I wasn’t clear on the Gaza thing. Of course we didn’t expect Gaza to turn into Paris in a year. But we did hoped they would WANT to. And it was a big issue here between the right and left political wings. Right-wing people claimed that by leaving Gaza it will turn into a violent, Hamas state. Left-wing people had a different vision: they hoped that without any further land claims, the Palestinian in Gaza will put their guns down and instead think of building a state. This dream was shattered. Listen to them - now they really think they are closer than even to destroy Israel and gain control of the complete territory. They see our peace attempts as a weakness.

No logic problem here. Israel’s political map is splitted (roughly) fifty fifty. half right, half left. Actually after the GAZA failure people are going right a bit. Anyway, such a split has huge support for settlements. Even if it’s 30%, it’s still “a lot of Israelis”. Nevertheless, if a real oppurtunity would come, people will vote for peace. Just like they voted for evacuating Sinai (in exchange for peace with Egypt), S. Lebanon (in hope the hezbollah will put down its weapons once they will be left out of land claims), GAZA,.. So - deep inside - people know that the vast majority of settlements will be evacuated one day…

I think I got the newlines better this time. Have a good weekend !

I think that if Israel just waits, it will lose in the end. That would be unfortunate. I touched on that in my original blog entry.

The expectation that Gaza would simply clean itself up in a couple of years was wildly unrealistic. Did people really think that? Gaza did not and does not have a functioning independent economy. It is entirely dependent on Israel, and Israel remains in complete control of its borders which precludes developing any other possibilities. It will take many years to change that even under good circumstances.

I simply don’t believe that simultaneously a lot of Israelis support expanding settlements and that “everybody” also believes that they will be evacuated eventually. That defies both logic and common sense.

Any chance to crop them ?

(It always seems so counterintuitive for me to keep writing and let the line wrap by itself…)

Why Iran-backed militant groups seize control of their hosting countries:

1. Hamas:
They won the elections, true, but shortly after that they systematically
attacked Fatah posts, haunting and kililng Fatah men, until they reached
a complete military control of Gaza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_%282007%29

2. Hezbollah:
Just open TV.
or:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080508/lebanon_update_080509/20080509/

They may take over completely (although that seems unlikely), but they
don’t really need to, since they already do in Lebanon as they please.
They control its south completely; most of the houses in S. Lebanon
have a dedicated room for.. rockets (aimed at Israel). They pay generously
for that with Iranian money. Their weapons, btw, are not smuggled any
more - they are transported freely on the highways. UN men there do not
dare stopping them. And now, the recent fights are becuase the Lebanon
government don’t want Hezbollah’s recently declared new toy:
They have a private Iranian-built communications network within Lebanon.
A network that lets them tap on Lebanon phone system and communication
networks. A state within a state.

I admit I don’t know too much about militias within Iraq and other countries.
Sorry for that. But there are not too many options as to where do they get
the money, weapons, and military knowledge from.

About the Israeli settlements:
This is an Israeli political issue.
There are simply a lot of Israelis that do support them and want
them expanded. Israel is a democratic country, and a lot of citizens
is a strong political power, which can affect the government.
Everybody knows that they will be evacuated once a peace agreement
will be reached. See our peace with Egypt, and our unilateral evacuation
from Gaza.
Personally I don’t support the expansion of the settlements, because
that eventually is a waste of money (why build so much infrastructure
if it’s only temporal?). Nevertheless, as long as we do not have a serious partner
for peace, and instead we only have countries and militias that call
for our destruction, I do not strongly oppose it.
Btw, this last paragraph represents a general opinion shift for most
of Israeli’s left wing stream. We were sure that after we completely evacuate from
Gaza, people there will put their weapons down and instead start building
their life. We were surprised to see the opposite happening, and nobody
here is building on a Palestinian good will anymore… I guess we have
nothing else to do than just.. wait. wait for them to have a strong leadership
that seriously wants peace. This is sad, but that’s what we have been doing
for the past 60 years. in 1947 the UN offered to split the land into two halves.
The jewish community agreed, but the Arabs refused, and instead invaded…

The balancing you are talking about is not what we in the U.S. mean by “politically correct.” That is more like “diplomatic language” or “political language,” in which certain references must be made, often with the understanding that they are not true.

