COEXISTENCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINIANS?

By the Hasbara Committee

Everyone is talking about it but when push comes to shove it falls by the wayside. Take the example Professor Sari Nusseibeh, President of Arabic Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. Professor Nusseibeh spoke out against the British boycott of two Israeli universities: Haifa University and Bar Ilan University. And Professor Nussseibeh and Professor Menachem Magidor, President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently made an agreement for the two universities to cooperate with each other at a high level, although they have been cooperating with each other for a long time. One would think this a step in the right direction towards better coexistence but the Palestinian Teacher’s Union is pressuring the Palestinian Authority to fire Professor Nusseibeh for his ‘consorting with the enemy’. The Palestinian tactic is that everything must be solved before any agreements can be entertained – of course they know that will never happen because, for one thing, they will never cease with their demands. A breakthrough starts with a small opening and is not intended to rectify every supposed wrong. But a small opening leads to a larger opening and that is how real progress is made.

WHAT DID MAHMOUD ABBAS ACHIEVE IN WASHINGTON? The Palestinian Chairman went to meet with President Bush to pursue the Palestinian position. President Bush agreed to give Abbas US$50 million so that he would be able walk away with something tangible in his hand. This amount will pay the salaries of his 57,000 security men (at current rates) for about four months or for June, July, August and September. This is till just after the Gaza Disengagement slated to be completed in September. Maybe it is simply a coincidence. Abbas complained to Bush that Israel should be doing more to advance the Roadmap while he is still not even in control of the gunmen that roam the streets and the Palestinians are losing support of the Palestinian people to Hamas every day. And what about Palestinian plans to create employment programs? Has anyone noticed that this critical factor never seems to make the important international news even with hundreds of foreign reporters stationed in Israel and looking for stories? Perhaps it’s just not sexy like blood and violence. Israel has proposed the establishment of industrial centers for the Palestinians but the Palestinians are not answering their mail or returning telephone calls on the subject.

The Americans may be full of gestures but the reality is they are waiting to see the outcome of the Gaza Strip changeover. How well will the PA manage it? Or will they wait for foreigners to do this for them?

ISRAEL’S INTERNAL INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE is front page news for everyone to read and cannot be ignored or downplayed. As we just wrote in our last Update, truth and corruption are mutually exclusive. This kind of massive corruption is part of the internal rot that plagues this country and has nothing to do with Palestinians. Leading private investigators on behalf of clients, which are leading businesses, planted viruses called Trojan Horses in the computers of many businesses to learn everything they are doing and steal their records. The virus is almost impossible to detect by conventional means. It is said to be the worse scandal of its kind in Israel’s history. Readers may recall that we wrote a short time ago about this country needing some major shake-ups. Believe me we know the situation very well and would like to do something to improve it. There is no use in living in a world of ‘make believe’. That will not help Israel. Israel has to root out the rot before it can hope to improve its public image. Let’s not be naïve. We are one address you can write to about the problem.

NEW IHC UPDATE HAS BEEN SENT OUT. This Update contains important thoughts about Hasbara, the political situation in Israel and the future of the Israel Hasbara Committee as well as other points of interest. If you are in disagreement with some of the points contained in the report or have useful suggestions, we will as usual be pleased to hear them.

THE ISRAEL HASBARA COMMITTEE is an entirely independent media voice that brings you new and highly relevant material every day, five days a week, which relates in some way to Israel's image. We devote considerable time to select, write, edit and clearly present this news and commentary. The Israel Hasbara Committee continues to be the source of many original comments and ideas. www.infoisrael.net is the leading website of its kind in the world.- ISRAEL HASBARA COMMITTEE.

It All Comes Down to the Buses

By Paula R. Stern

In Israel, the term “hasbara” is loosely translated as “propaganda.” In more general terms, hasbara is seen as the attempt by Jews and Israelis around the world to explain Israel’s position in a way that will help others understand why we do what we do, how we live where we live, and why. Hasbarais about taking the cause of Israel and explaining it so that people don’t automatically sympathize with what they perceive as the underdog. Instead, they see the broader picture, one of historical rights, of peace offerings made and violence returned, of a people who have built a nation out of sand and another people who have been robbed of billions of dollars in donations, incited to violence and continually deprived of a democratic voice by their own religious and political leaders. Hasbara means making it clear that there is no “cycle” of violence, but a long history of terrorist attacks and attempts to stop these attacks with various means.


