I am a former employee at the radio station, Israel's radio station in Arabic.
I'm a journalist by profession in the Arabic language, not Hebrew,
although Hebrew is my tongue, mother tongue, native tongue.
And I'm also a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs.
I have a PhD from Princeton University.
And since 2000, I've been working on the attitude to the other
and to peace in school books of the Middle East.
I've done reports on Palestinian school books, Iranian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Syrian,
and also some work on Israeli school books.
The root of the problem is that there are two full nations,
very different from each other, living on the same land with aspiration on that very land.
And they think, they believe very strongly that they both belong to that land
and it is part of their identity, the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, of course.
So they fight about who is going to be supreme and who is going to have all the land.
And in my opinion, both nations should divide the land between them.
Some of them will live here and have their own state.
And the other side, the other nation will have its sovereignty over the other part of the land.
And both sovereign states will have minorities of the other nation within them.
I found out that while Israeli school books have only one solution to the conflict, namely peace,
and they are trying or are ready to recognize at least some of the rights of the other nation, namely the Palestinians.
The Palestinians are stuck with the idea that the country is only theirs
and Jews have no place to stay, have no right to stay in the country.
They even don't have any holy places in the country against history, against all evidence we have.
And they don't count the six million Jews living in Israel as legitimate inhabitants of the country.
This is a problem.
I think it's mainly politics, but religion is mobilized to strengthen the position of maybe the two sides,
but mostly the Palestinian side.
As I say, this is a holy land and we cannot allow other people to live here and the holy places are only ours
and we are not allowed or not ready to share them with the other nation or the other religion.
While in this country, in fact, the history dictates that most of the holy places are shared by all religions,
both Muslim and Jewish, and even Christianity, they share the same holy places.
To tell you the truth, I once quoted parts of the Quran, the specific verses that speak about Jews,
and the Muslims were hearing them, listening, but after seconds, they just forgot about them.
They didn't listen anymore, as if it entered from here and came out of here.
But they are aware that these verses exist, and they don't teach it at all.
Not the Palestinians.
I found in an Egyptian textbook some verse which is mentioned in the school book, yes, but not the Palestinians.
Hatred can only be eradicated through love.
People of the book is mentioned in the Quran to be Jews and Christians.
Muslims as well are people of the book as well.
So we are no different from one another.
And we have no right, we have no option to discriminate one prophet from the other, according to the verses in the Quran.
Do the Palestinian society have any kind of information about this?
I'm afraid they don't listen to such attitudes because they are so very heavily taught about the other sides of Islam,
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.
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,
the road to peace would be much easier, in my opinion.
Thank you.