>Right!! The Israelis took the West Bank and Gaza back in the 60's or 70's and that was supposed to end the fighting permanently. Finally, Israel had the buffer zones it needed to ward off any attacks from the Arabs. Fast forward to the 90's......the Palestinians have come up with the concept of the suicide bomber. No longer do they have to fight gun to gun, street to street with the Israelis. Just come over to a Sbarro or a supermarket and blow up some Israelis.
Taking over those territories wasn't supposed to end all of the fighting... you can't end the deep-seeded hostilities overnight- doing so was just meant to take away geographical advantages that the Arab states around them had. The people in the territories were going to try and attack Israel whether it took over those territories or not- Arafat started the Fatah movement in the late '50s and the PLO in the early '60s, and commenced terrorism against Israel in 1964, three years before Israel took over the territories. Before 1993, the Palestinians didn't express any sentiment at all that any less than all of Israel as a Palestinian state would be satisfactory, and in the years following the Oslo accords, Arafat has told his own people over and over that the peace accords were just a step towards the eventual conquering of all of Israel- the last time he did that, AFAIK, was sometime in late '01. They turned down nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem in 2000. However, until the second intifada, which began in September of 2000, Israel refrained from military incursions into Palestian cities because it thought that it would gain peace through negotiation with Arafat. There really is only year-long history of Israeli military incursions, and those incursions have been very brief. This is the first one that I've really felt good about. According to Shimon Peres, the Americans have told Israel that they can continue for another couple of weeks before pulling out. Considering how much Israel has accomplished in the past week, another couple of weeks could help a lot, but it probably won't do all that it needs to do, and then you'll come back after another bombing and say, "See? Look, the military actions didn't work!"
And we'll be right back where we are today.
>And you believe that if you take every weapon and lock up every member of Hamas and Al Aqsa and every other terrorist
group that that would be the end. If so, I don't think you understand the root of the problem and how pervasive the unrest is. If you better want to understand, go to some of the largest cities in this country and see the extent to which gangs rule the inner city. I suspect the spawning ground for gangs in this country is similar to and just as fertile as the ground for terrorists in the Middle East.
Do gangs ever really threaten to undermine our whole country? No. Why not? Because they don't have automatic weapons or missiles or powerful explosives. Those are all things that need to be taken from the Palestinians. As I've said before, after taking all of the weapons, Israel would then have to try to work with a demilitarized Palestinian people- it would be much easier than working with a militarized one.
>Oh, the poor Israelis.....undermined by a Madison Ave. PR war on the part of the Arabs. Its the Israelis who have done the PR war.....and very effectively I might add. I
Please tell me what Israeli PR war you're talking about here.
>If only their military actions were as effective. But they have become less effective, and will be even less effective in the future.
Less effective? When was the last suicide bombing in Israel?
-Z
>The annexed areas no longer provide safety and have become a major bone of contention.
The West Bank and Gaza haven't been annexed. AFAIK, the only land that Israel has actually annexed is the Golan Heights, which they won from Syria. They annexed it because it was a very strategic point from which Syrian gunmen fired down on Israeli farmers for years. |
