Walling Off Palestinians May Be the Only Hope for Israelis

Sloppy imagery indeed to make your point, especially in light of the wall building in the Gaza strip. I think you have betrayed far more of yourself than you can ever be comfortable with. Perhaps you should ask the monitors to remove your Freudian slip.

Yawn. Southern Federalist was right on the mark. Palestinians are free to leave the Gaza Strip any time they please; they just can't leave it to go to Israel. In fact, periodically larger numbers of Palestinians are welcomed in by a sympathetic Arab country with generally disasterous results (e.g., Jordan and Lebanon).

Yes, the wall is the only answer. It must be more than just a wall, too -- it must be a security zone wider than the max effective range of small arms like RPGs and mortars.

IMO the best solution is a unilateral withdrawl from most of the West Bank while maintaining some strategic high ground near East Jerusalem and the northern Jordan river valley. This would displace some settlers living deep inside the West Bank, but they can be resettled in the northwestern area of the West Bank where Israel prime is at its narrowest corridor.

This should be enforced by a wall like the one at Lebanon. Israel's ace in the hole here are the Christain Arab refugees it allowed in after the fall of the SLA. These folks are pretty hardcore and have no love of the PLO. As such some of them may be willing to form the nucleus of a Christian Arab puppet state on the West Bank with its headquarters in Bethlehem. The various wourld churches would eventually play ball with this plan because they are all in competition with one another for access to the Churches of the Nativity and Holy Sepulchre. This state would help secure Israel's eastern flank along with the aforementioned annexation of WB territories by settlers at Israel's narrow point.

"The sins of the fathers on both sides pass to the children. Consider this, written about slavery but well apropos to the Mideast and Israel, from Thomas Jefferson: [slavery analogy follows]"

"Apropos" with regard to morals and the importance of maintaining them, but that's as far as it goes.

As for morals, the actions of those involved in the "Middle East Crisis", both in and outside of Israel, speak for themselves more eloquently and accurately than either of us ever will.

Imal

I hope you aren't misinterpreting my posts to suggest that I consider morals "trivial". That is, after all, what most strikingly distinguishes the parties in the "Palestinian dispute" -- and that is exactly the point I was making.

Actions speak louder than words. Honestly compare the actions of Israelis and Arabs and you will have an honest comparison of their morals as well. Israelis try to kill soldiers among crowds of civilians, Arabs try to kill civilians protected by crowds of soldiers.

"Morality versus immorality" doesn't get any more obvious than that.

Imal

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