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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (191385)	7/12/2006 6:03:08 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "The more the Palestinians militarize the conflict, the more they free up the Israelis to make a military response. This is not to their advantage, since they are the weaker party." Israel's problem is that a militarized state is not an attractive place to live, do business in, have children in, etc. Being militarized is precisely Israel's weakness. You wrote that the "Palestinians" are the "weaker party", but again you ignore the larger issue. It's not "Palestinians versus Israelis". It is "Arabs versus Jews", and the Arabs are not the weaker side. If it were just a matter of Israelis and Palestinians there would be little reason to doubt Israel's continued existence, until the Arabs in Israel outnumber the Jews (which is bleak enough). But with Israel taking on the whole Arab world, the situation is far more bleak. One of the primary principles of combat is to arrange for overwhelming force. What you are doing is arranging for overwhelming force in your mind. You are doing this by failing to accurately assess the numbers of those with whom Israel must contend. This is the sort of bad analysis that leads to the overconfidence in military strength that destroys even large nations. Today I see that two more Israeli soldiers are prisoners of "war", and another half dozen or so dead on the Lebanon front. Evidently matching Israel's strength against Palestine wasn't any more a rational measure of the strength of the two sides than that of Germany when in 1939 she matched her strength against that of Poland, or when in 1941, Japan matched its strength against that of Hawaii. War is a matter of numbers, but you continue to refuse to acknowledge the numbers that Israel faces. And getting the EU to quit supporting Palestine is not going to help Israel. Who do you think is responsible for paying for the food eaten by Palestinians when Palestine is under Israeli occupation? Have you read the Geneva Convention requirements on the "occupying power"? Do a search for "Geneva" "Convention" "Occupying" "Power". Israel is on the horns of a dilemma here. If they occupy Palestine they have to pay for the expenses of everybody. If they don't occupy Palestine, their ability to stop the rockets is so limited as to be ineffective. In either case, the vast majority of the people who end up punished in Palestine are innocent of having anything more than wishes against Israel, and thus Israel's actions simply lead to more ill will in the future. By invading Gaza, Israel simply adds on to its burdens. That means more conscription, more lives lost, more bad press, more taxes, and a country that is that much less friendly to live in. -- Carl