Skeets, Israel will benefit from this catastrophe, just as Britain benefited from Pearl Harbor 60 years ago. A line has been drawn between civilization and terrorism, and the Palestinians are left standing on the wrong side of it. Pictures of the Palestinians dancing in the streets (which Arafat is trying desperately to prevent getting out, even threatening the lives of the reporters) won't help their cause.
While it's true that the radicals control the government and the streets in Palestinian areas, and the more educated can voice their opinions only in their own kitchens, it is not true to say 99% of the Palestinians throw rocks. Arafat has been waging a low grade guerilla war for nearly a year. Shooting incidents (including mortars) average fifty per day, and there have been literally hundreds of bombings or attempted bombings. This is a military campaign.
There's no space here to begin the long arguments about the rights of the Palestinians vs. Zionism, but just let me say that "they had their land stolen" is imo a vast, vast oversimplification of the development of the Jewish presence in Palestine and the Arab political response to it, particularly of the way the Palestinians have deliberately been kept in refugee camps to be used as pawns and weapons by their Arab "brethen". Remember in 1948/49, half a million Jews living in Arab countries had all their property confiscated and were made refugees, too. You just never hear about them because they were all resettled as fast as possible. |
