If Samuel Johnson was right that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel—religion, presumably, being the first—the lowest form of nationalistic pandering is also the simplest: demonization of the other and “the enemy.” The current conflict between Israel and militant groups in Gaza provides a choice array of the ugliness and cynicism of demonization, with demagogues on both sides clutching frantically at the opportunity to whip up fear and hatred. Words matter. Words shape attitudes. Attitudes define actions. And actions can kill.

On the Israeli side, the ugliness has rarely been this crass. The Jerusalem Post recently published a commentary by Gilad Sharon, son of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, that bordered on the genocidal. Sharon was as blunt as this: “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza.”

If any Iranian official said such a thing about Israel, calls would resound for his indictment by the International Criminal Court. And Sharon was only echoing Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who said that the “goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.”

But it’s okay, Sharon explains, because, “The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.” Let’s not even bother with the obvious historical inaccuracy of this raving. Here’s the nitty-gritty: If Israel decides it’s in its interests to murder civilians in Gaza neighborhood by neighborhood, then they deserve to be killed.

All my life I’ve heard arguments from Arabs about there being no “civilian settlers,” and, occasionally, even no “civilian Israelis.” Last time somebody said that to me was in a car traveling at high speeds near Beirut. I demanded that he stop the car so I could get out on the middle of the highway. He refused. I contemplated hurling myself out onto the road to get away from him, but I figured I had made my point without actually courting suicide.

It’s just so easy to think like this: whatever we choose to do to the other side is entirely their own fault. They started it. They chose it. They’re not “innocent,” even if they’re civilians, non-combatants or, for that matter, children. Recall the settler rabbis’ book “The King’s Torah,” which religiously endorsed killing children who might possibly grow up to become enemies. So conscience need not make cowards of us, after all.

A similar tactic was pursued by noted Israeli commentator David Horovitz, who simply castigated Hamas as “godless killers” (that completely inverts their disturbingly theocratic hierarchy of values, of course). Horovitz makes the point that Hamas has behaved cynically, putting the people of Gaza, Israel and even the West Bank at risk. That’s true. But the death toll reveals a deeper, far more complex, reality: 131 Palestinians, at least, most of them civilians and many of them children, killed, as opposed to three Israelis.

Horovitz argues the conflict is a very simple one, especially in moral terms: “They are people who glory in death. Since we delight in life, we had better prevail.” It’s as simple as that. They are bad, evil, and must be crushed. We are good, decent and we must win. No complication. No effort to contextualize Hamas’s history, ideology, relationship with the Palestinian public, or anything else. They are simply “godless killers.”

But oddly enough those who “delight in life” have certainly managed to kill a whole bunch of innocent people over the past few days. Meanwhile, those who “glory in death” seem to have had most of this “glory” robbed from them by the Israeli military.

I’m focusing here on Israeli voices, but similar attitudes abound on the Arab side. And they are to be found in every conflict. The longer any conflict drags on, the deeper ingrained and more bitter they will become.

But they are a symptom of conflict. Not a cause. The substitution of an effect for a cause is an old technique and trick of classical sophistry. Indeed, it is the most common form ofmetalepsis, designed to confuse the audience. In this case, it’s designed to trick you into thinking that killing civilians or other war crimes are somehow okay because, for whatever reason, it’s the other side’s fault.

But it’s never okay. Not when Hamas, or any other Arabs or Muslims, commit crimes against Israelis, settlers included. And not when Israelis or their military commit crimes against Palestinians, or any other Arabs, including the innocent civilian population of Gaza.

No amount of hate speech or demonization relieves anyone of their moral responsibilities or justifies war crimes, even if Israelis and Palestinians, and their friends, are presently clambering over each other to try to prove Dr. Johnson correct.

As the conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza drags on, there are growing signs both sides need to look for a face-saving way out. The best solution for almost all concerned would probably be a cease-fire brokered by, or credited to, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, which could secure many of the most important aims of the main parties. Both Israel and Hamas have their reasons for wanting to extricate themselves sooner rather than later from the current conflagration. They have both achieved significant results already, but may have overplayed their hands and be facing rapidly diminishing returns.

