On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Trent Shipley wrote: > Look, everyone but Jeroen will admit that comparing a policy of exile for all > Palestinians who will not accept Israeli citizenship is *not* directly > comparable to the more egregious NAZI policy of genocide. > > That leaves a few questions.
I like the questions, but I'm too lazy to try to answer them in detail except to note that no matter what happens, someone -- probably the Palestinians -- will get screwed; and that nevertheless some forms of getting screwed are worse than others. The question that interests me is, what is the West's obligation in all this? We seem to take it for granted that, aside from trying to aid negotiations and provide humanitarian aid or peacekeeping forces, we're not really liable for any of this mess. But it seems to me that if it weren't for modern western imperialism and colonialism (including Zionism but a hell of a lot more than Zionism, too -- Britian and France didn't grab the Arab territories for the sake of their Jewish populations, and America's involvments have hardly been based on charity); and if it weren't for modern western anti-semitism, including but not limited to the Holocaust; then we wouldn't see the Palestinians and Jews fighting for land like the two desperate orphans of their respective cultures that they've become. Shouldn't the West acknowledge its debts and offer massive inducements in aid and trade to both sides to help bring peace about? Israel can't solve the problem of Palestinian refugees alone, for example, and the entity that emerges from the current rubble of Palestine won't be able to, either. Why isn't the West, with its vast wealth, offering one or both sides enough money to make it worthwhile to make concessions to the other? It seems to me that without some kind of outside inducement, no agreement between Palestine and Israel will be rich enough to give either side confidence in the happiness of the other and thus in the security of itself. Marvin Long Austin, Texas
