Posted on 11/30/2001 8:53:49 AM PST by Francohio
Legitimate Grievances?
It is, IMHO, absolutely true that the 'Palestinians' have many legitimate grievances, both collective and individual, against 'Zionism,' and the supporters of it, namely us. Certainly the Palestinian refugee camps, for which there is enough blame on everyone's side, are one of the most totally unecessary sets of hellholes on this planet.
The grievances are real enough. The question is how do we (and Israel, of course) settle it?
We Americans, of all people, apparently have a better handle on squaring things with wronged populations, indigenous and slave, than anyone else in the world. We settled it for our own truly wronged indigenous populations with sovereign land and many perks for the resettled tribes. Now misery slowly gives way to lucrative gambling operations, mineral rights, and a huge (if tragically mismanaged) Indian Trust Fund. None of the arrangements we have made for our wronged imported or indigenous people, including Reservations and Affirmative Action, has exactly covered us with glory, or made everyone (or anyone) ecstatic. But as time goes by, our pragmatic (and eminently adjustable) solutions are more and more workable. At the very least, we haven't had any Native Americans strapping dynamite to their bellies and taking out pizzerias.
Thus, it has always been a bit of a mystery to me why the Palestinians have never been offered true resettlement. (The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan being a notable exception.)
So, why not give the Palestinians a large, presently underpopulated, brand new country? Then, heavily subsidize each family to homestead in areas with good water. For example, Northern Iraq has many natural resources, including oil, and an enormous, untapped agricultural potential. It would make a splendid, and far larger than the original, New Palestine.
The Palestinians in diaspora whom I have met all over the Middle East are among the best educated and hardworking people in the Arab world. They definitely have the skills.
In regard to Iraq, (Baathist phony nationalism aside) historically speaking, there really is no such thing. Iraq was merely created, with arbitrary borders drawn by the British Foreign Office in 1916. These borders could just as easily be redrawn by the US and Russia, or Allah forfend,the UN. Wars have always changed boundaries, and unless I miss my guess, we are about to enter upon one with Iraq.
Where to get the funding?
Founding a country isn't something one would want to do on the cheap. However, between the funds available from world-wide Jewry, the United States, Europe, and of course, Saudi Arabia, (Speaking of available funds, Arafat holds personal title to about $9 Billion, most of it in London real estate!), the Palestinians could soon have a real country going, living in the dignity they deserve. Of course, there would be much Middle Eastern face-saving palaver on both sides before it went down. But trust me, if there's real money on the table going their way,it would do wonders for the bruised egos and lost property. It could also be be supported, if necessary, by no end of peacable Koranic quotations.
Solving the 'other' major problem for Israel.
The other issue this could solve for Israel is the vexing question of Palestinian civil rights. If it had not been for the massive Russian immigration of the last 3 decades, Arabs would already be the majority in Israel. How did the Israelis ever intend to "democratically" cope with the eventual population time-bomb the fast-breeding Palestinians are sure to drop in the next 20 years?
Paying off the Palestinians, while perhaps not an elegant solution, just might be a workable one, even if the Israelis and we their supporters, would have to at least tacitly acknowledge the abuses. Think of it as paying a fine, or settling a lawsuit. No one leaves the courthouse happy, but they do leave and they do get on with life.
Let us deal in reality. There is no way that millions of rapidly reproducing Palestinians can or could support themselves in some series of rump states carved from Israel's tiny territory.(There are larger Indian Reservations.) Let's face it, the Palestinians were not living large when a half-million of them ran the whole place.
The Palestinians should seek, or be offered, a deal to leave their misery and their false pride behind. Subsidized farming, as many American families well know, is hard work. But it is one hell of a lot better than life in a refugee camp ... or suicide. With some real elbow room and a couple of oil fields in Northern Iraq (i.e., New Palestine), bruised psyches would soon heal. They would also undoubtedly be better off materially than they ever were in their whole 'history."
And so, perhaps, would be the rest of the world.
Jews paid their tax and lived peaceably ... harmoniously, even ... among the Muslims in many countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, even Palestine.
Things did not start to get rocky between the protagonists until the 1880's, really, when the Zionist movement started buying up land in Palestine. At the time, it even made some sense to do so, because then, Palestine was very underpopulated. However, it went rapidly south after that, because in many cases, the land the Zionists bought, was, to put it under American terms, under cloudy title.
So this battle is not Biblical, it is recent history. IMHO, it has far more to do with real estate than religion.
A few points here.
First, approx. 45% of the Jews who make up Israel are those persecuted and repressed dhimmi who left Arab Islamic lands in the 20th century or their heirs. The Arabs have no remorse for this population transfer and didn't compensate one dime for the confiscation of their property.
Secondly, the Jews in Arab Islamic lands as dhimmi had it roughly as difficult as the Jews in Europe and in many respects more difficult. Indeed, it was the modern European states which emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries which in large part provided the new found freedom for the Jews in Europe and which forced the Ottoman Empire to abolish the discriminatory raya against the Jews and Christians. Unfortunately, most of the Arab Islamic lands refused to follow this process and hence one sees cries for help from the dhimmi Jews in these Arab governed lands as late as the early twentieth century.
Third, I've never been impressed by any historical claim advanced by Islamics. They distort and misrepresent history consistently and express no remorse for the repression, massacres, ethnic cleansing they perpetrated on native Christian, Jewish, Zorastrian populations in North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc. Particularly, the Arab Islamics by a policy of ethnic cleansing and colonization accelerated under succeeding Islamic rulers, dispossessed these mainly Christian (non Arab) and Jewish populations throughout the area of Palestine. Many of these dispossessed Jews scattered throughout the Arab Islamic lands in North Africa, present day Iraq, Iran, etc. Hence, the typical "indigenous" argument which is made by analogy to the American colonists displacing the Indian populations, is not an appropriate analogy to Israel and the Arab "palestinians". In effect, its acceptance would be to sanction the hegemony and colonization by the Arabs which occurred by force and succcessive jihads into these areas. Even if the European Jews are left out of the equation, 45% of the Jews which make up Israel are those Jews who were largely forced out of Arab Islamic lands and many of those were the ancestors of those colonized out of Palestine by the Arabs themselves.
Your solution is of course good and reasonable. After all, is not all Islamic land part of dar al-Islam and belongs to the umma, the Islamic community? I hear so much Pan Arab nationalism that one would think such a notion is reasonable. Well, what's reasonable in India and Pakistan, or Turkey and Greece, for the Arab Islamics is unreasonable. And for the Arab Islamics, as in most of Islam, the fundamental process stopping this from occurring is their inability to acknowledge their historical hegemony, persecution, colonization and destruction of longstanding Christian and Jewish communities and civilizations. Where the west continually comes to the well of repentance concerning past deeds and opens itself up to historical examination and scrutiny, the Islamics deny any wrongs. They disallow self-scrutiny. They encourage blame-shifting - the "crusades" for example or any number of other false historical events to deflect self-scrutiny. It is this intellectual and moral dishonesty which will always be a bar to an equitable solution such you have suggested.
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