• POINT 1: American institutions, especially institutions of higher learning, should divest from Israel. This helped to topple the apartheid regime in South Africa and will help to end the Zionist regime in Israel/Palestine.

  This could be stronger. How about putting in some quotes from the anti-divestment petitions? That it's one sided condemnation of a difficult situation; that Israel is the good guy; that it's hypocritical etc. I think some of the anti divestment petitions are still on line.
  
  

  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel is not an Apartheid state and its policies do not approximate Apartheid policy. Many Muslim states enforce policies and practices more closely resembling Apartheid.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel gives its Arab Minority citizens the right to vote, practice religion, pursue an education, and exercise individual political and civil rights. This was not the case for Blacks under Apartheid South Africa and it is similarly not the case for minorities in the Muslim and Arab states in the Middle East. Among Israel's neighbors, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libyaa, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria and the Palestinian Authority do not allow minorities political participation. Jordan and Lebanon offer only limited political rights to minorities. Within the Middle East only Israel gives minorities (Including Arabs, Druze, Bedouin, and others) the right to form opposition parties, exercise universal suffrage in free and fair elections and participate fully in the political affairs of the state. [1]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "A non-Muslim in an Islamic state is required to pay jaziya, which in the Koranic language is a Humiliation Tax. In fact, the life of an unbeliever is a series of humiliations in a Muslim country. He has to wear distinctive clothes and mark his house to express the unbelief of its dwellers. Muslims are forbidden to associate with him and attend his matrimonial or funeral ceremonies. He must not ride horses or bear arms. Since it is the Islamic way of life, which requires an unbeliever to yield way to the Muslim when they happen to be walking on the same path, it can be safely called the forerunner of the South African apartheid." - from Islam and Human Rights, by Anwar Shaikh [2]
      
      
    • Question: Isn't it a double standard to insist on boycotting Israel but not to demand a boycott against those Arab regimes that, according to International NGO's, deny their own citizens basic civil and political rights, subjecting them to torture, random detention, forced disappearances, and violent death? Why not boycott the Sudan for murdering 2 million Christians in its ongoing genocide? Why not boycott the PA and other states for funding and encouraging Palestinian terrorism against Israeli children?
      
      
• POINT 2: Israeli Academics should be boycotted.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: The Boycott of Israeli Academics is unjust and hypocritical. It is an unethical attack on academic freedom. Furthermore it stifles the most progressive element of Israeli society - one that often works for peace and elevation of the Palestinians within Israeli Society. Finally it will cost the lives of people who may be saved by medical innovations developed jointly by American or European and Israeli researchers. As members of a university community we know that academic freedom and exchange should not be hijacked for a political cause.
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: The word "peace" does not appear in divestment petitions, which makes clear the intent is not to resolve the conflict but to delegitimize Israel. ( http://www.ucdivest.org/petition.php)
    
    
• POINT 3: US Aid to Israel must be stopped. American taxpayers should not fund the Israeli war machine. Under the US Foreign Arms Export Act the US should not be supplying weapons to Israel that will be used against civilian targets.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: The claim that Israel launched deliberate attacks against civilians using U.S. made or other weapons is false. The Israeli army always takes care to avoid civilian deaths, sometimes at the cost of its-own soldiers. But as in all urban military operations in the history of warfare, fighting inevitably and unfortunately harms civilians.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: During the NATO operation against Serbia over the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, hundreds of civilians were inadvertently killed. "Human Rights Watch concludes that as few as 489 and as many as 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed in the ninety separate incidents in Operation Allied Force." [3]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In the October 2002 raid on a Moscow theater full of hostages, Russian commandos accidentally killed well over 100 of their own civilians in the process of disabling around 40 armed terrorists. That doesn't mean that Russians targeted their own civilians but rather that necessary anti-terror operations are not always as precise as governments would like.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel's efforts to avoid killing civilians can be demonstrated by its actions in Jenin. If Israel really wanted to use American F16's and Apache Helicopters to attack civilians they would have done what America did in Afghanistan or Iraq. They would have bombed the town from above. Instead, to save human life, Israel fought door to door in a booby trapped area. Israel lost 23 reservists in what was described as the heaviest fighting the IDF has seen since the Yom Kippur war. Because Israel would not use its US warplanes and helicopters, not a single woman or child was killed in the fighting. [4]
      
      
    • Question: You have said, and the world recognizes, that Israel has one of the most powerful and advanced militaries in the world-even the US uses Israel's military developments and innovations. My question is what do you think the reasons are that Israel hasn't used its full military might in its so-called fight against Palestinian terrorism? For example, why didn't Israel just aerial bomb Jenin as the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of sending in its soldiers and having casualties it would otherwise not have had? Do you think it's because Israel is playing a PR game so it looks humane to the world? What do you think Palestinians would have to do to provoke Israel to use its full military might?
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Compare this unfortunate reality of war to the constant and deliberate attacks by Palestinians, not on military targets, but on unarmed men, women and children, riding busses, at restaurants, cafes and clubs, in synagogues and on hikes -- even in their own beds. Terrorists deliberately target civilians. This was demonstrated by the Palestinian suicide bombing on families celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover that killed 29 and injured 140.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel has been one of the US' staunchest allies since 1967 when foreign aid to Israel began. The US gives aid to Israel as it would to any staunch ally surrounded by hostile enemies perpetrating terrorism and war. When England was besieged in WW II, US aid was certainly available. Israel earns its financial assistance while Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey provide very little in return for US foreign aid they receive.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "Israel is the only outpost of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and the only absolutely reliable friend of the United States" - Former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, August 5, 2002
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel needs US foreign aid to survive. Despite its overtures for peace every Arab country with the exception of Egypt and Jordan maintain a state of war with Israel. Many have declared their intent to destroy Israel. The US government recognizes that it must support its democratic ally.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Former president of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani, even said that his government should develop nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel. "The establishment of Israel is the most hideous occurrence in history. The Islamic world will not tolerate the continued existence of Israel in the region, and will vomit it out from its midst… The Jihad operations against Israel must continue unrelentingly until victory is achieved. Therefore, all Palestinian Authority actions against the Jihad organizations are unacceptable. When the Islamic world acquires atomic weapons, the strategy of the West will hit a dead-end - since the use of a single atomic bomb has the power to destroy Israel completely, while it will only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." - Hashemi Rafsanjani on Iranian Jerusalem Day, 2001. [5]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Palestinian National Charter, Article 19: "The establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void." Article 15: "[We call for] the liquidation of the Zionist presence in Palestine." Article 9: "Armed Struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." [6]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." - Hamas Charter [7]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [8]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. [9]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Both Israel and the Arab countries have received US foreign aid for signing peace agreements. Egypt, for instance, receives almost as much aid as Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Since signing the peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has been the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid ($2 billion in 2002, Israel received $2.8 billion). Jordan has also been the beneficiary of higher levels of aid since it signed a treaty with Israel (more than $225 million). The multibillion dollar debts to the U.S. of both Arab nations were also forgiven. Until recently the US was the largest single donor to the Palestinians as well.
      