For the Israelis, their main aim was to restore a sense of “deterrence.” Certainly the assassinations of Hamas’s military commander Ahmed Jabari and rocket-launching unit chief Yehiya Bia and several other key Gaza militant figures, including leading Islamic Jihad operatives Ramez Hamez, Baha Abu al-Alta, Tayasir Jabari, and Khalil Bahatin, have made clear the consequences of deciding to resume rocket attacks against Israel. Israel’s second goal of destroying stockpiles of weapons has also been to some degree accomplished, although the primary threat does not come from longer-range rockets that can reach Tel Aviv but from short range “Qassam” projectiles that are crude, easy to produce and for which Israel has no strategic answer other than its partially-effective “Iron Dome” missile defense system.

However, Israel is beginning to feel a serious backlash from the assault. At least 100 Palestinians, including 50 civilians, many of them children, have been killed during the attacks. Israel’s attacks on several media centers, injuring numerous journalists, including international reporters, were widely condemned. Even more embarrassing was the inexplicable assault on the al-Dalou family home which killed 12 Palestinian civilians, including numerous children, from three generations of that family and their neighbors.

Statements from Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai that “the goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages” only added to the growing since that Israel was overreaching. And, as Israel’s preeminent political commentator, Nahum Barnea, pointed out, Israeli soldiers killed on the battlefield in Gaza could prove an electoral catastrophe for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas, too—while it may have achieved a kind of diplomatic breakthrough with a string of high-level visitations beginning with the Emir of Qatar, followed by the Prime Minister of Egypt, the Foreign Minister of Tunisia, and announced potential visits from the foreign minister and prime minister of Turkey and an Arab League delegation—is beginning to feel the heat. Hamas leaders must remember that while Palestinians rallied around them during the last Israeli assault in 2008 to 2009, there was a subsequent backlash which held them responsible for the consequences of rocket attacks.

Gaza militant groups may have changed the psychology of the conflict by showing Tel Aviv is potentially within the reach of their unguided, medium-range missiles, but these are not the real strategic challenge for Israel compared to the easily produced, crude short range rockets. And Hamas must know that by presenting “terms for a cease fire” to the Egyptian leadership, they may be overplaying their hand with a vitally important new ally.

Both sides may feel they still have more to accomplish and that the formula for getting out of this mess hasn’t yet arisen. But an Egyptian-brokered deal potentially provides something for everybody.

Israeli leaders can claim they restored deterrence, took out key militant leaders, destroyed infrastructure and demonstrated that there is a heavy price for anyone attacking Israel from Gaza. Hamas leaders can claim to have stood up to Israel, shown the Israeli public they can reach Tel Aviv, once again unfurled the banner of armed resistance, and achieved major diplomatic breakthroughs with the recent high level visits to Gaza.

Morsi can achieve the neatest trick of all: he can continue with what are effectively Mubarak-era policies—Egypt serving as a broker of cease-fires and a liaison between Hamas and Israel—while presenting the whole thing as a reassertion of Egypt’s regional leadership, and a new foreign policy that stands closer to Hamas (mainly by symbolically dispatching his prime minister to Gaza). So he can create the appearance of popular change without actually changing policies that would aggravate relations with Israel or the United States.

The Americans, too, have much to benefit from such an arrangement as President Barack Obama is already warning about the potential damage caused by an Israeli ground assault in Gaza as he continues, inevitably, to repeat platitudes about Israel’s right to self-defense.

The only real losers in such an arrangement might be Islamic Jihad and other, smaller and more militant groups that, unlike Hamas, want to continue the fighting. And, of course, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah which, throughout, has stood by like an impotent bystander blustering about purely symbolic U.N. initiatives while real people are dying by the scores.

Reports that open areas near Tel Aviv or waters off its coast were struck by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip have transformed the politics and psychology of the conflict, making a major Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip much more likely.

The interest of Israeli politicians in striking a tough pose in advance of an election is straightforward. But the intentions of those in Gaza who know full well what the Israeli response is likely to be, and are deliberately provoking the strongest reaction they can, are less clear-cut. One potential motivation might be to call the bluff of the new Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, who is ideologically aligned with his fellow Muslim Brothers in Hamas, has in fact been conducting a foreign policy towards Gaza that is, if anything, tougher than that of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, including the destruction of many smuggling tunnels. Morsi has thus far been protected from a public opinion backlash in Egypt by his Islamist credentials.

