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A 63-Year Search for Mideast Peace

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Michael B. Oren - 63 years ago, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of Resolution 181, dividing what was then known as Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states. While the Zionist leadership accepted Resolution 181, and Jews throughout the world danced ecstatically in the streets, the Arab states rejected it. Worse, they swore to annihilate the reborn Jewish state and drive its inhabitants - many of them Holocaust survivors - into the sea. Six armies descended on the weakly-armed Israeli defenders. Yet, after a brutal war in which 1% of the Israeli population - the equivalent of 30 million Americans today - were killed, Israel triumphed. The Palestinians have spent much of the past six decades striving to defeat Resolution 181. Instead of building viable democratic institutions and investing in their children's education, they instilled hatred and glorified "armed resistance." Our founding fathers and mothers were willing to divide our homeland with another people that also regarded it as their homeland and to live side-by-side in peace, and so are we. Yet the "moderate" leadership in the West Bank still refuses to join Israel at the negotiating table. The writer is Israel's ambassador to the U.S.
2010-12-02 10:17:08
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