This is a very interesting read on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Here is an excerpt:
"Right now both continue to offer too little and demand too much. Israel has at least abandoned the dream of a Greater Israel that bewitched it after the great victory of 1967. The illusion that the Palestinians would fall into silence has been shattered by two intifadas and every rocket Hamas fires from Gaza. Israel's present government says it is committed to a two-state solution. But it is a weak government, and has lacked the courage to spell out honestly the full territorial price Israelis must pay. The Palestinians have meanwhile gone backwards. If Hamas means what it says, it continues to reject the idea that Jews have a right to a national existence in the Middle East.
What self-defeating madness. For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail."
Last I checked, it was a religious disagreement. It's not really what I would distinguish as Ethnic. Apartheid was Racial, Black, White, Colored and Asian. Each race had different rights, about where they could go, what they could do. I'm pretty sure in Israel, regardless of your faith, you can sit down on a bus, or eat at a restaurant of your choosing. I'm pretty sure that the Israeli government isn't trying out biological weapons on its own people, and I'm fairly certain that Israel actually considers a Palestinian a person, unlike the South African government in the Apartheid years.
1 comment:
it is not about religion: religion is only a way of expressing and channeling the conflict. the conflict is about ownership of land. do you think the people in northern ireland were killing each other because they disagreed on interpretations of the bible? that is totally absurd. something tells me it had to do with english/protestant colonialism going back to the time of cromwell.
if the zionists had come to palestine and decided to build a state without expelling most of the native inhabitants, do you think there would be a problem now? it is about land, and politics. hamas is not in charge because of religion, but because they do not bend to the collaborationist tendencies that corrupted fatah.
come on. every government of occupied lands claims that the people they administer are cared for. do you believe that propaganda? for every israeli death there are 10 to 20 palestinian deaths. in any case, why does it matter what goes on in the heads of israeli commanders/leaders? or for that matter, what hamas leaders might be thinking? this kind of obsession with personal qualities and sentiments of individuals is the red herring for americans. what matters is the macro situation. and it is ethnic. last i remembered, there are christian palestinians. so you think it is christians and muslims against jews? no. it is two ethnicities, one -- the jews -- defined by religion.
the palestinians have nothing to do with the holocaust nor with iran's nuclear program.
it is only the west's hypocrisy in this conflict -- every other situation where ethnic cleansing occurs, international law decrees they be allowed to return -- that has kept it unsolved. and the US media and congress is afraid of AIPAC.
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