On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 04:30:29PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > It's funny, everyone always screams at Israel to trade land for > peace. Nobody ever screams at the fucking Arab governments to trade > peace for land. It's always Israel's fault.
It seems to me there is plenty of fault to go around, on both sides. But assigning fault and blame is not likely to accomplish much. I prefer to discuss possible actions to take. As far as finding a solution, I think Israel is in a much stronger position than Palestine. They are richer and much more powerful. Israel is not realistically in any danger of being displaced, not with their military might and the full might of the US behind them. They were in danger in the past, but Israel demonstrated in 1947-48, and again, decisively in 1967, that they are the force to be reckoned with in the region. The acts of murder by the Palestininan groups are evil and counter-productive, and are deserving of the strongest condemnation and opposition. Still, it is so easy to forget that there are many dirt poor Palestinians who have nothing to do with the acts of terrorism, who can realistically do little about terrorism, and are simply trying to live with their families in a horribly war-torn area, in some cases having been driven off their land by soldiers or having had their homes destroyed by attack helicopters. I'd like to see Israel halt all new settlements, comply with UN resolution 242 and the UN partition plan of 1947, and provide humanitarian aid to poor and homeless people in the area. I don't think such actions pose serious risk to Israel, and they seem to have at least a glimmer of hope of starting to solve the problem, or at least starting to build some bit of trust. But it is very hard for Israel to do this. Palestinian terrorists are murdering Israelis, and it is very hard to separate the horrific acts of murder of a few evil terrorist groups from the innocent, poor, suffering masses of Palestinians. But it needs to be done. The U.S. should demand that Isreal immediately halt new settlements and comply with UN 242. The US should make this a condition for further financial and military aid to Israel. If Israel refuses, then the financial aid that was going to Israel should be diverted directly to humanitarian aid, and some sort of reconstruction plan, for the Palestinians. The Middle East desperately needs a good Marshall-type-plan in several regions. I think that helping to build up the living conditions and economy of former enemies is the best way to make peace. One of the things that should come with the humanitarian aid to Palestine is teaching non-violent protest to the aid-recipients. Teach them about Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Encourage them to not accept injustice (and there have been some grave injustices done to the Palestinians) but rather to make their protests known in a non-violent manner. I think they would get a lot of sympathy from the US if their story were to come out in this way, and the US has a lot of leverage over Israel. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/
