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Impeached by a patch
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Impeached by a patch
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LUNATIC ATHEIST!!11!!!
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Elite Pathogen
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| Roadkill, I like your pictures but a caption would be nice so I knew what the hell you're talking about  .Also, for the record, Israel never offered 95% of the West Bank. Barak did. It is doubtful whether, had Arafat accepted, the treaty would have passed in the Knesset.
Whether that's true or not, Arafat didn't want to take that chance did he? You are forgetting that it is the Palestinians that are the wronged party. You would not expect a victim of robbery to accept an out-of-court settlement where he'd only get part back, and would have to cede his claims to the rest. A middle ground is only relevant when both sides have equally valid claims. How much of the Palestinian refugee problem was caused by direct expulsion and how much by voluntary flight is irrelevant, for Israel explicitly denied them right of return after the conflict. Which effectively achieved the same result as an expulsion.
From what I understand of the situation, this is a very biassed and black and white view of it. I'm not here to say that Israel was a saint in the matter, but take into consideration that they were attacked by ALL of their Arab neighbors. It might be just a little hard to let all the former Arab residents to return and just say all is swell especially when it happened again in '67. You have to understand the hesitancy in allowing them to return. Who do not owe anything in return, except for peace and acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist.
Isn't this what Israel wants more than anything? Rabi chime in if I'm wrong here. I think that if it was assured that this would happen, the Palestinians would get what they "deserve" but they aren't even willing to go that far. And keep in mind that while every Palestinian is not involved in violence, by giving Hamas an official position (and a dominant one at that) at the table it only shows that they are of like minds. This all or nothing, you're 100% wrong and we're 100% right attitude is exactly the problem in the Palestinian Authority. If peace is the goal, it will not be reached under these circumstances. If the goal is the destruction of Israel, the jury's still out... |
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-A government that is powerful enough to do anything for us is powerful enough to do anything to us. -Fred Thompson
-There are two races of people, the decent and the indecent. - Victor Frankel
-They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. - Benjamin Franklin
Consequences
Edited: 5/21/2008 12:10 AM by jerm |   |  |
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Elite Pathogen
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die with honor
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Conscript Rabbi
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| In a way I agree with Konrad that the Palestinians are the wronged party. To put it more specifically: after 80 years of conflict, the people in the Palestinian refugee camps are getting the shortest stick in the box, over and over again. They need to be helped.
I'd like to question, by whom. And this by delving into the prerequisite question, by whom they were wronged. I will not argue they were not wronged by Israel at all, they were, certainly over the long run. However, it was never Israel's intention to hurt them, certainly not in the beginning and I feel Israel would be ready to contribute not very little to bettering their lot, but nothing at the expense of Israel's strategic position, which one can hardly deny them.
In my opinion the Palestinians who pay the heaviest toll of the conflict, were also wronged by their own leaders. Their own leaders have repeatedly gambled with their lot and lost. By inspiring the earliest intifada in the 1930's, by rejecting partition until and after 1947. By not representing them until the 1960's but branching this out to the neighboring countries (about whom more below). By choosing the terrorist card as off the 1970's and most importantly by not building a society as of 1994 - when they could and had to.
The surrounding Arab countries and others such as Iran, have wronged the Palestinian people, by playing to be their champion, but offering them no more than war with Israel. This means, the Palestinians are designated to be helped by Israel's future defeat and nothing else. There has never been a plan B. And so, until further notice the Palestinians are stuck with a lost cause and no other backup from their protectors.
Last but not least, the Palestinian populace has wronged itself. It still largely recognizes the legitimacy of their own leaders and of their foreign champions and the struggle for wiping Israel off the map. it cherishes its narrative of being the victim of Israel and Israel alone. This makes it all the more difficult for Israelis even to consider, taking these people in, or having them acquire a normal life and any reasonable economic standard.
I am not sure whether this community conflict is very different from many other community conflicts around the world. Where two communities clash and make each other's life miserable for many generations, they will cling on to these narratives of enmity and danger about each other. The further struggle will serve only to corroborate that story. Do you think Croats and Serbs are very welcome back in Sarajevo? Greeks in Anatolia? Turks in Greece? How are Hutu's and Tutsi's coming along these days? The clashing communities in Aceh, Timor and Ambon? Etc. Etc.
I'd like to merge my ultimate point with what is being discussed in the Road Map thread (in which I myself fall short to write the next segment). The only real solution is to have the communities come to peace and live together in the soil that can bear them both and to which they both belong. The biggest obstruction are the sentiments. And part of the sentiments are these one sided narratives that magnify the other's bad and deny where they themselves went wrong. These narratives constantly feed the righteousness of the struggle and invite if not demand that Jihad terminology and that bar compromises and pragmatism. Mind you, no less in Israel. |
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Hypocrisy is sin's reverence to virtue
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Grognard fantôme
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|  5/21/2008 8:23 AM | |
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