If the Palestinian problem were solved, would Arabs stop hating Israel (and America)?

Great Debates
41

Brian, first off you make some statements as facts which are far from such, so the questions which follow are therefore flawed.

Nope.

I wouldn’t go along with Eve’s take that it is all due to Jew-hating either. Some of it had origin’s in Jew-hating: when the population began to regrow in the 1900’s (with escape from pogram’s and Zionism emergent) some Arab leadership was motivated by Jew-hating. That helped set a tone of anti-Jewish riots and massacres. But the prime motivation has not been Jew-hating.

Nor has been concern for Arab brethern motivated Arab leadership. It would have been easy to absorb the original refugees. Israel absorbed an equal number of Arab Jews who were kicked out of Arab lands with all their property confiscated. Arab states of the area were the ones who annexed the nascent Palestine when it was first created and kept the refugees in dismal camps at the borders, creating a Palestinian identity as a public relation tool to use against Israel.

No. The motivation has always been personal power. Arab leaders of the last century are a far cry from the glory days. They are to a large extent abusing the hell out of their populations for private gain. The average Arab has few freedoms in Arab lands, little educational opprtunity and litle to do with an education if obtained. They have no vote. They have no say. The leadership needs a strawman, and Israel, packaged both as Western and Jewish, having humiliated Arab leadership in their early grandiose promises to drive the Jews all into the sea, comes gift wrapped for that purpose. Arab leadership has always refused to accept a comprimise until after the opportunity was past. Arab leadership has every reason to keep the I/P conflict as roiling as possible for as long as possible. It exists, and persists, precisely because it is less a cause of conflict as the result of a percieved need to keep the populus united against a “them” lest they look and realize how crappy they’ve been treated by their own. They will do what they can to prevent any real peace even once it was magically obtained.

And “the West” (including the US) is not hated because of Israel so much as Israel is tarred with being a representative of the West. A history of colonialism and Crusades was enough for the West to be disliked on its own merits. Israel is just doubly “other”: part of the West and its current secular ideas; and Jewish, which by rights should be second-class in an Arab world.

BTW, I doubt that any Israeli is using the phrasing of a “Palestinian problem” and a “finality” … that seems a not so subtle dig by the author of the article. It is true that many see The Fence as solution to terror by providing seperation from terrorists. If you can’t negotiate a solution then just go to your seperate rooms until you can behave like mature adults. I am frustrated by Sharon’s using The Fence’s course for other political means and trying to appease certain groups by having it wander farrther from the Green line than it really has to for security purposes, but the concept is still the most hopeful that remains.

And I, like Edwino, am hopeful. When terror is no longer an option, and the Palestinians have an area to try to manage, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll stop trying to blame everything on Israel and look at where their leadership has led them. Maybe they’ll recognize the obvious reality that both sides would benefit from a real peace plan and that a few miles this way or that are less important than plans of investments in educational and industrial infrastructures. Mutual ventures to redevelop tourism and factories and beneficial tax structures for Palestinain citizens working in Israel, etc… I just think that it is going to take a decade or so of cooling down seperated before the parties are ready to get there.

42

No, because anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world, has nothing to do with what Israel has done :rolleyes:

Starting with the axiom that it is ‘All the Arabs fault’, you then must add a few more contentious statements, a convoluted argument follows, perhaps making the odd concession to try and deflect attention from the baisc one-sidedness of the argument. Of course the only reason for this is to to try to square the circle of the fact that Israel, having done nothing wrong, is universally loathed by it’s neighbours. Did the Arab leaders have a big meeting to make the Israel a scapegoat or did they each come upon the idea indepently? Who knows?

The reason Arabs, including Arab leaders, generally support the Palestinians is infact much simpler, they support them because they are Arabs. The reason they dislike Israel is again quite simple; it is for their treatment of Arabs.

43

Then why don’t the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, etc., etc., hate themselves for their use of the Palestinians as pawns in their anti-Israel campaign?

As long as we have three major religions all believing that their god can (and should, and must) kick everyone else’s god’s ass, we’ll never have peace. Which means, of course, we’ll never have peace. Unless by “peace” you mean all of us being dead.

Are you getting the impression I am not an “optimist?” I’ve been reading this book and am getting more and more depressed.

44

Since when has the inabilty to recognize your own failings stopped anyone from disliking others for their failings? Infact the Palestinian cause has been abused by some seeking to tie the natural support it receives with their own cause.

Their can be peace, but peace will only come from dialogue.

45

A large number of Israeli Jews are Arabs. They left, or were expelled, from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries. That doesn’t seem to make any difference to the Muslim activists marching in the street, shouting “Yitbach al Yehud”.

46

Let’s define our terms carefully here, mks57. “Arab” is an ethnic designation. “Jew” is both an ethnic and a religious designation. There is such thing as an ethnic Jew who lives in an Arabic society, speaks Arabic, and is thorough assimilated except with respect to religion; but there is no such thing as a “Jewish Arab.” There might be such thing as a “Jewish Muslim” – a practicing Muslim of Jewish ancestry – but that person still would not be a “Jewish Arab.”

47

I disagree with this - the Palestinian refugee problem couldn’t have been easily circumvented. The Palestinian diaspora at the end of the '48 war numbered in the millions, and went overwhelmingly to only a couple of states, Lebanon and Jordan. In both of these states, Palestinian national feeling remained very strong, which caused immense problems, Black September for example.

The Palestinians deliberately lived apart from the local Arabs, especially in camps. They may have been forced to move into the camps in the first place, but they chose to stay there. It’s a fairly simple piece of symbolism - by staying in temporary accomodation, they attempted to convey the point that they were only staying temporarily in these places, until they could get back to their homes in what’s now Israeli territory. We’re talking about people who pass the keys to their now non-existent house in Tel Aviv down from generation to generation.

48

Is this actually the case? Yes Israel occupies territory it did not originally, but the Syrians and Egyptians tried to destroy Israel, were defeated, and lost land which is now Israeli by right of conquest. There is a Palestinian country: it’s called Jordan. Why are the Muslim countries around Israel not letting people out of the refugee camps?

I’d suggest that a long-term solution would be for Israel to expel all Palestinians, expand to defensible borders - the river Jordan to the East, back to the Suez canal (reclaiming the area it ceded back to Egypt) to the South - and for the displaced populace be resettled at Israel’s expense in Jordan. This is not a nice solution, and I well know it, but we need to learn from the ruin of Yugoslavia.

I also hear repeated rumours about the gross corruption of Arafat’s administration, and how the Palestinian condition could be alleviated if it were not so corrupt but most of the websites are plainly biased.

49

Sure there is. There were Jewish Arab tribes in Medina during the time of Mohammed…we know because he clashed with them. There was a pretty large population of Jews in Yemen (including, at one point, a Jewish royal dynasty), most of whom are in Israel now…they’re Jewish Arabs. The last royal family to rule an Israeli state, the decendants of Herod the Great, were Arabs through Herod’s mother. If a Jew who converts to Islam, as you said, could be described as a “Jewish Muslim”, why wouldn’t an Arab who converts to Judaism be a “Jewish Arab”?

50

Brian, As noted above, the Jews, some 800 to 900,000 of them, who were kicked out of Arab lands, were as Arab as any Muslim. They had lived there for hundreds and thousands of years. Sure they were dhimmis, second class by Arab law, but they were Arab.

Atticus You are, simply put, just wrong. By Arab estimates the number of refugees after 1948 was between 800,000 to 1,000,000. UN estimates were 472,000. Not “millions”. Israel, one country, absorbed as many Arab Jewish refugees. The Arabs didn’t go to those two countries, they to the land now considered “occupied” … certainly large enough to make into a country for 1,000,000. But the area was annexed by those countries.

Interestingly, if the Arab leadership had accepted the UN partition plan, there would have been a Palestinian state of 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews in 4,500 sq miles, and a Jewish state of 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs in 5,500 sq miles. The borders changed after the newborn state was attacked after its birth. One doubts that the Israel created by the original mandate would have survived as a secular Jewish state had it not been attacked.

51

Yeah, and little singing mice will sew dresses for us while the wee forest creatures dance about in tutus.

Optimist.

52

What you are describing, qts, would be a reprise of Yugoslavia.

53

They were not Arabs. They were Jews in Arabia, and very conscious (as Mohammed was) of the difference. In Mohammed’s time the Arabs believed (and still believe, for all I know) that they were literally lineal descendants of Abraham – by Abraham’s elder, bastard son, Ishmael; and the Jews were descendants of Abraham by his younger, legitimate son, Isaac. So they viewed the Jews as cousins, but still different. And there are no squabbles more bitter than family squabbles.

I repeat: “Jew” is both an ethnic and a religious designation. “Arab” is an ethnic designation only. There are Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, and atheist Arabs. There are Jewish Christians (e.g., Jews for Jesus) and Jewish atheists. There are no Muslim atheists or Muslim Christians – that would be oxymoronic. An Arab who converted to Judaism would, I suppose, be a “Jewish Arab” – but I do not believe the Jews of Arabia in Mohammed’s time, or the Jewish royals of Yemen, were “Jewish Arabs” in that sense.

54

The Jews of North Arabia were probably immigrants or soldier colonies from Palestine and Babylonia. The Jews of Yemen were probably mostly Arab tribes that converted to Islam. “Arab” is a lingustic definition as much as an “ethnic” one. In what way weren’t the Jews of Arabia “Arabs”? They spoke Arabic, they had the same culture and way of life as non-Jewish Arabs.

55

Sure you don’t mean “converted to Judaism”?

But they had very different ideas (true or false) about who their ancestors were, and that counted for a lot then and there – still does, in fact.

56

I did mean converted to Judaism…thanks.

57

Except without the slaughter. That bit is very important, you know.

58

jjim, I’m asking these questions because I honestly don’t know the answers:

  1. Have the Ulster Catholics given up their dream of joining Ireland?

  2. When Ireland declared independence in - was it 1920-something? - what happened to the Protestants (English, Scotch-Irish, converts) living there?

59

Do you honest.yly thiink that makes a difference?

And again more lazy stereotyping.

60

So your solution involves plunging the middle east into war, expelling over 3 million civilians. And you’d certainly need to kill a good number of the Palestianas to get them to move. All I can say is I’m glad that you will have no part to play.

And why go back to the Sinai? You seem to have a comic-book view of the middle-east. Israel gave up the peninsula when it proved indefensible during the 1973 war, even though prior to this 0.5 billion dollars was spent on making the border impregnable.