personally opposed to the settlements, I do not believe that they are the real barrier to peace. The real barrier has been the unwillingness of many Palestinians, and many Palestinian terrorist groups and nations, to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. If these groups would accept a two-state solution, the settlements

Had the Arabs accepted the U.N. partition, there would have been a large, contiguous Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state.

Palestinian terrorism preceded the occupation as the tactic of choice.

Wars waged against Israel are wars of extermination that target its cities and population centers. Its enemies are seeking its total destruction.

Experience shows that when Israel did not respond firmly to Palestinian terrorism, more terrorism followed, and when Israel took appropriate military steps, the number and severity of terrorist attacks were reduced.

Terrorism has been used as a deliberate tactic to derail any movement toward peace and a two-state solution. For

One of the goals of the terrorists is to provoke an overreaction by the Israelis so as to generate support for the terrorists’ cause.

After all, there had never been a Palestinian state in this area. A Jewish homeland would not be carved out of a preexisting Palestinian state. Instead, a decision would have to be made about how to allocate a 45,000-square-mile area of land that had been captured from the Ottoman Empire and was populated by Arabs, Jews, and others. There were four

Churchill also recognized that a Jewish home in Palestine already existed on the ground without any help from the British: