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I am a former employee at the radio station, Israel's radio station in Arabic.

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I'm a journalist by profession in the Arabic language, not Hebrew,

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although Hebrew is my tongue, mother tongue, native tongue.

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And I'm also a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs.

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I have a PhD from Princeton University.

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And since 2000, I've been working on the attitude to the other

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and to peace in school books of the Middle East.

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I've done reports on Palestinian school books, Iranian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Syrian,

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and also some work on Israeli school books.

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The root of the problem is that there are two full nations,

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very different from each other, living on the same land with aspiration on that very land.

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And they think, they believe very strongly that they both belong to that land

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and it is part of their identity, the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, of course.

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So they fight about who is going to be supreme and who is going to have all the land.

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And in my opinion, both nations should divide the land between them.

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Some of them will live here and have their own state.

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And the other side, the other nation will have its sovereignty over the other part of the land.

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And both sovereign states will have minorities of the other nation within them.

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I found out that while Israeli school books have only one solution to the conflict, namely peace,

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and they are trying or are ready to recognize at least some of the rights of the other nation, namely the Palestinians.

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The Palestinians are stuck with the idea that the country is only theirs

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and Jews have no place to stay, have no right to stay in the country.

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They even don't have any holy places in the country against history, against all evidence we have.

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And they don't count the six million Jews living in Israel as legitimate inhabitants of the country.

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This is a problem.

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I think it's mainly politics, but religion is mobilized to strengthen the position of maybe the two sides,

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but mostly the Palestinian side.

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As I say, this is a holy land and we cannot allow other people to live here and the holy places are only ours

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and we are not allowed or not ready to share them with the other nation or the other religion.

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While in this country, in fact, the history dictates that most of the holy places are shared by all religions,

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both Muslim and Jewish, and even Christianity, they share the same holy places.

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To tell you the truth, I once quoted parts of the Quran, the specific verses that speak about Jews,

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and the Muslims were hearing them, listening, but after seconds, they just forgot about them.

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They didn't listen anymore, as if it entered from here and came out of here.

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But they are aware that these verses exist, and they don't teach it at all.

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Not the Palestinians.

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I found in an Egyptian textbook some verse which is mentioned in the school book, yes, but not the Palestinians.

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Hatred can only be eradicated through love.

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People of the book is mentioned in the Quran to be Jews and Christians.

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Muslims as well are people of the book as well.

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So we are no different from one another.

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And we have no right, we have no option to discriminate one prophet from the other, according to the verses in the Quran.

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Do the Palestinian society have any kind of information about this?

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I'm afraid they don't listen to such attitudes because they are so very heavily taught about the other sides of Islam,

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Islam, about all sorts of ventures and activities, martyrdom, jihad, ribat, and other values that contradict or they are made to contradict the actual situation on the ground.

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And for the time being, they are not listening, but I strongly believe that if both nations would listen more to their own culture, their own religious ideals,

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the road to peace would be much easier, in my opinion.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.