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

To: Bilow who wrote (23330)	4/3/2002 7:21:55 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

They, like I, probably don't think that Israel can survive, and that therefore plans have to be made for an eventual Palestinian victory What??? The destruction of Israel will require an enormous amount of conventional weaponry which the Palestinians do not have. The Palestinian allies do have such a conventional capacity, but using it against Israel would be to commit mass suicide. Plus, the Palestinians are not worth it--just ask Jordan and Egypt, both of which have made a peace of sorts with Israel after being hammered conventionally in every war they fought against it. These bitter enemies will find a way to peace eventually because they have the capacity to bleed or destroy each other--with Israel having the upper hand militarily. You are badly mistaken in your assessment that Israel will be the loser in this conflict. The French have an anti-Semitic streak that has nothing to do with any assessment that the Palestinians will prevail. Your suggestion that the lessons learned by the French in Algeria are relevant is not well thought out because it ignores a huge distinction, i.e., the fact that the French in Algeria were not fighting for their survival as a nation on their own soil. I rather think that the result would have been different had the French been fighting the Algerians for French survival on French soil, like the Israelis are presently fighting the Palestinians.

To: Bilow who wrote (23330)	4/3/2002 7:37:04 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Many people before have thought that Israel would lose. The general expectation in 1967 was that Israel would lose. After all, the Arabs had twice the weapons (of similar quality) and many times the men. The Soviet Union certainly thought the Arabs would win; that's why they egged on their client state Syria to start the game of brinksmanship that culminated in the Six Day War. Now Israel has arms far superior to the Arabs, with US supplied weapons, beside their own excellent quality stuff, while the Arabs no longer have the Soviets to supply them. If there is a conventional war, the Arabs will lose, quickly. What Israel really has to fear is an unconventional war or a war of attrition. You may be sure that Israel has delivered a clear message to all the neigbors that they will find a return address for a dirty bomb and deliver a very harsh response. That's why the Arabs are all behind the current proxy war of attrition strategy, what I call the "shoot'n'whine" strategy. But it's a delicate game keeping such a strategy from blowing up into a conventional war, and Arafat seems to be aiming straight for a Palestinian Gotterdamerung. The Israelis have no mother country to go back to; they are home with their backs to the sea. They do not intend to suffer another diaspora and will do what it takes to avoid it.

To: Bilow who wrote (23330)	4/3/2002 10:05:48 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

[The French] like I, probably don't think that Israel can survive, and that therefore plans have to be made for an eventual Palestinian victory. Extremely unlikely. This "eventual victory" is far enough off to be an abstraction. The French have a love affair with communism and the underdog. I can tell you having lived there how l'hégémonie des États Unis (and Israel's successful capitalist economy by association) sticks in their craw. They're just self-righteously dying for Israel to get it in the neck. The Palestinian territories in Israel are like one gargantuan crime riddled housing project, the likes of which you find in many areas of France, but many orders of magnitude worse (and to make things really the worst, the Palestinians are being exploited for political ends by other Arab nations.) France hasn't been willing to deal correctly with that problem right at home, so I can't see them doing any forward thinking concerning the Mideast conflict. The comparison with Algeria isn't pertinent because la France métropolitaine wasn't directly threatened by the war, and it was too easy to write off les pieds noirs; who by the way were hardly welcomed back when they had to flee the country once France capitulated. (1.2 million of them, including such well known names as Albert Camus...) All you have to do is look at Algeria today, 40 years after the departure of France, to see what a cesspool what is now Israel will become if and when the Jews are forced out.