The Palestinian News You Don't See

Thunderian

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Serious question: Given what Palestinian territories look like right now, what do people think a Palestinian nation would look like?

The Palestinian news you don't see
washingtonexaminer.com/the-palestinian-news-you-dont-see/article/2621501

The tragedy of the pro-Palestinian movement is its attachment to a single narrative: "Look at how wretched the lives of the Palestinian people are," they tell us, "It is because of Israeli oppression." Because this narrative must be constantly reinforced, there is little room for real reporting about the failures of the Palestinian leadership and the corruption and infighting that have caused the West Bank and Gaza to languish.

One journalist who does pay attention to internal Palestinian politics is Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning Israeli-Arab journalist who writes for The Jerusalem Post and the Gatestone Institute. He risks his life to tell the truth. Let's track the last few days in Palestinian news through his reporting.

On April 22, Hamas, the terrorist group ruling Gaza, arrested a Palestinian woman and Fatah activist, Ruwaidah Muhareb. Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Abbas is the president of the sometimes-moderate Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank. This arrest follows Hamas's previous apprehension of journalist Taghreed Abu Tharifeh of Palestine TV last week.

On the same day, Fatah publicly called for a general strike among Palestinians on Thursday and clashes with the Israeli Defence Forces on Friday—a planned "Day of Rage." The strike is supposed to be in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Marwan Barghouti, convicted of five murders, publicized their case in a New York Times op-ed. You may have heard of these hunger strikers. You will not have heard, however, of Abdullah Dataghmeh, held in the PA's Jericho prison, who died last month after embarking on a hunger strike against his Palestinian jailers.

Let's move on to April 23, when Mahmoud al-Habbash, an advisor to Abbas, called on Palestinians in Gaza to revolt against Hamas. It is "time to end a black chapter in Palestinian history," he said.

The next day, April 24th, a Palestinian official in Ramallah denied rumors of Abbas's deteriorating heart condition. Abbas, now 82 years of age, was elected to a four-year term as president in 2005. He has not submitted to an election since. This is the man with whom Israel is supposed to sign a peace deal—a leader with no democratic legitimacy running a government propped up by the money of the international community, an ailing old man with no clear successor.

On April 25th, Hamas released a statement accusing Abbas of practicing "political blackmail" against the Gaza Strip.

On April 26th, a Hamas official went beyond his party line and called for Abbas' execution for treason. On the same day, the party announced on its website that it will release a "political document"—wrongly reported as a "revised charter," for its previous charter calls for a genocide of all Jews—on Monday that is expected to accept a neighboring state on the borders created by the 1949 armistice agreement, reflecting where troops were when fighting from the Israeli War of Independence ceased.

However, the document is expected to deliberately not recognize Israel's right to exist. How these two can co-exist is confusing, at least to me, but it is still a step forward.

Today, the Palestinian Authority notified Israel that it would stop paying for the electricity that Israel provides to the Gaza Strip, effective immediately. The Palestinian Authority has not explained its actions, but they can reasonably be interpreted as a move to exert pressure on both Hamas, which will face a serious humanitarian crisis if the flow of electricity stops, and Israel, which will surely face the wrath of the global media if it does not now provide Gaza with free energy, even though it is governed by a terrorist organization committed to Israel's destruction.

Most of this will be ignored in the international press, which seems to believe that Palestinian-on-Palestinian fighting isn't worth the paper it…isn't printed on. Were it not for Khaled Abu Toameh, many of us simply wouldn't know. But if the terrible governance doesn't end, the Palestinian territories will never improve their own lot.
 

Serveto

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Serious question: Given what Palestinian territories look like right now, what do people think a Palestinian nation would look like?
As I read it, that above-linked article, in some respects worth reading and considering, is looking through the microscope. This one which follows looks through the telescope.

Divide Et Impera ("Divide and rule, or conquer")
Hamas vs. Fatah
The Washington Post (Ishaan Tharoor) said:
How Israel Helped Create Hamas
... It also obscures Hamas's curious [sic] history. To a certain degree, the Islamist organization ... has the Jewish state to thank for its existence. Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first intifada, or uprising ... But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.

At the time, Israel's main enemy was the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, which formed the heart of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Fatah was secular and cast in the mold of other revolutionary, leftist guerrilla movements waging insurgencies elsewhere in the world during the Cold War ...
Source
 
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Serendipity

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In one breath you say that Palestinians have the best life and post pictures of swimming pools in Gaza and the West Bank (which is like the worst evidence ever) and in the next breath you say that they have it bad because of Fatah and Hamas who ironically are inventions of Israel (refer to Serveto's link above). So which one is it?

I love threads like these, they show how insecure Israel and their supporters are. What I love even more is that it's American Evangelical Christians who go above and beyond to justify Israel's actions when Israelis make fun of them the minute they walk away.

I also love how some people claim to be experts about Palestine when you use sources like the ones above. 'Scared for his life' - yes, he should be since it's either the Israelis blackmailing him or he's just a traitor who deserves to be punished.

And finally, I love how you're turning an honorable cause i.e. the hunger strike where thousands of prisoners including children who, mind you, are arrested without cause into propaganda and yet again victimizing Israel. I didn't see this coming to be honest. /s

I'm proud of my country and my people. You can attack us with everything you have (money, weapons, propaganda, media, whatever) and we will still be standing. Our mere existence is an inconvenience to all of you (understatement of the year) but we're not going anywhere so keep it coming.
 
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Serveto

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"Let's do the time warp again ..."
Dan Murphy and Joshuah Mitnick (CSM) said:
Last week [2007], when that fighting veered towards open warfare between the Palestinian factions, Israel allowed about 500 Fatah loyalists to cross back over the Rafah crossing into Gaza from Egypt, where they were receiving US training, an unusual move for Israel, which seeks to strictly limit the movement of fighting-age men through the Gaza border with Egypt.
In other words, let Hamas, which WaPo op-ed writer Ishaan Tharoor cautiously said "to a certain degree" has the Jewish state to thank for its existence, and Fatah wage open conflict, thus keeping the Gaza Strip in a continuous state of chaos?
The situation has gotten to be quite dire in Gaza, we have a situation of lawlessness and outright chaos ..." [US] Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton said.
It sounds to me as though, to some of the power elite, the guys whose Supreme Court building (thank you, VC!) has the one-eye looking through the pyramid, everything was -and is- right on track: "ordo ab chao."
These men have been widely reported to be members of the [Fatah] Presidential Guard, though a source who works in Israel says they may have been from another [?] Palestinian unit. In his testimony, [US] General Dayton referred to the men as "soldiers" and members of the National Security Service.
Oh look. The Presidential Guard of Fatah's Abbas, in that case, were called "soldiers" instead of "terrorists."

Source
"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia." (George Orwell)
 
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Serveto

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I don't think many people are going to believe he risks his life for the truth when he's writing for those two outlets.
It may well be that, in both presenting and publishing his findings, his life is endangered by others, especially partisans of Palestine. If so, I regret that and wish it were not the case. People should be given a hearing, even, and especially, when they express the usually unpopular minority viewpoint (and I say this as somebody who often finds himself in the minority, on many subjects).
 

Thunderian

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As I read it, that above-linked article, in some respects worth reading and considering, is looking through the microscope. This one which follows looks through the telescope.

Divide Et Impera ("Divide and rule, or conquer")
Hamas vs. Fatah

Source
I have seen this brought up numerous times, but have never seen anyone follow through on the thinking. We are told that Hamas was created by Israel, but what does that mean? Is Hamas controlled by Israel? What does this mean for peace, or for a Palestinian state? Hamas has just said they agree with a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but still refuse to recognize the state of Israel. Why not?

