<p>Hamas is more interested in being, at the very least, a thorn in the side of Israel than in building a liveable country for Palestinians. Not that Fatah was any better. But Hamas being armed by Iran…now that’s scary.</p>
<p>“Will Egypt step up to the plate, and provide humanitarian assistance?”</p>
<p>I heard on NPR that Egypt has been allowing Hamas to bring weapons into Gaza. Egypt has not helped provide humanitarian aid prior to this, why would they start now. None of the arab nations surrounding Israel have done anything to provide humanitarian support or a future for the Palestinians. If they did, that would take away the argument that the Palestinians were nationless and living in desolate conditions.</p>
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<p>so you think that “now there’s a lot more chance” that Hamas will eventually turn into “a secure and democratic Palestinian leadership” and become Israel partner in peace talks? </p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3YN1R0U0TPQRHQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2007/06/15/do1502.xml[/url]”>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3YN1R0U0TPQRHQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2007/06/15/do1502.xml</a></p>
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<a href=“SELF-RULE? TRY MOB RULE”>SELF-RULE? TRY MOB RULE;
<p>Just a note about the Iranian funding of Hamas: Everyone seems to agree that it’s happening, but it’s a very recent thing. If it’s for real, it’s just a massive testament to the utter failure of U.S. and Israeli policy and tactics over the past few years. Hamas is a hard-core Sunni organization, founded by members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Sunni Islamist group. It boggles the imagination that the Iranians are giving money to Hamas – Hamas is only one step removed from the people who are blowing up Shiite shrines in Iraq.</p>
<p>The enemy of my enemy is my friend.</p>
<p>Why should it require any failure of U.S. and Israeli policy to result in Iranian support of Hamas? Whatever their differences, both are explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel, and Hamas certainly represents no threat to Iran. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies in WWII, philosophical differences notwithstanding.</p>
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<p>See, didn’t take long - it’s all the Jews’ fault.</p>
<p>Ummm . . . I’m not sure what you mean, Chedva. But do you think that a Shiite, theocratic, non-Arab government would be funding an Arab, Sunni-chauvinist organization if US policy were working well? And, for the Israelis, Sunni-Shiite cooperation (and Iranian-Arab cooperation) is an unmitigated disaster.</p>
<p>Chedva </p>
<p>:) </p>
<p>just wait till the holier-than-thou europeans get involved in the blame game. that’s always “fun” to watch.</p>
<p>drb: I think Abba Eban’s comment is racially bigoted. There seems to be enough human stupidity to go around for all of us. Yes, tribal culture and fundamentalist religion are a disturbing combination, but so is being a global super power and fundamentalist religion.</p>
<p>Chedva: The knee-jerk Jewish reaction makes me cringe.</p>
<p>And yes, I am of Jewish heritage. But I can only be responsible for myself. As a very young man my father was a lieutenant in the OSS. He saw a liberated concentration camp. I can only imagine the shock he experienced as a young Jew, especially because he had previouly read no accounts of what he’d find. His job was to escort a war criminal to trial. there were only three of them in the jeep: the Nazi, my father and the enlisted man who drove him. He explained to the ten-year-old me that he wanted to take the man into the field and shoot him but didn’t. “because you’d get in trouble?” I asked. "No, because I’d lose my humanity.</p>
<p>What’s happening is tragic for the people it’s happening to, dangerous, especially for Israeli, but for the world-at-large as well. I, too, am terrified of Arab hatred and fundamentalism, but then again, I am terrified of all hatred and fundamentalism.</p>
<p>I consider myself pretty able to relate to a lot of what I haven’t experienced in the world – perhaps because of a fertile imagination, perhaps because I read widely, whatever. However, while intellectually I can describe as “sad” the desperate situation in Palestine (for example, the comment above about flour & bread), it is very hard for me to feel it emotionally when I hear even a very pro-Palestinian spokesman come onto a radio talk show (a liberal one), and describe the “main problem” in Palestine as overpopulation. I’m sorry: Here’s the Western “monster” in me, I guess: Who told them to overpopulate? Who forced them to do that? Poverty didn’t give them a clue that fewer mouths to feed would help them survive? This is not an agricultural problem, such as in regions with farmland to work & many hands needed in a family or community. This is not a technological problem; birth control, I assure you, was practiced by the Ancients – I mean mechanical contraceptive devices, not just Natural Family Planning.</p>
<p>^^that is the only part of the situation I have trouble relating to. I can understand, though, why He Who Feeds is seen as a saviour politically.</p>
