Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (353713)	3/16/2010 12:11:39 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 794337

I wouldn't doubt we could see an effigy burning in Jerusalem and at the same time in Gaza.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (353713)	3/16/2010 12:15:46 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794337

The Palestinians just declared a "Day of Rage" A "Day of Rage" is when they show nothing on PA TV but images from the last intifada, and order the Tanzim and other groups out to riot and shoot at the IDF (often behind stone-throwing kids), stone worshippers at the Wall, and try to get some suicide-bombers through (though Shin Bet makes it tough). I wouldn't be surprised if Obama is burned in effigy in Jerusalem within a week.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (353713)	3/16/2010 12:26:16 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	1 Recommendation Respond to of 794337

Good post from Yaacov Lozowick's blog, explaining the Palestinian policy of strategic helplessness and irresponsibility: No to the Two State Solution American Vice President Joe Biden is in town today, mostly to make sure Netanyahu doesn't order a pre-emptive attack on Iran anytime soon, but along the way also to pretend things are moving forward on the Israel-Palestine negotiation track: "I think we are at a moment of real opportunity, and I think that the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian people, if everybody stops and takes a deep breath, are actually more in line than they are opposites," he added. Why do respectable people make such silly statements? I can't answer that. I mean, the man is the number 2 person in the American administration; there's a reasonable chance he's being recorded, and someone might even be watching; who knows, if you stretch your imagination a wee bit it's even (just) imaginable that someone will still remember long enough to know how unrealistic he was being. Ehud Yaari recently published an important article in Foreign Affairs, and a quick summary of it in The Forward. Sadly, the full article is not accessible, and neither of those two links lead to the parts that - to my mind - are most important, namely, the description of how the Palestinians are not interested in a two state resolution to the conflict. Yaari is one of our top experts on the Arab world and the Palestinians in particular; he has spent his entire professional career of over 40 years listening to things Arabs say (in Arabic, of course). His analysis is obvious to those of us who stake our lives on knowing what's going on around us, but needs to be said from the perspective of someone who really listens, directly. So I've cut and pasted a snippet, in the hope the Foreign Affairs people won't sue me for copyright infringement. Its a long and interesting article, and I've only cited three paragraphs. A small sovereign state within the pre-1967 boundaries has never been the fundamental goal of Palestinian nationalism; instead, Palestinian national consciousness has historically focused on avenging the loss of Arab lands. As the prominent Palestinian academic Ahmad Khalidi has argued, “Today, the Palestinian state is largely a punitive construct devised by the Palestinians’ worst historical enemies.” Furthermore, he contends, “The intention behind the state today is to limit and constrain Palestinian aspirations territorially, to force them to give up their moral rights.” Indeed, in a private conversation in 2001, then pa President Yasir Arafat told me that he believed statehood could potentially become a “sovereign cage.” Many Palestinians now feel that by denying Israel an “end of conflict, end of claims” deal, they are increasing their chances of gaining a state for which they are not required to make political concessions. Within a few years, the scant support for the two-state formula that currently exists will likely erode, and new concepts will begin to compete as alternatives. In other words, the Palestinian community will accelerate its collapse into Israel’s unwilling arms, in effect accomplishing by stealth the sort of Arab demographic dominance that Israeli leaders have for decades sought to avoid by occupying, rather than annexing, the Palestinian territories. Such an annexation in reverse would leave Israel no choice but to coexist alongside an Arab majority within the whole of Palestine as it existed under the British Mandate. Khalidi has illustrated what many Israelis and Americans refuse to see: the Palestinian general public instinctively distinguishes between “independence” (the end of occupation) and “sovereignty” (statehood). Most Palestinians wish to get rid of Israeli control but do not necessarily strive to see the land divided. More and more Palestinians are therefore considering options other than statehood. One option proposed by Abdel Mohsin al-Qattan, former chair of the Palestinian National Council, would be to maintain the territorial integrity of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and govern it through a weak joint central government and two strong autonomous governments—without necessarily demarcating geographic borders between them. Another popular solution among Palestinian leaders is a unitary state, which, for purely demographic reasons, would eventually be controlled by an Arab majority. Update: Soccerdad points me to what seems to be the Yaari article in its entirety here. yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com