My choice is to let them become modern democratic humans who are much more interested in economic development than in killing Jews. Where do I go to vote for that choice?
I don't know; I'm not sure that choice is available at this point.
Giving in to this way of thinking is to implicitly acknowledge that only the Arabs really have a right to be in Palestine; the Israelis are just squatting by right of conquest.
I think the question of rights is pretty much beside the point. Do we have the "right" to be in America because a bunch of Europeans came here a few hundred years ago and pushed aside the Indians? At some point in the evolution of a nation from ideological project to full-fledged reality, talk of rights gives way to more practical concerns, and I think that time has been reached in the case of Zionism. I realize that some hard-core Zionists might not agree, and that one can make an intellectually consistent (perhaps more intellectually consistent) case for their position. But that way chaos lies, and I see no reason why the United States should be dragged into it. If Israelis want to get into a deathmatch for the sake of Greater Israel, fine, but they should not expect help from us.
That's another way to say that all the fault for any policy that turns out to be a mistake rests on the guy who first made the decision, no matter how long ago or what happened since. A little simplistic, no?
depends on how clear it was from the beginning that the choice was a mistake. I go pretty easy on the Nixon administration for its Vietnam policies, because it inherited a giant mess from the Johnson administration. Major subsidized settlement of the territories should have been understood to be a mistake from the beginning, and so the folks who pushed it are among the ones we should blame now (altho not necessarily the only ones).
Perhaps you meant something narrower, to only refer to the settleements. Even there, one could argue about the different classes of settlements. I don't think you'll find many backers left for the ideological settlements sprinkled throughout the West Bank, but you'll won't find many Israelis who regard the "internationally recognized 1967 borders" as sacred, or are eager to give back the Old City or Gilo either.
The Israelis would have a much better case for holding onto stuff beyond the green line if they limited their claims to some relatively small stuff done for clear defensive purposes, geographical contiguity, and some areas of Jerusalem. In practice, they'll be able to get away with keeping the large settlement block suburbs around Jerusalem too, altho I think it was a mistake to build those. Most everything else should go--and if it did, and the situation didn't improve, then the hawks would have an even better case for not compromising further, no?
tb@backtoyou.com |
