Origin of evil

[Pat Mustard]

For most of the country's history there was (and is) nobody in a position of power willing to even talk, let alone make the neccessay climbdowns to generate a proper Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Not true. Menachem Begin and Saddat, Menachem Begin and Arafat, Jitzchak Rabin brokering peace with Jordan and being on his way to reach some kind of agreement with the Palestinians before getting killed by a home made nutjob. Even Sharon wthdrew from Gaza.

It's only this last adminstration under Netanjahu that's totally against any kind of serious negotiations. The reasons are clear, since Netanjahu is in a coalition with the jewish fundamentalist Schas party and they haven't got any interest in brokering a peace deal or give up even a yard of the occupied territories.

Begin didn't speak to the Palestinians, he spoke to the Egyptians. He essentially traded Gaza to Egypt for a free reign in the West Bank. Rabin was the only one who actually spoke to Palestinian groups, but the Oslo accords hammered out ended up giving Palestine less land than they were legally entitled to under international law at the time. And before Begin's time, Israel's attitude to Palestine was, essentially, "unleash the Stern Group on them"

My point still stands, that even when in the very rare instances where Israel was willing to speak to Palestine, the prequesite for such talks were for Palestine to give up its rights and land before talks could commence.