      
• POINT 4: "Immediate international intervention" must "protect the Palestinian people and ensure Israel's compliance with International Law."
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: Why does your organization call for international intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, but you remain silent about other occupied or disputed territories like Chechnya, Kashmir, Lebanon or Tibet?
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: In 1991 Kuwait alone evicted 300,000 Palestinians for siding with Saddam Hussein. Why is your campaign for Palestinian human rights limited only to Israel when in every Arab country besides Jordan, Palestinians are treated as third class citizens, largely denied citizenship and property rights?
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israelis have valid reservations about inviting a UN presence into the Territories. The United Nations has repeatedly demonstrated its support for the Palestinian cause and contempt for Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: 429 General Assembly and 97 Security Council Resolutions have been passed against Israel in 27 years. Not one resolution has condemned Palestinian terrorism against Israelis.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The UN has repeatedly passed Resolutions endorsing the Palestinians' right to "use all available means, including armed struggle"-terrorism and suicide bombing-against Israel in 1973, 1982 and 2002.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The UN called for an "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" to be observed every year on November 29, the anniversary of the UN's 1947 compromise that recommended creating a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state. No other nation or national group has such an honor. The observance laments the UN recommendation. [10]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The UN monitors along the Israeli border with Lebanon do not interfere with Hizbullah mortar attacks on Israeli villages, but dutifully report on Israeli flyovers and other reconnaissance missions.
      
      
• POINT 5: Israel should just return to the 1967 borders and end the Occupation. Then terrorism would end.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: Resolution 242 specifically did not require Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The British UN Ambassador, Lord Caradon, who introduced the resolution to the Council, has stated that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial [...] That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them." [11]
      
      
    • Question: You claim that Israel must return to it's pre-1967 borders, but the resolution you cite, Security Council Resolution 242 says nothing of the sort. The British UN Ambassador, Lord Caradon, who introduced the resolution to the Council, has stated that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial [...] That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them." Why have you mislead the audience as to the demands of the UN? [12]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: After each Arab-initiated war in which Israel made territorial gains, the Arab governments have demanded that Israel return to its pre-war borders before negotiating peace. This is an unprecedented demand - one that encourages Arab aggression by ensuring that war can never result in territorial loss.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "After 1949, the Arabs insisted that Israel accept the borders in the 1947 partition resolution and repatriate the Palestinian refugees before they would negotiate an end to the war they had initiated. This was a novel approach that they would use after subsequent defeats: the doctrine of the limited-liability war. Under this theory, aggressors may reject a compromise settlement and gamble on war to win everything in the comfortable knowledge that, even if they fail, they may insist on reinstating the status quo ante." - Middle East Historian, Mitchell Bard [13]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel has been the victim of terror attacks decades before the "occupation" began. In fact, the PLO was founded three years before the 1967 war. If Israel leaves the territories there are no guarantees that terrorism will end from terrorist groups like Hamas or Yasser Arafat's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: During the five-year period between 1951 and 1955, (twelve years before Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip), 922 Israeli Jews were murdered by Arabs in terrorist attacks. Here are three examples of attacks from that time:

      Mar 17, 1954 - Terrorists ambushed a bus and shot each passenger, one by one. Eleven passengers were murdered. Survivors recounted how the murderers spat on the bodies and abused them.

      Mar 24, 1955 - Terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire on a crowd at a wedding in the farming community of Patish, in the Negev. A young woman was killed, and eighteen people were wounded in the attack.

      Apr 11, 1956 - Terrorists opened fire on a synagogue full of children and teenagers, in the farming community of Shafrir. Three children and a youth worker were killed on the spot, and five were wounded, including three seriously. [14]
      
      

    • Question: How can "occupation" cause terrorism if terrorism began years before the occupation? In the early 50's, more than a decade before Israel took control of the territories, 922 Israeli Jews were murdered by Arabs in terrorist attacks. The murdered included women, children, and elderly people in synagogues, busses, and a wedding ceremony. Why would Israel expect terrorism to end if it withdraws from the territories?
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian's own public opinion polls indicate that Palestinians support suicide bombings against civilians and see the goals of such attacks to be the destruction of the state of Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. [15]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [16]
      
      
    • Question: In September 2002 the Palestinian JMCC public opinion poll concluded that 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel.(*) In light of these statistics, how can you convince Israelis that suicide bombings will stop if Israel withdraws from the territories? Don't these statistics indicate that Palestinian terrorism is designed to end Israeli existence, not Israeli "Occupation"? [17]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Both the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic terrorist organizations have made it clear that the goal of violence is not the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it is the elimination of the state of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Israel. Palestinians have made it clear that the acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza strip is just a first stage - the creation of a launching ground for the conquest of all of Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996. [18]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Hamas' founding covenant calls for jihad to "obliterate Israel" and to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine" (Hamas Covenant Preamble, and Article 11)(*) Islamic Jihad has said "The war will continue until Israel ceases to exist and the last Jew is eliminated from the world". (Islamic Jihad announcement, March 1992) [19]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Palestinians did not call for "liberating" the Territories when they were under Jordanian and Egyptian-that is, Arab--control between 1948 and 1967. The 1964 PLO Charter explicitly stated that the PLO "does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, [or] on the Gaza Strip." Article 24 (at http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Peace/cove1.html) They only sought to liberate pre-1967 Israel. Only when Israel captured the Territories in their defensive 1967 War did the PLO and other groups expand the boundaries of what they considered to be Palestine. Their objection was to Jewish sovereignty over Arabs.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "At this stage we talk about a state within the 1967 borders, but this is not the end of the story....because I aspire, historically, culturally and geographically, to a unified Palestine. ...It can be established through peace, if the Israelis accept the logic of a [unified] democratic Palestinian state. If they don't accept this logic, then the logic of history will lead to a confrontation [ie war]." - Bilal Al-Hassan, representing the position of the Palestinian left, in an interview on Al-Jazeera, November 17, 2000. [20]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996. [21]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo Accords were a Trojan horse; the strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." - Faisal Husseini, PA Administrator for Jerusalem Affairs, July 2001. [22]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The genocidal strain in this kind of fundamentalist rejectionism is older than the settlements, older than the state of Israel. It reflects the spirit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...fled to Berlin....begging Himmler to let him handle his version of the final solution in Palestine against the Jewish settlers." - Britain's Lord Weidenfeld to the House of Lords, July 13, 2001. [23]
      
      
    • Question: Hamas' founding covenant calls for jihad to "obliterate Israel" (*), Islamic Jihad has said "The war will continue until Israel ceases to exist and the last Jew is eliminated from the world", and during the Peace process Yasser Arafat said, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state." In light of these sentiments, how can Israel believe that handing over the Territories will result in an end to terror? [24]
      
      
    • Question: The Peace Process is predicated on the equation of land for peace. Israel will give Palestinians land on which to create a state and all the Palestinians must pledge is to live peacefully with their Israeli neighbors. Experience shows that suicide-bombing attacks increase during each round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Why should Israel have faith that new negotiations will contribute to their personal safety?
      
      
• POINT 6: Settlements must be dismantled because they are illegal under international law.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel's neighborhoods and towns in Judea, Samaria, (the West Bank) and Gaza may be politically contentious, but they are absolutely legal.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Jews have continuously inhabited the region. These areas are the cradle of Jewish civilization and include the holiest sites in the Jewish religion. During the 1948 War of Independence, the Jewish inhabitants of places like Hebron were massacred and expelled. Their synagogues were razed and homes were usurped. Thousands of Jews were expelled from the region dubbed by King Abdulla as "The West Bank". Many Jews who chose to return to these areas have roots there that span hundreds or thousands of years.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there," according to Professor Eugene Rostow, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the American Journal of International Law. [25]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel's detractors invoke the Fourth Geneva Convention to substantiate their claim that the Jewish neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the forcible transfer of one population into territories occupied in war in order to displace another population. It should be noted that Israel has never "forcibly transferred" Jews into the West bank and that the Jewish communities do not displace anyone.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Jewish towns and neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria sit on only 1.6% of the territory. The advent of bypass roads and security perimeters around the settlements only came after hundreds of terrorist incidents in which Palestinian Arabs ambushed families either in their homes or on their way home.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: 80% of Jewish neighborhoods that are considered settlements are in effect suburbs of major population centers and border the "green line" demarcating the boundaries of the West Bank. Virtually all Israelis understand that these communities, housing hundreds of thousands, cannot be moved. Most plans for a final settlement envisage minor modifications to the "green line" allowing for these neighborhoods to remain part of Israel, while other comparable areas are ceded to an emergent Palestinian state. Footnote?
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israeli public opinion polls consistently show that most Israelis would be willing to abandon the communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in exchange for a true and lasting peace. Barak offered to dismantle most of the settlements and was greeted with war. Israel is aware that ceding its heartland is a tremendous sacrifice, but as it has proven in making peace with Egypt, it is willing to cede land and evacuate towns if it can be guaranteed peace. It is up to the Palestinians to prove that they are willing to live side by side with Israel in peace.Footnote?
      
