West plans to pressure Jerusalem to express remorse about being
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – Pressured for nearly two decades to swap land for peace that never came, Israel will next be asked to apologize to its Arab and Muslim enemies for coming into existence in the first place.
That’s what experts in conflict resolution have determined is the most expedient path for the Jewish state to take in turning around enemies who don’t accept Israel’s legitimacy as a Mideast state, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter edited by the founder of WND.
“According to my sources, a new form of pressure will be placed on Israel – pressure to apologize for what Arabs call ‘al-Nabka,’ the catastrophe of the 1948 war that ended with the displacement of hundreds of thousands of them as refugees,” writes Farah in his G2 Bulletin report, available in full to subscribers only.
Farah writes that the basis of the argument for an Israeli apology is found in the Aug. 24 issue of Science magazine. In an article written by two researchers from John Jay College’s Center on Terrorism and a professor of “human understanding” at the University of Michigan, a new plan for conflict resolution in the Middle East is unveiled.
The researchers, who adamantly describe their work as “science,” say they went to the Middle East in February to conduct interviews in Syria, the Palestinian Authority and Israel and gauge emotional responses over suggestions for resolution of the conflict.
“We found that the use of material incentives to promote the peaceful resolution of political and cultural conflicts may backfire when adversaries treat contested issues as sacred values,” they write in Science. “Symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit may be key in helping to solve seemingly intractable conflicts.”
As evidence, they quote Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas leader, as saying: “In principle, we have no problem with a Palestinian state encompassing all of our lands within the 1967 borders. But let Israel apologize for our tragedy in 1948, and then we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine.”
“In rational-choice models of decision-making, something as intangible as an apology could not stand in the way of peace,” writes the research team, comprised of Scott Atran, presidential scholar of sociology and senior research fellow at the Center for Terrorism at John Jay College; Richard Davis, research fellow at the Center for Terrorism; and Robert Axelrod, professor for the study of human understanding at the University of Michigan.
Farah, a former Middle East correspondent and long-time analyst, warns the notion that Israel has it within its ability to change the hearts and minds of its enemies is misguided.
