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

To: Bilow who wrote (32783)	6/20/2002 8:14:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Find me a modern example where a small, distinct and hated ethnic group was able to hold down a population that had huge numbers of relatives in adjacent countries. There are damn few example at any time in history, and none in recent eras. Can you find any example of a country where the majority gives up power to a minority that hates it while it still has a predominance of military power not just within the country but in the entire region. Not true. You're still thinking in simple military terms. I'm thinking in military terms becuase its going to take military action to destroy Israel. The US provides nothing to any advantage to Israel except vetoes at the United Nations. You seem to think moral support is so important. We also provide that. If Israel starts ethnic cleansing, even that will go away I'm not sure it would if it was in response to the attacks on the scale we speculated about before. Also I'm not sure the response really would be full scale ethnic cleansing. More likely might be very limited "cleansing" and full scale martial law. and Israel will fall 5 years afterwards I think it would take more then 5 years for Israel to fall even if the US walks away. The Arabs lost support from the Soviet Union. The threat you are mainly talking about is a terrorist one and the Israelis could deal with that with their current weapons even as they get older. Unless the Arabs get new weapons and Israel does not I don't think they can militarily defeat Israel. "Heavy weapons" are as useless as carriers and nuclear weapons against domestic (as opposed to cross border) terror. All the military power of the Soviet Union (or South Africa for that matter), didn't save the state. The heavy weapons are good to keep the cross border terror from happening. And tanks make fighting the PLO much easier. This does help control terror. Without these heavy weapons the terror could easily be much worse not just suicide bombers but military style attacks aimed at Israeli civilians so they obviously are not useless. The military power of the Soviet Union and even that of South Africa preserved the state as long as it was used. The Soviet Union decayed in a way I don't think Israel is going to, and in Russia there was no hand over of power to a hated ethnic group. South Africa negotiated away white control of the government. South Africa still exists the country is the same with a different government. All of the groups within South Africa considered themselves South African. It was one country in the hearts and minds of its people as well as on the maps so there was no realistic equivilent of giving up land for peace. If Arafat had been in charge of the ANC then you would probably still have white rule in South Africa. I don't think you're looking at the problem with enough imagination. First, you're making the assumption that Arafat really is in control of his people. I don't really assume that. Already the Palestinians are making rockets. All it takes is one hobbyist to provide them with a design for guidance and say goodbye. Its not that simple, unless they can fire them right at take off or landing. If there is any threat, and probably even without a specific threat, the areas near the landing strip, within the efficient range of the simple rockets or make shift missiles you are talking about can be shut down. A hobbyist is not going to make a stinger. All they have to do is to threaten to shoot them down and the commercial activity will be halted. I think to make the threat credible they would have to shoot one down or at least demonstrate that they have the capability to do so. The threat without such demonstration would reduce traffic but not halt it. You're still looking at this as a classic military confrontation. It's not that. It's a domestic uprising. Exactly. A domestic uprising. The domestic factors are most important. The support from other countries is relatively minor. Having the ability to run across the border and then stage attacks when you are ready for them will help any guerilla army, but the Palestinians don't even really have a guerilla war they just have occasional acts of terrorism. They don't need cross border havens for that. In any case the fact that Israel has relatively small borders, and local military dominance reduces the ability of the PLO or any other group to make cross border raids. The PLO has tried but it usually is a big failure. The Afghans resisted the Soviet Army but 1 - Afghanistan is bigger then Israel. 2 - The terrain is more difficult. 3 - The Afghan rebels had support from the US as well as the neighboring countries. 4 - The cold war meant that the Russians less likely to chase the resistance in to neighboring countries then Israel is likely to give chase in to or threaten other countries that support cross border attacks. 5 - Israeli's care more about Israel then the Russians cared about Afghanistan's communist government. and 6 - The Soviet Union was in such internal decay that its army was no longer reliable. Many of the rebels arms where from the Soviet Army. Sure a lot of them where taken from defeated units, but some of them where actually sold to the Afghan resistance by Soviet soldiers. The Soviet army and nation was decaying and Afghanistan was one of the first major signs of this. Again, you're analyzing from a simplistic 19th century military point of view. Despite the fact that military power is still concentrated in the hands of what once were the colonial powers, there is despite this fact no more colonies. And notice that none of the colonial powers where destroyed by the locals. The English might look at the costs and benefits and decide to pull out of India. The Vietnamese communists with the assist of the damage done to France by WWII could kick out their former colonial masters. But France and England are still around they just stopped trying to keep down a hostile population on the other side of the world so they went home. The Israelis however all ready are home. They fought hard when they had not been there as long and when the odds (at least on paper) where not in their favor. Do you expect them to roll over now when the threat is weaker and they are stronger? I really think you are ignoring or at least unreasonably downplaying the distinction between a colonial power and people defending their homeland. Tim