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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (15262)	1/1/2002 5:06:14 PM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 281500

Nadine, what was this issue on "shared tax revenues" just some time ago?? Still collected?? To pay for local infrastructure?? Ilmarinen I'm slightly tired of finding the worst stuff in the first 2-3 sentences, one could try to keep those sentences at some level of intellectual hinesty?? Save the better part for the last sentences??

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (15262)	1/2/2002 9:27:55 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Define "winning". If you think that Israel is fighting to keep the territories, I think you have it all wrong." No, I think that Israel is fighting for the right to have a territory (any at all) that is democratically governed and majority Jewish. Re: "Israel had already put an offer on the table to give back 95% of the territories, for goodness sake!" This is exactly the tactic that South Africa used, without success, in attempting to create a land that was both democratically governed and majority white. I'm not saying that Israel is morally similar to South Africa, just that their political aims are similar. Israel's long term problem is that Jews are out numbered in that region. Perhaps instead of attempting to keep things under control militarily they should instead be aiming to convert Moslems. Re: "That's what makes this intifada particularly idiotic. No, Israel is fighting to survive." If the Intifada is idiotic, then why is it make Israel "fight to survive"? The whole objective of the intifada is the non survival of Israel. Re: "If Israel withdraws from the territories -- which are not a foreign country (however many times the PLO says "occupation"), but part of the one country of Israel/Palestine -- in the face of such terror tactics, as it did in Lebanon, it will be such a convincing display of weakness and demoralization that it will guarantee a sixth Arab-Israeli war. If you don't understand this, you don't understand what is going on." The real problem with doing this is not the "display of weakness and demoralization", so much as the fact that Israel would be reduced in size to the extent that it would be much more difficult for it to defend itself militarily. Re: "You cannot talk as if this conflict were between Israel and the Palestinians alone, forgetting the Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis, and Iraqis and Iranians." No, I'm not forgetting the other Moslems. In fact I wrote: "If Israel doesn't have the military might to do this, (perhaps because the local Arabs countries will gang up on her), then she needs to recognize the futility of the situation and do something else. Either close the borders, or start waging peace." #reply-16848740 This is why the "stupid" intifada is a fight for Israel's survival. If Israel can't control the territories, are they really a part of Israel and not a "foreign country"? Seems to me that most legitimate governments don't have a lot of trouble keeping control of their own territory. Let me try and give you the point of view of the rest of the world. We don't care about who did what to whom, either in the last 100 years or the last 5000. It's all ancient history to us, and we truly and honestly don't care. *What we see is a territory that breeds terrorism.* With Afghanistan we finally had to go in and solve their problems for them. *What do you think we will do when we go into "Israel / Palestine" and solve "our problems for them"?* Do you think that we're going to cut the territory into tiny chunks too small to be militarily defended or economically self supporting? Do you think we're going to set up a government where a particular religious group is given complete control of the government in perpetuity, despite their lower population growth rate? Do you think that would solve the problem? Do you think we're idiots? washington-report.org Israel's real problem is not with the local Arab states, as far as the Intifada goes. Their problem is with the rest of the world. All we want is peace, and if some Jews have to live in a nation where they will inevitably eventually be under a Moslem controlled government, it truly doesn't bother us at all. Re: "This is a battle of wills, like a strike. It's hard to see who is winning a strike while it is going on. Daniel Pipes said recently that he thought Israel might be winning. Several of Arafat's lieutenants have begun openly expressing disatisfaction with the progress of the intifada. But ultimately, everything remains corked while Arafat, the world's great decision-avoider, remains in power. So it goes on." All it takes is for the local Arab nations to have the power (military, diplomatic and economic) to pull off one successful war against Israel. Then it's over forever. To win, Israel has to win forever. To a certain extent, this is similar to the situation that the US (apparently) faced in 1979 against Communism. But the US did not win the cold war by surviving forever. Instead what it did was subvert its enemy into becoming a friend. Maybe subvert isn't the right word; what the US had to do was wait until the Soviet Union collapsed internally. The problem for Israel is that the Arab nations are not collapsing internally (and presumably converting to a less virulent version of anti Jewishness). Instead, their hatred is undimmed, and they're growing faster than Israel: Population Growth rates (percents): Syria 2.54 Egypt 1.69 Jordan 3.00 S.A. 3.27 Lebanon 1.38 ---- Average 2.38 Israel 1.58 cia.gov cia.gov cia.gov cia.gov cia.gov cia.gov 0.8% per year may not seem like much of a difference, but over the course of a generation or two it starts to add up. And it's not like Israel is starting from a big population advantage. Economic growth rates are also important, but they change so much from year to year that it's difficult to get a handle on them. But the tendency of history is for backwards nations to slowly catch up with more advanced neighbors. In order to "win", what Israel has to do is to survive as a nation until a permanent peace arrives. The problem for Israel is that the trend is against her. What the Intifada does is to ensure that the "permanent peace" is postponed as long as possible. -- Carl