Hasbara is about explaining what the Arabs have done to their own children and why we are not to blame. Hasbara is about explaining that Israel has a right to exist and Jews have a right to live in this land, and that there can be no peace agreement until these basic principles are accepted by the Palestinians. And finally, hasbara is about explaining that what Arab leaders SAY in English is not relevant when compared to what they SAY in Arabic, and what they do. Just about everyone agrees that in the war of information, Israel continues to lag hopelessly behind the Palestinians. They are so much better than we are at getting their side across to the media. They have no problem showing their wounds, they glory in them. They even glory in wounds that never existed, as when they cried “massacre” in Jenin and left the world believing that thousands had been murdered, when the real death toll was 52 (vast majority of which were armed gunmen). After a terrorist attack in which Israeli citizens are murdered, the Palestinians are quick to condemn violence on both sides, as if the death o f the terrorist is morally and socially equivalent to the deaths of those he murdered. Smooth-talking Palestinians such as Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi fill the airwaves with their double talk, exaggerations and outright lies, while incoherent Israeli representatives, vying for time in front of the lights, stumble through with the heavily accented English and embarrass us all. They focus on points and miss nuances and meanings. They confuse with details and buzzwords while Palestinians talk about real people and suffering. The impending visit of a radio journalist explains it all. Already, an impressive list of Palestinian leaders are lined up to meet her, show her the camps, the poverty, the disadvantaged Palestinians, the evil fence we are building, the unemployment. They will not show her the Palestinian textbooks filled with hatred and incitement, nor will they show her Palestinian television which broadcasts Holocaust denial, anti-Semitic slander and calls for violence. While the Israelis will offer her a press card giving her the right to travel all over, they are too busy to organize an impressive list of Israelis who can counter in a meaningful way what she will see and hear during her visits with Palestinians. It is therefore left to ordinary Israelis to speak for our side, to explain why Palestinian poverty is self-inflicted, why violence in textbooks yields a violent society.

If we are not careful, this becomes something of a race for each side to show its bloody wounds and she is left to judge which side has bled more. In sheer numbers, the Palestinians will win because buried in these figures are the suicide bombers, those who shot and lynched and attempted violent actions and were eventually stopped. We have our blood and the Palestinians have theirs. We have our land issues and they have theirs, our claims versus theirs, our history versus theirs. Worse, from the point of view of the impartial scales, our children are brought up in comparative wealth while the Palestinians retain their “underdog” image at all costs. I’ll take the journalist to meet settlers as she has requested, but my goal will be to show her that settlers are nothing more than people who have chosen to live on this block versus that one, in this house versus that one. And yet, there is a more important challenge facing Israelis who are put in the position of having to defend Israel. How can we quickly show the difference between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side? I began by thinking of what she would see from them and what we could show her. They would show her squalor and refugee camps, we could show her orderly homes and planted trees. They would show her a wall covered in angry graffiti, and we could show her statistics showing that terrorist attacks have dropped 90% since the security fence was built. They can show her families who have lost children and we can show her families decimated by terror. A pathetic parade of victims, she will quickly conclude. Slowly, an idea began to form in my head. I could ask someone from ZAKA to speak to her, that amazing organization of people tasked with the job of cleaning up the human remains after a terrorist attack. To the last drop of blood and human flesh that can be gathered, they fight for the dignity of the dead. Even better, I thought, is for her to see. A visual is needed beyond the words. And that’s when the picture formed in my mind. I could take her to see what is left of the buses after the terrorist attack, sanitized and cleaned, but horrific nonetheless. I could ask the ZAKA representative to meet us there, to walk with us and explain what happened on some of the buses. The child found alive under the remains, the victims, the blood, the horror that was inflicted on people who simply got on the wrong bus. The school children on the way to school, the doctor on his way to the hospital, the grandmother on her weekly run to the market. And therein lies the difference, the one thing that we have that the Palestinians do not, the one piece of the puzzle that is uniquely Israeli. The Palestinians have no buses to show. We have never targeted a bus filled with innocent Palestinians on their way to school and work. Our defense forces have never intentionally bombed civilians, shot babies in the head, indiscriminately opened fire on Arab cars. Even more so, our leaders have never threatened these actions as a means of forcing the other side to surrender. Beyond the poverty, self-inflicted or not, beyond the pain of wasted lives and incitement, it all comes down to the buses.

