„‚Land for peace seemed like a possible and legitimate idea back then. Most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza I talked to went back in history to 1967. They wanted to turn the clock back by an Israeli withdrawal from the territories conquered in the Six Day War,‘ Shipler said.
‚But in speaking to people now, I understood that the time frame has become 1948 for the Palestinians. It’s always been about historical grievances and a clash of national narratives, but there are now more severe distortions of history, especially on the Palestinian side. Now Israelis are seen only as colonialists. There is no recognition of Jewish history in the Land of Israel, of the Holocaust, and the real reasons for the creation of Israel,‘ he continued.
Shipler also noticed that three decades later, there is less – if any – daylight between individual Palestinians’ expressed opinions and the official line of the Palestinian leadership. ‚The conversations I had with Palestinians this time were more militant and less nuanced than in the early ’80s,‘ he said.“
(Der ehemalige Israel-Korrespondent der New York Times, David K. Shipler, über die Unterschiede zwischen den 1980er-Jahren und heute: „After 30 years, author finds Arab and Jewish spirits more deeply wounded“)
