No one is denying the Palestinians statehood except the Palestinians themselves.
That's not true at all. Israel has denied Palestine their statehood for decades.
The U.S. has very recently promised to help fight for a Palestinian state, if only they could focus their voice into that of an elected official and slow down the violence. They have made a little progress with Abbas, but they haven't slowed the violence down. They are their own worst enemies. Somehow they've gotten it into their heads that if they can just outlast the Israelis in the ongoing Intifada, then everything will work out ok in the end. How wrong they are.
A very simplistic and unsympathetic look at the Palestinian predicament.
One other thing I want to point out. Just about every Middle Easterner will tell you that anti-Americanism is alive and well because Americans are so obviously biased towards Israel. If only America would be more biased towards the Arabs, then everything would be ok. However, what they fail to realize is that we aren't biased towards Jews. On the contrary, we are biased towards Democracies, because we simply have much more in common with them.
We are biased towards Israelis because they look and act like us. Racial/ethnic motivation always has had a big role in how the US see things. We've gotten better at it but the old prejudices still exist. Its helps that Israel is a democracy but if democracy were solely the issue, we would be as close to Turkey as we are to Israel, and we are not.
We have free economies, free people, freely elected officials, and other common interests. It's difficult to side with non-Democratic states over a Democracy. However, despite that, the U.S. has tried many many times to be the honest broker. The best attempt in our history was made by Clinton and the Palestinians threw it back in his face and started the Intifada. Palestinians should think on that a little. Hold the mirror up to themselves and think a little about why we might be biased towards Israel.
You ignore all that Sharon/Israelis have done to incite the Palestinians. Sharon has publicly stated on a number of occasions that the Palestinians will never have their own state. How you can come to conclusions about a people based on a one sided look is beyond me. So long as people continue to take that approach in the ME we will get no where.
Having said that, if I were President, my first action would be to tell Sharon, not one more penny of loans or aid money until the settlements are removed from Gaza and the West Bank. Then things would start to move.
On that we can agree completely. |