      
    • Question: Pending the outcome of an eventual settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that will more than likely result in the establishment of a Palestinian state, isn't it racist to remove 200,000 Jews from their homes in the disputed territories just because they are Jews, when there are 1.3 million Arabs living in Israel as full and equal citizens?
      
      
• POINT 7: Israel should acknowledge responsibility for the suffering it has caused the Palestinians and compensate them.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel is not morally responsible for the Palestinian refugees and should not apologize for a war that Arabs started in 1947 and have continued to wage until today.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel has acknowledged that Palestinian refugees have suffered and tried to help them realize their national aspirations in the Oslo Accords and at Camp David in 2000.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: As even new historian Benny Morris observed recently, there is a dark, intransigent thread of rejectionism that has been a constant in Arab and Palestinian attitudes toward the Jewish state and it sabotaged the Oslo Accords and Camp David negotiations.
      
      
    • Question: When will Palestinian Arabs take responsibility for their actions and apologize for their chronic rejectionism, the death and war and suffering they have inflicted on Israelis and on themselves?
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel's "Occupation" of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza has benefited the Palestinian Arabs in many ways.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel built up and developed the Territories and gave freedoms, rights, and opportunities to Palestinians that Jordan, during its 19-year rule, had denied them. Palestinians may not have wanted to be under Israeli rule, but they flourished. [26]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Life expectancy soared from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 while infant mortality plummeted from 60 per thousand live births to 15 per 1000 and childhood diseases disappeared due to systematic Israeli programs to eradicate them. [27]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel brought economic prosperity to Palestinians. Israeli investment in business, industry and infrastructure and the opening of its borders to labor made the Territories the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world in the 1970's and unemployment dropped from an average of 40% or more to below 5%. [28]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel fostered educational development, building 7 universities and 20 community colleges for the Palestinians. Illiteracy dropped from 50% to 30% just between 1967 and 1980. By 1990, only 14% of adults over age 15 were illiterate. [29]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel offered political and civil freedoms, including freedom of association, trade unions, civic organization and opposition parties, none of which had been allowed under Jordan. It also established freedom of the press, even for newspapers hostile to Israel, giving Palestinians the freest press in the Arab world.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Though Palestinians suffer, this is not Israel's fault. 98% of Palestinian's lived under Palestinian Authority rule by the beginning of the current Intifada. Under Palestinian self-rule Palestinians saw a deteriorating standard of life, increased corruption, and a break down in the rule of law.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: From 1992 to 1996, per capita income dropped 35% in Gaza and unemployment rose over 20% in Gaza and the West Bank. [30]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In 1997, 40% of the PA budget was reported "missing". Monopolistic practices and diversion of funds from development projects to alleged "security Forces have discouraged private foreign investment. [31]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: During the period of PA rule restrictions on association. It intimidated and assassinated political opposition leaders. It conducted arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and unfair trials, especially in new State Security Courts, which "flagrantly" violate "Fair trial standards." [32]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel has no obligation to show contrition for defending itself against incessant terrorism. The Palestinians have suffered largely because of the decisions of their own leadership. Nonetheless Israel does show deep sympathy for the Palestinian's suffering
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: A host of independent Israeli human rights groups have insured that the Israeli military use humane defensive measures and they have monitored and denounced any human rights abuses they see in the Territories. B'tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Peace Now and a host of other groups have urged Israelis to respect Palestinian claims and needs. Their work is used by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and even by the Palestinian Authority itself. [33]
      
      
• POINT 8: Israel must allow the "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees to Israel. This right is based on moral and legal grounds (UN Resolutions 194 and 242, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ). No other people has been denied this right.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: No nation, regardless of past rights and wrongs, could contemplate taking in a fifth-column of such a size. And fifth-column it would be - people nurtured for 20 years [in 1967] in hatred of and totally dedicated to its destruction. The readmission of the refugees would be the equivalent to the admission to the U.S. of nearly 70,000,000 sworn enemies of the nation. - New York Times editorial, (May 14, 1967).
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: Arab leaders have been outspoken about the goal of Palestinian emigration to Israel. "Right of Return" is a strategy for the destruction of Israel. Note these examples:
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The return of the refugees should create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character of Palestine, while forming a powerful fifth-column for the day of revenge and reckoning." Lebanese newspaper, Al Said, (April 6, 1950), quoted in Prittie in Curtis, p. 69.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." Egyptian President Nasser, September 1, 1961
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel" (Al-Misri, October 11, 1949). - Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason" (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957). Resolution of the 1957 Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel is not at fault for the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Arab states are. Many Arab sources corroborate this claim:
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..." - Emil Ghory, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, Beirut Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return." - Haled al Azm Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down. - Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel." - Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, told the BBC that the fabricated atrocity stories about Dir Yassin were:

      "...our biggest mistake," because "Palestinians fled in terror" and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity claims.
      
      

