Again, it might be smart to consider using non-palestinian sources sometimes?
Haaretz is a Palestinian source now? A newspaper owned by a Jewish Israeli family, staffed almost entirely by Jewish Israelis, published in Hebrew?
Israel closed off the west bank this Sunday
They imposed another total closure after the bombings, but they can't sustain total closures for long. Food aid has to get in, etc. The normal situation is partial closure, and that wasn't lifted.
Yeah... imagine a rolleyes emoticon here.
Apparently there are roads in Israel that are marked "for settlers only" and those roads are not as heavily guarded by the IDF... So let me guess, the terrorists put up a sign that says "settler" on their car, and they are waved through?
Most of the paved roads in the West Bank are forbidden to Palestinians. They are more heavily guarded by the IDF, because they are used by settlers, who often face ambush.
A terrorist simply buys, makes or steals Israeli licence plates, and the IDF rarely stop a vehicle with Israeli plates to check. The settlers have a lot of political power, and several hours wait at a border crossing for them isn't acceptable.
Jews in the territories recieve Israeli licence plates, Arabs don't, so it's easy to differentiate between a settler's car and a Palestinian's, unless they are using false plates.
So what the PLO has been doing since 1988 is their version of the "two state solution"? One "state" sends in suicide bombers and other terrorists to kill as many civilians as possible in the other state? Just exactly how naive are you anyway?
How naive do you think the PLO leadership are? Naive enough to think a few terrorist attacks can force 4 million Israelis to abandon their country?
Hamas doesn't want a settlement, so they will always try to send bombers, but the PLO do want a settlement. Hence during the Oslo period throughout the mid - late nineties, the PLO didn't launch terrorist attacks.
After Oslo broke down, and it became clear Barak wasn't going to offer a deal acceptable to the Palestinians, they resorted to attacks and demonstrations against Israeli targets in the territories, which were put down very brutally.
See the ICT's report on causalties:
http://www.ict.org.il/(Before claiming this is another Palestinian source, look at the board members of ICT, every one a senior ex military or government figure in Israel)
From their report on casualty figures:
"Graphs 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7 suggest that the al-Aqsa conflict, up to late July 2002, can be divided into four phases:
An initial phase characterized by very high Palestinian fatalities and relatively low Israeli fatalities; "
"The first phase of the al-Aqsa conflict began on 27 September 2000, and ended in late December 2000. At that time Palestinian fatalities tapered off sharply, and remained generally lower until the next September. December 21, 2000 has been chosen as the last day of this first phase. As a first approximation, we can label this phase of the conflict the “real or apparent popular uprising” phase (leaving room for uncertainty as to whether this “uprising” was genuinely spontaneous, or was manufactured by Palestinian leaders),
as most of the fatalities appear to have occurred as the result of Palestinian mass demonstrations or riots, and the Israeli response to them"
(My emphasis)
This is my point.....both parties hold blame to one degree or another....the difference being that the pal leadership has brought more strife upon their own people thru the lack of compromise. In life, the are few absolute or immediate solutions to problems....many look good on paper, but theory is far from execution.
The common pal is simply a pawn used or sacrificed for the gain of a few corrupt leaders and special interests terror groups.
Certainly by the terror groups, but not really by the Palestinian leadership.
Arafat and the PLO could, and did, ensure their own wealth and power by running the territories for Israel's benefit. One of the goals of Israel from Oslo was to use the PLO to run the territories on their behalf. It was often described as using the PLO as the IDF's subcontractor, to do the dirty work the IDF was getting international condemnation for.
The problem was the Palestinians increasingly saw the PA as corrupt, and not working in their interests, and began to turn to Hamas.
The BIG difference is that the dominating faction - the "hagana" was trying to controll the other two organization. It handed some of their leaders to the british (was called the "season" as in hunting) and was generaly against terror attacks against the british.
The Hunting Season was followed by the United Resistance, in which the Haganah controlled the other orginisations, and allocated them targets, including the King David Hotel.
Even the Hunting Season was carried out mainly as part of an internal struggle to maintain leadership in the Jewish community. A British report on the men turned in concluded:
"Unfortunately, the Jewish Agency's lists of so-called terrorists continues to include numerous people who have no terror connections, but politically speaking are undesirable to the Jewish Agency. This adds to the difficulties the police has in separating the sheep from the goats"
And during the United Resistance, when the Jewish Agency was organising terrorist attacks, they issued a statement to say:
"It is a tragedy that matters in Palestine have reached such a pass. The Jewish Agency abhors the use of violence as a weapon in the political struggle, but realizes that its ability to impose restraint has been severely tested by the continued policy (of the British government), which the Jews regard as fatal for them."
Sounds just like Arafat, condemning violence whilst organising it.
