t any partition plan, partial as it was. They can also learn from the Zionist leader Yigal Allon, who maintained that this is our land, but that this does not mean that it cannot be shared or divided, out of humane concerns.
There is an urgent need for this decision. At this very moment, before the war is renewed in full force, will the Palestinians have the strength to make such a decision? Apparently not. The Jews accepted it only after the Jewish leadership – Ben Gurion, Allon – did so because the Jewish people had already experienced 2,000 years of suffering and persecution culminating in the Holocaust, choosing survival and humanity. For Hamas and the Palestinians, as for most of the Arabs, their political culture is one of victory, and Islam is a religion of empowerment and triumph. Survival and humanity are not built into their political and religious culture, as they are for the Jews.
Two weeks after the war began, on October 23, 2023, I published an article titled About the Future. In it, I wrote that the war would continue for about another decade. When asked why I was so pessimistic, I said, "Pessimistic? I am realistic. It could take a lot longer."
As the renowned Moroccan liberal intellectual Tahar ben Jelloun, idol of the left in Europe, put it sorrowfully but truthfully: "The Palestinian cause died on October 7, 2023, murdered by fanatic elements mired in an Islamist ideology of the worst kind."
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