I would really like to discuss these issues, but I'm not interested in replying to memes or manifestos. Blaming everything on Israel seems to take precedence over everything else, and that has produced nothing helpful so far.
 

Serveto

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I have seen this brought up numerous times, but have never seen anyone follow through on the thinking. We are told that Hamas was created by Israel, but what does that mean?
That's a good question. We are also told, and here Zbigniew Brzezinski admits as much, that Al-Qaeda since morphed into Al Nusra Front and ISIS, were created by the USA. What does that mean?
Thunderian said:
Is Hamas controlled by Israel?
To me, it seems unlikely, at least not entirely. I suspect that both Hamas and Fatah have a certain, very limited amount of autonomy (please note, however, that it was Israel that controlled allowing Fatah "soldiers" into Gaza in 2007), but clearly the two factions can be played against each other, as the CSM article describes.

At any rate, it could be one of those "blow back" factors. By aiding and abetting, or even acting as mid-wife to, Hamas, Israel, as the above article in the rather establishment publication Washington Post points out, created what was hoped to be a battering ram against the PLO and Fatah. As happens with many golems, Hamas, ISIS and Frankenstein included, things tend to get out of hand; that is to say, Frankenstein takes on a life of his own and makes it to the movies. On the other hand, "divide et impera," as a military policy and stratagem, is age old and the masters of statecraft, both in D.C. and Tel-Aviv (and elsewhere), know and use the stratagem with incomparable, consummate skill.

Thunderian said:
What does this mean for peace, or for a Palestinian state?
That, of course, remains to be seen. "President" Abbas, who is annoying -to say nothing of possibly endangering- a lot of Hamas-supporting Gazans on the ground as we speak, and is generally not a representative of rival Hamas, is making a move toward President Trump now. Whether it is a move to solidify his own political power or it proves valuable for Palestinian statehood, that is to say, the masses, in general is also an open question. I, personally, and though I tend toward cynicism, consider the political class of most countries, including most notably my own, a generally sorry, power-grabbing lot.

Thunderian said:
Hamas has just said they agree with a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but still refuse to recognize the state of Israel. Why not?
It might have something to do with over all reciprocity. I don't think that Israel, especially when one considers the so called "settlement" movement, is much given to recognizing Hamas either, despite the fact that Hamas might be one of Israel's own children, and a child with some pronounced matricidal tendencies at that.

Thunderian said:
I would really like to discuss these issues, but I'm not interested in replying to memes or manifestos.
Thank you, in that case, for responding to my post. Apparently you didn't see it as either a meme or a manifesto. If so, you are correct, my post was neither of the two.

Thunderian said:
Blaming everything on Israel seems to take precedence over everything else, and that has produced nothing helpful so far.
I agree that, to use a trite and inexact analogy, much like in an unhealthy marriage, pointing fingers in blame is far from productive. However, it is important, in my view, to recognize the extreme power differentials in this case, and to recognize, as well, the fact that those who create the golems are ultimately responsible for them.
 
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UnderAlienControl

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Well, there's a reason why everybody talks about 1967 borders. Because the '67 war ended with a land grab. Why do you think they attacked the USS Liberty, a basically unarmed eavesdropping ship, killing Americans and tried to pin it on the Egyptians? Moshe Dayan didn't want the US to hear his tank movements because he was violating an agreement and going into Syria. The Syrians had already agreed to roll over and play dead, so Moshe Dayan decided to sucker punch them and grab some land and that is how they came to be in possession of the Golan. I did read that they offered the Golan back to syria in exchange for Syrian recognition of the state of Israel, but that the offer was lost in translation and thus never acted upon. Anyway, this is most of the reason Egypt and Syria attacked in the !973 Yom Kippur War. Egypt was trying to recover parts of the Sinai it had lost and Syria was trying to reclaim the Golan so they surprised attacked Israel. I study a lot of history man.

