Before the US the British had a hand in the region. The Arab states have always been there, and do not depend on the support of the West. Israel was pretty much created by the great powers of Europe- had Israel gone genocidal I think it's existence would have been in jeopardy- as it would have completely lost the support of countries I think it has long depended on. Does it ALWAYS depend on them? No. But many European countries and the UN have had a hand in helping Israel. Without the moral support of the West, and the looming spectre of Western wroth, and the nuclear and military technology I think Israel gets from the West, I don't see Israel surviving. It's no wonder Israel lobbies so hard here, right? I mean they must need us, or they wouldn't spend so much time courting our law makers.
Had Fatah and Hamas that kind of relationship with the West, maybe they'd suck up to us too. But as we all know, the Palestinians special relationship with the West was to bend over and take it:
In his November, 2002 interview with the New Statesman magazine, the UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw blamed Britain's imperial past for many of the modern political problems, including the Arab-Israeli conflict.[3]
"The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis—again, an interesting history for us, but not an honourable one," he said.
In a 1919 memorandum he wrote as a Cabinet Minister, Balfour wrote of these contradictory assurances as follows:
The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the forms of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desire and prejudicies of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion, that is right.[4]
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For the benefit of the illiterate, this post is not intended to suggest the problem in the ME is "all" Israel's fault, or even "mostly" Israel's fault. |
