palestenians cant decide: tells israel to decide for it.

[pelsar]

Maariv: june 3, 2005, page4 (hebrew addition).

"The PA has sent a letter to Israel saying that they are not interested in taking part of the decision concerning the housing left by the settlers, to destroy or not to destroy, due to differences of opinion with the PA"
___________________________________

Well now, that certainly is interesting..seems the PA not only is avoiding taking responsability in terms of the future of Gaza, but this way whatever israel does they get to blame israel...and so too will the intl community.

The PA cant even make a relativly simply decision on what is best for its people, so how are they going to make the more difficult decisions further down the line?..this hardly gives me confidence in their govt....granted, they've been blaming israel for everything, from aids laced candies to massacres, for quite sometime now so I can see where it would be difficult to "break the habit", never the less, this "lack of enthusiasim" for making a decision about future "town planning" strikes me as absurd......more than that, its not a good sign of things to come.

[Lithos]

1. LInk?

Even to the Hebrew edition is okay.

L-

[pelsar]

5. Ltihos..

the maariv edition wasnt "on line' earlier...I 'll check later....

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Is this it?

Ma'ariv Online I can read Hebrew, but have no idea what I am reading, so I can link to the direct article. I tried. :)

[pelsar]

19. its not there

i found maariv in hebrew (poor website)...and finally found the news section but it wasnt there...it was only a small article in the printed edition....perhaps it will show up later

[Lithos]

32. Okay

If it comes up, could you please post it here?

Thanks

L-

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Talk about reading what you want to.

They don't want to piss the Israelis off by tearing down houses that aren't theirs. No matter what they did, I guarantee you would complain about it.

Nor should they be responsible for cleaning up someone else's mess. How bout the Israelis take some responsibility for their own actions for a change?

[pelsar]

4. funny statement...

'They don't want to piss the Israelis off by tearing down houses that aren't theirs"

what does that mean?...they shooting kassams and mortors at us for the last week...and that doesnt "piss us off?"


but this is very confusing...the lands is theirs but the "houses arent"..that means the palestenains consider that the houses belong to israelis?....gosh that certanly is a new piece of info. So If i am to understand what you wrote....they might just leave the houses up since they belong to israelis...or did i misunderstand something here?

anyway thats not what was written....they wrote they couldnt decide (please dont tell me you understand the inner workings of the PA, I and I admit I am making an assumption here, bit I suspect you probably dont even know the names of those involved in the decision)

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[Coastie for Truth]

7. Enabler Rule #1 = Whatever the Israelis do is always wrong

If the Israelis tear down the houses - or any infrastructure - it's wrong and they are impoverishing the Palestinians.

If the Israelis leave the houses up - or leave any infrastructure up - they are leaving behind their garbage for the Palestinians to clean up.

Let's face it--

Enabler Rule #1 = Whatever the Israelis do is always wrong

If the Israelis don't turn over everything - and go back to the pre-Herzl condition - that is wrong too.

If the Israelis don't jump into the Mediterranean swim back to Russia - that is wrong too.

If they Israelis jump into the Mediterranean and swim back to Russia - that's wrong too - because they might just go to Birbidzhan (which Stalin "gave" them) - and there's oil there.


Let's face it--

Enabler Rule #2 = Whatever the Israelis do is always wrong

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

8. Sorry, but the vast majority of the rest of the world can't be wrong.

When resolutions condemning Israeli action pass consistently by a tally of around 140-6, with the six including the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands, and Palau, your "woe is me, I can do no right" argument really doesn't fly.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. No, that could NEVER happen

The 'vast majority' of the rest of the world has never been wrong. :eyes: It would be interesting to know how historians will look back on this time. There are many actions that SHOULD be condemned that fail to register at the UN. But, throw in the word "Israel" and you can place money on that horse crossing the line!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. Having seen it first hand, I'd say they're right. (nt)

[Colorado Blue]

10. REALLY? Wasn't that Hitler's excuse for murdering

6,000,000 Jews?

The world can most certainly be wrong. And simply because the Jewish people, and the Israelis, are OUTNUMBERED - it doesn't make THEM wrong.

Mob rule is something to be dreaded. And very, very few people in the entire world really know anything about the history and complexity of this issue. The Islamic world, 1.3 billion people, will ALWAYS vote against Israel and Europe has a dreadful history of antisemitism.

There are 13 million Jews on this entire planet, with a human population in the BILLIONS.

Please take a look at a map of the Arab League and tell me who is being ridiculous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Israeli_conflict

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. So the entire population of the world is anti-Semitic?

Is that what you're claiming?

[Jack Rabbit]

20. In the late thirties, few cared enough to try to prevent the Holocaust

Granted, no one believed the Nazis were really going to do it. Granted further that during the war there were few reliable reports of what was actually happening.

Even prior to the war, things were bad enough. Did the world have to wait for Jews to be murdered in order to condemn stripping them of their rights in Hitler's Germany? That was done out in the open and in broad daylight. The world was willing to listen to Hitler make excuses, just let him say that if every other nation in the world had as many Jews (terrible, terrible people, you know) as Germany, then each would understand and do the same thing. It was nonsense, many knew it was nonsense, but still did nothing to stop it.

