Fox News is running the below op-ed by Anne Bayefsky that lays out perfectly how President Obama's policy toward Israel is emblematic of his failed foreign policy.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/12/israel-crisis-obama-moral-relativism/
At best, Obama is trying to treat the two sides as morally equal. At worst, he is on the Palestinian side. His policies and actions ever since he took office would suggest the latter.
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Gary, you are asking the wrong question. It doesn't matter whether both "sides" are morally equivalent. What matters is, as long as there is no Palestinian state able to organize its own economy, give people something to live for besides "resistance," there will be no peace for Israel. As long as Israeli troops are engaged in occupation, they will be deemed to be occupiers. If there were out of the West Bank, calling them "occupiers" of the land that is Israel would be more difficult to maintain with an credibility. Nothing would undermine Hamas so much as a functional Palestinian state. People would have better things to do than fire rockets and go on suicide missions.
The kingdoms that tried to destroy Israel in 1947 knew that. That is why they kept the refugees in refugee camps (funded by the UN). They wanted them to be a pool of and focal point for resistance. There will be lots of provocative sound bytes, not matter what policy is followed, for many years, but defined borders for two states is the only viable solution. And yes, that means stopping the expansion of new Jewish settlements into land that makes a compact Palestinian border untenable.
Do you really think these people are capable of running a functional and peaceful nation?
Now if someone called you a "racist" over that remark, it would be hard to defend you.
Individual Palestinians have shown intellectual capacity, ambition, aptitude, in all kinds of professions and business (not unlike Jews) all over the world. It is only in the context of the West Bank and Gaza that the mass appears to be "these people" who are not "capable."
Yup, half a century of deeply embedded culture has taken its toll. complex social structures, however lamentable, are difficult to untangle. It will take time, and there will be violent incidents all that time. But its not that "these people" are not capable.
You are right, Jordan and Egypt no longer want these territories. In 1947, King Abdullah aspired to add all of the British Mandate of Palestine to his kingdom, and make use of the Jews as useful subjects. That didn't work out. Israel could have got ahead of the game by sponsoring a Palestinian state in the west bank territory siezed from Jordan, and the Gaza territory seized from Egypt. But it would have been difficult to forsee such a bold possibility in 1967.
The prime minister of the PA, the first few years after the Oslo accords, was doing a reasonably good job of developing an economy and getting people out of the refugee camp mentality. Why don't more Americans volunteer for the military? We have, in Dick Cheney's words "better things to do." This conflict won't subside until the Palestinians have "better things to do," like make stuff and sell it and build new additions on their homes, confident that Israeli bulldozers won't knock it all down to make room for some new settlement.
Sorry, Siarlys, but you have to explain to me what shows you that the Palestinians would have a responsible nation. History since the 1960s shows I am correct. They have allowed terrorists to drive their agenda and have celebrated attacks on innocent people including Americans on 9-11.
Gary, there has been NO Palestinian state since the 1960s. As long as people are either packed into refugee camps or subject to summary eviction from their homes and farms, some portion will turn to terrorism at any opportunity. That has to end. Perhaps it could have ended by the Arab countries that tried to invade in 1947 taking in those THEY made into refugees, but they haven't and they won't. Israel exists based on a UN resolution that called for two states in the Former British Mandate of Palestine. It is time to finish establishing them.
Some years ago, I read an article about the men who staffed Black September. At some point, Arafat decided the outfit had outlived its usefulness, and wanted to wind it down. Easier said than done when you have people whose adult life has basically been training for and carrying out ruthless missions. I know, you would have executed the lot of them, but Arafat could hardly do that.
Instead, he encouraged them to marry, have children, provided generous subsidies, and in a few years, they didn't even want to travel abroad because they had such a comfortable family life.
It may not be poetic justice, but creating space in which people with little hope and many grievances can settle down, make money, and send their kids to school is how to wind all this down. It doesn't matter if they "deserve" it. What matters is to give them reason to live, instead of going off on suicide missions.
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