  • COUNTERPOINT: Most of today's Palestinians that claim refugee status were not native to the area. Note these sources:
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Any Arab who entered Israel up to two years prior to the rebirth of the Jewish state could claim to be a Palestinian refugee, even if he and his ancestors had lived elsewhere for generations before and he owned no land or property in Palestine. [Editor's note: the UNRWA collected information from 'refugees' on an 'honor basis' without checking even the above absurdly minimal requirements] - Middle East Digest - October 1998
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "No doubt, some Arabs have lived in the area of the Mandate of Palestine for many centuries, but not as many of them as had the Jews. What is more, Jews had lived in Arab lands since times preceding Islam itself. And yet, these Jews in Arab lands were never regarded as citizens of the Arab lands they lived in and were unceremoniously expelled in the years subsequent to Israel's establishment." - David Basch
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: The Arab States, not Israel, are responsible for the plight of the Palestinian Refugees.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Even Benny Morris concluded that the refugees would "be utilized during the following years by the Arab states as a powerful political and propaganda pawn against Israel. The memory or vicarious memory of 1948 and the subsequent decades of humiliation and deprivation in the refugee camps would ultimately turn generations of Palestinians into potential or active terrorists and the 'Palestinian problem' into one of the world;'s most intractable.'" Benny Morris p 296, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die." - Ralph Galloway, former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, Jordan, August 1958
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The UN repeatedly tried to persuade Arab nations to solve the refugee problem by resettling the Palestinians, but they refused. Modern neighborhoods that were built in the areas of Jenin and Nablus during the 1990's still remain unoccupied because the Palestinian Authority will not allow the refugees to move out of the camps. - Historian Mitchell Bard, AICE
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The Arabs blame Israel for creating the Refugee problem while it was the Arabs who insisted to keep the camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, to use the Palestinians for political exploitation. In 1982: 65,425 Palestinian refugees put in camps in Syria, 123,442 in Lebanon, 192,392 in Jordan, this was reported by UNRWA, while the Arabic propaganda lied and inflated the number to 4,000,000, and ALL who fled on their own will and without any force. Now, please compare with 850,000 Jews actually expelled from the Arab lands, forced to leave to Israel. - Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector quoted at "Answering Islam"
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians are the only refugee population to claim a full right of return. This demand is unprecedented in all of history. In fact, the Palestinians are the only displaced persons to have become wards of the international community.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: 12.5 million Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia were evicted and massive tracts of land were appropriated from the Germans without return or compensation after World War II. At the same time Finland lost 1/8 of its land mass and had to absorb more than 400,000 refugees. No return or compensation was sought. In 1950 Turkey accepted 150,000 refugees and in 1947 India and Pakistan swapped 14 million refugees. Finally, following Israel's war of independence, it absorbed more than 800,000 refugees from Arab countries. No compensation or return was demanded or received by any one of these groups. All refugees were settled by their host countries. Why do Palestinians claim this unique "right of return".
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: There was no historical precedent for the return of such a large number of refugees. In the previous 30 years, population exchanges had been the method for resolving refugee issues between hostile groups.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The had been a de facto exchange of population as Israel absorbed Jewish immigrants who had been forced to flee Middle Eastern countries as a result of the war. Between 1949 and 1952, Israel absorbed 700,000 immigrants, more than doubling its population.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel could not accept returning refugees without the framework of a peace plan. Its security was fragile with hostile Arab nations surrounding it who were taking increasingly belligerent actions. As Abba Eban said at the UN: "Can the mind conceive anything more fantastic than the idea that we can add to these perils by the influx from hostile territory...of people steeped in the hatred of our very statehood?"
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: The claim that refugees from the 1948 War have a "right of return" to their homes in Israel has no basis in law or history. Arab spokespeople confuse Israel's "Law of Return" with an international right of return. They are quite different. In fact, no people in modern history has been granted a "right of return." Arab leaders invented this principle as another weapon for dismantling Israel for if the right of return were granted, the Arab population would quickly outnumber the Jewish population, and Israel would cease to be a Jewish state.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The "Right of Return" has no basis in law. UN resolutions (194, 393, 394, 513 and 242) did not set up a principle for the "right of return," but instead recommended several solutions for the refugee problem-an explicit repudiation of the principle of a collective right of return.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Arab governments voted against 194, in part for this reason, and the PLO strenuously objected to 242 for the same reason.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: These resolutions recommended "repatriation or resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation....and compensation" as Resolution 194 explicitly stated in Chapter 11, the only clause addressing the refugee problem.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The resolutions referred to the Jewish refugees from Arab lands as well as the Arabs (there was no explicit mention of "Palestinians") displaced by the 1948 and 1967 wars.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Resolution 194 explicitly stated that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so." There was no assurance that returning Palestinian Arabs would "live at peace." They had gone to war against the new Jewish state and Arab countries refused to sign peace treaties with Israel. A state of war still existed.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Resolution 242 nowhere raised the principle of "Right of Return." It calls only for a "just settlement of the refugee problem," implicitly referring to Jewish as well as Arab refugees. It presumed, in accord with earlier Resolutions, that a just solution would be resettlement in neighboring lands or repatriation. The PLO roundly condemned Resolution 242 because it did not mention the Palestinians by name or the right of return. The PLO did not endorse Resolution 242 until 1988.Footnote
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel's "Law of Return" is in no way comparable to an international right of return. As a sovereign nation, Israel had a right to determine who would qualify for citizenship and chose to grant automatic citizenship to people of Jewish heritage-just as America grants citizenship to children born abroad who have one American parent. Procedures exist for non-Jewish immigrants to become citizens. Israel's Law of Return was not based on an international legal principle, but on Israelis' view of their national mission.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Similarly, Germany established a "law of return" after WW II to give instant citizenship to Germans who had been expelled from eastern and central Europe, where many had lived for centuries.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Jordan also established a law of return in 1954, giving citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews. (Bard p 31)
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In contrast, it is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. (Bard p 31)
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: There is no modern historical precedent for the "right of return," especially for those who initiate wars. In the aftermath of World Wars I and II, new national boundaries were drawn in Europe, the Middle East and Asia with tens of millions of people displaced. Yet, the refugee problem was solved by resettlement in new host countries, not by repatriation.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "No large scale refugee problem has ever been solved by repatriation...for most of the world's refugees, the only solution is integration where they are."-Dr. Elfan Rees, Advisor on Refugees to the World Council of Churches, Century of the Homeless Man, available at http://www.world.std.com/~camera/docs/backg/rret.html
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: 1923.Greek-Turkish War. 2 million Greeks who had been Turkish citizens fled to Greece; 500,000 Turks who had been Greek citizens fled to Turkey. They had no right of return. Immovable property left behind was used by the respective governments to resettle the incoming refugees.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: 1945. World War II. 15 million Germans who had lived for centuries in Poland and Czechoslovakia were expelled and relocated into the new, smaller borders of Germany. They received no compensation for property they left behind.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: 1947. Hindu-Muslim conflict in India. 8 million Hindus were resettled in India and 6 million Muslims were settled in the newly created state of Pakistan. Despite the poverty of the refugees, the international community did not establish a relief organization to aid their resettlement.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians who lived in pre-1948 Israel and who now live in the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan cannot legitimately be called refugees.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: In Jordan (once part of the Palestine Mandate), they now have Jordanian citizenship and have been legally resettled.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In the West Bank and Gaza, they in fact are still living in their "homeland" if not in their old homes, though they confuse the two terms. In many instances, they live within 20-30 kilometers of their former homes. They are, rather, internally displaced persons.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: When the Soviet Union aggressively conquered parts of Finland at the beginning of WW II, took over the land and exiled Finnish citizens into the Finnish state, those Finns were regarded as displaced persons , not refugees, and have never demanded a "right of return." --A.B. Yehoshua, leading Israeli Leftist, March 31, 2000. (At http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP8300 )
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Arab and PLO policies-not Israel-have kept the Palestinian refugee issue from being solved. They are the only post-World War II era refugee problem that has not been resolved because instead of humanely resettling them as host countries did with other refugees, Arab governments and later the PLO actively prevented resettlement, with the exception of Jordan, in order to use the refugee issue in their campaign against Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the UN and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die." --Ralph Galloway, former director of UNRWA, in August, 1958.At http://www.world.std.com/~camera/docs/backg/rret.html )
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "We refuse to talk about the resettlement of refugees (where they are currently located) because this is a crime." -Yassir Arafat, September 1999.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The "right of return" of an alleged 3-5 million Palestinian refugees is designed to undo the results of the 1948 War by destroying the Jewish state demographically.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The approximately 10 million Germans expelled without compensation from their ancestral homes in Central and Eastern Europe after WW II do not claim a right of return. "Had a German government insisted in talks about reunification [of East and West Germany] in 1990 that all German expellees from Poland and Czechoslovakia have, in principle, a right to return to these countries, it would have been clear that what West Germany had in mind was not reunification, but undoing the consequences of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945....[N]either I nor any of my colleagues claim the right to go back...[p]eace in Europe today is embedded in this realization." German spokesmen at an international conference on the Middle East, Summer 2003. [34]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The return of the refugees should create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character of Palestine, while forming a powerful fifth-column for the day of revenge and reckoning." Lebanese newspaper, Al Said (April 6, 1950) [35]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." - Eyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser, September 1, 1961.Footnote
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the state of Israel" - Muhammed Salah al-Din, Egyptian Foreign Minister in Al-Misri, Oct 11, 1949
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: The demand for a right of return repudiates the principle of compromise through a two state solution as spelled out by the Oslo Accords and the Road Map.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The PLO and Israel agreed to establishing two states-one Jewish and one Palestinian. The Palestinians cannot continue to claim that both states are their country or that Palestinians settled in a new Palestinian state are not finally "home."
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: At Oslo, the PLO agreed to recognize the State of Israel, to accept UN Resolution 242 and to delete from its charter provisions calling for the "Zionists' " destruction. Insisting on the right of return abrogates these commitments which all confirm Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "[Y]ou cannot expect Israel to acknowledge an unlimited right of return to present day Israel and, at the same time, to give up Gaza and the West Bank...[for] that would threaten the very foundations of the state of Israel, and would undermine the whole logic of peace. ...and for creating a Palestinian state.... And it shouldn't be done." -President William Clinton, 1/8/01 [36]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Resolution 194 does not call for the unconditional return of refugees to their homes.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Resolution 194 "Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." (UNGA 194, 11)
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Because Resolution 194 did not guarantee unconditional return of Palestinians to Israel proper, all Arab governments voted against it.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Most Palestinians 'wishing to return' want to destroy Israel, not live in peace.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Public opinion polls find that at the start of the current Intifada almost all Palestinians, 95.4%, supported attacks against Israeli citizens. (Birzeit University, November 2000) More recent polls indicate that 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. (JMCC Public Opinion Polls, September 2002). Israel is not required to admit hostile enemies to enter its borders.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians demand that the children and grandchildren of one-time residents of the Palestinian mandate be allowed to return to homes their parents or grandparents may have leased for as little as two years.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The UN Mediator on Palestine stated that 420,000 Palestinians lost their homes in Israel's War of Independence. (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records: Third Session, Supplement No.11 (A\648), Paris, 1948) Today, Palestinians claim the 'Right of Return' for all 5 million Palestinians living outside of Israel. This is not a feature of resolution 194.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Resolution 194 calls for reparations for the nearly 1 million Jews made refugees as a consequence of the 1947 war.

      Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense, and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions. Israel has consequently maintained that any agreement to compensate the Palestinian refugees must also include Arab compensation for Jewish refugees. (Avneri, p. 276)
      
      

• POINT 9: "[T]he only real solution is a single-state solution...." Jews should not be concerned about the prospect of living in a majority-Palestinian state dominated by the likes of the PA and Hamas. These organizations are not anti-Semitic, do not want to destroy Jews or the Jewish character of Israel, and will grant religious freedom and freedom of worship to Jews. In short they do not pose a threat to Jews.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: There are no legal, historic, geographic or moral grounds on which to advance a one state solution. A single-state solution is not a solution. It is simply a continuation of the 1948 War through demographics instead of militarism-imperial conquest by another means. It would pave the way for Palestinians to dominate demographically and destroy the Jewish character and the purpose of the state itself. No legal or historical precedent justifies imposing one national group upon another in order to eliminate its national movement and character.
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: A one-state solution would be asking Israel, a UN nation state for over 50 years, to eliminate itself.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: There is no historical precedent for coercing groups with different political, religious or ethnic identities to form into one nation. Creating new national borders to separate hostile groups has been the accepted solution.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In 1947, just months before the UN's recommendation on partitioning Palestine, India had accepted a partition plan to separate hostile Muslims and Hindus. Pakistan was carved out of India with a population exchange of 14 million people.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In the former Yugoslavia, five separate states were carved out to separate warring ethnic and religious groups in 1991 -1992 despite their small size and historic unity. [37]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Political hostilities and an inconclusive war led Korea to be divided into two separate, internationally recognized countries, North Korea and South Korea. People are reintroducing this issue right now.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: A one-state solution would be unjust. It would deny the right of self-determination to both the Palestinian and Jewish national movements. It would result in one of these peoples becoming a minority in the other's nation. This is a recipe for conflict, not for justice or peace.
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: A one state solution would have to be based on the agreement of the separate states and on shared national objectives. At the current time, this would be impossible.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Palestinian leaders have reiterated for the last 80 years that Zionism is not a legitimate national movement and that a central Zionist objective-a safe haven for Jews in their ancient homeland-is racist and unacceptable.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel has a highly developed political and economic system. In their 10 years of self-rule, the Palestinians have demonstrated that they don't share these aspirations. Israel cannot be asked to sacrifice its own values because some Palestinians want to undo the effects of the 1948 War and of international agreements dating back to 1917.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: With a one-state solution, Jews would once again be a minority in a hostile state. It is Arab states that impose an official religion and persecute other religious groups, especially Christians and Jews.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The Arab states in the Middle East all established Islam as their official religion and have "very serious issues of religious restrictions, discrimination, persecution….lack of tolerance and pluralism…[and] impose significant legal obstacles to religious freedom, contrary to the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Steven J. Coffey, US Principal Deputy Assistant of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations May 1, 1997. [38]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Because of persecution, "Throughout the entire Middle East, once significant Christian communities have shrunk to a miniscule portion of their former robust selves. In 50 years they may well be extinct…2 million [fled] in the last 20 years alone." Professors Jonathan Adelman and Agota Kuperman, 2002 [39]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: In Saudi Arabia, "the government prohibits the public practice of other religions;" in Egypt, "religious practices that conflict with Islamic law are prohibited" and "Christians cower[ed] in fear of violence from Islamic militants and systematic human rights violations by Egypt…." In Iran, "the printing of Christian literature is illegal, converts from Islam are liable to be killed and most evangelical churches must function underground." American Department of State First Annual Report on International Religious Freedom and Professor Jonathan Adelman and Agota Kuperman. [40]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Persecution and violence forced the over one million Jews who had lived in the Middle East for millennia to flee between 1947 and 1967. Only a small and dwindling fraction of them-33,200-remain.
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Three-fourths of Palestinians and Israelis don't want a one-state solution, according to recent polls. Such a solution would have to be imposed against their will, a clear violation of the right to self-determination.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: In a poll of 40,000 people conducted by OneVoice, a peace group, in April and May 2004, "[t]he most significant finding was that among the 23,000 Palestinians and 17,000 Israelis queried, about 76 percent on each side endorsed the two-state concept - a Palestinian state existing beside a Jewish state, "each recognizing the other as such, both democratic and respecting human rights, including minority rights.'" AP May 26 2004 [41]
      
