Palestine

following letter was sent to the Guardian Weekly:

Time and again one reads about the conditions the Palestinians have to fulfill before the West will start negotiating with them. One of them is the requirement that the Palestinians have to recognize Israel; another is to renounce violence. The West is negotiating or trying to negotiate with Iran and with North Korea, and Britain and the Republic of Ireland have been negotiating with the IRA for ages without posing any of the conditions mentioned above. So I wonder what the reasons are that the Palestinians get a far more severe treatment. It is clearly applying different standards. Is the only real reason that the West does not want to anger Israel and the Israeli lobby?