<p>I think blucroo hit the nail on the head:</p>
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<p>And exactly why should they have done so? It would be a nice thing of course, but the Palestinians are inhabitants of Palestine, not Kuwait. Western nations created Israel (and Palestine), not the Arab states. I don’t quite understand the argument - is it because Arabs “should” believe in Pan-Arabism? (which is purely a British creation of the first half of the 20th Century?) Why should Dubai adopt a worldview which is a British creation? Or is that now that most Palestinian Christians live in Michigan, they should adopt a pan-Islamic view of things (which the U.S. and the West has fought so very hard to prevent?)</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t understand the argument.</p>
<p>Okay. To be perfectly fair, I have no problem with Hugo Chavez providing humanitarian aid and support to his poor, suffering Hispanic brethren in the Bronx, and for their future. I just have no particular expectation that he “should” do so.</p>
<p>Chedva-They always do, in some way, blame the Jews. And, let it be known, I am not Jewish but I like to think of myself as a “clear” thinker, putting aside all politics -and yes, they always find a way to blame the Jews.</p>
<p>Hmm mini wants open borders for the US and US citizenship for all the relatives of any child born in the USA but thinks it odd that an Arab child whose father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all born in Kuwait should be treated as anything other than a refugee simply because his great great grandfather lost a war and fled his homeland.</p>
<p>There has never been a Palestinian state and it is the Arab countries that have created the Palestinian problem by refusing to grant citizenship even to their great grand children. Who would stay in Gaza if there were a place to go? The Palestinians could have a state of their own on the west bank and Gaza if only they didn’t insist on driving Israel into the sea.</p>
<p>having a Palestinian “problem” serves the interests of the Arab states because it creates a bogeyman of the Jews to divert Arab citizens attention and anger away from their own inept governments and towards history’s favorite whipping boy the Jews.</p>
<p>mini, it’s because they cry a river about the poor treatment of their Arab “brethren” and then decide that it’s all Israel’s fault that they’ve been in refugee camps in horrid conditions for 40 years. Yet with a couple of months’ income they could turn those camps into luxury resorts. Or they could assimilate the population of those camps without difficulty or pain. Yet Israel is the country that has provided the infrastructure in the camps. </p>
<p>Why shouldn’t a Palestinian be able to get employment in Jordan? Or in Syria? Why is it only in Israel? When else have there ever been “refugee” camps for generations? Are there still camps for the Jewish refugees from Poland and Germany in 1945? They were assimilated into other countries, including ours. Do we now expect them to be able to return to their “homes” and be welcomed with open arms, especially if their shouted desire was to destroy that country? </p>
<p>If the Arabs (including the Palestinians) put down their weapons, there would be no more war.
If the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.</p>
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<a href=“Satellite News and latest stories | The Jerusalem Post”>Satellite News and latest stories | The Jerusalem Post;
<p>Will an insult to Arafat make a difference?</p>
<p>The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The amount of money they have squandered on weapons could have been used to feed their population, or been put towards infrastructure, or jobs. </p>
<p>The Arab countries have no incentive to solve the Palestinian problem, because then they would lose their very best scapegoat: Israel. As long as they can continue to blame Israel, or the west, for all of their internal problems, it keeps them from assuming the responsibility that people who want self determination and their own state require.</p>
<p>The behavior in Gaza, of indiscriminate factional killing, kidnapping, stoning, looting and general mayhem, does not suggest, at this time, that the Palestinians are able to keep any sort of law and order which a society must have. And because the other Arab nations simply send in arms and vast money for arms, it is clear that the intent is to leave the civilians in abject poverty, pay for suicide bombers to Israel, and never help the Palestinians form a viable country.</p>
<p>The instability is dangerous to the other Arab nations too though, so it will be interesting (and frightening) to see what happens.</p>
<p>“And exactly why should they have done so? It would be a nice thing of course”</p>
<p>Yes, Mini, it would have been nice and the right thing to do, but not in their political interest…</p>
