[...]We have waited more than 35 years for the attainment of our rights, equality and self-determination. We are the only people on the face of the earth who continue to live under a foreign colonial occupation.

First, Israel is not a “foreign colonial” occupier. Its claim to the land is Biblical and antedates the founding of Islam by about 2,000 years. There is no mother country to which the Israeli “colonizers” can return. Second, the statement that there are no other people on the planet who consider themselves occupied is ludicrous. What about the Lebanese, who are occupied by Syria; the Tibetans, who are occupied by China; the Chechens, who are occupied by Russia; the Kurds, who are occupied by Turkey; the Basques who are occupied by Spain; the Saharawis, who are occupied by Morocco? The list goes on . . . .

We have tried every possible means to achieve our human and national aspirations. From the first intifada to the Madrid conference to the Oslo peace process to the Wye River memorandum to the Sharm el-Sheikh conference to the Camp David talks, Palestinians have pursued every possible avenue to live in peace and provide the children of our region a promising future.

The violent first intifada is a rather bizarre example of a Palestinian effort to live in peace with Israel. And what about the Palestinians' pledge to resolve their conflict with Israel peacefully, which they made as part of the Oslo accords and then abandoned in favor of negotiation through terrorism after Yehud Barak offered to give up virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza and share sovereignty over Judaism's most holy city? The Palestinian school curriculum that teaches hatred of Jews and that the Israelis are vicious occupiers who have no right to a Jewish state in any part of “Palestine” hardly seems calculated to prepare Palestinian children to live in peace with Israel, either.[...]