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

To: JohnM who wrote (25747)	4/17/2002 9:28:33 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Sharon and Arafat - a strategic picture By Ze'ev Schiff HA'ARETZ Wednesday, April 17, 2002 haaretzdaily.com <<...Sharon also, despite the military power of Israel, has not led his people closer to peace and security. The war with the Palestinians has become more bitter, and the hatred has deepened. Israel's international situation has deteriorated to such an extent that some people have come to regard the killing of Israeli citizens as something almost natural and Israel's defensive actions as aggression. At the moment, Sharon doesn't know how to emerge victorious from the war. If his impatience results in the Labor Party's departure from the government, Sharon will be pushed - together with the State of Israel - down a slippery slope...>>

To: JohnM who wrote (25747)	4/17/2002 9:31:39 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

the Palestinian suicide bombing is qualitatively different from Al-Qaida. I am not sure I know exactly what you mean by this statement, John, but I am sure I disagree with it, in any case. :) In both cases you listed above, innocents are being deliberately picked out to be killed. So I see no quality difference between the two. Both are immoral actions for the exact same reason and to the same extent. BTW, when we, or the Israelis, kill innocents in fighting a war, it is done is spite of our desire to kill only participants, the innocents are not the the direct target. If you want to say that our action is immoral also, you are saying that self defense is immoral. I could make a case for that viewpoint, that all violence is immoral. However, even if it is immoral, self defense is rational, and therefore right, IMO.

To: JohnM who wrote (25747)	4/17/2002 6:15:57 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Challenge for thread participants at the end of this post. John: I would like to respond to this post but can't find a straightforward way to do so. I don't have a lot of time these days. It is the general conditions that have to be changed before the particulars can be worked out, changed, replaced, etc. I wrote: This is the case that can be made. There is moral indiscipline in both Palestinian and Israeli leadership. It shows in the former's 20 year campaign of hatred in style reminiscent of the Nazis and in it's promotion of suicide bombing to such a degree it had become fashionable, and in it's economic fecklessness; It shows in the latter's establishment of settlements in occupied areas, in lax control of IDF's young soldiers as they've manned check points and security details, and in a general view that Palestinians are an underclass. (I've mentioned only a few examples in both cases as evidence of moral indiscipline). Who is to blame for this is right now irrelevant. Those are the general conditions on the ground there. The general conditions must be changed. They can be changed lots of ways and not all of them for the better. It would be easier if the two sides strengths were reasonably symmetrical, but they're not. The Israelis have strengths: they are democratic and can change their leadership fairly easily (which Palestinians cannot), they can change the behaviour of their young soldiers, most Israelis are ashamed of the situation of most individual Palestinians in the occupied areas and would like to change it if this could be done without jeopardizing their own existence. They have conventional military superiority. The Palestinian strength is singleness of purpose (in goals of destroying Israel and freedom from Israeli control), control over most of the media, and demographics - they feel they can be profligate expending young lives. They feel they can say no. And they are well financed externally. The israeli strength is that of the people generally; strength of the palestinians is held more by the leadership. In both cases the strengths may also be seen as weaknesses. Palestinian leadership see the Israeli strength that way. Some of the Israelis see the Palestinian strengths as a weakness, also. Both sides have operated on that basis. The overall situation has broken open because of the Palestinian assault on Israeli society and the [co]responding Israeli assault on Palestinian leadership. It's not clear the general conditions of leaders' moral indiscipline have changed. (There will be a sign of this, perhaps, when both sides change their leadership) It's this general condition which leads to the structural reason of rage which produces the young murderess and the young IDF soldier sniping at civilians. So let me add: The particular conditions which you are concerned with can be changed in many ways and I said not necessarily for the better, for example: destruction of Israel, expulsion of palestinians to some other place, The general conditions which I think I've described correctly as moral indiscipline by ME leaders can be changed, again not necessarily for the better: they can be replaced by even more morally challenged leaders. However, the moral indiscipline infecting the leaders grew over time and for reasons well discussed on the thread and I won't go into those (action - reaction). The moral indiscipline of leaders is taken up by citizens and eventually can infect large segments of their poulations. The indiscipline can be "corrected" by one side totally defeating the other, the defeated through exhaustion giving up their intransigence, but what sort of result might come from this depends on the goodwill of the victor - not something to be counted on. The degree of destruction which might lead to exhuastion is not something desirable if it can be avoided. The other way of correcting the indiscipline is to replace the current situation with a project allowing the leaderships and eventually their populations to start over. Oslo was such an attempt and for various reasons it didn't come off. The new project must be sufficiently different that it can be a shock allowing people to give up present attitudes and letting them entertain new visions. There have not been enough new projects proposed. The endless back and forth of action , blame, reaction as we witness only further promotes the moral indiscipline. A new project must be imagined and imposed long enough for it to be real in the minds of the affected people. If it means replacing their leadership, so be it. Not such a tough thing for the Israelis, harder for the Palestinians. The important players are: US Russia Israel Palestinians Egypt Saudi Arabia Other powers are very much secondary and don't count in the equation. Things have reached such a point that the US and Russia have to devise the project and impose-sell it to the others. If it's a good project they can sell it because they can be guarantors with a lot of muscle. Requirements of such a project are clear, I think. Israel requires security guarantees Palestinians require a contiguous territory with defined borders. Palestinians require real civil and property rights. So, what would the project look like? I ask the participants here to exercise their imaginations. Gotta go. Duty calls.