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Gideon Levy: Israel doesn't want peace

Gideon Levy has never held back in expressing a forthright view about the Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the attacks on Gaza, the inequalities in Israelis society (that is, between Jews and Arabs) and the "lie" about Israel seeking a peace with the Palestinians.

 He once again challenges the alleged desire of Israel to have peace with the Palestinians in his latest op-ed in Haaretz.   Levy is right - as "history" has shown those who look past the Israel and Jewish Lobby PR machine - and events in Israel, the West and Gaza in the last days make one fear that another intifada is in the offing.

"Israel does not want peace. There is nothing I have ever written that I would be happier to be proved wrong about. But the evidence is piling up. In fact, it can be said that Israel has never wanted peace – a just peace, that is, one based on a just compromise for both sides. It’s true that the routine greeting in Hebrew is Shalom (peace) – shalom when one leaves and shalom when one arrives. And, at the drop of a hat, almost every Israeli will say he wants peace, of course he does. But he’s not referring to the kind of peace that will bring about the justice without which there is no peace and there will be no peace. Israelis want peace, not justice, certainly not anything based on universal values. Thus, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Not only is there no peace: In recent years, Israel has moved away from even the aspiration to make peace. It has despaired utterly of it. Peace has disappeared from the Israeli agenda, its place taken by the collective anxieties that are systematically implanted, and by personal, private matters that now take precedence over all else.

The Israeli longing for peace seemingly died about a decade ago, after the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000, the dissemination of the lie that there is no Palestinian partner for peace, and, of course, the horrific blood-soaked period of the second intifada. But the truth is that even before that, Israel never really wanted peace. Israel has never, not for a minute, treated the Palestinians as human beings with equal rights. It has never viewed their distress as understandable human and national distress."

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