Why we think the Bishops are wrong: (part 2)

• The aim of the Palestinian war is not a separate Palestinian state on the West Bank (as Fr. Sabbah and Bishop Shaw assert), but a single Palestinian state "from Jordan to the sea".
  There is some reason to believe that this was once the view only of the radical minority. But recent public opinion polls (poll 1, poll 2) make it clear that a majority of Palestinians support the continuation of the war against Israel, and consider suicide bombings and other forms of murder to be "suitable" means to this end. Is this radicalization the result of the Israeli "occupation"? Hardly. Under the terms of the Oslo Agreement, the Israeli Defense Forces withdrew from Arab villages and towns on the West Bank, which were turned over to the day-to-day governance of the Palestinian Authority - i.e., to the leadership of the PLO, with the full cooperation of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
  
  Terrorists ran the schools, the official (and only) Palestinian television network, the police, and the courts. We know what use the PLO made of this unprecedented authority: they raised a new generation of haters, from whom the suicide bombers have been recruited. That is why the bombers have come almost entirely from the very villages, neighborhoods, and refugee camps that have been controlled by the Palestinian Authority since the mid-1990s.

Bishop Thomas Shaw with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.