Google the Yinon Plan, drawn up in 1979 and apparently implemented in 1999. It states that removing the dictators will plunge those countries into civil war and thus enhance Israeli security. Translation: when all hell breaks loose we can possibly push those borders back and get more land. Side benefit: those countries will be too tied up to support the Palestinians very much anymore. Well, the dictators are gone, no?

That's why Gen. Wesley Clark will tell you that after 9/11 the plan he was told to follow was that 'we were going to roll 7 countries in 5 years". Well, they've been doing it for 15 years now-how's that working out for everybody? I'm sure you've heard the term "Neocon" cause that's who you can probably thank for all of this.

Read up on Theodore Herzl and what the tenets and aims of Zionism actually were and are. You know, they were seriously looking at settling in Argentina first. Anyway, a tenet of Zionism was to buy all the land up that they could, and whoever wouldn't sell they would isolate them by building all around them. The native population would then not be given work and transported to countries that would give them work. In other words: Now you see why this is done to the Palestinians? They're all supposed to be gone now, "transported to other countries" (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) to work and live. Apparently, they are just too damn stubborn! And BTW, nothing in this treatise is "conspiracy theory", these are all facts. You can look them up for yourself and I'll leave some footnotes. As for your question, "We are told that Hamas was created by Israel, but what does that mean?". It means "controlled opposition", doesn't it? Straight out of the playbook.

And before the next talking head news anchor or politician states that "Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine", I watched a neocon on the Bill Maher show (was it David Frum?) tell Bill Maher and I quote, "We are going to try to pry it (Ukraine) away from them (Russia) without upsetting them too much." And as Putin told the press about the "invasion", "If we had invaded it we would have owned it 18 months ago." Just more propaganda to demonize Russia at the behest of the neocons and the globalists? Zbignew Brezinski, I think, has a lot to do with this mindset arguing in his foreign policy book "to go all the way to Moscow next time" we go to war.

In closing, a few points: Israel doesn't seem to need to make a deal they are settlement building right now as we speak. "With the ill-treatment of Palestinian civilians, shooting white phosphorous on civilians, leveling Gaza (it would take a century to rebuild. A century!), Checkpoints, the IDF shooting people at demonstrations where they were NOT attacked, sterilizing Ethiopian Jews without their knowledge, detaining African migrants in the desert for deportation, being an Apartheid state
("In the territories" - Jimmy Carter), and on and on.


Christian persecution in the Holy Land-the Vatican had to send the Israeli government a letter denouncing the Christian abuse and desecration of churches. The favorite line to scrawl on church doors seems to be, "Jesus is a monkey". So while the land may contain "Holy" sites I can't really believe the land is that Holy anymore. It's been defiled countless times from the Crusades onward. It's sad that blood ran up to the knees in the streets during the Crusades.

As Kissinger stated to Nixon when he was Sec State: "We have to keep them (Israel) from turning into a little Sparta." Well, we failed miserably on that front, Henry. All of their citizens serve a military stint. After all, most of their Prime Ministers were the "head of a Special Forces unit" in the IDF. It's like electing Rambo as President. Now 200-400 rumored undeclared nukes and 6 Dolphin nuclear attack submarines later, how'd that work out? And on top of all that, the USA gives that tribute every year ($3.8 Billion) while the USA's infrastructure crumbles all around the country.

Israel only country to escape proposed cuts to U.S. foreign aid
http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-israel-only-country-to-escape-state-1489695965-htmlstory.html


Anyway, just wanted to make sure we are talking about the same group when it comes to making deals, cause it's been 50 years and there ain't no deals on the horizon anytime soon. The annexing and building go on. So now, in summation all I can ask is: If these are facts, does that make me a liar? (<>..<>)

FOOTNOTES FROM THE MEDIA:
http://www.newsweek.com/isis-fighters-regret-attacking-israel-apologize-defense-minister-591020
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/lutherans-say-cut-off-aid-toisrael/
http://www.texemarrs.com/102012/sixteen_intelligence_agencies.htm