However, a widescale incursion by Israel in Gaza remotely resembling the “Cast Lead” operation that began in December 2008, which took the lives of almost 1,500 Palestinians, would completely call his bluff. He wouldn’t be able to keep pretending to be staking out a new foreign policy while continuing, or even toughening, Egypt’s traditional stratagems. And in all likelihood, he would be forced to begin to seriously recalibrate relations with Israel to the benefit of Hamas, which has been waiting impatiently, and thus far in vain, for some practical dividend from his presidential victory.

Qatar kicked the ball off in the new game with the official visit from its Emir to Gaza a few weeks ago, almost daring other Arab states, particularly Egypt, to follow suit by recognizing the political and diplomatic legitimacy of Hamas. Given the public outcry over Israeli attacks on Gaza, Morsi has already recalled his ambassador to Tel Aviv and has apparently instructed his Prime Minister to visit Gaza tomorrow in his official capacity.

Until now, it appeared that Israel’s preferred strategic response to the violence that had growing over recent weeks was to simultaneously escalate by assassinating Hamas’s military commander Ahmed Jabari, and prepare for the contingency of a limited ground offensive. As I have explained elsewhere, the increase in rocket attacks against Israel in recent months is linked to an internal power struggle within Hamas; an attempt to shift the decision-making authority within the organization to the political and military leaders in Gaza and away from the Politburo scattered throughout Arab capitals.

Jabari’s assassination was clearly meant not only as an escalation by Israel, but a message that if Hamas’s change of policy meant that its commander would no longer be preventing attacks on Israel, he would be eliminated. At the same time, Israel was strongly signaling that any action it was preparing on the ground would be limited compared to the “Cast Lead.”

But at least some forces in Gaza evidently have no interest in containing the conflict. By targeting Israel’s main city, militants in Gaza have performed a major escalation of their own, at least as provocative as Israel’s assassination of Jabari. Israel, it appears, escalated, but wanted a limited war. Others, it seems, want a major war. Whoever is funding, arming and encouraging the factions in Gaza that are firing missiles at Tel Aviv clearly have no interest in a contained or limited conflict.

In the run-up to the January election, Israeli politicians, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, will now be tempted to launch a much more open-ended military intervention in Gaza in order to be able to claim they are taking decisive action. The voices that have been urging much more far-reaching Israeli military measures in Gaza, such as Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter, who, on November 11 said, “Israel must perform a reformatting of Gaza, and rearrange it,” will be greatly emboldened. Those, such as Yosef Kuperwasser, director of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, who point out that no amount of war will resolve Israel’s dilemmas regarding Gaza, will be very much on the defensive.

Even the limited conflict thus far between Israel and Gaza has put Morsi in an exposed and difficult position. The kind of intensified conflict being provoked both by Israel’s high profile assassination and efforts to attack Tel Aviv itself by Gaza militants will quickly make his position untenable. His party’s ideology and Egyptian public opinion will inevitably collide with Egypt’s national interests and the traditional policies he has so far been rather scrupulously maintaining.

He can always try to play the role of broker, and negotiate cease-fires and truces. But it’s clear that Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza, and their international backers, are no longer willing to wait for the Morsi victory dividend. They want Egypt to move in Hamas’s direction, right away.

Alternatively, those targeting Tel Aviv might be seeking to outflank both Morsi and Hamas, and ultimately strengthen the small but growing “Jihadist” movements in Gaza. Chief among these is Islamic Jihad, which is still tied to Iran, and which has claimed “credit” for the attack on Tel Aviv, but there are other much smaller and much more extreme “Jihadist” groups gaining ground in Gaza.

All of those who are escalating this conflict—whether Israeli politicians looking at reelection, or militants in Gaza trying to force the hand of Egypt’s new president or achieve some other strategic results—are gambling with the lives of ordinary people. With senior Hamas figures assassinated and rockets now falling in or near Tel Aviv, political cynicism on all sides has brought us to the brink of a potential calamity, above all for the long-suffering people of Gaza.

Following the recent election, and noting the growing influence of nontraditional power blocs such as Latinos, Arab Americans have again raised the question of how they can become politically empowered. There is only one answer: become politically “normal” Americans.