 

 

 

 

IPCRI ISSUES REPORT ON RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REFORMS IN PALESTINIAN TEXT BOOKS

By Dr. Gershon Baskin

[IMRA: "Palestinian text books have confused messages and it is not difficult to come to the understanding that the main political theme  imparted to the students is that Israel should not exist and that is essentially the Palestinian goal."
Gershon Baskin, Ph.D. Co-Director, IPCRI

PNA: Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks 'a Myth' Israeli Children Are Taught to Hate Arabs, Trained to Kill Them'

In a report titled "The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks," the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education has refuted as "unfounded" the Israeli and US allegations that Palestinian textbooks incite hatred and violence, ahead of attempts by some US Congressmen to attach conditions to direct US aid to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), including changes to the Palestinian syllabus. US Congress in taking the unprecedented step of establishing an in-house oversight apparatus to monitor daily how American aid money to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is being spent. Following is the text of the ministry's report that was distributed to the foreign diplomatic corps in PNA as well as to the US institutions, Senators, congressmen and women:


The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks: Allegations Unfounded

There has been a flood of accusations for several years over the content of Palestinian textbooks; that the textbooks incite children to hatred and violence towards Israeli Jews, and fail to promote the values of peace, tolerance and coexistence. This claim has been widely accepted as a fact mostly in the United States and Israeli official circles. Such claims are largely based on reports by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), a Jewish organization with links to extremist and racist Israeli groups that advocate settlement activities in the Palestinian territories, expulsion (transfer) of Palestinians from their homeland, and claims that Palestinians are all "terrorists" that peace with them is not possible.  Israel's supporters now are intensifying their orchestrated crusade against Palestinian education, in preparation for the House International Relations Committee's planned consideration of the Foreign Relations Authorization bill, FY 2006-2007. The issue of Palestinian incitement "is going to be a very big issue for Congress as we move ahead to the next few years," said Ester Kurz, legislative strategy and policy director of the influential pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to Jewish American paper The Forward, 27 May 2005. Senator Hillary Clinton has continued to criticize Palestinian textbooks since her first Senate campaign. "All future aid to the Palestinian Authority must be contingent on strict compliance with their obligation to change all the textbooks in all grades-not just two at a time," she insisted five years ago. Unfortunately, she fails to realize that leading the campaign against what she calls "new generation of terrorists" is in itself  an act of incitement to hate and racism. ("Hillary Clinton: Link PA Aid to End to Antisemitism," Jerusalem Post 26 September 2000). A member of the United States Congress wrote to The New York Times: "According to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, today's sixth-grade Palestinian students are required to read the textbook 'Our Country Palestine,' which has a banner on the title page of Volume I that reads, 'There is no alternative to destroying Israel.'" (Steve Israel, letter to The New York Times, 10 June 2001, Section 4, p. 14). Had Congressman Steve Israel checked his sources before making his declaration,  he would have found that there is no such banner in the textbook. However, in their rush to judgment, some American politicians repeated the allegations without bothering to verify such claims. Thus, and consequently, victimizing the Palestinian people and children further. In the words of Alice Rothchild, co-chair of Visions of Peace with Justice, in a speech  given at World Fellowship Center August, 2001: "The campaign of the CMIP has created a self-fulfilling prophecy that is devastating to the peace movement." And she asked: "What does this tell us about our own stereotypes, racism, power relationships and knee jerk responses?"

Criticism of Palestinian textbooks has been largely based on claims by Israeli government sources and CMIP, who's work has been criticized as  "tendentious and highly misleading" by Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has also published his own studies on this subject. According to Prof. Brown, CMIP's "method was to follow harsh criticisms with quotation after quotation purporting to prove a point.In short, the CMIP reports read as if they were written by a ruthless prosecuting attorney anxious for a conviction at any cost. Exaggerated rhetoric, charges of anti-Semitism and racism, and denial of the significance of existing changes in the curriculum will hardly convince anyone further improvements are worth the effort." (Nathan J. Brown, Getting Beyond the Rhetoric about the Palestinian Curriculum, 1 January 2002). CMIP's claim that the European Union was funding Palestinian textbooks with anti-Semitic content infuriated Chris Patten, on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, and External Relations Commissioner. He declared: "It is a total fabrication that the European Union has funded textbooks with anti-Semitic arguments within them in Palestinian schools. It is a complete lie." The European Union, responding to the false allegations, issued a statement  on 15 May 2002 which asserted that: "Quotations attributed by earlier CMIP reports to the Palestinian textbooks are not found in the new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks funded by some EU Member States; some were traced to the old Egyptian and Jordanian text books that they are replacing, some to other books outside the school curriculum, and others not traced at all. While many of the quotations attributed to the new textbooks by the most recent CMIP report of November 2001 could be confirmed, these have been found to be often badly translated or quoted out of context, thus suggesting an anti-Jewish incitement that the books do not contain. Therefore, allegations against the new textbooks funded by EU members have proven unfounded."

