re: #16 Bob Levin

It’s hard to form a country when you’re disallowed from forming your capital in disputed land. The sooner you admit that the Palestinians have as much right to Jerusalem as the Jews, the easier this will be to swallow. The Palestinians want a capital in East Jerusalem and it’s entirely reasonable for them to hold off building the rest of their state if the desired center of all government activity is not available.

Pairing self-determination with racism is heavy-handed. Once you pretend that Fatah represents all Palestinians, it is you who sounds just as racist as any faction of Palestinians that supports violence against Israelis. By treating Fatah as representative of all Palestinians and all Palestinians represented by Fatah, you’re going to polarize the Palestinians even more and decrease any sense of identity, which is the whole point here: the Palestinians feel so historically dejected, any mention of peace before true recognition of their existence becomes cynical humor.