This seems simultaneously a provocative and absurdly facile response. Who wants to be “abnormal?” The initial reaction might be outrage: in what way are you suggesting we’re not “normal Americans?” But for many Arab Americans, especially as a collectivity, becoming politically “normal”—successfully acculturated to and invested in the American political system—is easy to endorse in theory but exceptionally difficult to accomplish in practice.

Normalization means accepting that the system is open to all. There are no laws preventing effective participation, and no candidates who aren’t responsive to the normal levers of influence: votes, money, time and advocacy. But there is a self-defeating delusion prevalent among many Arab Americans that they are uniquely excluded. Some identify anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia as insurmountable barriers. Others say our opponents are so powerful that we cannot be heard.

Moreover, the community is badly divided along numerous axes. Many Arab Americans have imported political allegiances from the Middle East. They identify primarily with organizations or constituencies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Palestine, rather than those here in the United States, and formulate their policies accordingly. As my friend and colleague Ziad Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, has pointed out, this is the equivalent of running into the middle of a football game waving a tennis racket and expecting to affect the outcome.

Many Arab Americans left the Middle East precisely to get away from politics, where it has been a terrain of oppression, corruption and, above all, defeat. Politics are considered dirty, because in the Arab world they typically are. Woe betide those on the losing side of a major political fight in most Arab states. So there is a completely unrealistic sense of the cost of political engagement. Many Arab Americans believe even the most mainstream political engagement will get them on some kind of “list,” invite law enforcement surveillance or damage their business opportunities. Such paranoia often functions simply as an excuse to refuse to donate time and money.

No doubt since 9/11 Arab and Muslim Americans have been subjected to unfair and abusive scrutiny by law enforcement. Scandals involving surveillance and infiltration of mosques in southern California and the greater New York City area are all too real. Yet there is no American mukhabarat (secret police). And overzealous and misguided counterterrorism policies don’t mean there is a higher price or a greater barrier to mainstream political participation.

To the contrary, Arab and Muslim Americans can point to numerous instances in which arrests have been made and potential threats thwarted due to their own cooperation with law enforcement. And, as with the growing problem of cultural and political Islamophobia, the most effective response is communal empowerment within the system that would make the social and political costs of discrimination and bigotry prohibitive for promoters of fear and hatred.

Anti-Arab racists and Islamophobic bigots have been able to thrive over the past decade. But one of the principal causes has been the relative impotence of the unorganized and divided Arab and Muslim political response. Serious, respectful and patriotic collective engagement in our country’s political system simultaneously raises the costs of hate speech and proves the bigots wrong. Continued relative disengagement gives them free space in which to operate and does nothing to expose their false accusations.

Probably the greatest barrier to Arab normalization in American politics is the profound alienation many feel towards U.S. policies, particularly regarding the Middle East and Israel. Political correctness and litmus tests, ruthlessly enforced by social and ideological bullies, cripple the community’s ability to successfully participate in American decision-making.

Many influential Arab Americans operating in academia or online forums represent the far left. Others, more quietly but just as insidiously, operate from the Muslim religious right. In their respective echo chambers and cult-like environments, they thunder in righteous indignation that the entire U.S. political system is corrupt and corrupting, engagement with it is debased and debasing, and those who engage seriously betray indispensable moral values and principles.

They revel in the imaginary moral authority of victimization and alienation, and enforce a crippling political correctness, typically based on paranoid and chauvinistic Arab nationalism. This ensures either willful disengagement, or guaranteed ineffectiveness by insisting on political messaging that is not receivable by the government, the policy community or mainstream American society.

For decades Arab Americans have been saying, “We should follow the example of the Jews, Blacks, Latinos, Irish, etc., and engage and empower ourselves.” American political normalization indeed means doing exactly what those communities have done: putting aside imported politics and allegiances from the old world and looking for every opportunity to deal with the government and all key actors on terms of mutual respect. But the litmus tests of political correctness ensure that any Arab American who actually tries to follow those examples and become politically normal in American terms is instantaneously vilified as treacherous, corrupt and morally bankrupt.

There have been numerous individual Arab-American members of Congress, senators, governors and others who have enjoyed political success. But generally speaking they are not popular or influential figures within the community. In every case they got where they did completely on their own and in spite, not because, of their Arab-American identity. To date, this identity is still a political liability, and in no case has it proven an asset to any elected or appointed official.

