Re: If Israel returned to 1967 borders, somewhat modified for defense, Hamas and the terror organizations would continue in existence.
Of course! However, that should not be an argument for opposing a Palestinian state... Get real: do you expect TOTAL peace between Israel and her Arab environment? Do you plan to wage war against the Palestinians and deny them a state until each and every Arab organization resorting to violence against Israel is eradicated? But that kind of Utopian pacification is impossible --it has never happened, whether in Northern Ireland, in India/Kashmir, or in Spain:
Spain's Basque government vows to push regional autonomy one step further
Friday, 26-Sep-2003 9:40AM PDT
Story from AFP / Denis Teyssou
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
VITORIA, Spain, Sept 26 (AFP) - Spain's autonomous Basque government on Friday vowed to pursue a controversial plan to change the region's political status to one of "free association" with the rest of the country, prompting furious criticism from Madrid.
The president of the Basque government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, told the regional parliament in Vitoria that the "new statute of free association" -- which essentially pushes autonomy one step further -- would be based on the "respect for the right of the Basque people to decide their own future".
He also offered to debate the issue with Madrid, but stressed that the Basque government intends to put the plan to a referendum regardless of the outcome of its talks with the central government.
Should Ibarretxe's project succeed, Euskadi, the Basque name for the region in the country's north, would be freely associated with the remainder of Spain by the will of its inhabitants rather than by the current constitutional arrangement that granted the region its autonomy, under the so-called 1979 Statute of Guernica.
But the plan will have to run the gauntlet of furious opposition from a right-wing Spanish government which derided it as "separatist and secessionist. "
Ibarretxe, of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV -- in power in Vitoria since 1980), first drafted the plan a year ago. He revealed Friday that the Basque government was set to approve the project on October 25 and that it would be put to a vote in the regional parliament in September 2004.
After that, the Basque government would seek to hold six months of talks with the central government in Madrid with a view to modifying the region's autonomous status.
In Madrid, the conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar immediately warned it would oppose the plan, insisting that it "seeks to break apart the political and constitutional framework" of Spain, said government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana.
Zaplana insisted the Basque region already enjoyed "a level of autonomy unknown in Europe."
[...]
Alluding to the violence by armed separatist group ETA, whose commandos have killed about 800 people in the past 35 years, Ibarretxe said he wanted to cut out "a cancer that does terrible harm to the Basque image throughout the world."
He added that the plan "is decisively going to contribute to slamming the door on violence and expel ETA from our lives."
Ibarretxe's reference to an all-embracing vote was seen as a reference to the banning earlier this year by the Spanish judiciary of Batasuna, ETA's political mouthpiece.
Ibarretxe said last year's sinking of the Prestige oil tanker off northern Spain, a catastrophe that polluted the whole of the north coast, as well as the war in Iraq -- supported by Madrid but not by the Spanish population at large -- justified his mission to give the Basques greater control over their own affairs.
He called both issues "two significant examples of the great chasm, the divorce that exists between Basque society and the Spanish government.
"The enthusiastic support of the Spanish government for the war against Iraq ... is an illegitimate, unjust and erroneous decision ... adopted without United Nations approval, against our European allies and against the will of Basque society," Ibarretxe charged.
quickstart.clari.net
As you can see, there'll always be diehard extremists in both camps: even if Britain relinquished Northern Ireland altogether, there would still be IRA fanatics calling for expelling all the Catholics from Ireland... Likewise, in the Basque country, extremists would push their luck and call for annexing the French Basque country... and on and on. Yet, that didn't prevent both the Spanish and the UK governments from negotiating with their breakaway foes. |
