Honesty from Hamas

From yesterday in The New York Times:

"Recently freed Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Youssef, was detained after he tried to return to Ramallah after illegally attending the Muslim rally at the Al Aksa mosque. Mr. Youssef, who was recently released from jail, is banned from entering Israel or east Jerusalem.

He had given an interview earlier today to the Arabic cable station Al Jazeera from the mosque compound and called on 'all our people in Jerusalem and the land occupied in 1948 to head toward Al Aksa mosque.'"

"The land occupied in 1948." That's the fundamental Arab dispute with Israel: Israel's existence. As Edward Said remarked:

“Nineteen forty-eight for Palestinians is the date on which their search for self-determination begins. It doesn’t begin in 1967. That simply completed the Israeli conquest.”

In fact, for Jews to even inhabit the same region perturbed Arabs. Columbia University's Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi has written:

“The founding of the Zionist movement, and the establishment of 32 settlements in Palestine between 1897 and 1914…seem clearly to have been perceived regionally, and not just in Palestine itself, as an ominous and potentially threatening phenomenon.”