      
• POINT 10: Palestinians must confront Israel with a combination of diplomacy and armed struggle.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous strategy. Palestinians must decide whether they want war or peace, whether they are truly committed to accepting Israel's existence and getting land and a state in exchange for ending all violence, the one and only demand that Israel has made. They cannot have it both ways. How can anyone, especially Israel, trust their commitment to peace if they remain committed to war and terrorism?
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: A strategy of armed struggle violates the very heart of the commitment Palestinians made in the Oslo Accords and violates the first requirement of the Road Map.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historical event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence…Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators." Yasser Arafat Letter to Prime Minister Rabin on the signing of the Declaration of Principles, September 9, 1993. [42]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "A two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty…." Road Map text. April 30, 2003 [43]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: The Palestinians have used only one element of this dual strategy: armed struggle and violence. They have not sincerely engaged in any diplomatic efforts. At Camp David in 2000, Yasser Arafat walked away from a generous offer without even making a counter-offer. How can peace be achieved when Palestinians seem committed only to war?
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: This dual strategy has caused Palestinian suffering. The Palestinians' refusal to end armed struggle and to compromise on their most extreme demands have deprived them of a state, perpetuated the conflict and caused Israel's justifiable military actions.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: In the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, editor Jubran Tuweini wrote, "Once again, we realize that the Arabs are their own worst enemy - just as the worst enemy of the Palestinian cause is the Palestinians, who have endorsed a policy of refusal and fundamentalist extremism as a way of behavior. How many times have they already served Israel with their deeds? How many times has the behavior of these groups already saved Ariel Sharon and his government?" December 24 2003 [44]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The mania for armed struggle….is the cause for [us] missing …historical opportunities since 1937 to 2000, with…pristine excuses such as 'we have the right[s] on our side…" Al-'Aff Al-Akhdar, Tunisian columnist, 2002 [45]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The liberal-leaning Hazem Abd Al-Rahman wrote in his Al-Ahram column:"… Are these scum of the earth [Palestinians who attacked the Egyptian Foreign Minister] capable of accomplishing something for the Palestinian people? It is reasonable to assume that they, like the supporters of suicide bombings, are the first to damage the Palestinian cause, and are bringing death upon the Palestinian people…" December 24 2003 [46]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: On the liberal Arab website Elaph, Egyptian columnist Sami Buheiri wrote: "[T]he rabble majority of the Arab and Palestinian street today….refuse to accept any kind of a peace agreement with Israel... It is they who applaud the bus and restaurant bombings in order to destroy any spark of hope for peace... They are Arab nationalists who have failed completely in all their wars with Israel and in all attempts to achieve peace with Israel, because they were not serious, and they were not men - neither in fighting nor in peacemaking... [47]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Palestinians don't have a state because they have had "an all or nothing policy," unlike the Zionists. "The Zionists never demanded the impossible….Our leadership….enabled the Zionists to succeed at every opportunity…by rejecting every proposal for compromise, rejecting proposals to give it a state on most of the land of Palestine…" Tawfiz Abu Bakr, Palestinian columnist, 2003 [48]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: "Armed struggle" is a euphemism for terrorism, for slaughtering innocent men, women and children. This terrorism is a war crime and violates the most fundamental of human rights. In effect, you are calling upon Palestinians to commit these war crimes and justifying one of the most egregious crimes against humanity.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The obligation to protect civilians is absolute and cannot be set aside…The attacks against civilians by Palestinian groups are widespread, systematic and in pursuit of an explicit policy to attack civilians. They therefore constitute crimes against humanity under international law. They may also constitute war crimes…" Amnesty International 11/7/02 [49]
      
      
• POINT 11: International Solidarity Activists should serve as human shields for Palestinians in the Territories.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: If the human shields want to help Palestinians, they should be trying to persuade extremist Palestinian groups, terrorists and Yasser Arafat to end the violence, to return to the negotiating table and to be willing to make compromises in the interests of peaceful co-existence.
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: There is no evidence that the "human shields" have helped the Palestinians in any way. Well meaning internationals join organizations like the ISM not knowing that they have lent support to extremists and terrorists who are hurting average Palestinians and sabotaging the chances for peace.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Susan Barclay, an ISM leader, "said in an interview with the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, she knowingly worked with representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad….'We are open to working with any political party as long as they are interested in non-violent resistance…" (Seattle Post Intelligencer, March 20, 2003) [50]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Adam Shapiro and other ISM members broke through a closed military zone to reach Arafat's compound in Ramallah to protect him and his supporters from IDF actions.(*) Ten ISM members stormed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on May 2, 2002 to bring food and support to armed terrorists who were trying to escape the IDF and had seized the Church. (**) [51]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "As far as we are concerned, ISM is not an international organization or a peace organization. It's a pro-Palestinian organization, set up by Palestinians, funded by Palestinians and linked to Palestinian terror." Senior IDF Officer [52]
      
      
    • Question: It is wonderful that you are concerned about human rights abuses and are committed to fighting for peace and justice. What I don't understand is why you volunteer for an organization that admits to working with some of the world's most violent terrorist groups,(*) and whose leader tried to serve as a personal human shield to Yasser Arafat (**), one of the world's most corrupt and tyrannical dictators.(***) If you wanted to advance peace and justice, why not volunteer for organizations that advance realistic initiatives for peace - not organizations that work with terrorists and despots to advance maximalist demands while people - Palestinians and Israelis - suffer? [53]
      
      
    • Question: It is wonderful that you are concerned about human rights abuses and are committed to fighting for justice. But Palestinian voices are already well-represented by Israeli human rights groups, in the UN and elsewhere, and Palestinians are dealing with a democratic country as free as the USA-which is precisely why groups like ISM are free to travel, live in and openly criticize Israel. Don't you think your efforts to protect Palestinians would be better served by trying to encourage reform of the corrupt PA which is terrorizing Palestinians, denying legal recourse to them, stealing their money, prohibiting a free press and calling out racist slogans for killing Jews? Wouldn't the Palestinian people be better off if their own leadership served them instead of serving Arafat and his cronies?
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians in the Territories have no need for "human shields." Israel's military rules of engagement are among the highest in the world and their chief priority is to avoid harming innocent civilians.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "…in battle, the Israeli army regularly accepted risks to its own men in order to reduce risks that it posed on the civilian population. The contrast with the way the Russians fought in Grozny, to take the most recent example of large-scale urban warfare, is striking, and the crucial mark of that contrast is the very small number of civilian casualties in the Palestinian cities despite the fierceness of the fighting." Princeton Philosophy Professor Michael Walzer. [54]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians in the Territories have no need for internationals to act as human shields. There are multiple Israeli human rights groups that respond to their needs as does the Israeli legal system. In addition, multiple Palestinian human rights groups exist which have not been hindered in any way by Israel.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Ten of Israel's human rights groups as listed by a pro-Palestinian web site:(*)

      -"B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
      - Gush Shalom the Israeli "Peace Block", one of Israel's most respected Human Rights organizations
      - Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Nonviolent Direct Action group working against the Israeli Army's policy of home demolitions.
      - Rabbis for Human Rights, Faith-Based Israeli Direct Action group fighting for justice in the Occupied Territories.
      - Yesh G'vul, meaning "There is a Limit," works against Israeli military service in the Occupied Territories.
      - Refuser Solidarity Network, a site dedicated to building support for Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.
      - Peace Now, one of Israel's largest and most active peace groups.
      - The Arab Association for Human Rights: Association addressing Human Rights concerns of the Arab minority in Israel.
      - The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, working to protect civil liberties and Human Rights in Israel.
      - Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Community of Jews and Arabs living together and promoting peace and coexistence" [55]
      
      

    • Supporting Evidence: "One of the most unusual aspects of Israeli law is the rapid access that petitioners, including Palestinians, can gain to Israel's highest court. In April 2002, during the fiercest fighting of the current conflict, in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, the high court was receiving and ruling on petitions almost daily." New York Times May 5 2003 [56]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: I am "constantly amazed by the high standards of the [Israeli] legal systems." Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. New York Times May 5 2003 [57]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Eight Palestinian Human Rights Groups listed on a pro-Palestinian website:(*)

      -Al Haq, one of Palestine's oldest and most respected Human Rights orgs.
      - Palestinian Center for Human Rights, dedicated to promoting Human Rights in Gaza.
      - Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Envirionment (LAW), reporting on Human Rights and Environmental issues in the Occupied Territories.
      - The Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, promoting health and justice in the Occupied Territories.
      - Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between Peoples, , working nonviolently to achieve a just and lasting peace.
      - The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group,
      Organization of Palestinian Journalists and others monitoring Human Rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.
      - BADIL, Resource Center for Palestinian residency and refugee rights.
      - Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, supporting agriculture and health in the Occupied Territories. [58]
      
      

  • COUNTERPOINT: Even ISM activists rely on Israeli human rights groups to help them. When on June 10 2003, Huwaida Arraf became concerned about how some Palestinians were being treated at the Huwarra checkpoint, she reported that she "got on the phone with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization in Jerusalem that often turns in complaints of abuses to the Military District Coordinating Office…." She noticed that the situation was improving and concluded "perhaps because the HaMoked calls were working." Huwaida Arraf report June 19 2003 (http://www.green-rainbow.org/pipermail/needtoknow/2003-June/001152.html (visited 1/1/04))
    
    
  • COUNTERPOINT: The belief that internationals from the 1st world should act as human shields smacks of orientalism, bigotry and colonialism. These internationals seem to assume that Palestinians do not know how to deal with Israelis, that their own 1st world privilege gives them a special superiority.
    
