Right To Exist ?

By Uri Avnery

I am an Israeli patriot, and I do not feel that I need anybody's recognition of the right of my state to exist. If somebody is ready to make peace with me, within borders and on conditions agreed upon in negotiations, that is quite enough for me. I am prepared to leave the history, ideology and theology of the matter to the theologians, ideologues and historians...


...The US and their European satellites are boycotting the Palestinian government and starving the Palestinian population. They have set three conditions for lifting the blockade:

(a) That the Palestinian government and Hamas must recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist,

(b) They must stop "terrorism", and

(c) They must undertake to fulfill the agreements signed by the PLO.

On the face of it, that makes sense. In reality, none at all. Because all these conditions are completely one-sided:

(1) The Palestinians must recognize the right of Israel to exist (without defining its borders, of course), but the Israeli government is not required to recognize the right of a Palestinian state to exist at all.

(2) The Palestinians must put an end to "terrorism", but the Israeli government is not required to stop its military operations in the Palestinian territories and stop the building of settlements. The "roadmap" does indeed say so, but that has been completely ignored by everybody, including the Americans.

(3) The Palestinians must undertake to fulfill the agreements, but no such undertaking is required from the Israeli government, which has broken almost all provision of the Oslo agreement. Among others: the opening of the "safe passages" between Gaza and the West Bank, the carrying out of the third "redeployment" (withdrawal from Palestinian territories), the treatment of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one single territory, etc. etc.

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I often hear the argument that Hamas refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist, but rarely do I hear people defend the rights of Palestine itself to exist. Surely any two nations 'rights to exist' should never be mutually exclusive ?