<p>When the UN created the State of Israel, many arabs chose to stay and attempt to build a life within the structure of Israel. I will grant you that they are quite literally second class citizens in Israel and this is wrong, but they chose to stay and work within the system and build lives. There are arab Israelis in the Knesset. Those that “fled” to the refugee camps were immediately pawns of the arab nations surrounding Israel. They thought that the creation of these refugee camps would put pressure to reverse the course and eliminate Israel. It didn’t work and the refugee camps became permanent POLITICAL settlements. </p>
<p>For years those living in the camps have travelled back and forth into Israel to work. Often, sadly, they carried bombs and blew up innocents in cafes and market places. Israel is damned for blocking entrance to workers and for building a fence to protect themselves from those who aim to destroy them. The Lebanese are now in the midst of a terrible battle with radicals from the camps, who seek to create havoc in Lebanon. The arab nations have benefitted from maintaining the refugee camps and now there are generations of angry people bent on destruction not only of the Israeli’s but the Lebanese, and within their own people…Hamas vrs Fatah; sunni vrs ****e…</p>
<p>One other interesting point…For hundreds of years, the inhabitants of “Palestine” (actually it was the Turks and the Romans for many, many years) literally raped the land, cutting down trees and creating desert. When Israel became a state, the people set about to nourish the land, plant trees and create a self-sustaining country. If you ever visit Israel and see the lush, central valley where miles and miles or orchards and farms exist, you will be stunned at the beauty and success in reversing the destruction. I was amazed at just how much of Israel is beautiful farm country. Not at all the image we westerners have of the land. Jews and western nations around the world have partnered to develop Israel into a farming and technological miracle, in just a half century. We plant trees in honor of anyone for every occassion. This is a stark contrast to the surrounding areas. Some of the arab nations are the richest in the world, but yet the poverty and dessolation is horrendous. They give lip-service to caring about the Palestinians, or for that matter, citizens within their own countries who might be of a different religious or political group.</p>
<p>So the Arabs for the past 35 years have been providing funds to Hamas to make them the leading social service provider in Palestine. Shia Iran providing social service dollars to strictly Sunni Hamas, but we are told that they have been only fighting with each other for a thousand years. That means they have been “aiding terrorists”. The U.S. meanwhile has provided more than $30 billion in military aid to Israel - that makes us a supporter of the “peace process”. All funds that have been squandered, and which could have turned the area into paradise. The amount of money that has been squandered is breathtaking.</p>
<p>Now the U.S. is worried about pan-Islam, the idea that Muslims will band together and make common cause against a common enemy. This, of course, after Arab countries have refused to do so over the past 40 years. This is something the U.S. should be celebrating. Is this something folks here would like to advocate? </p>
<p>None of this is all anyone’s fault. But it’s fascinating to me how the U.S. has turned the Arabs into the new Jews. </p>
<p>“But thinks it odd that an Arab child whose father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all born in Kuwait should be treated as anything other than a refugee simply because his great great grandfather lost a war and fled his homeland.”</p>
<p>Actually, I think it more odd that a “right of return” should be based upon the notion of some British guy living in London in the 1920s, for people whose ancestors for the most part hadn’t inhabited a piece of land for more than a thousand years. But there are historical realities and that’s just the way things are.</p>
<p>“The Arab countries have no incentive to solve the Palestinian problem, because then they would lose their very best scapegoat: Israel.”</p>
<p>I have no idea what firsthand knowledge you have of Arab countries (nor why you lump them all together) nor why you think the rulers of Muscat spend an awful lot of time “scapegoating” Israel. </p>
<p>"Why shouldn’t a Palestinian be able to get employment in Jordan? Or in Syria? "</p>
<p>I agree. I think the same of Mexicans who are kicked off their land as a result of U.S. trade policies. But then we always blame the Mexicans. </p>
<p>Frankly, I remain hopeful. The Palestinians and Israelis still have more in common with each other than with anyone else. The demographic realities of the theocratic state of Israel (which still lacks a Constitution guaranteeing the rights of minority citizens, and which can turn Jewish children into pariahs without inheritance rights) are such that it will not be long before their non-Jewish citizens represent a majority of the population. Dubai is not going to solve this problem for them. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, because of LACK of Arab solidarity and support, because they are NOT united against a common enemy, and because they don’t see a need to be, I expect Gaza to turn into something resembling Mogadishu.</p>