I normally prefer to articulate my own views myself – except when someone else articulates them better than I could.
David Bogner: Is it Just Me?
How sad is it that after all these years we still haven’t settled the most basic issue of Israel’s right to self-determination… yet Palestinian self-determination is not only a given, but their right to define themselves any way they like is considered sacrosanct.
Just to review:
1. The Palestinians want demand their own state… but they want all of the ‘Palestinian refugees’ to have the right to retrn to Israel… not the Palestinian state. Isn’t the very raison d’etre of a Palestinian State (and the Paletinian self-determination movement) to provide people who self-identify as ethnically, politically or culturally ‘Palestinian’ with a place they can call their own???
2. The Palestinians claim the right to self rule and bridle at any whiff of outside interference in their internal affairs… yet they demand that Israel be treated like some bankrupt company languishing in receivership that must be administered by an outside fiduciary trustee (i.e. the UN or the EU).
3. The Palestinians are arguably the least transparent legal/political/financial entity on the planet, yet they dismiss as cumbersome and insulting any request from those who have been pouring unprecedented amounts of foreign aid into their
Swiss bank accountscoffers (more than even the Marshall Plan provided to All of Europe after WWII) for even the most basic accounting of where the money has gone.4. The Palestinians have no single centralized authority to govern political, military, economic, infrastructure, medical, intelligence or security issues. In fact there are as many as seven or eight entities claiming control of some of these ‘departments’… and nobody at all minding the store in others. But despite this novel ‘decentralized’ approach to government, they expect Israel to enter into binding negotiations with them even as they engage in open civil war amongst themselves… without a clue as to who might emerge the winner or how the victor might be disposed towards honoring exisitng agreements with Israel.
5. Normally a people yearning for nationhood have some basic idea of what kind of government they want, how the economy will be arranged, how basic infrastructure (electricity, sewage, water, roads, transportation, etc.) will be provided for, how the citizenry will receive medical care and education… and perhaps most important, how it will relate to its neighbors and the rest of the world. The Palestinians have done about as much thinking on these subjects as one can comfortably fit on a cocktail napkin. Yet they have several full-fledged chapters of their charter that, to this day, still call for the destruction of the Zionist entity . Clearly they have given some thought to that part of the plan.
6. Even as the Palestinians bring claims to the UN and other interested parties of ‘Israeli atrocities and genocide’ they continue to bombard Israel cities with rockets, stab Israeli citizens in the street, throw Molotov cocktails and rocks at civilian traffic and attempt to smuggle explosives to terrorist cells for use against Israeli civilian targets. Yet we still provide them with fuel, electricity, water and other ‘humanitarian’ services.
Somebody please explain to me again why we are talking to the Palestinians about anything right now (except possibly terms of surrender)?
So to answer your question David: no, it is not just you.
(David generally shys away from political posts, but he really shouldn’t).
