DeadPresident
Avenger
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2011
- Messages
- 13,952
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- 103
You say that, and you may be right. But we have no way of knowing that, because Israel has been building those settlements for decades. It's hard for the Palestinian moderates to accomplish anything as their people are being actively ethnically cleansed.
How many Palestinian moderates are there? I concede your point, but I'm not sure there's anyone to sell that idea to in any case. The Palestinians in general have had their agenda set for them by the likes of Hamas. The same way Palestinians have legitimate grievances surely Israelis who are targets of rocket attacks have legitimate grievances? The issue is at their best times only one side was interested in a workable peace solution, and the Palestinian leadership won't acquiesce to any agreement that doesn't put them in a position where they can threaten a Jewish homeland.
Actually, there's a lot of complaints. They're second class citizens. But yes, the standards of living are higher than in much of the Middle East, that much is true. I was, however, thinking more the Palestinian Arabs living under military occupation and in refugee camps throughout the region, which far outnumber those with Israeli citizenship (i.e. 80% or more).
Fair, but when we've got the Syrian situation for comparison I think it's reasonable to assume every Arab would rather be a "second class" Israeli citizen than a first class Syrian citizen being either evicted from their homes or killed by missiles fired by their own establishment. Many Arabs throughout the ME who supposedly are represented by their governments live in far worse conditions than Arab Israelis. I agree Palestinian Arabs living in military occupation have unacceptable living conditions, but unless a Palestinian authority represents their people with a view to improving their lives rather than handing out punishments and symbolic defeats to Israel and Jews, how does it ever end? Do Palestinian governments care about their population more than they care about driving the Jews into the sea? I'm not sure.
The rhetoric and propaganda in the Middle East (and left-wing Europe and North America) is that Israel is the reason for all the Middle East's plights. Like Sunnis and Shi'ites will suddenly stop hating one another if all the Jews in the territories are eradicated, like Wahhabism will suddenly reform and become peaceful when all the Jews are gone, like there won't be a new despot massacring his own people every decade or so. People have too much of an emotional reaction to the topic of Israel instead of looking at pragmatic facts. The pragmatic fact is even if Israel bend to each and every whim suggested by Palestinians and the global community alike, we can reasonably infer from the state of the region that it guarantees nothing and that there will still be attempts to get every Jew out of the territories.
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