As I explored the Holy Land in September 2010 I read a book by Thomas Friedman called "From Beirut to Jerusalem". The book was assigned to us as "homework" prior to our trip in order to prepare us for the complexities of the area in which we would be traveling. Indeed the Holy Land is a VERY complex place. There are no simple answers. This is due to the many layers of human history and biblical history coming together with three major world religions being represented in some form or another.
There are several myths between the Israelis and the Palestinians (as per the book). Many Israelies had convinced themselves that there was no such thing as a legitimate Palestinian nation with a legitimate national claim to any part of Palestine. They saw the Palestinians instead as part of an undifferentiated Arab mass stretching from Morocco to Iraq with no particular cultural, historical, or ethnic identity linked to the land of Palestine. This myth was one of the oldest and most enduring in Zionist history. In the early twentieth century, when the Zionist movement was just taking off, it may have been a necessary myth. If the Zionists had come to the Jews around the world and said, "Look, we want you to come to Palestine, but you had better understand that there is another legitimate nation there, the Palestinians, who claim it as theirs and will fight you to the death, " many Jews might never have come. So the Zionists had to believe, as the saying at the time went, that they were "a people without a land" coming to a "land without a people".
Myths are precisely what give people the faith to undertake projects with rational calculation or common sense would reject.
This becomes a real scenario when you travel through the Holy land today.
My prayer is that the myths, whatever they may be, will be shown for what they are and true peace will be achieved because everything is brought into the light.
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