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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (143306)	3/15/2002 2:06:35 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1577019

Tim, if you read the article on the Oslo peace process, in fact they state that the PLO negotiators agreed to provisions which benefitted Israel significantly and helped restrict the movement of the Palestinians. In fact it sounds like what happened is opposite to what you suggest. Before the last several years of the peace process there was no Palestinian Authority, there was the PLO, and the West Bank and Gaza where controlled by Israel's army. There was some violence every now and then and both sides really didn't want it to continue the way it was. Then the PLO is allowed to create a Palestinian authority that will control large sections of the west bank and gaza. They are allowed to form a large police force in the area and to get small arms for this force (automatic rifles and such). Since that the unrest and violence and chaos has grown. Actually everywhere the PLO has set up shop chaos has followed. They where forced out of Jordan (and it took a bit of effort by Jordan's army to do this), then they took over sections of Lebanon, now they are in the West Bank and Gaza and again there is chaos. I think the Palestinians should have a state but there current government would not be a good choice to lead such a state, and the alternatives with the most power like Hamas would probably be even worse (at least in regards to how they deal with Israel, they might at least be less corrupt). Trying to establish peace gradually may make some sense, it gives both sides a chance to get to trust each other before making final commitments but in this case it didn't work. It raised expectations and emotions and then violence. From Israel's viewpoint they give up some land to control of the PLO and they received the concessions that you talked about. However in a way they where not concessions at all, because before the last few rounds of the peace talks the Israeli army could and would just restrict the Palestinians in any way they wanted. So what Israel did trade was land for peace. However once they got some land the peace went away. Presumably the peace was supposed to come back for some more land, and then some more land and so on. I can see why Israel did not want to negotiate this way, so during the last round of the peace talks they pushed for a final agreement. There would be a real Palestinian state (rather then just a PA that controlled a few areas). Arafat apparently didn't like the exact terms of the treaty (initially it was something like 91% of the occupied territories plus the equivalent of 1% of the occupied territories from pre 67 Israeli land, later it was increased to about 95% plus 3 or 4%) but for whatever reason never really made a counter offer. Unfortunately, I don't think the violence will end until Palestine has a stable, job producing economy. Then I think we have a bad chicken and egg problem. I don't think Palestine will ever have a stable job producing economy until the violence ends (and even if it did end it would be hard to have a booming economy with Yassir at the helm) "Foreign aid isn't very good at creating jobs. " That's not true........if used wisely, foreign aid can speed up the recovery of an economy/economies..........look at the Marshall Plan. I didn't say it could not create jobs. Just that its not very good at it. It can help provide the infrastructure needed to create jobs, which is what I think the Marshall Plan did. Most of the actual private sector jobs where created more by trade with the US (And with other European countries) and by expansion of commerce within the European nations, rather then by the Marshall Plan itself. If you had the conditions of Europe post WWII (an educated and competent workforce, which wants peace and is willing to work hard, expanding trade, a low level of violence, governments who use the aid wisely, and a lot of investment both internal and from foreign sources) then a big aid plan could really help things by providing the needed infrastructure, and staving off temporary financial problems. But given current conditions in Palestine (continued violence, incompetent and currupt administration, a low level of trade, a very low level of private sector investment, a lack of widely available good quality education, and other problems) I think more foreign aid would just go to buy new toys for Arafat and his friends, or would be used to buy weapons, or would be wasted in projects that have little real return. Simply pointing out that Israelis are in lock step agreement over Sharon's aggressive policy or that the left has disappeared as you suggested earlier. I don't think there is any lock step agreement, but the mainstream dovish element is where the moderates used to be, the moderates are where the hawks used to be and some of the hawks are where the extremist wackos used to be. Everything has shifted against trusting and working with the Palestinians. The left hasn't disappeared but it has been marginalized in terms of being dovish about the Palestinians. Tim