Like most postings in this blog, this one is my responce to a Plastic poster suggesting that the only way to resolve the troubles in the middle east is to start fresh: ie let generations go by so that hatereds are forgotten. The author pointed out that he knew his own proposals were un-realistic. But I had to pipe in with this little bit of opinion:

Your idea about kindergarteners may fail, according to this:

Six days a week, kindergarten teacher Samira Ali El Hassain tells her class of 30 5-year-old boys and girls what makes the world go round.

"Here is how an egg becomes a chicken," she says to a student. "Here is how to draw a circle," she tells another.

Hassain then quizzes the class about a previous, more serious lesson. "Who are the Jews?" she asks.

The children know the answer by heart: "The enemy!" they reply in unison.

"And what should we do to them?" Hassain asks in a voice that is as casual as when she discussed chickens and eggs.

"Kill them!" the children cry out.

...

On the walls, graffiti calls on residents to "kill the Jews" and "die like shahid (martyrs)" -- the men and women who have died trying to kill Israelis. Instructions on how to become a shahid are spray-painted, along with photos of weapons, exploding buses and portraits of men wrapped in explosives.

And if that isn't enough to convince Gaza's children -- many of whom spend their days roaming the dusty streets, playing in sandbag barricades, shooting toy assault rifles and throwing stones at each other -- hatred of Israelis is part of their kindergarten lesson plan.

"I tell them that they are Palestinians, that they must defend their land when they grow up, that this land belongs to them and not to the Jews, our enemies," said the 35-year-old Hassain. "Every morning, I ask them: 'Did you watch the news? Do you love the enemy who massacres the Palestinian people? Would you want to make peace with them when you grow up?' "

...

etc etc...

The point of most of my pro-Israeli postings on Plastic has been that Palestinians are a culture of hate and that a dialogue/negotiations with them are doomed to failure. And no, I am not advocating they be bombed into extinction to solve the problem, but it seems that the status quo is the only possibility. The Palestinians won't conveniently learn to accept Israel and the Israelis won't conviniently remove themselves from the middle east, so there will always be friction and hate. If you really want to solve the problem long-term, go after the foreign governments like Syria ans Saudi Arabia and Iraq that raise money to support hate-education among Palestinian children. Hold the EU responsible for funding schools where the school books have no mention of Israel. Your basic point is correct: there will be generations before possibility of peaceful coexistance is attained. But you're wrong to think it's equaly bad on both sides. The youth of Israel seem to be favoring a Palestinian state and there's a significant leftist movement that, like all leftists in the West, decry the occupation totally. If peace came, of course there'd be many who resent co-existance with Arabs, but they will be a tiny minority. Most will just be happy once the violence stops. On the Palestinian side, I don't think the same dynamic exists. The youth are endoctrinated into hatered early, and a movement for co-existance with Israel is simply not present. It's not hard to see that most Arabs are unhappy not simply with the violence, not simply with the occupation, but with the presence of Israel and Jews in general.

So yeah, the problem is much as you see it on the surface of it, but you're wrong to blame both sides. Not that it makes a difference in the result, I guess.