text: There is a simpler, fundamental explanation for the Arabs' intransigence over a Jewish state in Palestine. It is a religious prohibition. A passage in the Qu'ran states that Muslims are forbidden to give up territory that has been made Muslim. Palestine was conquered early on by Arab Muslims and reclaimed from the Crusaders in the Middle Ages, so falls under this prohibition. For Abbas or anyone else to formally recognize a Jewish state in Palestine it would be a serious violation of their religion - apostasy. This they cannot do. 
  
  What they could do is quietly abandon hostilities against Israel without official admission of doing that or official recogniing of Israel as a Jewish state, as they have done with Spain, once largely a Moorish (Muslim) land, and more recently in Nagorno-Karabakh and neigboring territory reclaimed by the Armenians from Azerbaijan. If there is to be peace in Palestine, that is what it must look like.