Quote:
Originally Posted by ubertuber
Ultimately it comes down to displacement of people and ownership of territory.
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I'm not sure how much of that statement is valid. Case in point:
"In 1947 the British Empire in India was partitioned into two states, India and Pakistan. There was a bitter military struggle, and an estimated 10 million refugees were displaced. Despite continuing friction, some sort of accommodation was reached between the two states and the refugees were resettled.
In the following year, 1948, the British-mandated territory of Palestine was partitioned -- in terms of area and numbers, a triviality compared with India. Yet that conflict continues, and the 750,000 Arab refugees from Israel and their millions of descendants remain refugees, in camps maintained and staffed by the U.N. Except for Jordan, no Arab state has been willing to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees or to their locally born descendants, or even to allow them the rights of resident aliens. They are now entering their fifth generation as stateless refugee aliens."
Consider also how refugees were resettled in Eastern Europe after WW2 without a bloodbath. How the defeated, disgraced, dishonored, dictatorial countries of Germany and Japan regrouped, democratized and moved forward.
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Size/population of Israel: 20,770 sq km (smaller than New Jersey)
pop - 6,352,117
Size/population rest of Middle East: 5,334,984 sq km
pop. - 230,040,675
Does it ever strike anyone as ludicrous how obsessed the Muslims are at the existence of Israel, realizing how miniscule a presence it is? Given the above population/area figures, why don't the other Arabs help resettle their "brother Arabs" (as Hamas and Hezbollah constantly rhetoricize over) in Palestine and end this goddamn conflict?
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-Would it be valid to point out the disdain between the differing sects of Islam in the ME?
-Where Shia and Sunni are killing eachother in Iraq by the hundreds on a daily basis?
-Where over 1 million muslims died at the hands of other muslims in the Iran-Iraq War, dumping every weapon conceivable - including chemical weapons - on eachother?
-Where Saddam looked to annex the entire country of Kuwait and enslave the population?
How justifiable is muslim rage over the existence of Israel, in light of the rage muslims have for eachother? Why do Persian Shiite muslims in Iran give a shit about Arab Sunni muslims in Palestine today, when they are so ready to thrown down and kill eachother en masse in the streets of Baghdad tomorrow?
Is rage towards Israel real, or manufactured?
Is it within the realm of possibility that Israel is a political scapegoat for the dictatorships and religious oligarchies of the region, used to refocus their own citizens' misery, anger, discontent and indignity away from the real source of their internal problems (their failed systems of government) onto something external? Wouldn't the ongoing existence of the Arab-Israeli conflict justify the existence of, 1) all violently religious islamic fundamentalist organizations in the ME, 2) all failed states in the ME?
What would the purpose of entities like Hezbollah and Hamas be without the agenda of exterminating Israel? Do they do anything positive for the economies of Palestine or universities of Lebanon? Do they provide decent jobs for people? Do they aid in the irrigation of the land? Do they build powerplants in the Gaza Strip? Do they help with issues of public mental health, or malnutrition? Does Hamas build, stock or furnish local public libraries? Do they treat alcoholics or drug addicts? Do they help gather and throw out the garbage? Do they train doctors or lawyers? Does Hezbollah provide public laundry service? Do they build banks or restaurants? Wouldn't they just fade away without a reason to kill-kill-kill Israelis?
Look at what 60 years of resistance has turned Gaza and the West Bank into...some of the poorest, most miserable plots of land on the planet earth. Is resistance really a winning strategy?