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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (115449)	9/22/2003 7:31:52 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "If it were just the Israelis vs the Palestinians, it would have been settled long ago. The Palestinians know that the other Arabs won't ride over the hill for them, but the Arabs keep promising and the Palestinians can never give up hope. Indeed, for all the fashionable discussion of Palestinian "hopelessness", they are fighting a war of choice because they are hopeful of victory. If they really were hopeless, then they would be looking to cut a deal." In other words, the Israelis want to strike a deal that takes advantage of the fact that they are the ones that are on top, right now, while the Palestinians still believe that eventually they will be on top. You might as well have written: If it were just the Israelis vs the Arabs, it would have been settled long ago. The Israelis know that the Americans won't ride over the hill for them, but the Americans keep giving arms and money and so the Israelis, despite their being so outnumbered, don't have to give up hope. Indeed, for all the fashionable discussion of the Israeli's "having their backs to the sea", they are fighting a war of choice because they are hopeful of continuing victory. If they really had their backs to the sea, then they would be looking to cut a deal. -- Carl

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (115449)	9/22/2003 10:43:18 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Did you miss the previous 5 Arab-Israeli wars? The last of those was fought how many years ago? The war that’s being fought now is against the Palestinian refugees, and if there were no refugees there would be no war. Both sides are getting outside assistance. The Israelis get a whole lot more than the Palestinians. The UN, by feeding the refugees for 60 years at US taxpayer expense. If those despots had had to feed them on their own nickel, they would have looked to resettle them in a hurry. That’s the ideal solution, isn’t it? Just make them go away, even if we have to starve a bunch of them to do it. Then you wonder why they blow themselves up. The plan, in case you forgot, was for a partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. A wonderful compromise. First an outside power settles a foreign population in your midst, then, in a moment of magnanimity, they offer to give them only half the place instead of all of it. Can’t imagine why they didn’t go for it. That was a colonial-era solution: white man sits down, thinks a minute, and says ok, we put these people here, and move these over here, and everything is fine. Didn’t work too well in the post-colonial era. Didn’t work too well in the pre-colonial era either. The only compromise that would have meant anything would have been the surrender of the goal of a Jewish State, which would have raised at least the theoretical (though by that time highly unlikely) possibility of coexistence in the same territory. It wasn’t offered. It amuses me that you always bring up the idea that the Mufti was trying to implement Hitler's final solution, without mentioning that the Zionists were equally devoted to implementing Herzl's solution, which required either the expulsion or the subjugation of the non-Jewish population of Palestine. Unlike Hitler, the Palestinian Arabs faced a real threat from the Zionists. It is pretty absurd to pretend that their motives were analogous.