There exists a long line of national groups out there around the world who are a MUCH BETTER FIT for statehood than the Palestinians.
I've been thinking about this. Confusedly. The only things getting in the way of palestinians being a state beside Israel are their leadership problems, which are huge.
Their leadership does not really grow out of the local community. Arafat has been foisted on them and he is much beholden to outsiders - Syrian, Iranian, EC, US, Israel. His agenda is not local. Rather it is to play off these entities for his gain and that of the cronies. He is an archaic style ruler; he is not even a modernizing one (who are usually nobility of some kind).
Much of the palestinian population, on the other hand is modern in outlook and because of that is a threat both to him and to all the other regimes in the area, except possibly Israel(!) which is mostly modern in outlook. Thus the puzzling results we sometimes see in those palestinian polls. (Despite his sometimes ferocious record, Sharon is modern in outlook and is not a ruler. Thus his desire to destroy Arafat's regime).
It's pretty clear Arafat has spent quite lot of his resources on suppressing and conning the modernistic elements in his population. It would seem, to me, that Sharon's basic view that removing Arafat and his cronies and patrons would in itself be a positive, leading to reasonable outcomes (not necessarily the "expected" ones), is correct. He could then protect and perhaps talk unimpeded with modernist elements of the population - which I suspect are a high proportion of the population who are keeping their heads down for the obvious reasons.
A huge amount of external resources are being shovelled in the direction of occupied territories palestinians, much of it focused on the archaic fundamentalist agendas. Given that the palestinian ruler is partly cooperating in this the modernist elements are "drowned out" both by the fundamentalist access to external financing of social services, education, military, and by the equally archaic ruler's access to external financing. The modernist forces are left with diddly squat.
At the end, there is no coherent informal or formal political/social regime for a palestinian, or modern outsider like you, to identify. Therefore they don't look like candidates for statehood. (Archaic rulers, like Iranian mullocrats and confused or desperate moderns, have no trouble identifying Arafat's version of palestine as a candidate for statehood).
The above could be filled out much more. One could compare the commonalities palestinians and Israelis have with those palestinians and (eg) Saudis and Iranians have. I think you'd find that palestinians have far more in common with Israelis than with their "allies" who send them mullahs, weapons and money. (The EU and US don't count very much because Arafat steals their aid and gets between them and the modernist elements).
I've been pushing this modernist/archaic line of approach to you for some months now and you've not seized on it even to rip it up, but I have a feeling it can be quite useful because it shows real differences. Arafat, Hizbollah, Hamas, Iranian mullahs, Saddam Hussein, Wahhabists, are all made from the same archaic model and because of this are mortal enemies of the modern world: they either want rulers or want to be rulers and the modern world can not allow rulers - there's more to it than that, but that's the essence, isn't it?
So, you if really want to know if the palestinians are candidates for statehood get rid of the rulers and see what the rest of them want to do. That does mean getting rid of Arafat, his cronies, hamas, hizbollah, and their ilk.
frank@ifeelradicaltoday.com |
