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The State of Progressive Palestinians

(New Republic) Mishy Harman - In April I attended the TEDx (Technology Entertainment and Design) Ramallah conference, which took place simultaneously in Bethlehem, Amman and Beirut. I came to TEDx expecting to meet liberal counterparts: forward-looking individuals with ideas "worth spreading." But after hearing the Palestinian speakers - many educated in leading institutions abroad, all eloquent, smart and ostensibly progressive - I felt they represented something far from what I was willing to endorse. Whether it was the elderly gentleman who lamented how borders are an unnatural addition to the pristine hills of his childhood, or the Palestinian-American businessman from Youngstown, Ohio, who argued that the only just solution to the conflict is a full right of return for the Palestinian refugees of 1948, many seemed to be saying the same thing: No longer is a two-state solution desirable, and one state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is the only acceptable outcome. There was no attempt to sugarcoat the implications - they were talking about the end of the Zionist enterprise, advocating for an end to Jewish self-determination.
2011-05-13 00:00:00
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