Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Quotes
This clause has been the cause of immense problems in the Mid-East. Hamas castigates any Palestinian who even suggests that there should be negotiations with Israel that are sincere as nothing less than the end of Israel is consistent with their charter. Anyone who uses the peace process for anything else but tactical advantage and buying time to strike again is a traitor. Meanwhile, the clause is taken be Israel to demonstrate that there is no point to any negotiations so long as the Palestinian Authority allows such an organization with this charter clause to be legal and operate in the open. The Palestinian Authority leadership are not willing to risk a civil war, and thus little or no progress is made.
Some Palestinians and other Arabs either ignore or are delusional about history as the Jews had been in the Area for 5 thousand years, and when Christ was born and died and Christianity born, the Jews were the majority population in the area of Israel and Palestine. Even in the Muslim Controlled Ottoman Empire, Jews were living in the area and are described on thousands of Ottoman legal and historical documents. The reason that this quotation is so important is that Abbas was supposed to be the most reasonable of the Arab leaders regarding a two state solution, and here in 2014 he argued that the Jews to not belong in the area and have no roots there. The other Hamas Arab leaders required in their charter the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews anywhere in the world. Who then, many conservative Israelis ask, can Israel reasonably negotiate with as no state will negotiate for its own existence—especially the most democratic, most developed, and has the highest average standard of living for its citizens and the most freedom for Arabs of any nation in the Middle East.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the base on which the Great Jewish Temple was erected. The temple was destroyed by the Romans. Hundreds of years later the Muslims built a mosque which the Prophet Muhammud himself is believed to have transported to. One side of the Temple Mount is the Wailing Wall, the holiest place on Earth for Orthodox Jews. When the Arabs controlled Jerusalem, they would not allow any Jews to pray at the Wailing Wall. When the Israelis gained control of the holy city they were more reasonable. They ceded day to day control of the Temple Mount—the top and the Mosque—to the Muslims and since then Jews have prayed at the side of the Mount and Muslims on the top. However there has been some friction about the archeology of the interior of the Mount itself. And some Muslims resent the fact that Israel controls the security and access to one of their holiest Mosques, and that in the event of some transgression in the Mount, Israeli civil law controls and not Islamic religious law—Sharia. Some permanent agreement will have to be made if there is to be an overall peace.
