OPINION - Denying Israel’s right to exist condemns Palestinians to another generation of suffering

The fever in the West over Israel’s war on Hamas brought much latent hostility and division into the open this year, accompanied by the inevitable debate about how to solve the unsolvable. Even after three months of violence and tragedy in Gaza, there remains one theme which is too often danced around or simply ignored. It is the question on which all others depend: does Israel have a right to exist?

This has been at the heart of the matter since at least 1947 and is still the often-unspoken mental test along which opponents align., itself an ideological microcosm of the poor leadership the Palestinians have endured for many decades.