On foreign policy, normalization means acculturation to the really existing policy making and framing discourse, not indulging in gadfly critiques or imagining alternative versions of the national interest. It means approaching officials with ideas that can help them achieve their goals, not angrily rejecting the consensus on the national interest with pseudo-moral grandstanding, or self-gratifying and purely rhetorical “anti-imperialism.”

Normalizing means becoming genuinely engaged in the political and policy-making system. That doesn’t mean agreeing with every policy, but it requires dropping a knee-jerk and undisguised attitude of hostility towards the law enforcement, defense, intelligence and foreign policy communities. Arab-American organizations that have allowed military, intelligence, FBI or other government agencies to rent recruiting booths at their functions are invariably subjected to vehement abuse. But who in their right mind would prefer such crucial agencies to have no Arab-American input and be run entirely by others? Only those who derive a neurotic emotional satisfaction from the jouissance and supposed moral authority produced by the pain of social and political marginalization. Yet this is a widespread affect among Arab Americans.

Above all, normalization means being willing to work with constituencies of all ethnicities and orientations to achieve desirable results, and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the better. It requires normalization with all other Americans—including the Jewish American mainstream—to be part of the conversation and, when possible, forge alliances for mutually beneficial purposes.

It is normative American political behavior to, for example, shake hands with an ambassador, including Israel’s, on their national day, and talk to mainstream organizations, including pro-Israel groups, on a regular and mutually respectful basis. Refusing to engage in such elementary political protocol is, in fact, to reject normal American political participation.

The accusation of “normalization” with Israel, Israelis, and mainstream Jewish-American groups is one of the most damaging and ubiquitous condemnations employed by the commissars of Arab-American political correctness. Similar denunciations, although less consistent and more implicit, are leveled against those who dare to “normalize” with the American government, establishment and political system.

As long as normative American political behavior is stigmatized as anathema, political normalcy for Arab Americans, as a community, will remain a distant dream. Self-imposed marginalization will persist. And self-defeating Arab Americans will continue to regard “normalization” not as a goal, but as the most damning of invectives.

In a recent interview with Israeli television, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed that Palestinians have no claims on the territory that became the state of Israel following the 1948 war, and that he does not believe he has either the right or the interest in returning to live in his home village, Safed, which is in Israel. The comments were angrily attacked by Hamas and small, far left-wing Palestinian groups, and derided as irrelevant by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But most engaged Israelis and Palestinians are well aware that Abbas was merely reiterating things that he had said many times in the past and wasn’t breaking any new policy ground.

Outside of the Middle East, however, Abbas’s remarks appear to have created a great deal of confusion, as have clarifying statements issued both by him and other Palestine Liberation Organization officials explaining that the Palestinian position on the refugee issue has not, in fact, changed. Here’s a basic summary of where the Palestinians stand on the refugee issue and peace with Israel.

The fundamental Palestinian position is that the refugee issue is one of the four final status issues identified by the parties in the Oslo agreements of 1993. They are therefore to be determined by negotiation, and not by unilateral acts or statements by either party. This is the American position, and that of the Middle East Quartet (the U.S., E.U., U.N. and Russia). It is also, importantly, the official Israeli position, even though Israel has been seeking end-runs around it such as demanding Palestinians recognize the “Jewish character” of the Israeli state, or raising the issue of Jewish refugees and migrants from Arab states. Obviously the Palestinians and Israelis have very different opinions about how the Palestinian refugee question should be resolved in final status talks. But they are formally committed to dealing with them in that context.

Legally speaking, the Palestinians have a powerful case under international law for the right of return not only of refugees that were expelled or fled and prevented from returning in 1948 or 1967, but also their descendents. However, from the outset of the talks, serious negotiators, including the late President Yasser Arafat, understood that there was no possibility of compelling Israel to accept any agreement that allowed millions of Palestinians the option of potentially returning to the Israeli state and eliminating or greatly undermining the Jewish majority within Israel’s internationally recognized boundaries.

The fundamental principle of all negotiations between the parties since Oslo has been that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. There have therefore been many different conversations and trial balloons floated between Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Palestinians and Israelis have wrangled over the numbers of Palestinians who might be allowed the option of returning, with Israel seeking to keep the sum to a minimum and package it under an alternative rubric such as “family reunification,” and Palestinians seeking a higher number but not one that would alter the essential demographic structure of Israeli society.

