powerclown

Most of the nations within the Middle East contain conquered people and conquerors. For an example right next door to the Palestinians, consider that the rulers and bulk of the population in Egypt are Arab conquerors who swept in from the southeast. The conquered indigenous people are the Copts, the descendants of the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids and temples so familiar to tourists. The Copts converted to Christianity during the Roman Empire and have suffered from religious, political, and economic oppression for 1300 years, ever since the Arab conquest. Copts are periodically murdered by Arab-Muslim mobs and generally the Arabs are not prosecuted for the killings. You could read about this in U.S. Copts Association but you probably won't because the Copts are not violent.

At the Potsdam Conference the Allies granted Eastern European nations the right to expel their ethnic German citizens, i.e., people who had been living in these areas for generations but whose forebears were German and who spoke the German language. Roughly 12 million of these volksdeutsche were in fact expelled, their property confiscated, and as many as two million may have been killed in the process. The surviving volksdeutsche settled in crummy houses in Germany and Austria and integrated themselves with those societies. If there were a Volksdeutsche Liberation Army murdering Czech, Polish, and Hungarian civilians the world might pay some attention to the injustices suffered by this group.

The 870,000 Jews expelled from Arabs countries in the 1940s and 1950s similarly settled quietly in the U.S., Europe, and Israel. They aren't out there blowing up Iraqi, Moroccan, and Algerian embassies or airplanes, which is why you probably never think about them.

The list of people who were displaced by the events of World War II and decolonialization is endless. The only group that anyone pays attention to is the Palestinians. If the Palestinians were to stop blowing up airplanes and pizza shops people would stop paying attention.

Arab leaders don't care about non-violent Palestinians. If you were an Arab leader there is no reason to care about your own subjects, much less members of very distant tribes. The only Arab nation that has ever offered Palestinians citizenship is Jordan; a Palestinian family that has lived in Egypt or Saudi Arabia for several generations will still be aliens with no right to permanent residence. Thus there are more than 4 million people officially classified as Palestinian refugees despite the fact that the final British census before the 1948 war found only about 1 million people of all religions living in Palestine. The primary agency for these stateless souls is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). If you visit their Web site, UNRWA Official Homepage (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), you'll see that the U.S. and European nations provide almost all of the funding. Historically in fact the Western nations provided 100 percent of the funding for UNRWA but in recent years Saudi Arabia has been shamed into chipping in. For 2006 the Saudis contributed $5.8 million, compared to a U.S. contribution of $120 million and Britain's $30 million. Most Arab countries contribute less than the cost of a new Mercedes automobile.

Violent Palestinians, by contrast, have no trouble getting support from fellow Arabs. In April 2002 the Saudi state television network ran a telethon that raised more than $100 million to aid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers (Associated Press, April 13, 2002). Iraq, which contributes nothing to UNRWA, had been donating roughly $10 million per year to the families of suicide bombers. Iran, another state that contributes nothing to UNRWA, sends weapons and money to anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah and Hmas and the ex-PLO, most notably a 50-ton shipment of rockets and plastic explosives in January 2002 (notable because it was in violation of the agreements that Arafat had signed and because it was discovered and intercepted by the Israeli Navy).

The only way that a Palestinian can get his or her hands on a share of Arab oil wealth is by becoming a suicide bomber. "[Izzidene al Masri] lived with his 12 brothers and sisters and his parents in a neat, tile-floored house" (Knight Ridder, April 1, 2002, on the Sbarro pizza shop bomber). If you lived in poverty it might make sense to trade your life for the knowledge that Saudi Arabians would support your parents, grandparents, and 11 siblings in comfort for the rest of their lives.

This kind of poverty is likely to endure because Palestinians combine a low level of education and a high level of illiteracy (30 percent) with perhaps the highest birthrate of any world population, estimated for 2007 at 5 percent per annum by passia.org. This means that Palestinians need to generate economic growth of 5 percent per year, and preserve that growth from kleptocratic politicians, merely to maintain their standard of living. For comparison, the most rapidly growing population with which most Americans are familiar is Mexico; its population is growing at an annual rate of 1.47 percent (CIA Factbook 2007). In the 1990s, according to the World Bank, the average country enjoyed a 2.5 percent annual growth rate. Even if they succeeded in liberating all of Palestine, the Palestinians would have a difficult time growing at any rate close to 5 percent per year. They'd have one of the most densely populated countries in the world, one of the poorest in natural resources, especially water, and a complete lack of industry.

It may be a mistake to look too deep into Palestinian poverty for the roots of Palestinian violence. For most violent Palestinians we need not conjecture as to the motivation for their violence because they've explained it in their own words.

Here is an except from The Palestinian National Charter, July 1-17, 1968:

Hamas has a Web site where they explain their goals:

Hezbollah also has a Web site (www.hizbollah.org) where they explain their objectives:

Note that if we take seriously the words of the Palestinian fighters we can ignore 99 percent of the journalism and punditry to which we are exposed. The guys with the guns have explained very clearly why they are fighting and under what conditions they will lay down their arms. Their reasons for fighting and their conditions for peace have nothing to do with day-to-day events.