Salon has a great interview today with Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli journalist. While his opinions are obviously only his own, I found the interview to be an excellent picture of how Israelis perceive their ongoing relationship with the Palestinians. For example, here’s his statement on the dealing with terrorism in day to day life:

On the other hand, Israel is the only democracy in the world that has never known any period without terrorism. That’s one of the mistakes that many of my colleagues in the media make when they judge Israel. They don’t understand the context of our excruciating internal debates over occupation vs. security or human rights vs. terrorist prevention. All of those issues which the United States is now going to have to start facing, we’ve been living with from the day of our existence.

I have never known a period in this country where terrorism was not an active consideration of how we live our lives. Israelis used to joke that in Alaska they have to deal with the snow, and in the Middle East we deal with terrorism. That is part of the weather here. In the sense of how you balance daily life with fear and caution, Israel is the world expert.