Wrong. In for the past year or so, the AA can claim the vast majority of attackers
Not even true for the last year, Hamas still has the majority.
(Netanyahu disgracefully broke signed agreements)
You do realize the Oslo accords never froze settlements?
The PA did NOT support terrorism - in fact they cooperated with Israel to contain it.
Oh please. You're making me laugh. Maybe they did in 94 and 95, a little, though not enough to stop Hamas' bus bombings. Really moving against Hamas was never on Arafat's program. Since then it's been "I deplore the bombings" in English and "one thousand martyrs will march to Jerusalem" in Arabic.
Of course, when Israel decided to destroy the PA in an insane plan to deligitmize Palestinian national aspirations
Yes, offering 95% of the West Bank was a diabolically clever way to deligitimize Palestinian national aspirations. Actually, the Israelis don't need to do that job, the Pals are doing a good job of it for themselves.
For can anyone totally control their extremists? Can Israel?
Yes, they can and they do. They did in 1948 when Ben Gurion sank the Altalena and brought the Irgun to heel. Before you race to quote Baruch Goldstein and the Rabin assassination, they can't stop every incident. But, as you've pointed out, there are lots of ideological settlers in the West Bank. Where are the massacres they've perpetrated on the Palestinians, the revenge for the attacks and the bombings? Not to be found? Because Israel controls them.
Whereas it always suited Arafat very well not to control Hamas. Sometimes he would 'shove it in the closet' for a while, tell it to be quiet. But Arafat's style is to have organizations that he can use with plausible deniability, some of them his own, some not. Hamas fit this role for a time (they're now moving to take over in Gaza). So did the Tanzim, who were formed before the start of the intifada and are on Arafat's payroll. Thus Arafat could do terrorism but claim to oppose it. This has always been Arafat's style. When he ordered the kidnapping and killing of the Olympic atheletes in Munich no one even knew that Black September was Arafat's organization. It's become a byword in Arab politics - "Fakarani (sp?) rule", named after the street in Beirut where Arafat had his headquarters in the 70's. As for Arafat's support of terrorism being an Israeli lie, did they also forge his signature and those of his top aides on the papers of the Karine A? on the Tanzim invoices for bomb belts (about $350 each, as I recall)?
and given a chance many more Arab countries would
So? and what was stopping them in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's?
As to the Arab press. Please, I can also find outrageous statements by Israeli extremists...
...in fringe websites. Whereas in the Arab press, you'll find outrageous statements in the major government-controlled dailies, along with every conspiracy theory known to man. And show me an article from even a Kach website that says that the Arabs drink the blood of Jewish children. Comparing the Israeli and Arab press is like saying that the US is just as anti-Semitic as Nazi Germany, because the Nation of Islam is anti-Semitic and based in the US. To really be comparable, The Nation of Islam would have to advocate another Holocaust and control the editorial content of the NY Times, the Washington Post and CNN.
a lot of stuff written in Arab newspapers is for domestic consumption by regimes that have little legitimacy in an effort to placate (and sometimes distract) the population... you can't take it at face value as representing what they'd actually do when the rubber hit the road.
The Arab regimes have a history of stirring their population's passions in an effort to control and distract them, then becoming captive to the passions they themselves had stirred. For example, Nasser was not really gung-ho for war in 1967, but after he had made a few stirring speeches about how he was going to wipe Israel off the map and drive the Jews into the sea, the people's blood was up and he couldn't back down without shame. |
