Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif

Dear Drs. West and Zogby,

Thank you for your magnificent job in trying to convince your fellow platform writers to embrace a more balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, your arguments did not persuade your fellow committee members and the national security of both Israel and the U.S. are endangered by their failure to heed your advice.  While your questions were powerful and accurate, there were a number of points that you did not raise that should be considered when deciding whether to acknowledge that Palestinians live under occupation. I therefore provide the following analysis in the hopes that it will help you convince your fellow platform committee members to modify the current draft recommendations on Israel and Palestine and to take a more balanced approach.  

Hamas started a public relations campaign on Friday to explain their position to the world. They announced that there would be a high level Hamas official available for each of the next five days to answer questions about Hamas. If you had a question all you had to do was tweet it using the hashtag #AskHamas and a Hamas official would be available to provide an answer.

There is a perception by many in the West that Muslims and Jews have been at each other's throats for over a thousand years.  They believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been going on forever, and there is no hope for a peaceful resolution because Islam is a uniquely virulent religion.  This fundamentally misreads the situation--the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is relatively recent and is primarily a conflict over land, though the introduction of religious elements into the conflict makes the conflict much more dangerous and difficult to solve.  I will discuss how religion complicates finding a s