In "A Study of the Impact of the Palestinian Curriculum", commissioned by the Belgian Technical Co-operation at the end of 2004, and conducted by education experts, Dr. Roger Avenstrup and Dr Patti Swarts, they found that: "In the light of the debate stirred by accusations of incitement to hatred and other criticisms of the Palestinian textbooks, there is no evidence at all of that happening as a result of the curriculum. What is of great concern to students, teachers and parents alike is that although they wish it, students find it difficult to accept peace and conflict resolution as a solution to the conflict, and teachers find it difficult to teach, while soldiers and settlers are shooting in the streets and in schools and checkpoints have to be braved every day. It would seem that the occupation is the biggest constraint to the realisation of these values in the Palestinian curriculum." In his evaluation of Palestinian Civic Education, Dr. Wolfram Reiss, University of Rostock, Germany, at the Conference on "Teaching for Tolerance, Respect and Recognition in Relation with Religion or Belief," Oslo, 2-5 September 2004, Wrote: "[I]t must be said first that, in general, the Palestinian textbooks cannot be considered a "war curriculum". At least these textbooks of Civics Education convey visions of society, in which tolerance to other religions, human rights, peace, pluralism, democracy and other values are encouraged and fostered much. There is no hatred or incitement against Israel, the Israeli people or Judaism. The textbooks do not contain anti-Semitic language." Dr. Reiss added that "civics education textbooks do not only avoid hatred and incitement against the West, but foster very much Western values: democracy, human rights, the individual rights, the education for peace and tolerance of all religions, the rights of women and children, the civil society and the protection of nature. From a Western perspective the civics education textbooks therefore have to be highly praised indeed." Finally, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), in their June 2004 report, "Analysis and Evaluation of the New Palestinian Curriculum" (30 books for Grades 4 and 9), commissioned by the US Congress and submitted to the Public Affairs Office of the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, concluded that: "There is, moreover, no indication of hatred of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition or the values associated with it," and that "the textbooks promote an environment of open-mindedness, rational thinking, modernization, critical reflection and dialogue." The report also confirmed that the textbooks "promote civil activity, commitment, responsibility, solidarity, respecting others' feelings, respecting and helping people with disabilities, and... reinforce students' understanding of the values of civil society such as respecting human dignity; religious, social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and political pluralism; personal, social and moral responsibility; transparency and accountability."
Palestinians welcome having their own textbooks examined and scrutinized from an academic, not prosecutorial stand point, but it is also fair and legitimate to ask those rushing to prosecute to look at Israeli curricula and compare how each side views the "other". Incidentally, the United States Congress has an ongoing program to fund research on Palestinian school books, but is on record as refusing to pay a dime for research on Israeli school books. Concern about Palestinian education and curricula, however, can gain credibility if it is not seen as blatantly one-sided and totally political.

Israeli Incitement

Those who are critical of what Palestinian children are learning should try to find out how Israeli children are taught to hate Arabs, and trained to kill them? Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, May 7th 2002, published a letter titled "Dear Soldiers, Please Kill a Lot of Arabs," that came from Israeli children who sent such letters to Israeli soldiers serving in the Tulkarm area during the so-called "Operation Defensive Shield". The letters sent by Israeli school students encouraged soldiers to disregard rules and regulations and to kill as many Arabs as possible. According to "Yedioth Ahronoth", dozens of the letters were sent to soldiers, mostly from children in the 7th through 10th grades, attending religious schools. Egyptian researcher Safa Abdel-Aal studied the Israeli curriculum and media, and published her findings in a new book entitled Racist Education in the Israeli Curricula in which she found that Israel's educational curricula incite the new generation for war, and racism against the Arabs. Abdel-Aal's book analyses eleven history and five geography books for elementary school from grades three to six. She thought that these books deliberately paint distorted pictures of the Arabs, giving them such derogatory descriptions as "Arab thieves" or "embezzlers", and saying they are "bastards, thirsty for Jewish blood" or that they are "underdeveloped Bedouins" and "vagrant highway robbers," and "house of Arab reptiles". Abdel-Aal said that Arabs are maliciously described as murderers and thieves. In one example she quoted the following from one Israeli textbook, "despite a harsh climate and strange environment full of attacks by Arab embezzlers, thieves and terrorists". And in another citation that refers to the city of Tiberias where "a feeling of insecurity and fear of the Arab murderers spread among the residents of the city." Ruth Firer and Sami Adwan, an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar, who conducted research comparing Palestinian and Israeli textbooks, March 2002, wrote that the Israeli books "strongly emphasizing the collective values connected to the history of the Jewish nation in 'their land' and God's promises to the Jews that give them an absolute right on the land. The land of Eretz Israel described in the books includes the territories of the PNA from 1967."

