On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:32 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Because the Arab countries rejected the propose division of the land and > > went to war to wipe out Israel. As usual they lost, leaving "Palestine" > as > > the West Bank/Gaza rump, which at the time nobody believed was a viable > > basis for a state (this may be correct). This lasted 19 years until the > > Arab nations tried again and lost again. > > Try replacing the phrase "wipe out Israel" > with "defend their homes, land and people". > It captures the motivation a lot better. Um, I'm sufficiently pro-Palestinian to have gotten myself in trouble repeatedly. Having said that, the fact is that in '48 and '67, the Arab strategy for dealing with the problem was to attempt to wipe out the state of Israel. This is a matter of historical fact, as is the fact that it didn't work. If we get a peace settlement, it's going to include most of the current population of Israel. I'm increasingly coming to believe that the two-state solution has become impossible simply because the Israeli settler movement (and there's as nasty a bunch of filthy racists as you'll find anywhere) has essentially won. If the USA instantly, like within *months*, informed Israel that all further aid and moral support would be discontinued failing immediate rapid progress on the evacuation of the settlements, there might be hope. But I don't believe that's going to happen. See http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/01/23/Muammar-Ghost -Tim
