want to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a nutshell, just look at the New York Times editorial pages of November 1, 2006. Amazingly enough, the Times ran a full op-ed column by a top official of the Hamas party, Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Yousef repeated the same offer Hamas has been making for years. In Arabic it's called a "hudna.
As Yousef told the British newspaper, The Guardian, Hamas leaders can't say that publicly because "there is no support in Gaza and the West Bank for recognition of Israel, and he could not propose such a change at present. 'If I did, I would end up like Michael Collins,' he said, referring to the Irish republican leader assassinated in 1922 for accepting an Irish two-state solution. 'We need to change people's minds on how they look at the conflict, and it will take time. The climate will change if we have a period of peace.'"
But right-wing Israelis, who get most of the space in the Times' letters to the editor, simply won't believe that. They won't recognize the risk that Hamas leaders are taking by getting ahead of their own public on the path to peace. They would rather hold on to their unshakable faith that Jews are surrounded by anti-semitic enemies bent only on destroying them.
Sadly, opinion polls show that fear-based right-wing view growing among Israeli Jews. They would rather hold on to their self-image as helpless victims than take any meaningful step toward peace.
And the Israeli public relations machinery is working as effectively as ever to shape U.S. public opinion, too. The latest Hamas offer of hudna, like the ones before it, have been totally ignored in the U.S. media. If Israel had offered a radical new peace plan for the Middle East, it would have been headline news everywhere. But Ahmed Yousef's proposal got absolutely zero coverage. So very few Americans are even aware that the Palestinians have once again tried to push open the door to peace, only to have the Israelis slam it shut again.
