Below is the link to a 28 minute video of an interview with Miko Peled, the son of Israeli general Matti Peled. General Matti Peled was instrumental in 1967 in calling then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's bluff in the Six-Day War. Miko Peled addresses many issues with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has a book The General's Son that will be available later this year, see below link to his website (Amazon doesn't have the book yet). Basically, in the interview, Miko Peled says that there are three popular and common myths about this conflict:
- A country without a people,
- The existential threat of 1967, and
- Israeli democracy.
I very strongly believe (and I certainly am not alone, many people around the world are of the same belief, far more important and relevant than me, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, what have you) that a genuine belief and agreement on the following four items must prevail in order for the Israel-Palestine conflict to be a thing of the past:
- There is no alternative to peace and a two state solution,
- War should never be an alternative,
- It should be made financially appealing and attractive for individual Palestinians to relocate to the new Palestinian state, and
- A Palestine state that is viable politically, economically, and socially, with East Jerusalem as its capital should ensure a Jewish state for many thousand years to come, only because Palestinians would be happy and welcome living in Palestine.
If these four items are in place, the following problems will be taken care of:
- Right of return, and
- The rapid expansion of the Palestinian population in Israel and the possibility of that population compromising Israel as a Jewish state.
I firmly contend that without inspired leadership in Israel, Palestine, US and other concerned nations, leadership of the quality of people like Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Itzhak Rabin, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and the likes throughout history, resolution of this most-intractable conflict of modern times will remain a beautiful dream!
Hussein
The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c4ZfnpN4Dfc
The book:
http://mikopeled.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/miko-peled-the-generals-son-an-interview-with-alternate-focus/
© Dr Hussein A Amin 2011
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