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Politics : The Arab-Israeli Solution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (550)	5/21/2001 10:16:00 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2279

the Flemings and the Walloons-- are not displaced communities! And neither are the 20% of Israel's population their Arab culture. And these people enjoy a far higher standard of living than do their fellow Arabs in Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. And the same goes for those Palestinians who live on the West Bank. When Israel occupied the West Bank -again because Hussein foolishly chose to attack Israel-, the Palestinians there enjoyed a TREMENDOUS increase in their standard of living. They were hooked up to the Israeli power and water infrastructure and they enjoyed tremendous increases in the level of tourist trade as a result of Jews being permitted to vist the old city, something previously denied to them by the Jordanian government. And indeed, Israel allowed the Palestinians to continue their trade relationships with Amman.. and left much of the Jordanian civil infrastructure in place to continue to manage the territories. But let's look at the history of the Palestinians.. The never was anything known as a "Palestinian State" or Kingdom. Some say the Palestinians are the remnants of the Philistine Kingdom, but there is little to substantiate that, nor do the Palestinians themselves claim any major linkage to that era. In contrast to that, the entire Bible is a history of the Israeli people as a nation. It relates their history extending over a thousand (thousands of?) years. There is no doubt that Israel and the distinctive Israeli culture were a nation that was dispossessed by the Romans, and then the Muslims. There is no doubt that they were in "diaspora". Thus, at least the Jews can make a case for a precedent for the existence of Israel. Far more than can the Palestinians or the Arab Sheiks, most of whom are self-glorified tribal leaders who gained the upper hand over their rivals. But at its heart, you're wrong about Colonialism. Colonialism is the child of imperialism, where resources are exported from a colony for the use by the conquering nation. Their is only enough development to accomodate the extraction of these resouces. And that is CLEARLY more the situation with Arab states where oil was discovered by the Brits and then exported for THEIR profit (until they were nationalized). However, in Israel the Jews did not return to the Palestine to create a colony, but to reclaim what they perceived as their "homeland". They were not there to extract and export resouces for the benefit of the motherland, but to build and develop what was a desolate land. They have invested FAR MORE than they extracted from Israel and they lived there with the view of staying. This stands in stark contrast to how the Arabs have treated the region. Jordan extracted some 40% of its income from the West Bank, provided no self-rule, and invested VERY LITTLE into the region. Jordan acted as the "colonialist power", extracting the agricultural wealth and tourist revenues for the benefit of Jordan, not the West Bank. Look at every nation in the region that does not possess significant oil wealth (and even some that do).. Israel, lacking any major resources to speak of, has become an economic powerhouse in the region, while its Arab neighbors CONTINUE to lanquish economically. Yes, the Palestinians have been caught in the middle, but they also relished playing "pawn" to their Arab allies because they see the political destruction of Israel as their means to inherit its ready made infrastructure for themselves. An infrastructure and economy they could never have created on their own. And to bring this back on topic, this is quite similar to what the communist Chinese have down with Hong Kong. Obtained Asia's financial center, created by the British and HK chinese, and are now milking it to support the rest of the mainland economy. The Palestinians have every opportunity now to develop their economy, rather than spending their time gathered at the gates between the Palestinian Authority and Israel throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at the Jews. They have economic control over 95% of the West Bank, but they have no plan as to how to tough work involved in running an economy and bettering the lives of their own people. So they wage war against the Israelis, putting off the final day of reckoning when they will have to meet the needs of their society and creating jobs internally, rather than relying on the Jews for 50% of their employment. Hawk