posted on Jan, 1 2006 @ 06:43 PM
The Israelis have said all along that the Palestinians didn't wish peace, and they have treated them all along, to their own international disrepute,
as enemy combatants.
The Palestinians insisted repeated, whether honorably or not IT DOESN'T MATTER, that they wanted "their" land back. Israel continued to refuse,
with the steadily weaker and weaker defense that the Palestinians weren't going to settle for that, and would continue to attack them anyway.
So now we get to see who was right. It had reached the point that Israel's insistence that giving back the occupied territories was not going to
stop the attacks was ringing more and more false. How was anyone to know if the Palestinians would stop or not? They insisted that they simply
wanted their land back. And yes, I know that historically they've called for the complete destruction of Israel, but Kruschkev banged his shoe on
the table and said of the US, "We will bury you!" and that turned out to be nothing more than empty posturing. Many things are said by many
politicians, but we can't legitimately base foreign policy on them. The only thing that matters is what they actually do. So the Palestinians say
they only want the occupied territories back. The Israelis claim that that won't be enough, and that the attacks will continue. After a while, that
just sounds like an excuse, and not much of one at that. The only way to really test it-- the ONLY way to see if the Palestinians are sincere, is to
do what was done-- to give them back the occupied territories, and to then see if that really is enough.
If it is enough, then (almost) everybody wins. The Palestinians get the independence that they've claimed to be fighting for, and the Israelis get
to live in relative peace-- free at least from that threat. If, however, the Palestinians continue to attack Israel, then Israel gains the moral
authority that the honestly didn't have before to deal militarily with the Palestinians.
So many people have complained about those who have opposed Israel's actions regarding the Palestinians, and most of them have, erroneously, ascribed
those reactions to anti-semitism. The truth is that the biggest obstacle that Israel has faced is their own refusal to grant the Palestinians the one
thing that they continued to claim they wanted-- an independent state that included the occupied territories. So long as Israel continued to refuse
that, and the Palestinians continued to say that that refusal was the reason for their attacks, Israel had a hard time convincing the world that their
response to the attacks was legitimate. It was too easy for people to see the Israelis as the cause of the strife. But now that they've handed over
the occupied territories, they have some measure of legitimacy. NOW, if the Palestinians attack them, they can LEGITIMATELY claim that it is not and
was not about the occupied territories. They will finally have the legitimacy they have for so long been so sorely lacking.
Now personally, as a bit of a side issue, I predict that the "Palestinians" will attack Israel, even if Mossad has to stage it. But that's a
different subject...