Crimson > President Bush repeats endlessly that "Israel has a right to defend itself", and I am happy to allow Israel to claim that it is "defending itself", but on the condition that it admits the truth - that it is defending that which it stole from Palestinians almost 60 years ago. That it is "defending" against a beleaguered and oppressed people who are simply demanding that their homeland is returned to them.
That is the point which I frequently make and which, to me, is the central problem in the argument, namely, the illegal occupation.
But more to the point is that the occupation of the Palestinian, West-Bank land is, from a cost-benefit point of view, totally ridiculous as far as Israel and its US sponsors are concerned. On the benefit side, the land enables the housing, and in grand style, of 200,000 "settlers". But the cost of this runs into the tens of billions of dollars, particularly for the military, when one takes into account the fact that there could have been peace, even in Rabin's time, if the land was returned to its rightful owners. Indeed, these "settlers" could have been given apartments in Fifth Avenue, New York or villas on the French Riviera for what it has cost to house them in the West Bank! |
