Quote:
Originally Posted by Stan187
It's not that they don't want to cut a deal. They do. The problem is that they want to cut deal where they get everything they want after always being on the losing side. It's pretty unprecedented. What happened when they Japanese wanted to "surrender on their own terms"? They got bombed to hell.
Imagine Nazi Germany dictating the terms of their surrender.
|
I agree with you, although there are some significant differences in the orgins of this conflict compared to those with Germany and Japan. I would say the most significant is that Israel was created out of whole cloth in a region heavily populated by Palestinians and which had been in the Islamic sphere of interest for nearly 1,000 yrs. In short the Palestinians did not begin as agressors, but as the disposessed. And one could add that they were not alone in making wars on Israel, but bore the brunt of them. So, from their point of view, they are justified in continuing the struggle, and anyone who claims objectivity would understand.
But history teaches us that civilizations come and go, that land is not bequeathed to any one people by natural right. Strength and purpose are the determiners of who occupies it. There is a progression in these ebbs and flows. First there is the struggle to determine the winners and losers, which
can go on for a long time on the human scale of time--heartbeats in historical scale. Eventually, the losers become resigned and accept the new status quo. To do less is to invite anniliation. I think the Palestinians are coming into the latter stage and perhaps beginning to sense that irrespective of their just claims, they will have to accept a loser's peace, which is IMO is generous from the winner's perspective. The value in a historical perspective is that we can predict the outcome with a fair amount of certainty, but not the events that lead to it. For this reason, Israel's best course is to be patient even as it counters attacks against it.