Letter to The Washington Post

Dear Editor, According to Washington Post Reporter Scott Wilson ("Obama's trip to Israel aims to fix missteps", 3/18/13), negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians broke down because Israel refused to renew its construction freeze. A more plausible view is that the Palestinians doomed the negotiations from the beginning by refusing to sit down until the last month of the building moratorium. How much clearer can it be that the Palestinians are doing everything in their power - stalling, making excuses, protesting, circumventing the process - instead of negotiating, which would give them the state they supposedly want - a state side by side with Israel? The fact is, they don't want a state side by side with Israel - they want a state instead of Israel, as is plainly written in the Hamas Charter. And why does a reader have to read the opinion of a Washington Post reporter in the news section, when opinions belong in the editorial section? Michael Berenhaus