 
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Kung Fu

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I would really like to discuss these issues, but I'm not interested in replying to memes or manifestos.
As would many others but I think many have come to see the peace-process as a joke. The peace-process has been going on for over 40 years and absolutely nothing has come out of it except for more Palestinian lives lost and more of their land taken from them and filled with settlers. And to really put dirt in the eyes of the Palestinians the "broker" of these peace negotiations is America, who have flat out said that they're completely loyal to their "friend and ally" Israel when it comes to the negotiations. That's equivalent to me going to court against someone I don't like with the sole decision and judgment maker being the judge who also happens to be my best friend and brother.
 

Thunderian

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As would many others but I think many have come to see the peace-process as a joke.
Why do you think it's a joke? Theoretically, peace between Israel and the Palestinians could start today if they both agreed to it.
 

Serveto

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It wasn't until recently, when President Obama was on his way out of office, that Israel learned, to the dismay of many of its disproportionately powerful partisans, that it doesn't invariably have de facto veto power in the UN Security Council by way of its usually obeisant "superpower," if a power as deeply in national debt as America is can, in fact, rightly be called a superpower.
 

Thunderian

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When did Israel ever stick to its agreements?
Can you provide some examples of Israel breaking agreements it's made with the Palestinians?

Israel, for their part, has made peace with Egypt and Jordan, and has not violated those agreements. However, after the 1993 Oslo accords, which were hailed as the way to peace in Palestine, it was Arafat and the Palestinians who showed they weren't willing to follow through on the very things they agreed to. Keep in mind, these were things the Palestinians agreed they would do for peace, and didn't.

Failure to accept Israel’s existence: Constantly referring (in Arabic) to a “phase
strategy” designed to use self-administered areas as a base of operations to destroy
Israel; comparing Oslo to a historic treaty made and broken by the Prophet Mohammed
once it was expedient; continuing to use maps, insignia, and terminology presenting
Israel proper as “Occupied Palestine”; disseminating inflammatory and fallacious
material that denied Jewish nationhood and Jewish historic roots in the Land of Israel.

Failure to take ‘all measures necessary against terrorism’: Refraining from disarming
lawless militias or even closing their training camps; refusing to outlaw organizations
that championed and carried out terrorist acts (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad);
seeking reconciliation with such rivals who openly aided, abetted and carried out
terrorist acts - in essence, adopting a modus operandi that allowed some Palestinians to
attack Israel while others negotiated.

Failure to change the PLO Covenant: Using a string of excuses and provisos to
postpone the vote time and again so that the pledge to remove from the PLO Covenant
clauses denying Israel’s right to exist was never fulfilled; likewise, failing to annul
clauses calling for an armed struggle to destroy Israel and the denial of Israel’s right to
exist.

Failure to repudiate terrorism and violence and refrain from anti-Israeli
propaganda:
Constantly calling for a jihad (holy war), praising terrorists as heroes and
Hamas leaders as brothers, while vilifying Israel in demonic, antisemitic terms on
Palestinian media channels; under self-governance, transforming public schools into
factories that inculcate hatred of Israel and Jews and nurture a ‘cult of death’ in
children, instead of promoting peace education as they promised.

Failure to extradite or discipline terrorists: Procrastinating in arrest of suspected
terrorists who found asylum in Palestinian Authority areas; or apprehending them and
then refusing to extradite them to Israel; abusing the terms of the agreement that
allowed the Palestinian Authority to prosecute and sentence perpetrators by conducting
bogus ‘quickie trials’ and establishing jails with revolving doors.

Failure to abide by limitations placed on the Palestinian Authority’s police force:
Failing to provide Israel with a full list of police personnel and register all weapons as
required; accepting former terrorists into the force who were specifically barred from
serving under the terms of the agreement.

