Who doesn't want a Palestinian state? Palestinian leaders, that's who

[Undertoad]

Pal leaders are actively protesting the first steps in the creation of a state, basically saying that there'll be extra violence if it isn't on their terms. From today's NY Times:

---
The Palestinian Authority reacted with concern today to reports that the Bush administration might call for creating an interim Palestinian state while leaving uncertain its final borders and the timetable for determining them.

Officials in Washington have said that President Bush intends to announce a proposal for Palestinian statehood in an effort to give hope to the Palestinian people and encourage them to lay down arms.

While the precise details of a Bush proposal are now yet known, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator, warned that such a step might only increase Palestinian frustration if it was not accompanied by a specific timeline for working out the final details for a state in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

"If we deviate from this to go to the psychology of thinking that the Palestinian problems and the frustration is because they want to change the name from a Palestinian Authority to a Palestinian state, I'm afraid that this will backfire," Mr. Erekat said.

He said that if Palestinians found, the day after such a state was declared, that Israeli forces still controlled checkpoints between Palestinian cities, "I'm afraid that you're gong to have a bigger explosion than you're having now."
---

tw, Bush still the evil one preventing peace?

Jag, Palestinians still have no other tools than terror?

What a bunch of BS. These so-called "leaders" are a bunch of ignorant wing nuts. They are ripping holes in the diplomatic process.

Opposing opinions welcomed.

[elSicomoro]

UT, no disrespect meant, but:

--1) You only put in part of the story.
--2) You didn't provide a link to the story (free registration might be required to view).

I found Muhammad Dahlan's comments interesting. Also those of Yasir Abed Rabbo:

"'As far as we are concerned the issue is not the declaration of a state,' he was quoted as saying. 'Our top priority is bringing about an end to the occupation.'"

[Undertoad]

Well OK, but I can only think of two ways to bring an end to the occupation. One is to create a Palestinian state. The other is favored by 51% of Palestinians in a survey taken a few weeks ago: destroy Israel.

The Arabic nations have already put in their two cents on relocating them to some other part of Arabia... they won't agree to that. They would prefer plan B.

Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

[Nic Name]

Breaking News: Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian State ... on the condition that Israel be allowed to occupy it.

[elSicomoro]

I wonder if all this fighting between the Israelis and Palestinians is:

a) Turning people towards Christianity
b) Turning people into atheists

[Nic Name]

It's a political conflict ... not a religious one.

c) None of the above.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Nic Name
It's a political conflict ... not a religious one.

Maybe that's your opinion...

[Nic Name]

I thought opinions were what you were looking for.

All my posts reflect my opinions.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Nic Name
I thought opinions were what you were looking for.

All my posts reflect my opinions.

The manner in which it was written read as fact to me. My apologies if I misunderstood your post.

[Nic Name]

In my opinion it is a fact.

That's not to say that others shouldn't have different opinions.

We can't all be right all the time.

[Nic Name]

One of the reasons that I think the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is a political one and not a religious one is that there are Muslim, Christian and Jewish Palestinians. And there most certainly are Muslim, Christian and Jewish Israelis.

Another, is that the dispute is over self determination and occupation of territory not religious beliefs. It is not a war to win hearts and minds but to control territory.

So, if you describe a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, it is a political conflict by definition.

I could be wrong, of course, but that's my opinion.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Nic Name
So, if you describe a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, it is a political conflict by definition.

I don't disagree that it is a political conflict; however, I see strong religious ties involved:

--Zionism
--Sharon's visit to the Temple on the Mount
--The fight over Jerusalem

[Yelof]

I can understand Palestinian reluctance to sign up to the creation of just any old political entity just as long as it has the name "Palestinian State". They would cheapen the concept if they ended up with just the same thing as the "Palestinian Authority" with just a different name. The Israeli negotiation tactic so far has in mine and others opinions been one of delaying "final questions" in order to attempt to reap the benifits of peace without paying the price. The Oslo accords perhaps were flawed as the Palestinians were willing to defer too many issues to which they were dearly attached in order to reach any agreement with Israel in order to end the diplomatic isolation thay had placed themselves following their stupid backing of the wrong horse in The Gulf War. The Palestinian should hang on until they get a state with some teeth, one in which a Palestinian is equal under the law to an Israeli, one in which cars on Palestianian roads don't have to stop at lights for twenty minutes while a single Israeli car passes on a crossing Israeli settler only road.

