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Israel & Hamas: Sit down and start talking

"Israel really needs to sit down and talk with Hamas … if for nothing more than to secure its own long term future."

So concludes Yvonne Ridley, a political analyst on Middle East and Asian affairs, as well as a presenter for The Agenda show on Press TV, in a piece on Information Clearing House.

Ridley makes some more than interesting points, not the least this one:

"I recently spoke to someone from Hamas and told them I was coming here this evening. I was very enthusiastic on several different levels and was rather crestfallen when he just sneered, shrugged his shoulders and looked singularly unimpressed.

When I pressed him and asked surely it was important for all sides to talk, he shrugged his shoulders again and then said: “Why do we need to talk? Why do we need to do anything? Time is on our side. We have waited 50 years for our country and we can wait another 50 years”.

I mentioned this to Jewish American author Dr Alice Rothchild, an amazing, compassionate woman who had just returned from the region and surprisingly she nodded in agreement.

According to Alice the so-called Zionist lobby in America is weakening by the day because young Jewish Americans no longer want to move to Israel and many want to forget about the so-called Promised Land because it was making them confront uncomfortable ideas about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. A case of the abused becoming the abuser is simply too unpleasant for some jewish people to contemplate.

But while it appears a growing number of young Jewish people from the West are content to remain in the West, the millions of young Palestinians living around the world are growing in their determination to return and demand the right to return to Palestine.

So you see, this could be why Hamas in particular and other Palestinians aren’t that bothered about talking to people who have no wish to talk to them or even discuss the notion of the right to return which could be demanded by as many as 7 million Palestinians."

Read the full piece here.

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