Why can't Jews and Palestinians make peace?

Haaretz : By Bradley Berson

What, then, are some of the factors making this particular form of mental illness so resistant to treatment? What, in sum, is the matter with these people? Herewith a few:

# They are profoundly, irreparably childish in a way only adults deprived of a childhood can be.

# They are addicted to blame as a way of life. They cannot look at themselves as anything other than victims. They cannot look at the other as anything other than usurpers.

# They desperately need help and advice, but cannot bring themselves to accept it. They tend to be unable to help themselves. They tend to act in ways which defeat their own declare aims. They tend to declare aims which defeat their own ability to reach a solution. They tend to be unable to shed or modify the aims which keep them from providing for the welfare of their own people, aims which keep them from making peace with their neighbors.

# Their spiritual advisors, who, it turns out, are also political kingpins, insist that scripture is proof of real estate ownership.

# Their hardliners, bolstered by their supporters abroad ? who are often even more extreme in their views, equate compromise with treason, failure of will, selling out, crimes against history.

# Convinced of its own moral purity, neither side can abide the idea of moral equivalency any more than it can accept the concept of shared responsibility for the problems and their eventual solution.