Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00246)

--- In theos-talk@y..., Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> Up to the point where Arafat turned down Netanyahu's proposal, which
> was pretty much as much as Israel considered itself physically able 
to
> give without committing national suicide

I believe you are a bit mixed up, Bart. M. is more of a Sharonista 
than the Commandant himself. There was a fellow named Barak who made 
an overture to Arafat that Arafat turned down. I think Bush was 
right in calling for Arafat's resignation, since nobody seems to be 
able to figure out which constituency he is representing (certainly 
npoot the Palestinian people.) By carrying out his series of 
retaliatory strikes, the Commandant shores up Arafat's popularity 
every time it appears he is about to get the boot. That and other 
things makes me wonder which constituency the Comandant is 
representing. I think one could argue that getting rid of both of 
them is the first step to peace.

> So, what do YOU think Israel should do?

Every political entity faces challenges from internal and external 
opponents. Since that seems to be built into human nature, we have 
to accept that as just an inevitable reality. External opponents are 
dealt with by means of diplomacy and war. Internal opponents, 
however, have to be either imprisoned or bought off (or killed.) The 
Palestinians, I submit, are not an external enemy. What is going on 
there is a civil war.

That said, aggressive killing has led only to more killing, so it 
makes sense to proceed to Plan B. That would require working with 
moderate Palestinian leaders to integrate Palestinians economically 
into a regional economy in which they have a selfish interest. If 
the Palestinians wanted to prosper they would have to find ways of 
neutralizing radical elements which by attacking Jews would 
jeapordize the emerging prosperity of the larger community. Jews 
might assist in this effort, but it would not be a simple Jew v. Arab 
conflict anymore. There are numerous instances of how this is done 
in history, but the most recent and most familiar if you live in New 
York would be the way the radical elements in the civil rights 
movement were handled in the seventies. No rational pperson in 1970 
would have expected American society to be successfully transformed 
the way it was. There are stioll radical elements, of course, but 
they are no longer mainstream. The best way to get people to stop 
wanting to tear down a society is to give them a stake in its 
continuing viability. I am not talking about a handout here, or 
necessarily integration, but a co-dependent prosperity arrangement. 
The idea behind the transfer program is to cut off water to 
Palestinians, while giving settlers swimming pools and well watered 
lawns, etc. That is not a co-prosperity arrangement. This will 
never be a perfect solution there, just as it isn't perfect anywhere 
else. Adolescents will always be nihilistic to some extent because 
they have no stake in the larger society, but it is dangerous to 
create a situation in which millions of people have this same 
mentality for the same reasons all the way to the grave. What we are 
seeing is that too many of them want to get along toward the grave 
ahead of schedule snd take some other people with them.