It was not for the British to decide borders of countries in the ME, anymore than it was for any colonial power nor anybody else - that decision belongs to the people living in those territories.
That's as may be, but the Ottomans were gone and the local people hadn't ruled themselves in 400 years. Some replacement rule had to be set up pronto, and the Great Powers were the only ones in a position to do it. If they hadn't, there would have been a long time of chaos. Maybe the end result would have been preferable, but maybe not.
First, to speak of the Palestinians "deserving" a state is a hoot - how did the Israelis "deserve" a state? Because Zionists came from another continent, invaded a land, displaced the inhabitants and engaged in terrorist "ethic cleansing"? The Palestinians deserve a state NO less than Israel does, if anything, they deserve it more.
The Zionists didn't invade, they bought land. They didn't displace, in fact their economic development brought a large Arab immigration into areas of Zionist settlement. The displacement came later, after the invasion of five Arab armies. You forgot that bit.
As for what the Zionists did to "deserve" a state -- I'll tell you, they built one. After all, what is a state? Why is France a state? Why isn't the Connecticut River Valley a state? Why isn't Kurdistan a state (it ought to be)?
A state is first of all an idea -- a group of people must conceive of themselves as separate and requiring autonomy. Second of all, a state is comprised of the human organizations that will run it. Material and military components follow after.
At the time I'm speaking of (pre WWII), the Arabs of Palestine (in this period the word "Palestinian" referred to the Zionists) were not a state at all. They had never been a state. They didn't have the idea of being a state(they considered themselves Southern Syrians), they didn't have the organization (and they had a Nazi leader, the Mufti, who assassinated his rivals, preventing attempts at organization), and they didn't have the materials.
So when the time came when the UN would have supported an Arab partition, the Mufti said no, the Arab world said no, and the Palestinians could do nothing, because they weren't a state, they had never been a state. They hadn't even moved to step one, the idea of being a state. That's why Palestinians society disintegrated and panicked in the war.
The Palestinians didn't even get the state idea until the 60's (unlike the Kurds, btw, who have been a separate people for millenia). So are they a state now? No, because you need step two, the organizations of a state. If Israel handed them the land tomorrow, who would run it? The most likely answer would be an internecine battle between two styles of mobs -- the PA and Hamas, neither of whom would be able to organize a state. The PA has already done disasterously. Hamas is actually a little more promising, if you assume they could have the sense to stop killing Israelis for a while, but the Islamist track record at running anything is dismal and the mostly secular Palestinians would soon turn against them.
Israel had a relatively moderate leader in Arafat (the street is far more radical than he), had a leader with the right stature, and he was secular.
This is the delusion of Oslo, which you seem to have bought wholesale (tell me, what did Mr. Moderate Arafat plan to do with the two tons of C4 on the Karne A?). Arafat is a career terrorist and a leader only as Al Capone was a 'leader'. He is il capo di tutti capi, as General Zinni called him. The reason that it is so hard to find a replacement for him is that the entire PA was constructed to support one-man dictatorship. The PA was never a government in any normal sense. When I first read that Hamas provided all the social services in Gaza, I knew that all hope for Oslo had been a delusion from the start.
Israel has to pull back to pre-67 100%
They sure got you convinced those borders are sacred, huh? Who convinced you that, say, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City deserves to be in Arab hands forever? (The Israelis begged King Hussein not to invade in 1967; if he had listened, the West Bank would still be Jordanian. And you get bet your booties we would have heard nothing about putting a Palestinian State in it)
You do realize the last talks came to an agreement over borders, but fell apart over "right of return"? You haven't mentioned that little sticking point. The final offer at Taba included land swaps, could have been presented to the Palestinians as 100% of the territories. It wasn't enough because Arafat could not say 'end of conflict' with Israel still standing.
If it weren't for the fact that any Israeli offer gets assumed as permanent by the rest of the world, I too would have favored Barak offering to redivide Jerusalem and go back to the 1967 borders, just to prove that a Palestinian state wasn't Arafat's real intention.
In short, your whole rationale is constructed around a false opinion of what the Palestinians want. If they wanted a state in the West Bank and Gaza they could have had it long since. If they want a state in the West Bank and Gaza now their current conduct is not moving them closer to it.
Like it or not, the Israelis are not going to accept a Palestinian Taliban preparing for invasion as a neighbor. Military occupation is not a permanent solution, but it sure looks better to the Israelis than permanent attacks from a terrorist state.
Also, realistically speaking, only the Americans can deliver a Palestinian state. Clinton got his face slapped by Arafat for devoting large political capital to the attempt. Bush came in with little inclination for trying, and Arafat's behavior finally drove Bush to dump him. Soon there will be a war in Iraq, and the Palestinians will dance on the rooftops again for Saddam Hussein, endearing themselves even less to President Bush and the Americans. The Palestinians had better seriously work at step 2, organizing themselves into a government, if they hope to get any American sympathy ever again. And that also means, stop bombing civilians.
Israel has a dark history here of monumental miscalculation
True, like many others, Israel did not see the ideological lunacy and hatred of Islamism coming.
Because one day, the Arabs will have the economic and military power many times greater than Israel.
Not if they keep going as they are, they won't. Current trends have them racing sub Saharan Africa for the bottom of the pack.
I visited Eastern Europe, where sad to say anti-Semitism is alive and well (I had lengthy and unfruitful arguments with garden variety anti-semites there, hate is hard to reform). But what horrified me, was what happened in the rest of Europe, particularly Scandinavia (my background). Europe, and especially Scandinavian countries used to have large reservoirs of affection and support for Israel. I was horrified by the fact that all of that seems to have evaporated, as Israel has gone from legitimacy and feeling of cultural and historical affinity to the image of a brutal oppressor who is creating tremendous problems in the world. Sadly, that is the correct impression
Interesting. And I keep wondering why Europeans sympathise so deeply with people who express their political aspirations by suicide bombing buses. I mean, there was no similar outflow of outrage over the Turk's (much harsher, actually) treatment of the Kurds? The Tibetans don't have much luck either. Just the poor poor Palestinians, whose oppression is considered so awful that it excuses all their behavior, and whose rights are so sacred that Israel's and America's attempts to negotiate a settlement are forgotten dismissively. Don't you think the anti-Semitism you've noticed could have something to do with the case? |
