mishkin
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2002
- Posts
- 259
I have to agree with Unregistered's main point, though not by any means with everything he says along the way.
Factual backfround: Israel has not withdrawn and continues to expand settlements. The fact that it continued to expand in contradiction to what it had agreed in the Oslo Peace Accords undermined any prospect for being trusted by the Palstinians during the Barak/Clinton Camp David negotiations.
The way I see it is that a sensible policy for Israel itself and for the US is different.
Israel has a dilemma. Do they expand as they are doing at the cost of making the Palestinians and the Islamic world even more hostile, or do they contract within the boundaries set by the UN resloutions at the cost of being less easily defended and less easily able to absorb more immigrants?
Their policy has been to continue to expand while trying, or claiming to try, to make peace with the Palestinians. The trouble is that this won't work because the first makes the second inherently unattainable.
The US and the rest of us, as I see it, have no such dilemma. Support for Israeli expansion is simply not worth incurring the intense hostility of the Islamic world - much bigger, and holding the oil. It has long been clear that the Isamic world would hit back at the US for its support for Israel as soon as it could, and though no state dare take on the US militarily, this simply means they finance undercover terrorists to do so. These will now have far more recruits in reaction to the US war on Afghanistan.
This would mean the US changing from a policy of claiming to be the honest broker but in fact always backing Israel, to a policy of using the US's financial and military supplies muscle to rein the Israeli's back, while offering them treaty guarentees to re-assure them against any weakening of their military position.
What I find entirely baffling is why this is not as obvious to the US govt. as it is to most informed outside observers, eg the EU, and for that matter many Jews.
Sorry to go on about it but then it really is important.
Back to sex and friendship!
Factual backfround: Israel has not withdrawn and continues to expand settlements. The fact that it continued to expand in contradiction to what it had agreed in the Oslo Peace Accords undermined any prospect for being trusted by the Palstinians during the Barak/Clinton Camp David negotiations.
The way I see it is that a sensible policy for Israel itself and for the US is different.
Israel has a dilemma. Do they expand as they are doing at the cost of making the Palestinians and the Islamic world even more hostile, or do they contract within the boundaries set by the UN resloutions at the cost of being less easily defended and less easily able to absorb more immigrants?
Their policy has been to continue to expand while trying, or claiming to try, to make peace with the Palestinians. The trouble is that this won't work because the first makes the second inherently unattainable.
The US and the rest of us, as I see it, have no such dilemma. Support for Israeli expansion is simply not worth incurring the intense hostility of the Islamic world - much bigger, and holding the oil. It has long been clear that the Isamic world would hit back at the US for its support for Israel as soon as it could, and though no state dare take on the US militarily, this simply means they finance undercover terrorists to do so. These will now have far more recruits in reaction to the US war on Afghanistan.
This would mean the US changing from a policy of claiming to be the honest broker but in fact always backing Israel, to a policy of using the US's financial and military supplies muscle to rein the Israeli's back, while offering them treaty guarentees to re-assure them against any weakening of their military position.
What I find entirely baffling is why this is not as obvious to the US govt. as it is to most informed outside observers, eg the EU, and for that matter many Jews.
Sorry to go on about it but then it really is important.
Back to sex and friendship!