The following is an excerpt from an article..apologies if this is long if it doesn't interest you scroll rapidly down, but the article is good and as I can't link into the New Scientist archive and I wish to share it, it affected me especially because New Scientist is not a magazine known for strong political stances.

"This is how we live"

New Scientist vol 174 issue 2342 - 11 May 2002, page 40


I STARTED down the road and I did everything right. "Don't go to the left, don't go to the right," the Israeli soldiers had said, and it's best to do what they say. They watched me go and the Palestinian policemen at the other end of the road watched me come. Everyone had a gun except me and all the guns seemed to be pointing at me. I had a half-kilometre of road all to myself and it was very quiet.

This is no-man's-land at the entrance to the Gaza Strip. It is one border you don't have to queue at. The soldiers were surprised that I wanted to go in. I could see their point. Their air force had bombed the place an hour before. "Have a blast," one of them had said. Not literally, I hoped.

I took a taxi the 10 kilometres into Gaza City and the first thing I noticed were the children. They were everywhere. It looked like one enormous playground. Of course, Gaza is no playground. Look beyond the children and you see chaos. Many shops looked like they'd been shut for months. Some buildings looked like they'd been bombed. There was graffiti on every wall. The sun was shining and the children were playing but it didn't feel right. I wasn't seeing the full picture.

I got part of the picture from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose white Land-Rovers I had already seen in the streets and whose compound in the city is like a town in itself. It has a department for everything: education, health, food, social services, environment. It runs many of the schools, finds shelter for the homeless and provides food to 144,000 families, many of whom would starve without it. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is the official government here but it's pretty clear who's running the show for the poor.

I met several UNRWA officials, all of them Palestinian. This is what they said. Of Gaza's 1.2 million residents, 80 per cent are refugees or descendants of refugees who fled from around Beersheba and Jaffa when Israel was created in 1948. Half these people live in eight refugee camps, where the population density is among the highest in the world. The population of Gaza is growing at a rate of 4.6 per cent a year. Half the people are under 18 and there are so many children that the schools can accommodate them only in shifts.

I wondered why everyone stayed. "Because they are not allowed to leave," says Aqil Abu Shammala, chief of UNRWA's field relief and social services programme and himself a third-generation refugee. Since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the Israeli authorities have sealed the borders of the Palestinian Territories to try to contain the militants and to put pressure on the people to end the uprising. Exports from Gaza and the West Bank are banned, and imports strictly controlled. As a result, the proportion of people in Gaza living on under $2 a day has increased from a quarter to a half. Some 40 per cent of the workforce is unemployed.

Abu Shammala is a big man and he tells me these things straight and without emotion. He wears a suit and tie and he seems imperturbable. Then he tells me he has not seen his family for five days because the Israeli army has set up a security barrier that cuts the Gaza Strip in two, and they will not let anyone pass. He and tens of thousands of other Palestinians are cut off from their homes. Others are cut off from their work. He says it happens often. When he tells me this he is shaking his head and you can see the anger rising. "If you keep people in these conditions," he says, "how can you expect them to keep the peace?"

There is little peace in Gaza. The next day, Israeli F16 bombers flew over the city at precisely the time they had attacked it the day before. This time they didn't bomb, but the psychological effect was conspicuous: everyone braced themselves as if they would.

I found a lift out of the city going south along the coast to the Israeli army's security barrier. About 200 metres from the checkpoint a Palestinian policeman was standing in the road. He said if you go any further the Israelis will shoot you; they will not know whether you are armed and they will not wait to find out.