It’s always odd to read comments like “I can’t tell what’s going inside their heads.” Of course it’s hard to know what people think, but people are people everywhere. To find out what is going inside somebody else’s head, look inside your own.

I don’t know why you conclude that the organizations that Iran supports will gain control of their hosting country. Hamas gained control by winning a free election, and they won that election by making more sense to Palestinians than Fatah did. Hezbollah is not in charge of Lebanon. al-Maliki is arguably supported by Iran, but he was put in charge by the U.S. Iran is strongly opposed to Al Qaeda–recall that Iran tried hard to help the U.S. in Afghanistan, only to be rebuffed; you undercut your argument by suggesting otherwise.

I too would prefer that Iran not have nuclear weapons. On the other hand, I’m frankly much more concerned about the weapons in Pakistan. At least Iran has a relatively stable government. I like what I’ve seen about the proposals to exchange nuclear fuel with a strong presence in Iran; it will be hard for the Iranian government to reject those.

I agree that the settlements are not the root problem. But as long as Israel continues expanding them, no peace is possible. So why does Israel keep doing it?

I didn’t know “politically correct” had so much meaning actually.
I was using it to describe language which seeks to minimize offence to groups of people. For example, after a big terror attack in Israel takes place, a great
deal of worldwide responses sounds like “we condemn any attack of
civilians on both sides”. Such responses are meant to be balanced in
and minimize offence to both sides, but they are actually hurting because
the situation is not symmetric in any way. We do not deliberately attack
civilians and we make a lot of effort to not hurt them, even to the extent
of not firing back at terrorists which shoot from within populated areas.
On the other hand, the Palestinians are methodically firing at our civilians,
with a deliberate intention to hurt as much as possible. That’s asymmetric.
And thus, balanced responses, which makes the situation look symmetric,
are actually supporting the Palestinians terror groups, since they make
them an equal side which is justifiably responding.

The other thing I ought you an explanation is my usage of the “menace”
word. No, I’m not mixing Iran with Arab population. I don’t have any
problem with Arab (or Iranian) population whatsoever. To have a normalized
relations with those populations that surrounds us remains a dream
for most of us Israelis. We rather send our children to universities than
to the army, be able to snowboard in the near Lebanese ski sites and
drive to Damascus to eat good hummus. So no, you got me wrong. I was
talking about Iran of course, and specifically about its regime (again,
I have no problem with the people). The Iranian regime is a great threat.
Look how they work. The era of conventional wars is over. They
are not sending troops and tanks to occupy lands. Instead, they sponsor
and arm extremists in other countries. They spread their propoganda
within those populations by inciting them and sponsoring them, thus
they rapidly gain support and control. Today they practically have armies
within Lebanon, Gaza and probably Iraq. But it’s not a conventional army,
it’s just plain population, which keeps the weapons in their homes.
The goal is probably to spread Islamic fundamentalism and gain control.
But I can’t tell what’s going inside their heads.
Anyway, they have no problem to continue and keep working
this way, since they do not publicly declare these relations. All of these
militant groups (Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda ? Iraqi’s Shi’ite militias) are “mysteriously” equipped and sponsored, and eventually they gain control
of their hosting country. Now what will happen if Iran will go nuclear
is yet to be seen (or not). How confident they will be to further act, and will
they directly use their nuclear or not is unknown. But one thing is for sure -
it will be much more difficult to stop them.

Last note - about the Israeli settlements. There is a majority in Israel
that prefer peace in exchange for territories. We did that 30 years ago
with Egypt. And we still want that with any Arab leadership who is brave
enough to put an end to the hostility. Just like Egypt’s Anwar El Sadat was.
We hoped we can do that with Yaser Arafat 15 years ago. But that didn’t
happen. So we tried to do that unilaterally with the Palestinians with a
complete withdrawal of Israeli armed forces and civilians from the Gaza
strip. We hoped that without territories claims in Gaza, they will work on
a better economy instead of bombs but we got that all wrong. We got Iran
there with Hamas. We also withdrew from Lebanon, hoped for quiet there,
but we again got Iran there with Hezbollah. In both places they have no
land claims, and yet, they keep shooting. So the settlements is just an
excuse. They have an agenda of destroying Israel, and having an Islamic
republic here. They also publicly say that even if Israel will withdraw from
the west bank, they will not recognize Israel as a state, and they will only
agree to “10 years of quiet (hudna)” in return.
So, yes, I agree with you that settlements are not helpful, but that’s
not the root problem. As soon as a strong Arab leadership will seriously
want peace with Israel, those settlements will be evacuated just like we
did in Egypt and Gaza… But currently we are dealing with a fundamental
opponent that don’t care about talks and peace. They want us out of here,
and every mean is legit for them, including firing missiles from houses,
shooting from “TV - Press” vehicles and exploding bombs from
within ambulances.

