[GCFL-discuss] Israel Without Hillary

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Until the so-called Palestinians are interested in co-existing with
Israel, in words -- English & Arabic -- and in deeds, the peace process
is a pipe-dream.  
Everyone is in favor of an un-divided Jerusalem, except Bush & Rice; the
only question is under whose sovereignty.  And frankly, i'm not sure
where Obama is on that question.
 
greenBubble


greenBubble, I knew you would have something to say along this line, but
I waited until you did, because it is not much use to throw out what I
think someone else is going to say and answer it before a person speaks
for themselves.

I take a long term view of all this. Only fifty or sixty years or so ago,
there were people high up in American government who had no use for Jews
and didn't care about Israel. They graduated from colleges where
fraternities didn't allow Negroes or Jews to join, and many didn't allow
Catholics either. The reason that changed was cold calculation of "what's
in it for us", not unrestrained enthusiasm for Israel. Establishing
Israel as a nation was done pretty much without U.S. military aid, in the
teeth of British connivance with such open fans of Adolf Hitler as the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The original "arab" cause was the cause of
feudal landlords, brutal illiterate monarchs, against an example they
didn't want their own people to see: renewed agriculture, productive
industry built from the ground up, democratic participation of everyone
in public life... 

...a rabbi who fought in the 1967 war tells me that after Israel seized
the West Bank, he was greeted by Arab residents who looked FORWARD to
becoming Israeli citizens, if only Israel had outright annexed the whole
territory. It might have worked. There is no question that the
concentration of Palestinians into brutal, overcrowded, refugee camps,
living on a kind of welfare dole from the UN, was the work of Gamel Abdel
Nasser, King Hussein's father, and whoever was dictator du jour in Syria,
precisely because they WANTED to create an excuse for continuing war
against Isreal, for the most ulterior and cynical of motives...

...but fast forward to today, and the real life situation is that three,
four, five generations have grown up and learned their identity in this
"Palestinian" environment. To deny that is like teaching African
Americans whose great-great-grandparents moved north to live in the city
that their identity is somehow rooted in a rural county in southern
Alabama. It's not...

..."the people" are not the voices that make political deals. Politicians
and parties and organizations that claim to represent "the people" are.
But who and what "the people" will follow makes a big difference.

If Israel cannot offer those people who have been defined as
Palestinians, and come to think of themselves as Palestinians, a
reasonable hope of some sort of life they can accept and appreciate,
suicide bombers will continue to emerge, with a sense of
self-righteousness, from among those people who see no hope for the
future. If Hamas can clear criminal gangs off the street, provide some
peace and quiet, organize medical and social services that nobody else
offered, people will support Hamas. (I don't think you would disagree
that the corruption and nepotism inside Fatah is what made Hamas
popular).

So Israel can either come to terms with the fact that this population of
people exists and has to be provided for, or can try to exterminate every
last one of them, or continue a state of pertetual war. As to U.S.
policy, the survival of Israel is indeed non-negotiable, but mindless
assent to whatever policy is pursued by whatever party won the last
election and whatever sentiment dominates in the civil service of Israel
is not acceptable. Sometimes we may have to say, this is what we support,
and if you want to do something different, you are on your own until your
policy is closer to what we can work with. The same goes for the
Palestinian organizations. The Palestinian Authority would collapse
without American and European funding.

I don't expect such bold vision from either Obama or McCain. Its not
considered a politically safe thing to do if you want to win an American
election. But it would be a great president who found a way to implement
policy along these lines.

Siarlys

P.S. While nobody devoted to Jerusalem, Christian, Muslim or Jewish,
really wants to hear this, the only viable way to keep Jerusalem
undivided is to organize it as a political entity to which everyone has
free access. The Dome of the Rock isn't going away, neither is the
Wailing Wall, nor those silly Greek and Armenian priests who get into
brawls over who is stepping onto whose section in the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher. Romans kicked the Jews out and named the city Aelia
Capitolina, Jews eagerly helped both Sassanians and the original Muslim
jihad take it from the Byzantines, and ultimately, if we don't want the
place to keep changing hands like that, it needs to be accessible to all
of the above (excepts the Sassanians, who are either refugee communities
in India or converts to Shia Islam in Iran).
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