Is an Israeli/Palestinian Peace Possible?

Every administration since Truman's has wrestled with the question of how to secure peace in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Some believe that there'll never be peace until one or the other side is exterminated or driven from the region.

Others think that the Palestinians really do want to live peacefully alongside their Israeli neighbors and that the key is persuading the Israelis to make enough concessions to Palestinian demands that the Palestinians will be mollified.

A recent poll taken among Palestinians is, however, a splash of cold water in the face of optimists who believe that peace is attainable and just over the horizon. The Washington Free Beacon provides a summary of the poll's findings:

• If a new presidential election was held today between the current president, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, and the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas would beat Fatah 49 percent to 42 percent.
• 88 per cent said that Palestinians who sell property to Jews are traitors. 64 percent said the punishment for selling property to Jews should be the death penalty.
• Palestinians oppose the concept of a two-state solution, 55 percent to 43 percent.
• "A large minority of 44 percent thinks that armed struggle is the most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel while 28 percent believe that negotiation is the most effective means and 23 percent think non-violent resistance is the most effective."
• In lieu of negotiations, "54 percent support a return to an armed intifada," i.e. terrorism.
• 50 percent of Palestinians reject in principle the holding of negotiations in order to resolve the conflict.

When such large percentages of people are opposed to any genuine rapprochement it's hard to see how there can be any peaceful solution to the "Palestinian Problem." It causes one to wonder whether the last seventy years of low grade conflict interspersed with intense spasms of open warfare won't be the template for the next seventy years as well.

For a concise, five minute overview of the problem watch this Prager U. video: