Yeah, sure, Steven a tidy little explanation.
It wasn't meant to be an explanation of the entire conflict, but an explanation of where the cycle of violence began. Explaining why it has continued is a little more complicated. Arab intransigence has had a good deal to do with that, as has Israeli intransigence.
it seems to me that one or two new countries have been founded in the last hundred years without the neighbors taking the attitude "We refuse to accept reality. If we can't destroy it, we're just gonna hold our breath until we turn blue and hope it all goes away."
How many new countries have been recently founded by a foreign population arriving in an area from a distance and declaring their intent to take possession of the region in question, against the will of the people who already lived there? Can't think of one, offhand. The trend for the last hundred years or so has been more toward founding nations by the expulsion of unwelcome intruders.
We aren't talking about "the neighbors, either", we're talking about the people who used to live there. The Zionists are also holding their breath and hoping that the Palestinians will go away, are they not? And if you want to talk about refusing to accept reality, were the Jews of late 18th Century Europe willing to accept the reality that they no longer had any imaginable claim to Palestine? If they wouldn't accept that reality after millenia, why should the Palestinians accept it now?
In any event, cycles of violence, many of them driven by migration, endure in many parts of the world. This one is hardly unique, it just gets more attention than most, because of religion and oil. |