    
• POINT 12: Occupation must end before negotiations can begin.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: This demand makes no sense. The peace process, since its inception has followed a formula of Land for Peace. (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/isrplo.htm) This formula brought peace between Israel and Jordan and Israel and Egypt. You can't expect Israel to accept a formula of "Land for Nothing" when most Palestinians still support continued suicide bombing until Israel is destroyed.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: " 59% of Palestinians believe Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created," according to a survey released in October 2003 by Public Opinion Research of Israel and the Palestine Center for Public Opinion. [59]
      
      
    • Question: Recent Public Polling by Palestinians show that 59% of Palestinians believe Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue to kill Israelis after Israel withdraws from the Territories.(*) Given the fact that Palestinian groups have killed approximately 1000 Israelis in the last three years (most of them civilians) and the fact that almost 1000 Israelis were killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks before it took control of the territories,(**) why wouldn't Israel assume that Palestinians really mean it when they say the killings should continue after an Israeli withdrawal from the territories? [60]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." - Arafat in a radio address (Voice of Palestine, Nov. 11, 1995.)
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary procedure, or just a step towards something bigger […] [Palestine], according to the higher strategy, [is] 'from the river to the sea.' Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [61]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "We will never be ready to lay down arms until the liberation of the last centimeter of the land of Palestine." - HAMAS, June 5, 2000.
      
      
    • Question: The Palestinian leadership including Arafat and members of his cabinet have characterized the creation of a Palestinian state through negotiations as a "Trojan Horse"(*) to "eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State." (**) In 1996 the PA's chief negotiator Nabil Sha'ath threatened to call for a "[R]eturn to violence," after the establishment of a Palestinian State, "But this time… with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom." (***)Given these persistent threats from Palestinians' peace negotiators and an environment of persistent killings orchestrated by the Palestinian Leadership, why would the Israelis allow for the creation of a Palestinian State in the absence of a peace treaty? [62]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: Israel already tried to aid the creation of a Palestinian State in the Territories, but it was greeted with rejectionism and violence. Why would Israel try to do so again without Palestinian promises to end suicide bombing, incitement, and vows to destroy Israel?
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel offered to withdraw from 97% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the context of negotiations with the PA.(*) Arafat refused and instead of offering a counter-proposal, resorted to armed violence against Israel. Israel cannot capitulate to Palestinian demands when Palestinian leadership chooses to use terror, rather than diplomacy as a tool. If Palestinians want a state, Israel has demonstrated that it is open to negotiations and willing to make painful sacrifices for peace. It cannot capitulate to terrorism and threats of obliteration. [63]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: Israel tried this formula before and it failed. In 2000, Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon without a treaty. The withdrawal was verified by the UN and a monitoring force was put in place. Hizbullah, an internationally-recognized terrorist group, replaced the Israeli security presence and claimed victory over Israel. Today Hizbullah controls Southern Lebanon and continues to wage an ongoing border war against Israel. The UN rarely reports on and does nothing to prevent volleys of Hizbullah rockets across the border into Israeli farms and Kibbutzim.
      
      
    • Question: Since its inception, the goal of the Peace Process has been to establish a Palestinian state that would live side by side with Israel through a formula of Land for Peace.(*) Israel would cede land and authority to the Palestinians along with money, arms, training etc… The Palestinians would concurrently offer the Israelis peace and recognition. At the height of the Oslo era, 97% of Palestinians were no longer under Israeli rule and negotiations were underway to create a Palestinian State in 98% of the territories - but the leaders of the Palestinian Authority were still calling for the destruction of Israel,(**) militias were still being armed and trained to kill Israelis, and the Palestinian charter still demanded the expulsion of Jews through force.(***) Israel ignored Palestinian violations of every tenant of the peace process,(****) believing - as you still do - that the creation of a Palestinian State in the Territories would ensure peace. How could you expect Israelis to still believe that withdrawal would create conditions for peace after this belief was tried and failed? [64]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: If the Palestinians refuse to lay down their arms then according to every peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel has no obligation to withdraw from the Territories. As long as the Palestinian Leadership continues a campaign of terror against Israel, Israel will be obliged to remain in the Territories to ensure the security of its citizens living there and along the Green line.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: At the current time HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades are poised for a bloody civil war that will claim many Palestinian and Israeli lives. These are all internationally recognized terrorist organizations (*) responsible for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and political killings of Palestinians. They reject peace and aim to destroy Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live within the territories, and the majority of all Israelis live within walking distance of the Green Line. (**) Why would Israel withdraw from the territories under these conditions? [65]
      
      
  • COUNTERPOINT: The so-called "Occupation" cannot end before negotiations begin. The borders of a future Palestinian state have not been determined. That can only be determined through peaceful negotiations.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: The British UN Ambassador, Lord Caradon, who introduced resolution 242 stated that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial [...] That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them." [66]
      
      
    • Question: You advocate Israeli withdrawal from the territories without a peace agreement. Israel tried this formula before and it failed. In 2000, Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon without a treaty. Hizbullah, an internationally-recognized terrorist group, replaced the Israeli security presence and claimed victory over Israel. Today Hizbullah controls Southern Lebanon and continues to wage an ongoing border war against Israel. Hizbullah claims that Israel's continued control over the Shebaa Farms is illegal despite UN verification of Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Today the UN border patrol does nothing to prevent lobbies of Hizbullah rockets across the border into Israeli farms and Kibbutzim. If Israel were to withdraw from all of the West Bank and Gaza in the absence of a negotiated treaty, wouldn't HAMAS and Islamic Jihad behave like Hizbullah? After all, they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist anywhere. What government would put every one of its major cities in range of terrorist rockets?
      
      
• POINT 13: Any just agreement must be based firmly on the legal foundation dictated by UN Security Resolution 242. In it, the boundaries of Jerusalem are clearly defined with reference to the Israeli occupation of 1967.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: This is another example of pro-Palestinian spokespeople distorting international law and UN resolutions to make them conform to their demands. In fact, UN Resolution 242 does not mention Jerusalem anywhere, nor does it define any borders. This was intentional. The framers of the Resolution wanted the aggressor nations to negotiate with Israel to establish new "secure" borders.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: ""I never described Jerusalem as occupied territory....Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate…Jerusalem was a discrete matter, not linked to the West Bank." Arthur Goldberg, US Ambassador to the UN 1967 (Letter to the Editor, New York Times, March 6, 1980). [67]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The only clauses which describe territories captured in the 1967 War makes no specific references about boundaries and certainly does not mention Jerusalem. The relevant clauses are:

      • "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
      •Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" [68]
      
      

    • Question: Could you please tell this audience where Resolution 242 discusses Jerusalem and where it defines any borders? The only part of the short resolution that refers to borders reads as follows:

      "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
      •Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" [69]
      
      

• POINT 14: According to international law, an occupied people should not negotiate with the occupiers until the occupation ends.
  
