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I have to say that I'm not a supporter of either Israel or Palestine. I am disappointed with the belligerent attitudes of both of them, and I despair of ever finding a solution there. Yes, Israel needs to defend itself, but the county's traditional response of bombing the crap out of neighboring countries in retaliation for terrorist activities such as suicide bombing or missile strikes seems perfectly designed to escalate tension and make reconciliation nearly impossible. 'Defense" doesn't necessarily need to be in the form of a military strike.
And the Palestinian factions are just as intractable and aggressive in return. As long as both sides remain stubbornly and intractably polar in their stances, this horrible situation is doomed to continue.
Israel/Palestine will be yet another turd sitting on Obama's plate when he takes office, joining the economic meltdown, the twin wars in iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, the looming presence of China, and the India/Pakistan conflict, which also has been bubbling uncomfortably. I don't envy the man his task.
And for the tattered King George who is abdicating his throne on January 20 and who had hoped to have a Middle East peace past as a consolation legacy for his disastrous eight years in office, well, it appears that now there not only won't be a peace agreement, but an open, festering wound. Yet Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice are insisting that history will judge that the Bush presidency was a resounding success. "I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he's done," Rice said in an interview the other day.
Uh, yeah. Sure. That's gonna happen.
Meanwhile, bombs continue to fall in Gaza, and tanks gather at the border. I hope this latest conflagration ends soon, but I have little hope that it will be the last one, or the worst one.
And the Palestinian factions are just as intractable and aggressive in return. As long as both sides remain stubbornly and intractably polar in their stances, this horrible situation is doomed to continue.
Israel/Palestine will be yet another turd sitting on Obama's plate when he takes office, joining the economic meltdown, the twin wars in iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, the looming presence of China, and the India/Pakistan conflict, which also has been bubbling uncomfortably. I don't envy the man his task.
And for the tattered King George who is abdicating his throne on January 20 and who had hoped to have a Middle East peace past as a consolation legacy for his disastrous eight years in office, well, it appears that now there not only won't be a peace agreement, but an open, festering wound. Yet Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice are insisting that history will judge that the Bush presidency was a resounding success. "I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he's done," Rice said in an interview the other day.
Uh, yeah. Sure. That's gonna happen.
Meanwhile, bombs continue to fall in Gaza, and tanks gather at the border. I hope this latest conflagration ends soon, but I have little hope that it will be the last one, or the worst one.
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I stumbled on this thread a little late . . .
There is much to be said. Choosing certain things to say should not suggest lack of awareness of many other things to be said.
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One of the most horrific parts of the current clusterfuck is that the Gazans voted for exactly this. After being ripped off and screwed by Fatah for generations, they voted in Hamas, which has been acting the way Hamas has always acted and has always said it would act . . .
It seems to me that one of the fundamentals is that you can't solve half a problem. The half of the problem which ordinarily goes unspoken is that the Palestinians are the toilet of the Arab world — they've gotten nothing but shit on, by every one.
To choose one beginning point: In 1948, the United Nations decreed the creation of two new countries, side by side, Israel and Palestine. In their eagerness to “push the Zionists into the seas”, the united armies of Egypt, the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq swept through the territory which was supposed to have become Palestine . . . and were stopped and pushed back by the desperate Israelis.
They never left.
Jordan annexed the territory, dropping the "Trans" from its name, but no one in the world acknowledged the legitimacy of the takeover. This was re-titled The West Bank after 1967, when Israel took it.
Meanwhile, the refugees were imprisoned in squalid, inadequate camps by their fellow Arabs, since their importance as victims was much more important than their own lives.
1967+21=1988 The "First Intifada" was the generation which had grown up under the relatively benign (by local standards, c.f. Black September (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan)) administration of Israel. Infant mortality was on quarter what it had been under Arab administration . . .
The Palestinians' own “leadership” has either been thieving thugs (Fatah) or bloodthirsty loony thugs (Hamas). No one has ever looked out for their interests.
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There are many other things to say. This is simply a gesture toward some of the things which usually do not get said.
<disclaimer />