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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (70291)	5/13/2003 5:55:10 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

While it describes each of the Arab Middle East states as "failed nations", it claims that efforts to reform the Middle East depend on a successful outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict He refers to "failed states", I believe. I am not sure of the definition of the term "failed state". The way I have come to understand the Middle East, and in fact, the Muslim world in general follows the west with a gap of several centuries. The reason is that religion is still as important to them as it was to the Christians of the Middle Ages. This enthusiasm will surely burn out one day. The question, imho, is what to do to minimize damage to the rest of the world while Muslims take their time snapping out of this religious fervor and cook up their own Renaissance. I am still not convinced that outside intervention, especially by brute military force, is going to help this slow process. I fear the all-thumbs approach of the US in Iraq is going to create a reaction - an Us against Them, just like Bush asked for, where Us will be coccooned around the religion. Needless to say, I am truly unhappy about this vision which appears quite likely to me... Now back to your question... How does Israel make peace with its neighbors when they are all "failed nations" and the Pals have all the aspects of the "failure" without the "nation"? "Failed state", please. Nation is a collection of people, and calling them "failed" is not only quite meaningless but also could be perceived as an insult :-) Perhaps the problem is the word "failed" - just because their states are different than ours and their people are not as prosperous, it does not mean their worth and value is Zero. Let's say I see English state as an 8 (quite inefficient, and has a wasteful royal family to boot), the American state as a 9 (big money elects the ruler, not really ideal), the Turkish state as a 6 (pathetic understanding of human rights, etc), then Egypt would probably be a 5 and Syria a 4. Question: If Israel is buddies with Turkey (6) then why not "make peace" (not asking to be as close) with Egypt (5) and Syria (4)? Specifically about Palestinians, you say: the Pals have all the aspects of the "failure" without the "nation" They have a nation. They don't have a state. A real state, in any case. Perhaps THAT is the problem. They are in a limbo, where bombs fall from the sky, they don't have land, no future, no hope. The way I see it, Israel's best move would be to make peace with all its neighbours and clean its hands off Palestinians (as in, separation, not killing them off :-) now, when it is clearly much more powerful than them in the region. It might not always be that way, you know.