Soccer Dad

"Note the words I've bolded "most unconscionable crime" and "socially abhorrent" are used to describe cooperation with Israel. Israel is expected to promote the creation of a state to live side by side with it. But the citizens of that eventual state, consider it "unconscionable" and "abhorrent" to cooperate with Israel."

Your assessment is absurd because the crime is not "cooperating," it is "collaborating" - as in providing intelligence to an enemy nation. I realize that Israel has been caught so many times spying on it's supposed ally, America that it is obvious that spying is not viewed the same by Israel as it is by the rest of the world. Still, would your analysis be different if the issue was a Jewish woman who was desperate for money and arrested for providing intelligence to Hamas which might very likely have facilitated a successful car bomb or assassination of a Likud leader? What about a poor Jewish Israeli who was serving the mandatory period in the IDF and took money in exchange for knowingly allowing a car filled with C-4 and detonators through a checkpoint into Israel from Gaza? Oh, but that's different because the Israelis who might be killed are people, but the Palestinian farmers and refugees who might be murdered by Israeli airstrikes are sub-human animals. Isn't that the Likud party-line?

How about answering the question which Soccerdad posed: Why should Israel give statehood to people who believe it is abhorrent and unconcionable to cooperate with Israel in preventing terrorist attacks?

(Un)reality -
Arafat pledged to fight terror and acknowledged Israel's right to exist in return for being classified as a terrorist no longer. He of course continued to engage in terrorism and demonstrated contempt for Israel's right to exist.

So it was up to Israel to fight terror. If that meant recruiting Palestinians to do the job the PA committed to but refused to do, what was wrong with that? That terror continued showed that Arafat and the PLO did not change their views of Israel. If Israel was still deemed an enemy nation, that means that the PLO never changed its stripes.

Laura - the answer to that question only requires taking it out of a vaccuum. Right now, the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and other areas have been under Israeli occupation since 1967 - it is now 2009, which means that these areas have been occupied for 42 years. Occupied people do not look favorably upon collaborating with the occupying forces. That is a general rule with few exceptions - ie Poland. After 42 years and so many failed and fruitless rounds of negotiation, it would be not only surprising, but miraculous if the Palestinians looked favorably upon cooperating with Israel. When you recall that we are talking about the same country which, despite having a large number of Arab citizens, insists on repeating the phrase "Jewish State" as often as possible and whose legal system is founded upon a doctrine of discrimination against non-Jewish Israeli CITIZENS, is it really notable that those who don't even have the minimal and paltry protection afforded by the Israeli system to citizens who are members of inferior races and instead suffer under the oppression of a military occupation are not in favor of collaboration with their oppressors?

(Un)reality -

The PA has jurisdiction over Jenin and has jurisdiction since late 1995. In no way is Jenin occupied.

The main point in my post was to suggest, that this woman was, in all likelihood, innocent of the charges. She hardly sounds like someone who would have had access to actionable intelligence. The 15 year old who was killed by his family supposedly did nothing more than wave to Israeli soldiers. I suspect that Tagreed's crime was more likely something like that than actually helping Israel.

It also emphasizes something that you would not likely acknowledge: Palestinians under the PA - be it Hamas or be it Fatah - are in reality more oppressed than those living under Israel's jurisdiction.