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

To: Capitalist who wrote (50055)	10/7/2002 10:22:53 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

What if those soldiers instead had chosen not to be present at checkpoints in the middle of occupied towns They are not in the middle of occupied towns, at least the towns were not occupied from 1993 until six months ago. The towns were all part of Area A -- full PA security control. And before the First intifada, there were no checkpoints at all. The point is, the checkpoints arose as a reaction to Arab violence. First of all, those Arab citizens were in Israel BEFORE Israel became a state. Those Jewish settlers are being IMPLANTED there from foreign lands (in most cases, America and Europe). Ah yes, the Arab line. I get so tired of refuting this stuff, which the Arabs have repeated so many times that they have convinced themselves. I recently heard a Saudi ambassador say magnanimously that when the Arabs destroyed Israel, he would let the young people who were born there stay, but make Sharon go back where he came from. I wonder, where does he think Sharon came from? Sharon was born in Palestine in 1928. A few facts. Jews predate the Arabs in the area. Jerusalem has had a Jewish plurality or majority since the eighteenth century. Jews were definitely there before the State of Israel, who do think fought the War of Independence in 1948? Jews immigrated during the period of Zionist development, which started in 1880. So did Arabs, drawn by Jewish economic development and British governance after 1918; in some cases, the British imported Arab labor directly. The Arab population of Palestine rose about five-fold from 1880 to 1948. Those Jewish settlers are being IMPLANTED there from foreign lands (in most cases, America and Europe). Most of the early Zionist settlers came from Europe (not counting the Jews who had lived in Palestine for millenia). Under their own steam, I might add, nobody inplanted them or gave them squat. They bought their land and reclaimed most of it from wasteland. However, by now most Israelis descend from the Mizrahim, the Jews of the Arab lands. Neither they nor their anscestors ever saw Europe. Over 600,000 immigrated to Israel in the late forties and early fifties, about equal in number to the Arab refugees from Palestine. Let's take the Gaza Strip for example...you have 1.5 million Palestinians living on 60% of the land who are fenced off in what has become the most densely populated region on Earth It's been pointed out to me that the population density of Gaza about equals the population density of the District of Columbia, so I suspect a little hyperbole here. I hold no particular brief for the settlements of Gaza. But let's consider how it originated. Lots of refugees fled there from Jaffa in 1948, where they waited to be liberated by the five invading Arab armies. The armies failed, a state of war continued, and the Gazans were kept fenced by Egypt for the next nineteen years, without citizenship, working papers, or permission to move. But they were fed on the UNWRA dole (paid for by you and me). UNWRA in recent years even announced that they would stop paying the dole except to families with pregnant or nursing mothers, resulting in one of the highest birth rates on the planet, an average of over ten births per woman. Gaza is an armpit by design. Begin offered it back to Sadat in 1979 and Sadat wouldn't take it. because it was Barak who first pulled out his negotiating team, while Arafat begged them to remain and continue Barak pulled out because he lost the election, something everybody but Arafat could see coming plain as day. He lost the election because he didn't get a peace deal. Terrible thing, that democracy. Sharon did not consent to Arafat's negotiating methods -- diplomats at the table AND bombs in the street. Do you recall anything about Arafat renouncing terrorism in 1993? I do. Real concessions for broken promises, that's the Arafat style of negotiations. Sharon wouldn't play that game. That's not what the Israelis elected him to do.