Another nes (miracle)

What are the odds that Bennie Begin and Alan Dershowitz would see virtually eye to eye on ... anything?  Let alone the logistics of and chances for peace in the Middle East?

Hey, it's Hannukah!

Begin, in an interview with JPost editor David Horovitz:

What can we do about it? We [put aside] Gaza, and the PLO negotiates with Israel about a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria? Now I think that the idea of a viable, independent, PLO-run state in Samaria, Judea and Gaza is an oxymoron. But Gaza is an important part of that oxymoron - it's a ballast, economically and politically, at any rate. You want to see two-thirds of the solution being created? For what? Israeli concessions, and no end to the conflict, and no end to the war, and no end to the launching of rockets? I think it's foolhardy even to think about such a "solution."

So you ask me, what then? And I ask, what do you offer? The other side doesn't favor the two-state solution - two states for two peoples. I have never heard the PLO leadership using the phrase "two states for two peoples." It appeared once, I think, in a Quartet resolution in June last year. It disappeared in their Moscow resolution in March of this year.

The Palestinians don't use [that phrase] because there aren't two peoples in the equation from their point of view. You'll find this in the resolution of the PLO Revolutionary Committee that you reported this week - after their deliberations last weekend, they stated that they oppose a religion having a state. They still view the Jewish people as merely a religion. A religion is not entitled to sovereignty. Only a nation is. But there aren't two nations [in their view]. And they go on and on to deny our historical rights, to say that even the Temple Mount [has no Jewish connection] as is evident in this new socalled study.

And Dershowitz, also in the JPost:

It is no wonder that so many Israeli citizens are skeptical about whether the Palestinian leadership is willing to make ­- or capable of actually making peace - with Israel.  This skepticism has been fueled by a recent article on the official website of the Palestinian Authority claiming that there is no hard evidence of any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site.  Instead, it claims that "this wall is the place where the Prophet Muhammad tethered his winged steed, Buraq, during his miraculous overnight journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in the seventh century."  The Palestinian Authority article asserts that "the Al Buraq Wall is the western wall of Al Aksa, which the Zionist occupation falsely claims ownership of and calls the Wailing Wall or Kotel."  In other words, the Palestinian leadership expects Israelis to believe Muslim theological claims over Jewish archaeological evidence. Following a request by the US the study was removed from the PA website, only to resurface days later on the PA's news agency Wafa.

Moreover, the Palestinian Authority refuses to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and refuses to end the repeated incitement against Jews that are a staple of the Palestinian Authority controlled media.

An unlikely approximate meeting of two very different minds, sadly necessitated by their refusal to deny the reality staring us all in the face.  Both worth a careful read.

See also, Vic Rosenthal's take (via Solomonia) on the prospects for Jewish/Arab coexistence within Israel, fed by many of the same concerns.