I reread your idea, I think it could work, providing the Arab States that expelled jews are willing to restore full citizenship and rights to the Jews and all of their descendants they have banished out since 1902.
Yeah, that seems a reasonable part of the reconciliation plan. Arab governments would have to offer citizenship to descnedants of Jews expelled from their countries. Not sure whether they should offer dual citizenship, so the descendants of expelled Jews would have to choose nationality, within a set period of time.
Your idea only makes concessions from Israel, and it means an end to Israel, and basically the Israelis depending on the Muslims for forbearance. I think my idea was better, and this is why. If they stopped fighting, and started to renovate Palestine, and bring it up to Israeli standards, Palestine could comfortably contain more people. By providing employment for the young men, they will have some hope. There is no hope of Israel simply saying yes all those palestinians can come back to israel. There are no homes for them, no jobs for them, and no place for them to live.
Remember, under my plan Israel-Palestine is united as a single country, so the space issue is unchanged from the status quo.
So a simple yes we'll take 150,000 Palestinians is simply not possible, they cannot sleep in the streets, they cannot live on welfare, that is a huge number of people to suddenly have to deal with. I am not even sure Israel could feed 150,000 new people all at once.
Remember my plan gets implemented over 20-50 years, not in a month, so the above issue could clearly be managed. And their could be significant financial support from outside countries, including Saudi, Iran, etc. If the Arab neighbor countries really want Palestinians to have their right of return they can pay for it. Nadine pointed out that Barak nationalized 150k Pal refugees during the Camp David negotiations, so it can be accomplished. I assume those 150k aren't all sleeping in the streets today, but who knows?
So why not try make palestine and israel co-operate to bring a better life to Palestinians first, to give each other Favoured Nation status first, to re open slowly the borders so that Palestinians can work in Israel and Israelis can work in Palestine.
This idea is an extension of the status quo, maintains a partition which resulted in a country that has neven been accepted by the neighbor countries or by 90% of the population in the region. Your plan basically has failed for 60 years.
I agree with the principle that as the winner of virtually every war and as a more economically developed nation the responsibility to make life better for the Palestinians lies more with Israel than vice versa, and it would be nice to see massive Palestinian colleges and infrastructure and development being initiated by Israel, but I don't think that's your point.
Then you will have a country called israel and a country called palestine, that provide opportunities for each other, and where if some palestinians want to move to Israel they will, and if some Israelis want to move to palestine they will, and both countries will be rich.
Uhmmm, how does your plan (which seems to be Israel promoting development in Palestine, a region who's borders are unclear at the moment) overcome the 60 years of hatred and mistrust on both sides? Your plan still ends up with the Palestinians believing they have the right to live in the land held by Israel, and denied that right by Israel, and thus probably results in more Palestinian violence against Israel. That violence will be generally supported by all the neighboring Arab governments that agree the Palestinian people have the right to live in Israeli land. You don't overcome the root cause of the objection to the state of Israel among the non-Jews in the region - the partitioning of land where many people lived for a long time into a land which became a homeland for a minority group in the region.
Basically, your plan doesn't overcome the opposition to Israel by the non-Jews in the region, so how is it going to result in peace?
Do you have any idea how much money they could make from just Christian Tourists?
Plenty. They could make the same amount under my plan, so that's a tie. |