The problem facing the Palestinian leadership is that refugee issues are one of the few articles of real leverage they have left in dealing with Israel. But they are also a shibboleth of the Palestinian national narrative and a very politically costly, albeit necessary, compromise if there is to be a peace agreement.

They therefore cannot afford to “give up” the issue in advance of an agreement with Israel, particularly if they are going to have any hope of getting an Israeli compromise on their own most difficult concession, an agreement regarding Jerusalem. On the other hand, Palestinian leaders clearly need to do more to prepare their people for the necessary and inevitable compromise on return, just as he Israeli leadership needs to prepare its people for a compromise on Jerusalem (which Olmert was indeed discussing with Abbas).

It looks like dissembling and confusion, and sometimes there is an element of that in Palestinian rhetoric about refugees and Israeli rhetoric about Jerusalem. But there is also the real conundrum of not giving anything away in advance for nothing, versus preparing your public for a painful and politically difficult compromise. Abbas’s remarks on Israeli television should be understood as a useful step forward in psychological preparation, which is why he was so savagely attacked by anti-peace factions. On the other hand, the backtracking and clarifications obviously undermined that.

What’s needed is bold, consistent, farsighted leadership from Israeli and Palestinian politicians alike, telling their people in no uncertain terms that they will have to compromise on cherished aspects of their national narratives. Israelis will have to compromise on Jerusalem. Palestinians will have to compromise on refugees. Nobody should expect either of them to make concessions gratis, but everyone should insist that, when the time comes, they do compromise.

The Middle East has more than its share of outrageous hypocrites, but since his arrival in the region, Russian émigré to Israel Natan Sharansky has fought valiantly to secure a place among them. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Sharansky again lectures Arabs about human rights and democracy, expressing relief that Israel did not conclude a peace agreement with the odious regime in Syria.

Sharansky decries what he calls “the dismal aftermath of the revolts in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia,” as if the outcomes in these three countries were all the same and simply bad. He shows no interest in the fact that Egyptians, Libyans and Tunisians have all at last been able to vote freely for new governments, with very different outcomes in each case, particularly regarding the fortunes of Islamist parties. In spite of his manifest denunciations of dictatorships, it’s almost impossible not to detect some latent nostalgia for the autocracies of Mubarak, Qaddafi and Ben Ali in his “dismal aftermath” characterization.

Sharansky suggests “a combination of pressure and encouragement [for…] nurturing the spread of free institutions, the rule of law and democratic institutions in all areas of civic life.” I also advocate this approach, and take a back seat to no one as a critic of Islamists, and tyrants. The difference is that Sharansky only applies these standards for Arab human rights to Arab governments, not Israel’s occupation, whereas I insist they are universal, and must apply to all people, including Palestinians living under Israeli military control.

If he were sincere, Sharansky’s human rights and democracy interventions would be helpful. But his political career in Israel betrays him as an expansionist Jewish nationalist who has cynically deployed this rhetoric to rationalize Israel’s occupation and denial of Palestinian human rights.

Sharansky extols the virtues of Arab “citizens… prepared to fight to preserve their hard-won freedoms” but fails to note that Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are not citizens of the state that rules them or any other state: the ultimate form of disenfranchisement.

Sharansky absurdly dismisses Palestinians as “the descendants of those Arabs who migrated in the last 200 years,” a malignant misrepresentation of history. But, he allows, at least in theory, “they have the right, if they want, to have their own state… but not at the expense of the state of Israel,” whatever that might, exactly, mean. Yet Sharansky has opposed every effort to actually make peace with the Palestinians or allow them to create such an independent state.

Sharansky rejected the Road Map of the Middle East Quartet, apparently because its main Phase One requirement for Israel was an end to all settlement activity. In 2000, he resigned from the government over the possibility of a compromise on Jerusalem, and in 2003 he authored an article entitled “The Temple Mount is More Important than Peace.” As a government minister he approved numerous confiscations of Palestinian property. In 2005, he again resigned in protest of Israel’s unilateral redeployment and removal of settlements from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

This self-styled “champion of human rights” has robustly defended Israel’s policy of “administrative detention” without due process for Palestinians. His modus operandi is to “contextualize” Israel’s abuse of Palestinian human rights in terms of national and security necessity, in effect giving his own country a free pass when it comes to the standards about which he incessantly lectures everybody else. His basic dictum is that Palestinians must “prove” they are worthy of independence and human rights.