Using “politically correct” in the context of a blog does not make sense. There is no systematic filtering of speech here, except to block irrelevant spam. I assume you mean something like “the standard left-wing view,” except that from my perspective there is no standard left-wing view on Israel and Palestine. It’s an issue which splits the left.

Two comments on the rest of your post. 1) If you look at how the election played out, the Palestinian people did not vote for a government which would attack Israel, they voted for one which would construct a livable society. None of us actually know how many Palestinians support the attacks on Israel, although we can make our guesses. 2) I’m not quite sure which “menace” is going to control the Middle East completely if Israel is destroyed. You seem to be conflating Iran with the Arab populations, which is a serious error. In any case, when that menace controls the Middle East, where will they be headed next? Nowhere. Do you think Iran, a country which could barely fend off Iraq, has a military chance against Turkey? Do you think that the military in Turkey, which has a long tradition of secularism, including the removal of insufficiently secular civilian leaders, would join forces with an Islamic movement?

In any case, without making any claims whatsoever about symmetry, real harm has been done to the Palestinians in the past, and it continues in the present through the ongoing settlement policy. If Israel can not stop expanding the settlements in Palestinian territory, no peace is possible. I see that the Israeli government is saying that the Bush administration gave them a green light for expanding the settlements, and all I can say is that I hope even the Bush administration could not possibly be so stupid.

In practice Israel plays all the roles of a government in Palestine, except for the roles the Israeli government chooses not to exercise. Yet the Palestinians have no say in the Israeli government. Without excusing Palestinian terrorism in any way, this is not a tenable situation in the long term.

A politically-correct attempt to make the situation look symmetric
is not helpful. While there are Israeli extremists for sure, the maximum
they can do is protest. Israel is a strong democracy with an advanced
judicial system. Civilians can’t posses weapons and do as they please.
Any attempt to do so is immediately stopped.
On the other hand, Palestinian terror groups are firing rockets to Israeli
cities on a daily manner, and send suicidal human bombs to attack
the Israeli gateways (through which they receive food, medicines and
electricity). What makes this even worse is the fact that it is not a
“small percentage” of the population; these attacks are approved
and planned by the Palestinian government itself - controlled by
Iranian-backed Hamas.

Next week Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday. 60 years ago we
have declared our independence. 8 hours later we were simultaneously
invaded by 5 armies - the Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Jordanian and Egyptian.
8 wars and thousands of terror attacks later we are still here.
The menace has not ceased, it has just changed hats. Now it’s Iran
who pledges to destroy us. And they don’t just talk; they supply
and control Gaza-based Hamas and Lebanese-based Hezbollah,
and develop nuclear weapons.

I hope we can prevail this challenge as well. If not it will be a matter of time
until they control the middle east completely.

Then, etbe, where do you think they will be headed next ?

A good article:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/643426/happy-60th-birthday-israel-well-done-for-surviving.thtml

I’m not sure we can really stop providing all financial support for Israel and Palestine. On the one hand it’s politically impossible. On the other it’s not clear to me that it is the right thing to do.

Having friends across the border would help, but my sense is that the conflict is being driven by a small percentage of the population on both sides. They would not be stopped.

I think that things would improve in Israel and Palestine if everyone else would minimise involvement in all ways other than supplies of medical equipment and food. No weapons sales, and no financial support for either side.

Then of course people on both sides would realise that their own security and economic well-being depends on working something out.

Another idea (which came from a peace summit chaired by a Big Brother contestant famous for wearing bunny-ears and organised by John Safran) is to have Israeli and Palestinian children become pen-pals. If everyone in that region had a friend on the other side of the fence there would be more desire for peace.