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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Bilow who wrote (32571)	6/18/2002 9:38:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 281500

It's common for sides in a war to make this sort of exaggeration of the other side's goals. It's just not a realistic appraisal. What's not realistic about it? The Palestinians want to remove the state of Israel from the Middle Easy. Sure there are some of them that well settle for less, but how would comming to some sort of agreement with the more moderate Palestinians bring about peace? Can you even indentify any moderate Palestinians that have any real power? And if it were realistic, then the Israeli Jews had better start looking at buying land somewhere else.) The Palestinians don't pose that level of threat to Israel. The suicide bombings are horrible but the murder rate counting them is still probably less then that the murder rate in the US. Its definitly less then the murder rate in many American cities. And if the Palestinians ever do start killing enough Israeli civilans to pose a serious threat to the state of Israel then Israel will get more serious about using its force and the US would be less likely to try and reign Israel in. Military weapons are not power, at least not any more. Similarly, money is also not power. They are both power. Not the only forms of power but they are power. Power of course isn't as important if you don't have the determination to use it, but Israel will use it rather then letting itself be destroyed if it comes to that. Military power no longer equates to the ability to decide how a piece of territory is governed. I'd agree that it is not the only decisive factor, and that it is probably less decisive then it has been in the past, but the only reason it has not been decisive enough is that the Palestinians have not been enough of a threat to overcome the combination of Israel scruples and Israeli fear of a negative world reaction or a new Arab Israeli war. Is the Palestinians escalate the conflict at some point that restrain would go away. I don't think the Israelis would, or would have to kill 10% of the Palestinians but you could easily see more then 1% of them dead. I hope it doesn't come to that. The force required might be a bit more like this - onwar.com or maybe a good deal more but probably not 10% of the Palestinian population. Such use of force would not resolve the issue completly (to do that might require the 10% plus ethnic cleansing or might not even be possible) but it would put a lid on things for awhile. In Vietnam the US's power allowed us to runtinely win battles. We did not win the war because we were less determined to win then our opponent. We just didn't care about it as much. Israel is in a situation of protecting itself not some dictator it set up on the other side of the globe. Letting Eastern Europe go did also not make Russia less secure. It can be argued it made the government of the USSR less secure because Russians saw that the communists could be kicked out, but it probably wasn't seen by the communist government as being a step that would reduce their hold on power in Russia. Actually eastern Europe is a perfect example. It was kept in the Soviet orbit by force for decades. When it finally left that orbit it was because force was not used. If force was used then Eastern Europe would not have left the Soviet orbit when it did. It might have left by now, but if so it would only have been because of the decay of the Soviet Union. My point is that the techniques that victors used to pacify the defeated in the 19th century are no longer available to Israel. The wild west is over. That's what "never again" means. The Israelis will have to negotiate with the Palestinians without taking into account differences in military power between them. I disagree but not completly. I agree that the military power is less useful in negotiations. If Israel gets to a situation where they have someone to negotiate with (someone who is willing to negotiate in good faith and who has the power to stop the violence, without these things negotiation is pointless) then the difference in military power will not be a decisive factor in the negotiations. At least not to the point where Israel could think about dictating terms. But it will probably still have some effect on the negotiations, at least to the extent of determining what issues are really on the table. Tim

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