Many people had gathered here and they were agitated. Some had been waiting days for the army to open the road. A few had decided they could wait no longer and were heading down a cliff to the beach to get around the checkpoint. I went with them. I start to walk and I am not yet level with the checkpoint when the gunner in a tank at the checkpoint starts shooting. He is firing a heavy machine gun at the people on the beach below him and I think, I hope, they are safe in the lee of the cliff. The gun is very loud, and though I cannot see the tank I can hear it and I can see the puff of diesel smoke as it manoeuvres. Now the bullets are close to me and the people ahead of me drop into the sand. I am looking at a man beside me with a baby in his arms, and I am listening to the bullets slapping into the sea. Incredibly, nobody is running. Some people are even trying to carry on.

None of the war films I have seen comes close to conjuring up what this feels like. A man with a red scarf looks at me and grins and asks me if I'm scared. "No," I lie. How can anyone not be? A man and a woman on a donkey-drawn cart are coming the other way and they pass close to me. They are very scared, they are close to tears, and I realise they must have been opposite the checkpoint when the shooting started. The man with the red scarf sees me staring at them and says: "This is how we live."

The next morning I went to see a man whose name I had heard often, a man respected by many here. Eyad El Sarraj is founder and chairman of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) and he has been studying the psychology of the people for years. He is in his early 50s. He is tall, speaks quietly and is always eloquent. He hates violence.

El Sarraj calls Gaza an open prison. "You feel exposed and vulnerable. There is no way to escape. You are trapped. Over the years, the Palestinians have developed the psychology of victims, and this has been reinforced over the past 18 months," he says. "There is a sense of helplessness, a sense of persecution. There is trauma, and so much anger." If El Sarraj gets angry he is good at hiding it.

The planes, the bombing and the threat of it are not things you get used to, he says. They affect the children most. A recent study by the GCMHP in Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps in southern Gaza found that of 121 mothers and 121 children, more than a fifth had witnessed members of their own family killed or injured, and more than half the children had started to develop acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of the 1400 Palestinians killed since the start of the intifada, at least 160 were under 16. Many children have nightmares about Jews coming to their house.

And yet, says El Sarraj, none of them has ever met a Jew. He knows how they feel. "I grew up in Gaza hating all Jews, believing they were blood-suckers, that they had robbed me of my land, my rights and my freedom and that they killed my fellow men. That was before I met my first Jew. Palestinian children today are growing up the same way I did. All they know about Jews are bad things." This, he believes, is why many Palestinians demonise the entire Israeli population as one. Few Palestinians feel disgust when an activist blows himself or herself up in West Jerusalem; the activist is celebrated as a shahid or martyr because all Israelis are considered as guilty as soldiers of the injustice wrought on them.

I set off in a taxi to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, scene of some of the worst fighting of the intifada. After 20 kilometres we come to a set of traffic lights, a checkpoint and a queue of cars waiting to cross one of the specially guarded roads that link the 18 Israeli settlements in Gaza to Israel "proper". I can see gun barrels sticking through the windows of the checkpoint but I cannot see the soldiers. "Why are we waiting?" I ask the taxi driver. He says that if a settler's car is within half a kilometre of the crossing, the soldiers switch the lights to red and Palestinians have to wait. And if we choose not to? "What do you think?" he says. Then he repeats the words of the man on the beach: "This is how we live."

[jaguar]

?
UT whats your point? I'm lost

While the precise details of a Bush proposal are now yet known, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator, warned that such a step might only increase Palestinian frustration if it was not accompanied by a specific timeline for working out the final details for a state in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

Rather understandable, if i said i'd give you the money i owed you at...oh some time in the future when i felt like it i'm sure you'd be pissed off.

They are trying to remove arafat, they refuse to negioate, they refuse to create a state or even set a timeline for the creation of one. The economist had a very good roundup of this. I doubt this 'interum state' will be as generous as the oslo accords, and oh, wern't they generous, breaking up the west bank ito 3 cantons surrounded by Isrelai military checkpoints to move between them. So cut the FUD will you.

[Undertoad]

I think you were saying at one point that there is a legitimacy to the terrorism if that's all they have. My point is that there remain plenty of tools other than terrorism if what they want is a state. Simple diplomacy could get it done.

The problem is that the leaders, and now 51% of the people, are not interested in a state.

Which means that, if you give them a state tomorrow, it doesn't solve anything whatsoever.