And he has accused Jewish Israeli peace activists of being “collaborators” intent on “setting the Jewish home on fire.” So much for political pluralism and tolerance.

Nationalism is often the handmaiden of the hypocrisy. But there is no excuse for being taken in by it, especially when the chasm between what is preached and what is practiced is as gaping as that between Sharansky’s words and deeds.

Whoever wins the election, President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, will face the same fundamental problem regarding Palestine. As their foreign policy debate indicated, the two differ little on most international relations issues, and tried to outbid each other on support for Israel.

But, domestic politics notwithstanding, any American administration will face the problem that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not go away. Various administrations, most recently the early period in the first George W. Bush administration, have attempted a policy of “benign neglect,” considering the problem to be either unsolvable and hence to be avoided, or too marginal to be a priority. All such efforts invariably confront the reality that this conflict can be neither managed nor ignored.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems poised to win the January Israeli elections. He aggressively promotes a “fortress Israel” mentality, particularly in the context of the Arab uprisings, and has focused Israeli and American attention entirely onto Iran, and away from the Palestinians and Israel’s relentless colonization of the occupied territories. Obama and President Mahmoud Abbas, through their own missteps, allowed Netanyahu to outmaneuver them both time and again on settlements and negotiations.

Abbas has said that, following a UN vote on nonmember observer states status for Palestine later in November, he would be willing to return to negotiations with Israel without preconditions. This would be an important first step in restoring relations with the West, and acquiring a resumption of badly needed aid that can offset the dangerous and destabilizing Palestinian Authority fiscal crisis.

Even if the Palestinians are ready to resume substantive negotiations, considerable groundwork will be necessary if they are not to prove futile. The calculations of Netanyahu must be shifted. If they yet again give him the space to do so, Netanyahu will avoid negotiations and, no matter how unfairly, place the blame squarely on the Palestinians. For both Americans and Palestinians, therefore, the priority must be to repair their relationship.

Palestinians are extremely unlikely to achieve their national goals without significant American cooperation, no matter how frustrating they find the relationship. And even in their day-to-day activities, they have not been able to discover an alternative to Western support.

The Arab states, too, are facing momentous decisions regarding Palestine. Palestinian national reconciliation is inevitable. The question is, on whose terms will it come, Gaza or Ramallah? The Emir of Qatar cast his vote in his recent trip to Gaza, with promises of massive financial and reconstruction aid to Hamas and the establishment of a diplomatic mission in the territory.

No doubt by embracing Hamas, Qatar has broken with the Arab consensus regarding the exclusive right of the Palestine Liberation Organization to speak on behalf of the Palestinians. And many Arab states have not done enough to help the Ramallah government survive the consequences of its failed UN bid from last year, or the upcoming revived UN effort, both of which they encouraged.

Everyone would prefer to be living in an alternate reality, but it doesn’t exist.

The incoming American administration would undoubtedly like to ignore the Palestinian issue and avoid any quarrel with Israel over settlements or anything else. But it cannot secure the American interest of Middle East peace without a major effort that involves confronting Israel.

Israeli would like the world to let it quietly complete the colonization and de facto annexation of the occupied territories, and hopes to be embraced by the Arab world anyway. But this is not how Arabs and others are going to react to this illegal and expansionist project.

The Palestinians would rather deal with another broker and patron than the Americans, who they reasonably perceive as too close to Israel for their liking. But no other country is interested in playing this role, or able to do it. Indeed, no one else is even compensating the impoverished PA for withheld American aid.

But the task of the next American administration and leaders in Palestine, Israel and the Arab world is to face reality as it is, and not as they wish it were.

If Americans are serious about peace being in their national interests, they must use their influence to secure it, even if it means confronting Israel. If Israelis want to live in peace and security, they must make a reasonable peace agreement with the Palestinians. If Arab states want the problem resolved, they must support those willing to make peace.

If Palestinians want to create an independent state, they must repair their relations with the West, particularly United States, and work with it as partners. Some might find that distasteful. But it is the only way to succeed. The difficult truth is the biggest instrument of leverage the Palestinians have is the American consensus that a two-state peace agreement is in the US national interest.