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

To: TimF who wrote (95394)	4/21/2003 5:26:53 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<We could force Israel to take constructive steps like halting settlement building but if we start putting massive pressure on Israel to get what the Palestinian want then they are likely to see the possibility to get even more.> That was exactly the attitude of many Israelis and Americans, about the Egyptians, for decades. What Nasser said and did, wasn't much different from Arafat. Yet a "land for peace" deal was made, both sides compromised, and the peace (or at least, non-war) has held for 20+ years now. We have no idea how the Palestinians would respond to a cessation of settlement-building. It's never been tried. But there was little settlement-building (except in Jerusalem) for the first 10 years after 1967, and no Intifada then either. When you assume that conciliatory efforts will fail, that leaves you with only violence as a method. And there is ample proof that "violence begets violence". The de facto program of Bush, Sharon (and, yes, Arafat too), is: "violence begets peace. I want peace, but only on my terms, and I'm going to keep killing till I get them." I posted an article a while ago, which said that all the "externalized costs" of oil, add 10-15$/B to the real total cost. The numbers are necessarily approximate, and depends on guesses/assumptions/approxiamtions. Also, we have no idea what alternatives would have been developed, and what their cost would be compared to oil, since no serious sustained R&D effort was ever undertaken.