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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 11/09/2006 : 23:49:48 [Permalink]
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Wars happen, lines on the map often get redrawn. Israel is here to stay, as they are the prominent military power in the region.
Groups like Hamas and Hizbollah came into existance [i]because[i] of the creation of Israel. They get popular support and money because of their openly anti-Israel stance.
I don't see a good solution to the problem until the anti-Israel groups decide to moderate their positions. Until then we are likely to see the same thing we have seen for the last 60 years.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/10/2006 : 03:00:06 [Permalink]
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I don't agree that the only solutions are for either Israel to "move," or for Israel to decimate Gaza and the West Bank and salt the earth as Scipio Aemilianus did to Carthage. The world cannot afford to allow either of these things to happen. Nor can the world allow Israel to be decimated and overrun by its neighbors, nor allow those neighbors to be nuked by Israel.
A couple of decades ago, the situation in Northern Ireland looked equally grim, but -- almost unbelievably -- progress there has been made, at last.
Yet the only country that has the clout on its own to possibly make peace between Israel and Palestine is the USA. And this would probably only be remotely possible after the present peak in hatred has subsided.
The US is the major sponsor of Israel. Despite this it is actually fairly respected, or has been in the past, by the Palestinians. This is due to the fact that Palestine has no useful external allies. None of the Arab nations have ever given them the help they needed militarily. Just hail a cab, and ask a Palestinian about their Arab brethren. (I literally have done that, though I needed a ride as well.) This leaves a vacuum that allows the US have an influence, especially as they know we are the only nation that has the potential of restraining Israel.
But the policies toward Israel and Palestine by the US in the last six years have been anemic. Once very close to settlement in the Clinton days, things have been allowed to slide back toward intransigence on both sides. Bush, so eager to exercise imperial power in Iraq, has left the central festering wound of the Middle East untreated.
The Palestinians, embittered in the lack of progress toward the establishment of their own state, and the corruption within the PLO, turned to the theocratic and militant Hamas, which had spend decades bolstering its image as a functioning and effective social service agency and uncompromising enemy of Israel.
The Israelis, as Mycroft has pointed out, have gone through a series of vacillations between getting tough, and trying to find peace. The nature of the Palestinians makes both approaches ineffective, without outside help.
To help Israel, the US needs to engage the Palestinians. To help the Palestinians, the US has to assure Israel. Either opponent may be able to prevent a peace, but it must be attempted.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 11/10/2006 03:02:33 |
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