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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (1713)	3/23/2002 11:50:20 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

E.T., without trying to diminish the plight of the Palestinian Arabs, they are really a very small portion of the 100 MM plus refugees created in the last century (including Jews evicted from Arab countries in the period 47 to about 51, in about the same numbers as Palestinian refugees in 48), they are the only group of refugees whose "problem" has been kept "alive" for 50 years (first by the "East/West conflict, and after the cold war by extreme Islamists). Time to solve that problem by all the nations in the Mid East, not just the Israeli and Palestinians. Barak offered "land for peace", but Arafat demanded "right of return". If the right of return (to original place, within Israel) is granted here, that will form a new international precedent and you are going to seed a major element of destabilization all over the world (some 6 Million Sikhs (then, in 49, only 2 Millions) forcibly evicted from their fertile lands, would demand their right of return, Europe will erupt in flames as right wing Germans will make forcible claims on Kalinigrad (old Koenigsberg), Breslau and Danzig (now both Polish cities). They of course could also expand their demand to Alsace/Lorraine, if the world's appeasers give them those three little apples, and you know what will follow. The Palestinian, in their own new state (where ever that state might be) cold pass a law of "return" (as Israel has), but return to within the territory of their new state, not to within Israel. Zeev

To: E. T. who wrote (1713)	3/24/2002 12:41:52 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

Why at the end of hostilities did these people lose the right to return home. I don't know why, but in any case they were stripped of that right. One reason, right off the bat, was that hostilities did not end. The Green Line is the truce line of 1949, no more. The Arab states did not recognize Israel nor did they end the state of war. Israel remains in a state of war today with Syria and Lebanon. Egypt and Jordan washed their hands of Gaza and the West Bank when they signed peace treaties, so they should be the Jews' headache. I am not saying that there were no forcible removals; I am saying that the exodus was a mixed bag, a large voluntary evacuation on the mistaken expectation of a quick Arab victory, a general panic when that victory didn't materialize, plus forced removals and whispering campaigns in certain strategic areas. That there was no uniform policy for forcibly removing the Arabs is shown by the fact that 160,000 of them remained in Israel in 1949. The Israelis could have cleared them all out if that was their policy. What I am saying above all, what the Palestinians want you to forget, is that the exodus happened in the context of a war that the Jews did not want but that the Arabs forced on them. Compromise is not a virtue in the Arab outlook on things (doubly so since the Mufti had killed any Arab who proposed compromise). If the Jews had lost that war, there wouldn't be one of them left in Arab Palestine. That circumstance should be remembered when you judge the outcome of events. To be sure, the Palestinians have suffered, at the hands of the Jews and more still at the hands of their Arab brothers. I read a good quote recently, when a Palestinian said of the Arab countries, "With friends like these, who needs Israelis?". Every Jewish family has ancestors who were driven out and can sympathize. But my family is not getting its houses in Latvia back; Israelis are not getting their ancestors' houses in Poland and Baghdad back. To give unknown millions of Palestinians (no census has ever been done) a 'right of return' to Israel is to demand a two state solution, where both states are Arab Palestine. Israel will never agree to that, and why should it?