  
  • COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim, another example of anti-Israel speakers inventing international law to support their claims. There is no historical precedent for an "occupier" withdrawing and THEN beginning armistice or peace negotiations, particularly when the occupation is the result of a defensive war.
    
    
    • Supporting Evidence: "The military occupation model, under which victorious belligerents occupy the territory of a defeated country and administer it for a period of time before turning power over to a successor government, is a viable and legal instrument of statecraft. It will remain so as long as war continues to be an accepted norm of international conflict. Indeed, rather than making military occupation illegal, international law prescribes the conditions under which military occupation should occur and regulates the way in which such an occupation should be carried out." David B. Rivkin and Darin R. Bartram, International Law experts. [70]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Often-invoked arguments that modern international law bars military occupation are either misinformed about historical precedent and doctrine or, more likely, are being employed to oppose a war for other reasons." David B. Rivkin and Darin R. Bartram, Experts on International Law. [71]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: "Both the Geneva Convention and customary international law …allow activities designed to eliminate all military and guerrilla opposition…..The belligerent occupying powers have the ultimate responsibility and obligation to administer the country whose government they have just displaced, at least until a new national government vested with all attributes of sovereignty has been created." David B. Rivkin and Darin R. Bartram, Experts on International Law. [72]
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: After World War II, the Allies did not end their occupation of Germany, Italy and Japan and THEN ask the defeated aggressor countries to negotiate.
      
      
    • Supporting Evidence: The reason to maintain an occupation is to ensure that the belligerent nation will not rearm and resume its war of conquest.
      
      

[1] http://www.freedomhouse.org/ratings (1999-2000)

[2] http://www.islamreview.org/AnwarShaikh/islam/IslamHumanRights.html

[3] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm#P217_53015

[4] New York Post. May 3, 2002

[5] http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56758.pdf

[6] http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_plo_charter_revise.php

[7] http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

[8] Dershowitz, 162

[9] http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=13885

[10] Resolution 32/40

[11] http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_un_242.php

[12] http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_un_242.php

[13] http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/myths/mf5.html

[14] http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ldc0

[15] http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=13885

[16] Dershowitz, 162

[17] (*) http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=13885

[18] http://www.middleeastfacts.com/Articles/arafatstockholm.htm

[19] (*) http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

[20] http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP15500

[21] http://www.middleeastfacts.com/Articles/arafatstockholm.htm

[22] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP23601

[23] http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP24101

[24] (*) http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

[25] http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/myths/mf22a.html

[26] Howard Sacher

[27] http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0bzz0

[28] Howard Sacher

[29] http://www.paktoday.com/deserve.htm

[30] http://www.israel-un.org/archive/latest-archive.htm#1999 (?)

[31] http://www.israel-un.org/archive/latest-archive.htm#1999 (?)

[32] Amnesty International, July 11, 2002.

[33] http://www.pna.net, and http://www.phrmg.org/monitor2001/feb2001.htm

[34] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1058413673474

[35] Prittie and Curtis, p. 69

[36] http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Peace/clintplan.html

[37] http://www.katzarov.com/clickable_map/p_general_yugosalvia.html

[38] Excerpts in Middle East Quarterly, September 1997 at http://www.meforum.org/pf.php?id=366 and Daniel Pipes,”Where Does Religious Freedom Exist?” at http://www.meforum.org/pf.php?id=318&location=pipes

[39] Cited in Jonathan Adelman and Agouta Kuperman at http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/arabs/christianme.html

[40] Excerpts of Annual Report on Religious Freedom at http://www.meforum.org/pf.php?id=318&location=pipes and in Jonathan Adelman and Agouta Kuperman at http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/arabs/christianme.html

[41] “Poll: Most Palestinians, Israelis, Favor Two-State Solution,” AP reported in Jerusalem Post, May 26 2004 at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085549625199

[42] Available at http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/peace/isplorec.htm

[43] Available at: http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/f3059c4183c2cc2b85256d33006f5b4b/6129b9c832fe59ab85256d43004d87fa!OpenDocument

[44] Translated by MEMRI at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP63604

[45] “Why an Even More Difficult Future Awaits Us, Palestinians and Arabs,” Al-Hayat (London) July 21, 2002, at MEMRI http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP40402

[46] Translated by MEMRI at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP63604

[47] Translated by MEMRI at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP63604

[48] Al-Ayyam (Palestinian newspaper) September 3, 2003, translated at MEMRI at http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD57303

[49] Amnesty International, “Israel and the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority: Without Distinction: Attacks on Civilians by Palestinian Armed Groups,” November 7 2002 at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE020032002

[50] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=b&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/

[51] (*) http://www.tikkun.org/magzine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/mode/printer_friendly/issue/tik0207

(**) http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:11UuCczYQ4IJ:www.coc.org/pdfs/coc/report_6_jerusalem.pdf+ISM+%22Church+of+the+Nativity%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[52] http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=8371

[53] (*) http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=b&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/

(**) http://www.tikkun.org/magzine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/mode/printer_friendly/issue/tik0207

(***) http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/free_forbes/2003/0317/049.html

[54] Michael Walzer, “The Four Wars of Israel/Palestine,” Dissent, Fall 2002.

[55] (*)Resource Center for Non-Violence at http://www.rcnv.org/rcnv/archives/2003/pacestudy.htm

[56] Greg Myre, “Trial of Palestinian Leader Focuses Attention on Israeli Courts,” New York Times, May 5 2003.

[57] Greg Myre, “Trial of Palestinian Leader Focuses Attention on Israeli Courts,” New York Times, May 5 2003.

[58] (*) Resource Center for Non-Violence at http://www.rcnv.org/rcnv/archives/2003/pacestudy.htm

[59] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066799672944

[60] (*) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066799672944

(**) http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ldc0

[61] http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP23601

[62] (*) http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP23601

(**) Washington Times, March 3, 1996.

(***) http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP13200#_edn9

[63] (*)"Camp David: an Exchange." The New York Review of Books. 9/20/01 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14529

[64] (*) http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/isrplo.htm

(**) Washington Times, March 3, 1996.

(***) Peace Watch

(****) http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0i1s0

[65] (*) http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/2003/12389.htm

(**) http://securityfence.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/46060.jpg and http://www.citypopulation.de/Israel.html

[66] http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_un_242.php

[67] Cited at http://www.jcpa.org/art/brief1-21.htm and in Mitchell Bard, Myths and Facts, 2001 p. 272

[68] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/UN%20Security%20Council%20Resolution%20242

[69] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/UN%20Security%20Council%20Resolution%20242

[70] Rivkin and Bartram, “Military Occupation: Legally Ensuring a Lasting Peace” at http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:V3pRr-onrH4J:www.twq.com/03summer/docs/03summer_rivkin.pdf+"legal+military+occupation"&hl=en

[71] Rivkin and Bartram, “Military Occupation: Legally Ensuring a Lasting Peace” at http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:V3pRr-onrH4J:www.twq.com/03summer/docs/03summer_rivkin.pdf+"legal+military+occupation"&hl=en

[72] Rivkin and Bartram, “Military Occupation: Legally Ensuring a Lasting Peace” at http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:V3pRr-onrH4J:www.twq.com/03summer/docs/03summer_rivkin.pdf+"legal+military+occupation"&hl=en