The late Ariel Sharon, a longtime Israeli soldier and political leader, confided his thoughts to his close friend Uri Dan, an Israeli journalist. Their beliefs can be found in This Burning Land, by Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin.
“The bond between the two men was built on an unshakable belief. The Jews and the Arabs had been fighting for generations, and… no resolution was on the horizon,” reads This Burning Land.
As Sharon and Dan saw it, “the Arabs had never genuinely accepted the presence of Israel,” and so a two-state solution was not possible nor even desirable. They “accepted the conflict as a permanent feature of life in the Middle East, part of the world they were born into, and part of the world they would leave behind… In their minds—and in the minds of a fair number of Israelis and Palestinians—if you did not accept the enduring nature of the conflict, then you did not understand the conflict at all.”
The 2010 book did not state the views of Benjamin Netanyahu, who at that time was beginning a long run as prime minister. But the idea of a long-lasting conflict helps to make sense of Netanyahu’s interview Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as several past conversations.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The 2010 book did not state the views of Benjamin Netanyahu, who at that time was beginning a long run as prime minister.
But the idea of a long-lasting conflict helps to make sense of Netanyahu’s interview Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as several past conversations.
Asked about the future of Gaza, which the Israeli military is now wrenching from the control of Hamas, Netanyahu said what he didn’t want but was vague about what he did.
When asked who will rule when Hamas is deposed, Netanyahu said that for “the forseeable future,” Israeli troops will have "overall military responsibility.
He rejects the most obvious replacement for Hamas, the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah, the party that rules the West Bank.
But for anyone who thinks the conflict is “permanent” and that no solution could possibly be satisfactory to Israel, the lack of a long-term plan for Gaza is desirable.
The original article contains 705 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!