Rage and its cognates remain as the only and certainly the defining Palestinian emotion. It explains the violence, and indeed, it reifies it so that Israel has come to represent a decency and democracy that is forever surrounded by rage and violence. Nothing is said of house demolitions, land expropriations, illegal arrests, torture and the like. Forgotten are the catastrophe of 1948, ethnic cleansing and massacres, the devastation of Qibya, Kafr Qassem, Sabra and Shatila, the long years of military government for non-Jewish Israeli citizens to say nothing of their continued oppression as a persecuted 20 per cent minority within the Jewish state. Ariel Sharon at best is a provocation, never a war criminal, Ehud Barak a statesman, never the assassin of Beirut.
Terrorism is always on the Palestinian side of the ledger, defence on the Israeli.
We are told that he was willing to give back 90 per cent of the territory. What gets left out is that the 90 per cent is of what Israel has no intention of giving back. Besides, Beit Jala was disproportionately shelled by Israeli helicopters using missiles to destroy civilian houses. I have made a survey of the major newspapers. Ever since 28 September, there have been anywhere between one and three opinion articles per average day in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.