Free Republic

We could see it coming when, upon a recent visit to Palestine, a young Palestinian child asked me if I was with Fatah or with Hamas, the two rival and politically irreconcilable groups in the Palestinian territories. I answered, spontaneously, that I was simply a Palestinian -- to which the young man seemed bewildered. The Palestinian people, we are being told, no longer have Israel's 40-year-old occupation as a common enemy, but a bloody and almost tribal war to decide who should speak for the Palestinians. What we are witnessing is a civil war in Palestine. But it is civil...

At the beginning of December, an Israeli-Arab was arrested before he was able to execute an attack modeled on the 2002 Park Hotel Passover massacre in Netanya. The 17-year-old resident of Nazareth allegedly planned to carry out a bombing that he hoped would blow up the packed lobby or dining room of Upper Nazareth’s Plaza Hotel. He told Israeli police he had chosen the location due to its popularity with Israeli Jews and its light security.A traditionally Christian-Arab city, Nazareth, located in Northern Israel, in the Galilee, has a population of 70,000, 60 percent of whom today are Muslims. Neighboring...