Letters to the Editor
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Credit for hope?
Paid any attention to the past 6 years of "American Foreign Policy"? It's a bankrupt disaster! I wouldn't expect anything too far from the comfort zone of "stay the course" coming from the Idiot who became our President.. Hope is for people with money and not in the middle of a civil war or in East Africa or Palestine; others (like Bush) are the only ones who can afford the luxury of "hope". My country is in disgrace by this man and his corporate henchmen, it is a very sad hour to be an American.
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forget it
if Nancy Pelosi's reaction to Carter's book is any indication, the dems are not about to risk their power in Congress by pressuring Bush, or Israel, to do anything.
What really blows my mind is that those right-wingers inside and outside Israel cannot see where their idiotic swagger has led them. I get the sense that these people would rather see nuclear war in the middle east than they would actually try to solve the problem by making a difficult peace. It seems increasingly as if the death of millions of innocent civilians is preferable to doing the hard work of negotiation and diplomacy.
The right-wing path is the path of cowardice. Of weakness. Of arrogant stupidity. A negotiated settlement, one already agreed to in principle by the Arab League, is the way that adults would consider.
And before all you hard-line supporters of Israel start shouting to drown out the voices of reason, think a little first. You REALLY want nuclear war in the Middle East? Because if we stay on the path we're all on now, that's exactly what we're gonna get...and it'll be your fault. Not someone else's fault. Yours.
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It's time to give up
There's no hope for peace. There never was. The Palestinian Diaspora is hopeless. What Jew would let the Arabs back into Jerusalem after what they did from 1949 to 1967 (and continue to this day on the Temple Mount)?
It's a blood feud. I realize that Americans have trouble really understanding what that means.
It means it will not end.
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Me thinks a better strategy
An Israeli peace offer now will give Palestinians less than if Palestinians wait peacefully for 10 years, become the majority in Israel as the trends indicate, and demand a vote in one state, called Israel. Why would powerful Israel give the weak Palestinians what they deserve in negotiations now? They never will, and why should they? Why take a pitiful "state" of some bantustans.
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There is NO ALAMO in Connecticut!
The Cowboy must "Round-up the Herd" in Palestine, no not Palestine,Texas. The Conquest of the Middle East will clearly mask those blunders, even at the cost of 2,867 American Lives and those countless Deaths in Iraq of infants, women and children and civilians.
The RMN hero said of the American people:"How quickly they forget", and by god they will even forgive, but probably not forget those years of Liberty, Justice and Freedom which they knew a little over a Decade ago.
"Head 'em up. Move 'm out!"
GO TEAM GO
watch out for Santa Anna and those Clauses in the Constitution of the United States of America.
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They gave peace a chance
The strange thing is that now, years after the peace process has collapsed, fewer bombs are going off in Israeli Cafe's and busses. Bombings inside Israel were very common up until they took their current hard line, and now the cafes are safe and the busses arrive on time.
Which should be more important to Israel, winning the "Nice guy" award or protecting it's citizens? Their methods are horrible and impossible do defend, but the successful reduction in terrorist attacks is just as hard to deny.
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What's the number?
1. "A limited number of Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel"
What's the number ?
2. " with the majority being paid compensation and resettled elsewhere"
Who is going to pay and how much ?
Who is going to compensate Jews kicked out of Arab countries ?
3. " All Arab countries, and the new Palestinian state, would recognize Israel and renounce violence against it. "
Why they don't first renounce violence agains each other?
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Ideologues
Well, we certainly have more than sufficient examples of what happens when ideologues and fundamentalists run institutions. Whether it be here, in the Arab world, or in Israel, allowing the extreme ideologues to run things leads to disaster. When one contemplates the region, one can imagine that these people deserve each other.
Now if only we could figure out a way to send Bush to live in the Middle East when he retires. Baghdad, Beirut, Gaza, or the West Bank? Personally, I think we should send him to Baghdad, but any of them would do.
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Wow
A reasoned, *pragmatic* suggestion for resolving Israel/Palestine that doesn't apportion blame and has something for all parties.
Cue the Liknud/APAIC/Neocon chickenhawks with their hysterical playing of the anti-Semite card in 4 3 2 1 ....
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A two-state solution would require two states
And Israel is so far from ever allowing an independent Palestine any of the attributes of sovereignty, that speaking of a "two-state solution" at this point is just to participate in a sham.
Israel has no intention of reducing its own armed might, or allowing a Palestinian military to so develope, that a supposedly independent Palestine would have any chance of resisting re-occupation at any moment the Israelis felt like re-imposing it. A supposed country that has no chance of defending its borders (not that Israel is even willing to withdraw the IDF from the Jordan, even temporarily, anyway) has no territorial integrity, exists only at the whim of its powerful neighbor, and could only ever be soverign in name only. Such a Palestine would be a dependency, a Bantustan. Much is made of Palestinian intransigeance over recognizing Israel's right to exist, when Israel stands ready to recognize the right of such a toothless Palestine to exist. But conceding the right of such a sham Palestine to exist, in an existence that is nothing more than a fig leaf to cover the continuing reality of Israeli subjugation, is to concede nothing, and less than nothing.
Not that I would recommend a two-state solution in which the Palestine would be capable of holding out militarily against the IDF. Offensive and defensive military power are too closely linked for the Palestinian state to be allowed military might that could only be used to defend its own borders, and would not allow the same forces to be used offensively. And, of course, such power would be used offensively. There are no borders you could draw for Israel that would not encompass land stolen from Palestinians, at some point or another. They have their self-respect, of course they would act on it. A genuine two-state solution, one that created two states of roughly equal military might, sharing a long border that merely marks the state of play at the conclusion of the last armed land grab, would be a recipe for continued war.
Living next door to a truly independent Palestine, one that Israel could not crush with certainty at any moment, would require no less trust than accepting the Arabs of Palestine into a democracy in which they would outnumber the Jews of Palestine. That a two-state solution is thought to be easier for the Israelis to accept is a function solely of the mendacity of the two-state solutions being proposed. They do not require that the Israelis trust, because they do not actually allow the Palestinians a defensible state. Israel has no moral choice, and not even a long-term enlightened self-interest choice, other than accepting the end of their own local brand of apartheid, and thereby accepting a one-state solution.