A study by Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel-Aviv University reviewed 124 Hebrew language books approved for use in 1994 by the Ministry of Education. The study concludes that "the majority of [Israeli school] books stereotype Arabs negatively." In one children's book, Bar-Tal offers this sampling, "We were lonely. pioneers surrounded by a sea of enemies and murderers." In elementary school books, according to Bar-Tal, Arabs are often stereotyped negatively and portrayed as "uneducated people and enemies." In a report titled "Israeli Textbooks and Children's Literature Promote Racism and Hatred toward Palestinians and Arabs," journalist Maureen Meehan concluded that "Israeli school textbooks as well as children's storybooks, portray Palestinians and Arabs as 'murderers,' 'rioters,' 'suspicious', and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks." (Washington Report for Middle East Affairs September 1999) In a study presented at the hearing of the political committee of the European Parliament, 24 October 2003, titled "The attitude towards Palestinians in Israeli textbooks," Dr. Nurit Elhanan, of the Hebrew University, revealed that "the Palestinians are absent from all textbooks, The Occupation is never mentioned, and the area where Palestinians live is  presented in the maps either as an empty space referred to as 'an area  without data' (Man and Space maps) or it is incorporated into the state of Israel (The Geography of the land of Israel maps). In both cases use of the term 'occupation' is out of the question, since you cannot occupy illegally what is yours anyway and you cannot occupy illegally an empty space." Dr. Elhanan added: "When reference is made to date in the West Bank it is only to Jewish colonies or to main cities like Nablus, Hebron or Beth Lehem as Israeli tourist sites.In Israel today there is already a second generation of children who don't know there are occupation, illegal domination and illegal settlements." A report by an Israeli research institution, The New Profile, entitled Child Recruitment in Israel, 29 July 2004, by: Amir Givol, Neta Rotem, Sergeiy Sandler, reveals the extent of the militarization of the Israeli education system. It states: "To begin with, militarised education naturally feeds on the militarism prevalent in society at large. In a country where various kinds of weaponry are permanently displayed in public places and the status of the military is used to promote anything from cheese to political candidates, militarised education comes natural. One absorbs militarism at home and on the street. The military is physically present in schools and school activities. Soldiers in uniform are stationed in schools, many of them are actually teaching classes. Other teachers, and especially principals, are recently retired career officers, without proper teacher training. High schools normally have a display on one of the walls in the school building with the names and photographs of "the fallen" among their graduates. School field trips, at all ages, are often made to military memorials set up on former battle grounds." Official curricula and textbooks also reflect the militaristic attitudes inherent in the Israeli educational system, all the way from kindergarten to the last years of high school, where there is a mandatory programme for all Jewish state-run schools called "preparation for the IDF," that in most cases includes actual military training. Whole curricular subjects are often described to the pupils, and in official documents, as having the aim of preparing pupils, or some of them, to military service. Glorifications of the military and military conquest, and negative or skewed representation of Palestinians, are to be found in many Israeli textbooks."

