Posted on 04/19/2002 7:01:18 AM PDT by iav2
The Palestinians are a Frankenstein's monster created by the Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Saudis, etc. as a weapon of destruction against Israel. The only fair solution is to turn them back on to the people who created them in the first place. Distribute them amongst the 22 Arab Muslim countries that expelled 850,000 Jews.
I cannot believe that Israel offered these clowns 95% of everything they'd ever asked for and the clowns refused it. I mean, if I were living in that Jenin shithole right about now, that 95 percent would have to be starting to sound pretty good...
Forget the buffer, take the whole West Bank and deport the muslims.
I am soooo happy to see more and more articles like this!
“Why don’t we admit that he can neither lead, nor plan, nor take a single step that makes any difference except to him and his Oslo cronies who have benefitted materially from their people’s misery” Professor Edward Said, New Left Review.
And here's a weird one sent to me. Pokey's fave ;), Robert Fisk gave an interview - in America - expressing his distaste for Arafat:
Beyond Disappointment -The Middle East, according to Robert Fisk . For example:
...Question - So does Arafat now, for his own cynical reasons, encourage or support the suicide bombings inside Israel as the Israelis insist he does?The article is worth reading. It has other trenchant statements about Sharon and Arafat. It has fewer of his fantasy as fact items, though he pushes the Jenin massacre bit. And he only mildly pushes the Europeans as more knowledgable line.Answer - Arafat is a very immoral person, or maybe very amoral. A very cynical man. I remember when the Tal-al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut had to surrender to Christian forces in the very brutal Lebanese civil war. They were given permission to surrender with a cease-fire. But at the last moment, Arafat told his men to open fire on the Christian forces who were coming to accept the surrender. I think Arafat wanted more Palestinian "martyrs" in order to publicize the Palestinian position in the war. That was in 1976. Believe me that Arafat is not a changed man.
I think that if he ever actually sees a wounded child, he feels compassion like any other human being. But he's also a very cynical politician. And he knows that Sharon was elected to offer security to the Israelis. And Arafat knows that every suicide bombing, every killing, every death of a young Israeli, especially inside Israel, is proof that Sharon's promises are discredited.
On the one hand, he can condemn violence. He can be full of contrition. And in the basic human sense, he probably means it. But he also knows very well that every suicide bombing hits at the Sharon policy, and realizes how that helps him.
IMO it is clear that he knows his audience in America is less-sheeplike and more discerning about the Middle East than the sheep and apparatchiks in Europe whose bleats about superiority are self-delusions. It's funny, like the "what do they say in English, and what in Arabic" question, he plays a game like "what you say in Europe, and what you say in America".
If that would solve the problem, I'd be all for it.
In reality, all that would do is move the battle line a few miles east of where it is today, and create even more numbers of radical Palestinians than there are right now.
The only path to peace is a political settlement, one which Palestinian leaders endorse and embrace. There are unappeaseable Palestinians who will never give up their goal to eliminate Israel entirely. Those folks either have to be neutered or killed.
But displacing millions more Palestinians does not accomplish a thing.
But displacing millions more Palestinians does not accomplish a thing.
What if the "unappeasable Palestinians" themselves number in the "millions"? Do we have any idea how many Palestinians are willing to live peacefully in a two-state framework? It would be nice if the problem were the corrupt Arafat and his cronies plus a few thousand fanatical jihadists, but I'm not sure that's true.
Most Palestinians are not terrorists, even if they support them. Most are civilians who work to put food on the table. If their leaders told them that peace had been achieved, and the struggle was over, I'm sure most would be relieved.
Civilian populations can be swayed in their opinions by their leaders. The Germans weren't Nazis before Hitler, and after the war was over, they weren't Nazis, either. You can think of countless examples where a population quickly reversed its opinion on something like this.
Of course, this discussion is entirely moot until there is a Palestinian leader who will do something other than preach Jihad against Israel.
We need to see a coup in the Palestinian ranks that takes out Arafat. Israel and the US has to have plausible deniability in assisting it. It has to be clearly a Palestinian coup. I hope we're thinking along those lines.
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