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

To: JohnM who wrote (23470)	4/4/2002 4:45:06 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi JohnM; Re: "I only mean to point out that the path Sharon and the present cabinet has chosen is extremely unlikely to produce a moderate Palestinian leadership eager to negotiate with him." You're exactly right, unless the Israelis start targeting civilians. Human societies are amazingly stubborn. To pacify a society through the use of violence (rather than through the use of negotiation) requires that the level of violence be raised until a substantial fraction of the society is dead. After the Israelis have given every Palestinian who is willing to die for Palestine the opportunity to do this, then they will have peace. Current Israeli actions are making negative progress towards this goal. Their kill rate against the Palestinians is a tiny fraction of the natural population increase rate. By contrast, even the "civilized" society of the Germans were willing to accept 3.2 million military deaths (maybe 20% of males between 15 and 50, plus lots of permanent disabilities) and 3.6 million civilian deaths in WW2 before they surrendered to a more or less civilized society with a more or less similar outlook on life. Uncivilized societies are typically willing to accept much higher carnage than civilized ones. Add in the religious and ethnic differences and its easy to predict that the Palestinians will require a lot more kills than the Germans needed. This conflict could run up death tolls in the millions before it is over. For the short term, it's possible that the Israelis will reduce the number of suicide bombers by occupying the West Bank. Without occupation, they would have to deal with mortars and missiles. With occupation there will still be Palestinian resistance, but at least more of it will be directed at Israeli soldiers instead of civilians. And as soon as they retreat the "without occupation" problems will return. Over time, the Palestinians will become more effective guerilla fighters. Armies of occupation are not a good idea. Ethnic cleansing might work temporarily, but would be bad for US opinion. The US has a problem with terrorism and Israel is in our way. -- Carl