Failure to respect human rights and the rule of law: Creating a police state where the
number of security personnel per capita (police, preventive security personnel, etc.) was
frightening in scope and where strong arm tactics, torture, and intimidation of citizenry

Failure to adopt transparent methods of funding and honest governmental
procedures:
Ignoring the norms of honest governance they promised to uphold,
misusing foreign aid, resulting in widespread corruption and graft among Palestinian
Authority officials and governing institutions. Far from improving average Palestinians’
standard of living, standards plummeted under self-rule as Arafat and his cronies grew
rich: Forbes magazine’s 17th annual survey (2003) of the richest people in the world
shows Arafat has used his position to amass a personal fortune estimated at $300
million, stashed away in Swiss banks. Ranked among heads of state, Arafat’s personal
fortune was reported to be one notch below that of the Queen of England.

Despite all this, peace was given a second chance with Oslo II (the Taba Agreement), but the Palestinians were up to their old tricks, including such acts of non-compliance as:

Failure to revise the Palestinian National Covenant: Arafat made a travesty of his
obligation in Gaza, when he pretended to annul the Covenant in the presence of
President Bill Clinton, in a manner contrary to the process stipulated in the Covenant
itself, by merely staging a spectacle without legal validity.

Failure to prevent terrorist attacks: Non-compliance continued parallel to terrorist
attacks. Failing to act, Palestinian forces began to express openly their support of
terrorists at demonstrations by firing weapons in the air, then using those weapons to
threaten and even kill members of joint patrols. The most memorable case was a two-
day rampage in September 1996 when Palestinian police turned their weapons against
Israeli soldiers, leaving 13 members of the Israel Defense Force dead.

Failure to guarantee religious freedom: Despite pledging to respect their integrity and
provide free access to Jewish holy sites in areas transferred to the Palestinian Authority,
Palestinians burned down the ancient Shalom al Yisrael (“Peace Upon Israel”)
synagogue in Jericho and smashed to rubble Joseph’s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus,
declaring that a mosque would be built on the site.

Failure to limit the size and firepower of the Palestinian Authority police force: The
Palestinian Authority equipped its police force with massive quantities of ammunition
and contraband weaponry, the quantity and quality of which was prohibited under the
agreement. Between 1995 and 2000, the PA violated the terms of the treaty by
increasing the size of the force from 36,000 to 40,000, vastly more than the 12,000
originally envisioned as a ‘strong police force,’ and far above the 24,000 ultimately
agreed upon in “Oslo I” or the 30,000 Israel acquiesced to retroactively in October 1995
in ‘Oslo II,’ hoping that a greater force would fight terrorism.17 In essence, the
Palestinian Authority built an infantry force larger than that maintained by the IDF, a
genuine military force (which the Accords clearly prohibited) rather than a police force.

Failure to halt terrorism: The Palestinian Authority police force did not prevent
terrorist acts launched by Hamas and others. In September 2000 when Arafat launched
all-out guerrilla warfare against Israel, PA police turned into combatants and
Palestinian preventive security forces became terror management operators, secretly
directing and funding attacks on Israel with money funneled from senior Palestinian
Authority leaders. Ultimately, the Palestinian police became perpetrators. In November
2000 an Israeli officer was murdered when Palestinian officials planted a bomb against
a wall separating joint Palestinian and Israeli offices, used for synchronizing cooperative
security details and transferring essential goods and commodities to Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, there have been at least five more attempts to make the Oslo agreement work, but each time it's failed because of problems of Palestinian origin, not Israeli. Israel has shown by it's treaties with Egypt and Jordan that it can abide by accords with Arabs, and it has taken steps in faith (like withdrawing from Gaza) that show it's willing to act in the interest of peace with the Palestinians. Each time, it's the Palestinians who break the agreements and act in ways that show they are not interested in peace.

So when you make statements like, when did Israel ever stick to it's agreements, everyone nods and likes the posts, but the facts don't support that sentiment, do they? In fact, it's the Palestinians who have always broken peace deals.
 
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