On June 15, Hamas and Fatah began a third round of talks in Qatar towards reconciliation towards a national unity government in the Palestinian Authority. Conventional wisdom places Fatah/the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the “moderate” camp, while Hamas is “extremist.” But interestingly, Hamas and Fatah/PA share jihadist tendencies. For ample support of this, one only needs to look at Fatah/PA’s messaging to its own people, in its own words. Fatah/PA media is chock full of interpretations of Islam that justify perpetual conflict with Israel. This rhetoric suggests the roots of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict run much deeper than a traditional conflict over land, and provides further evidence that the conflict is intractable. (For those who equivocate and point out that recent comments by Israel opposing a Palestinian state also make the conflict intractable, it would be helpful to note how many times the Palestinians were offered a state, and how...(Read Full Article)