July-August 2006
Sacred values http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ja06atran_100 If the Middle East peace process is to be salvaged, Israelis and Palestinians must make symbolic concessions. But time is running out.
By Scott Atran Web Exclusive © 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Hamas leader and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya seems to understand that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake his party's all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the '67 borders, living in calm," Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before it was destroyed in an Israeli missile attack, "but we need the West as a partner to help us through." Haniya's government recently agreed to a historic compromise with rival Fatah leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to form a national coalition that implicitly allows for the coexistence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, following the 1967 borders. But news of this breakthrough was quickly superseded by Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas's military wing. http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ja06atran_100