Sharon and the Future of Palestine
Interesting piece in The New York Review of Books about disengagement and its implications for both Sharon’s administration and the future of the Palestinian people. (c/o Joseph)
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Long…
I’ll keep it shorter.
Delusionary BS.
Notice how Israel must allow the creation of a Palestinian state in Yesha as well as allow free movement across borders into Israel – otherwise Israel remains an apartheid state. EXCUSE ME?!
Even the US requires most of the world to applu for entry visas, and surprise, surprise, many, many people get rejected each year and even banned for years. Is America an apartheid state?
Anyone who calls Israel an apartheid state is seriously making a joke of what really happenned in South Africa or forgets what ‘America’ was like only half-century ago.
And let’s say that a Palestinian state is created in all of Yesha, free of Jews, to the 67 borders. Now what???
This newly formed Palestinian state has one unrenewable natural resource (rocks), a modest olive harvest each fall and NOTHING else to provide the masses. What are they going to do? Work in Israel? Make itself production-based? How does this new state keep a stable economy, and raise the standard of living for its citizens? Well, China sort of has the production cornered with cheap labour, and so this Palestinian state will remain a charity case FOREVER.
A Palestinian state in Yesha is a non-starter for realists. Jordan is 85% ‘Palestinian controlled by 15% Hashemites immigrant transplants from Saudi Arabia. If the world would stop denying the truth that the Palestinians are oppressed in Jordan, than there would be peace.
But no. Israel has to give up more land for peace. Only Israel is to blame for the Middle East’s problems.
Anyone who calls Israel an apartheid state — careful. I think the article is calling occupied Palestine an apartheid state, not Israel.
Agreed, it’s a dumb analogy meant to inflame and obscure, not to enlighten. But there’s quite a difference between Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestine here: unlike in Israel, Jews and Palestinians really are segregated in the Palestinian territories, albeit for extremely different reasons than in the old South Africa.
And let’s say that a Palestinian state is created in all of Yesha, free of Jews, to the 67 borders. Now what???
Josh, I think you’re exaggerating quite a bit. True, I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about the Palestinian economy & resources. True, there are countries out there without booming economies, though this hardly disqualifies them from countryhood.
But I very seriously doubt that Palestine will be any worse off economically than 75% of the countries out there. Indeed, given the amount of skilled labour and high rate of education among the Palestinian diaspora, the elements are in place to suggest a Palestine at peace would be one of the more successful economies in the region.
Notice how Israel must … allow free movement across borders into Israel – otherwise Israel remains an apartheid state.
This seems strange to me, too.
”
Anyone who calls Israel an apartheid state is seriously making a joke of what really happenned in South Africa or forgets what ‘America’ was like only half-century ago. ”
thats a very revealing sentence..
josh, re: open borders, i agree. if i want to cross from eilat into taba, i need a visa. as an american citizen, if i want to work in israel, i need a work permit. if the palestinians have their own independent state, it is utterly unrealistic to demand american-canadian style border access when palestinians and israelis have been killing each other for 60 years.
as for the rest of your diatribe, i think you need to review your assumptions for racist motivation.
Josh,
I’m surprised to see that you consider yourself a “realist.” Especially with the views you take on the ability of the State of Israel to maintain the occupation of Yesha. The apartheid to which Siegman is referring is not within Israel, where Palestinians who did not flee their homes in 1948 and their descendants have the vote and representation in the Knesset, but in the West Bank and Gaza, where they have no representation and are instead fenced in by a network of “settler-only” roads guarded by the occupying army. I don’t see how this state of affairs, in which a stateless people who aspire to national self-determination are kept down by an army and settlers who don’t consider them to have rights in the land of their birth, can be “realistically” indefinitely maintained.
I agree with the above posters on the borders question. Once Palestine becomes enstated, there’s no reason Israel should allow free border crossing between itself and Palestine, just as it doesn’t with Egypt or Jordan.
“This newly formed Palestinian state has one unrenewable natural resource (rocks), a modest olive harvest each fall and NOTHING else to provide the masses. What are they going to do? Work in Israel? Make itself production-based? How does this new state keep a stable economy, and raise the standard of living for its citizens? Well, China sort of has the production cornered with cheap labour, and so this Palestinian state will remain a charity case FOREVER.”
The world bank had the same thought, and came up with this solution—-
http://tinylink.com/?fEuN0BdwF2
Great plan, World Bank!
Except we’ve tried it and only got more bombings. Can anybody point to any tangible change in the position of the Palestinians vis a vis Israel?