astralis

stan,

sure, but that is not to say there was no arab inhabitants whom had been living in what was to be the state of israel at the time. israel did not come into being in an utterly unclaimed and empty land, and so of course arises the current troubles, perpetuated by primarily the fantasies of the descendants of the dispossessed and secondarily by the ultra-orthodox jews thinking the land either empty or theirs by right of God anyway.

i wonder what would have happened had the US in the 1930s decided to grant a homeland for jews in alaska (it was a bill at the time). hard to imagine what would be palestine as a sleepy bywater.

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

astralis

JAD,

i think it works both ways, to be sure. as ariel sharon duly noted, the demographics work against israel- and for a populace that shows an amazing tolerance of doing stupid, suicidal things just to get at the israelis. golda meir and abba eban knew this very well.

the israelis need to talk before the last shreds of rationality disappear. if hamas or the palestinians as a whole were to turn towards al-qaeda style nihilism...

JAD_333

Perhaps not, but does that change anything? When I was in the ME, the Palestinians (whatever their name was) were always spoken of as very distinct people than Arabs... (Is Semitic the right word?). In fact, they were often referred to as more enterprising and possessing better administrative skills than others in the ME. Strikes me that you are throwing up a red herring...

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To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

JAD_333

Ok, you talk to Hamas and to the PLO and what do you come out with in the best of all possible worlds? A three-state solution? A united Palestine ruled jointly by Hamas and Fatah? Either eventuality adds a layer of negotiations to already interminable negotiations.

I disagree with you for one reason: Hamas is and forever will be scheming to do Israel in. That is their raison d'etre. If this were not so, they would have joined with Fatah already and started hammering out a 2-state solution with Israel to give Palestinians a better life.

Hamas may talk and gain a few crumbs and then the whole cycle of violence will start again until the next talks and so on. This is what Hamas wants and it is what Israel cannot afford to do. It's a policy of slow erosion for Israel. There is no alternative to a comprehensive agreement. To accomplish this there has to one Palestinian voice, not two. As soon as Israel has serious talks with Hamas (beyond low-level technical matters of aid pipeline and truces) Hamas and Fatah become competitors.

Also, I don't think Israel will lose all rationality. You're positing that they are and then basing your argument for action based on that. What if you are wrong? Would you then feel the same urgency?

JAD_333

That's almost laughable. Of course, had we done that, there might have been fewer exterminations during WWII. But putting aside the holocost, do you think Jews would have been happy in Alaska, which is about as far as you can get in terms of climate and topograhy from their ancient homeland, and I don't mean Egypt.

Stan187

Astralis,

I did not imply that there were no Arab inhabitants. However, they did not see themselves as Palestinians not only in the sense of a national identity, but also did not see themselves as being attached to that territory. A majority of the Arabs living there prior to the British Mandate period moved around back and fourth between the west and east side of the Jordan River or further, at the time there was no border. This is not to suggest that all of the were Bedouins or nomadic, but they were semi-transient until the time that the British started building some serious infrastructure that made it more attractive to settle down in one place.

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In Iran people belive pepsi stands for pay each penny save israel. -urmomma158
The Russian Navy is still a threat, but only to those unlucky enough to be Russian sailors.-highsea

Stan187

I believe there was a book written about recently.. Yiddish Policemen's Union or something like that? I haven't read it yet, but supposedly it was a best-seller and got rave reviews from some of my friends.