Education Under Occupation

Roger Avenstrup, who is an international education consultant and has worked in various countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, wrote in the International Herald Tribune, December 18, 2004, that the "biggest constraint, in the words of a Palestinian parent, is that Israeli tanks and soldiers are shooting in the streets outside while teachers are trying to promote peace in the classroom." Since September 2000, according to the Palestinian State Information Service (SIS), Israel has killed over 4,032 Palestinians, including 750 children; and wounded over 45,000 as of April 30, 2005. Denial of access to medical facilities at checkpoints caused the death of 131 civilians. Of a population of 3.5 million, the Israeli occupation still imprisons 8,500 Palestinians, including 350 minors; 69,843 homes were damaged, 7,438 of those were completely destroyed. Haim Yavin, Israeli Popular TV Anchor since 1968, commenting in the first segment of a five-part documentary he produced, after listening to settlers insisting that God gave them the lands, admitted: "Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people. We simply don't view the Palestinians as human beings." And "At one point, according to AP report "Yavin shifted the camera toward the Israeli soldiers to ask why they weren't letting people through. 'I look for danger in these people and I can't find it,' Yavin said in the film." (Associated Press, May 31, 2005) Fouad Moughrabi, director of the Qattan Center for Educational Research andDevelopment, Ramallah, Palestine, wrote, "I find no evidence of brain washing or anti-Jewish incitement in the new texts produced by the PA." He noted that "Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands breeds more hatred and mistrust than any schoolbooks can." The Convention on the Rights of Child of November 1991, Article 2, obliges State Parties to "respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction." Israel has repeatedly violated these rights and ignored it obligations. In its 20 November 2004 press release, Defense for Children International (DCI), appealed "to the international community and world leaders to abide by their declared commitment to protect the rights of all children, including the children of Palestine. We urge them to bring pressure on the Israeli government, to abide by international law and end the occupation which is incompatible with any declared commitment to promoting and protecting the basic human rights of all." In the same press release (20 November 2004) DCI reported that: "Since the start of the second Intifada on 29 September 2000, Palestinian children have borne the brunt of the upsurge in Israeli violence. Over the course of the past four years, more than 660 Palestinian children have been killed and almost 9,000 injured - hundreds of whom have been left with permanent physical disabilities. Many thousands more are suffering psychological  trauma from the daily horrors they witness. An estimated 3,000 children have been arrested during this Intifada, while currently there are still 335 children being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers."

Conclusion

The First Palestinian Curriculum Plan of 1998 stated that the principles of the Palestinian curriculum are that Palestine is a democratic state, ruled by a democratic parliamentary system; Palestine is a peace-loving state, working towards international understanding and cooperation based on  equality, liberty, dignity, peace and human rights; Palestinian national and cultural identity must be fostered and developed; social justice, equality  and the provision of equal learning opportunities for all Palestinians, to the limits of their individual capacity must be ensured without discrimination on grounds of race, religion, color, or gender; opportunities must be provided to develop all Palestinians intellectually, socially,  physically, spiritually and emotionally, to become responsible citizens, able to participate in solving problems of their community, their country and the world. Palestinian opposition to Israel must be understood in the context of their opposition to Israeli occupation and oppression, their quest for freedom and self-determination, self preservation, and national liberation. Ruth Firer, of the Hebrew University, who carried out research on Palestinian textbooks was quoted in Americans for Peace Now published interview as saying "we were surprised to find how moderate the anger directed toward Israelis in the Palestinian textbooks is, compared to the Palestinian predicament and suffering." Experience has shown that changes in school textbooks and syllabi are not at all the necessary ingredients for the fulfillment of a meaningful peace agreement between states in conflict, but rather the sincere will and commitment of both parties for achieving such an agreement. For over fifty years Palestinians have tried reconciliation and compromise. They declared a state on 22 percent of their original country for the sake of peace and security, through the Palestine National Council Conference of 1988 in Algiers, and accepted all U.N. resolutions regarding the Palestinian issue.

In 1993 the PLO signed the Oslo Agreement which called for ending the Israeli occupation and implementing the two-state solution. The Israelis responded by expanding settlement activities, in violation of international law and the Oslo Agreements at a frantic rate, with more violence, more land expropriation and house demolitions, incitement, demonization, and eventually the canonization of the Palestinian population in apartheid-like ghettos. More recently, the (apartheid) Wall, which was condemned by the International Court of Justice at The Hague and by the international community, has added to the inciting nature of measure taken by the Israeli government against the Palestinian population under occupation. As long as Israel continues to look for excuses attacking Palestinian institutions to smoke screen it brutal military occupation, and to deny the Palestinians' self-determination, freedom, and human rights, in violation of international law, and all U.N. resolutions, the conflict will continue. Palestinians need peace more than any other nation on earth, but peace must be based on mutual respect and justice for all.  IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis