Originally posted by capt. apathy:
however this problem goes back along ways (4,000 years or more i think) to the time of abraham.
There are quite real today's factors in that story.
There are two people and each one has a group of radicals that act against teh interests of the rest of the people but have disproportionate influence on the rest of the population.
Among the israelis there is a small but extremely influential religious minority that presses for the settlements. Their influence is in their unity. With extremely fractured political landscape that Israel has, 20% is a necessary block of votes for any kind of government and any ruling party has to make a deal with them to form the government.
The majority of the population is too fractured to effectively oppose the extremists. Some of that majority do believe that peace with arabs is possible, etc.
Such expansionist behavior of radicals puts all of Israel at risk, but the logical reasons do not work on those religious people. They believe that God would not let them fail. They are not interested in a peace deal because while it is not settled, they can contunie encroaching into arab-populated territories.
On the arab side there are religious and other radicals among and beside palestinians that would not rest while Israel exists or at least would not allow the war to stop. Many would have nothing to do but kill each other or at least lose power if the case was settled - through pease or defeat of Israel. Just like it was when afganis von over russians or bolsheviks von their revolution, etc.
Most arab states do not grant citizenship to their fellow-arabs in palestinian refugee camps even thought they were born there and lived there for decades. That does not strike me as much support.
The life of palestinians on controlled territories is pretty miserable. Palestinians are treated as second sort by the bureaucracy. The bureucracy is not responcible to them in any way because they do not vote. In fact the ministers are appointed according the agreement of the parties, so they may be reflecting interest of the same religious minority, not the majority of israelis.
So palestinians have huge restrictions on what and where they can build, businesses they can engage in, water use, etc.
Their land may be confiscated ets.
Arabs cannot defeat Israel militarily because they have no power, they hate each other and the smarter of them realise that if Israel is ever defeated, they would start killing each other in more massive and much less civilised manner then Israelis are killing them. And they will lose all that money coming for the anti-Israel fight.
Israel cannot eradicate palestinians because it is a civilised and democratic state.
Israelis would never agree on a peace treaty that would allow palestinians to return to Israel - they would end up a minority overningt. They may yield some land but not all that arabs want.
The best solution would be for palestinians to sit quietly and so speed up the signing of peace treaties so they get their autonomy and get out from under Israelis hated administrative control. Of course Israeli's radicals would drag that process but it would advance.
Unfortunately for everybody, arab radicals cannot allow that to happen. So they stir up the population and commit the terror acts. Not against religious radicals and their settlements (that most israelis would be happy to be rid of) but specifically against the rest of the population. The places that are blown up are the last places where you would see a religious jew.
It kind of makes sence - they do not need to antagonize the religious radical settlers, so why waste perfectly good explosives.
Of course the israeli radicals are happy for any excuse to disrupt the talks and settlement process...
If the arabs are too quiet, they can always arrange some offencive ceremony or provocative demonstration.
Do I see a solution for that problem? No.
Do I see good way out? Sure. Just allow israeli and any palestinians to freely immigrate to US. We could always use 10-15 million good people here. Let their radicals fight it out without involving other people.
P.S. The moderate israelis are hostages to the religious right. They have no choice but to defend themselves or emigrate and emigration is practically impossible because no country is willing to take them.
If US stopped supporting Israel militarily, they would be weakening considerably over time. US would have no influence on them to hold them back like it does now. In fact US help is money for them to bleed while defending themselves but not attack.
The only reasonabe solution for them would be to smash palestinians right away while they still can and evict them outside the borders and build a wall around the Israel and a safety zone against artillery strikes - the so called "transfer" solution. There would be unimaginable bloodbath which jews would not dare to lose and arabs would not dare to win even if they could since Israel has nuclear weapons of last resort.
The US action now towards both jews and palestinians are the same as when they sent ship full of jews back to the germany to be killed in gas chambers. They are willing to spend some money as long both keep away and out of sight.
miko
[ 08-15-2001: Message edited by: miko2d ]
