US. terrorism and Palestinian homeland.

Great Debates
21

You know, Collounsbury, you and I probably agree on what a reasonable compromise between the two nations should be. Some reparations from Israel, perhaps, and return to the 1967 borders. And in fact, I believe that if Israel believed that it could attain peace that way it would be happy to agree to those conditions.

The sticking point in this would be control of Jerusalem, but Israel has already offered shared control of Jerusalem as part of the Barak offer. So I’m sure they are willing to make major concessions there as well.

The problem is that there is absolutely no indication that the Palestinians would accept that. Did you read the first Victor Davis Hanson article I linked? He pointed out that there is a severe danger to the Palestinians if an unstable peace is brokered. If Israel withdraws from the occupied territory and the Palestinians continue to attack, then Israel will have nothing left to compromise, and without the occupied territories its defense will be more untenable. If that happens, and especially if other Arab nations start getting restless again thinking they have Israel on the run, then there will be another war, and this time Israel may just opt for a final solution and completely crush its enemies.

I think there is a real risk of that, because I do not believe for a minute that the Palestinians will revert overnight into a peaceful, democratic state. There are just too many forces at work preventing that, from the militancy of its population to the state of its economy and constant agitation from other Arab states which have shown no restraint in using Palestinians as pawns.

22

Sam

I do not doubt that we don’t disagree on what a final settlement would look like.

The issue is the route to it.

Now in re your Hanson references, as a general rule I don’t bother to read such publications as The Nation or National Review insofar as I find their propensity to publish articles without the benefit of balancing reflecting to be unenlightening.

Hanson’s writing was of little interest to me. Gross overgeneralizations. Empty posturing. I can get that through the mainstream media. His comments on Egypt? Pure shit. I can answer them were I so inclined to waste my breath with a history lesson or two. The same for the rest of the drivel. Please, don’t bother to refer me to such crap in the future. I’m irritated enough the NR promotes the lying crap by Pipes (Mr I predicted this, except if you follow his shit as I have one notes his predictions were rather different and rather centered around, what was his phrase, ‘an Islamic comintern’ centered in Tehran. (this is circa early 1990s as I recall, look it up.)) I have better things to do with me time, like berate people.

No wonder you have such a bizarre world view of these issues if this is your source.

Well, my entire intervention on this subject has been to point out that the equation has had two sides, and while I have tried to give credit to Israel for being the relatively more reasonable interlocutor, I have no patience for one sidedness.

As I have noted in the past: Israeli settlement expansions and non-application of any number of agreement accords, esp under Netanyahu contributed to poisoning the well. The cynical moves by certain portions of the Israeli right to sabotage a settlement has had no small influence. Collective punishment (not only a violation of law, also dumb, out of date policy, 30 years ago it was sensible in a tribal society, now it is not), land expropriation etc. Is it the driving factor? I don’t think so, but it is a non-trivial influence, and the commentaries one sees here and elsewhere implying that the Palestinians are irrational or cynical exploiters of the situation is at best unfair, at worst dishonest.

Now, none of this is to minimize the problems from the Palestinian side. Too large a segment of the P side ‘speak with forked tongues,’ too many are wedded to a military solution. Which worse, will fail in the long run. But they are not 100% of the society, and despite the poll – and I believe I have posted warnings in the past about polls in the 3rd world, frankly they don’t work, although I don’t think the poll is all that far off given current feelings, the real question being what it means—there is room to leverage a settlement.

Further, while the risks of an unstable Palestinian state are real, what are the actual motherfucking choices? They are two. A P state or ethnic cleansing. Expulsion of millions of people.

A stable Palestinian state is not going to have a god damned virgin birth and to expect otherwise is to be smoking god-damned crack. Only economic and social stability will allow for the possible emergence of a genuine civil society, cause guess what? The fucking occupation produces the very conditions and attitudes which your dear writer complains about. Fucking chicken and egg.

Now, the choice is there. One can stop fucking around and try to get to business (and I do believe the Israelis on average have tried harder than the Ps, but they ain’t sinless in this and there is a decent amount of justified bad blood to go around) or one can bite the bullet and expel the Ps and put up a wall.

Other choices just prolong the current hell.

One or the other. Sharon has the choice in front of him. I believe that he wants choice two but lacks the oomph. But maybe not.

I really could care less about justice at this point, as the bleeding wound is probably worse than trying for some hypothetical justice.

23

I’ll agree with Collounsbury again on this one.

I am pro-Israeli and a Jew, but I cannot find evidence of a vast anti-Israel conspiracy at work in Europe or the US, as the National Review articles outright stated and some of Sam’s posts have implied. In fact, outside of the some extremists in the Arab League, I can’t see any blatant anti-Israeli governmental views apart from a comment from the French foreign minister a few months ago.

There is a grievance here. The Palestinian people deserve self governance. NATO and the UN have intervened numerous times to ensure that this has happened in other parts of the globe (namely Kosovo and East Timor). It is a similar situation in Israel and there is no reason to think that Palestinians are any less worthy of self-governance than Kosovars, Timorians, or any one else in the world.

This grievance needs to be corrected, and neither side is doing their best to see that it is. Sometimes the press or the world’s governments views are naive or self-serving, but this does not make them anti-Arab or anti-Israel.

For evidence, I point at Lebanon. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and the UN sent peacekeepers. The UN cease fire line ceded the Sheba’a Farms region to Israel, but Hizbullah wants it back. I have not heard any calls for return of that land to Lebanon, nor have I heard any support for Hizbullah attacks or any criticism for Israeli response.

So if Israel corrects the grievance, then the world has no reason not to throw their weight behind Israel fully. In fact, when the situation is calm, people do this readily, and the economy of Israel was booming before the uprising began.

The actual form of Palestinian self-governance is secondary to the point of irrelevance. Israel has two peace treaties with autocratic states in Jordan and Egypt. Neither state has become less autocratic since the treaty was signed but neither state has threatened Israel since the treaty was put on paper.

Correct the grievance, and there is no reason for Arab states to fall in line behind their oppressed brethren. They can make money from Israel and there is no reason anymore not to – this is what the Saudi plan is attempting to acknowledge. This could lead to a wide scale thawing of relations with Israel as Arab countries hop off the anti-Israel bandwagon with the blessing of the head honchos in the Arab League. Perhaps prosperity and increased close dealings with a thriving democracy will be another part of the key to opening up the Arab world to democracy.

24

Look, I think we all agree that the Palestinians deserve their own state. The question is whether it is realistic, and how it can be achieved. Will just signing a treaty end the violence and lead to peace? Or do we need another solution? There are other solutions, after all. U.N. peacekeepers, Jordanian policing, physical barriers between the states. I’m just wondering what it will ultimately take to ensure peace. I have sincere doubts that withdrawing to the 1967 borders and sharing control of Jerusalem will ultimately do it. Israel was, after all, attacked several times before 1967.

My big worry is that there will be a peace, and a Palestinian state, and the PA will use the peace to rebuild, arm itself, and then wind up launching another series of attacks on Israel.

25

…from todays CNN.com

I tried to find info about what ** Sam Stone** posted, but no luck. Any links?

from ** Capacitor**

…please refer to what I first posted. Sure seems like the position that many Palestinians have towards Israel. They have NO interest in talking about peace unless it is over the graves of all Israelis…

And I didn’t see anything in ** Sam Stone’s ** posting that shows he was advocating anything like killing all the Arabs. Where did you get that idea from?