Nazi Germany could have and should have been stopped by economic sanctions long before the war started. But the human rights of Jews were not that important then.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

21. Before the Holocaust, how many humanitarian wars really took place?

People easily forget that it has only been in the wake of WWII that the doctrine of humanitarian war (or war for the sole purpose of defending another non-strategic ally population) came to exist. No one stepped in after the Japanese raped and pillaged Manchuria. No is stepping in now in Darfur. No one stepped in on behalf of the Muslims during the Crusades. If you can name a war prior to 1945 that was conducted for the sole purpose of altruism, please educate me on that. I just asked three men holding doctorate degrees in history and none of them could come up with a single case.

The "altruistic war" hardly exists today. Certainly, it did not exist at all prior to 1945. Anti-Semitism had nearly nothing to do with that. Humanitarian wars, simply put, were not something anyone seriously would have considered.

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Response

First, you wanted to know what Colorado Blue's point was. He point was that yes, the entire world can be wrong. It was about Hitler prior to World War II.

DO I think that every resolution passed by the UN against Israel is right and justified? No. Do I think that every resolution passed by the UN against Israel is a lot of hooey? Again, no. Nevertheless, your response to Colorado Blue was was a fallacy of the type argumentum ad populum (or the "bandwagon" fallacy). In this case, it is easily refuted as Mr. Blue demonstrated.

Second, I did not say anything about a humanitarian intervention (i.e., going to war against Hitler over stripping Jews of their rights as German citizens). I believe that there were things short of war that could have been done to address the problem; these were not tried, but should have been. We will never know if they would have worked or not.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

24. Well, I'll ask differently then.

How likely was ANY form of intervention for humanitarian reasons prior to 1945?

On edit: As for "Mr. Blue", he makes the point that Islamic countries will vote against Israel no matter what, and yet there are Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist countries in the U.N. as well that do not vote in favor of Israel. Out of 140 countries, you're telling me they're ALL anti-Semitic? Give me a break.

[Coastie for Truth]

25. sarcasm on: Yes

In the eyes of many we are all presumed guilty of DEICIDE - Mel Gibson made billions out of a movie about our collective guilt.

In the eyes of others we are part of a vast cabal, the Learned Elders of Zion (of which AIPAC and the Neocons are subsets), to take over the world.

sarcasm off:

Is that what you wanted?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

28. No. I never accused anyone of deicide.

There's little proof Jesus even existed. There's more than enough proof that Israel is a habitual human rights violator. Huge difference, don't you think?

[Coastie for Truth]

29. Please - don't insult DU or yourself

Deicide was the standard line until Pope John XXIII.

Pope Pius IX even used charged of deicide to justify kidnapping and forcibly converting Jewish Children (see David Kertzer, "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara")

Tomas Cardinal Torquemada used deicide as one of many excuses for carrying out the Inquisition, including the auto de fe's.

The early Church used it to justify wiping out the heretical, blasphemous Ebionite Gnostics (who observed both Jewish and Christian rites).

The medieval Church used deicide as the justification for the Mass Murder of Jews across Europe during the Crusades.

See, for example,

1.
2.
3.
4. , the NYPD cops and the cheering workers yelling "Christ Killers."

And, of course, Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie, "Passion of the Christ."

Deicide is a cry of anti-Semites. It happened. It happens -- today.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

43. Deleted message

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[Jack Rabbit]

26. It was not inconceivable

The League of Nations was a forerunner of the UN in its concept of being a world body that would provide a forum for the peaceful resolutions of international disputes. Like the charter of the UN, the League's charter called for economic and even physical sanctions against errant states.

On the other hand, the League of Nations was little concerned with anti-Semitism. There were a number of reasons for this, but two are worth mentioning. one was that the League existed in an era dominated by European colonialism, a system that implicitly assumed human inequality and a superiority what was White and Christian; the other was the fashion of casual anti-Semitism in the ruling classes of the world at the time. Some scholars even suspect the FDR held anti-Semitic biases.

Nevertheless, Hitler went virtually unchallenged not only for his injustice to the Jews but his open defiance of the Versailles Treaty. He provided the world many opportunities to slap him down, and League at least had the tools to sting Hitler's government for its ways. Granted, after World War I, most Europeans were in little mood for any confrontation that would lead to war; but it should have been recognized that Hitler was eager for a conflict and that he should have been slapped down while he could have been slapped down easily. The failure of the world to bring the full force of League-sponsored sanctions against Hitler only made matters worse.

So, my conclusion is that the world had the means to stop Hitler or at least slow him down, but took no advantage of them.

* * *

On the general subject of humanitarian intervention, I recommend this piece by Kenneth Roth from the Human Rights Watch World Report for 2004 which rejects the contention that the invasion of Iraq could be justified by humanitarian intervention. Says Roth:

In our view, as a threshold matter, humanitarian intervention that occurs without the consent of the relevant government can be justified only in the face of ongoing or imminent genocide, or comparable mass slaughter or loss of life. To state the obvious, war is dangerous. In theory it can be surgical, but the reality is often highly destructive, with a risk of enormous bloodshed. Only large-scale murder, we believe, can justify the death, destruction, and disorder that so often are inherent in war and its aftermath. Other forms of tyranny are deplorable and worth working intensively to end, but they do not in our view rise to the level that would justify the extraordinary response of military force. Only mass slaughter might permit the deliberate taking of life involved in using military force for humanitarian purposes.

In other words, in Roth's view, the test of a humanitarian intervention would be a tough one to meet. This is a practical matter in that it would do no good to disperse military resources for relatively minor human rights abuses as these resources would then not be available if a truly grave one demanded action. In addition, to use a low standard could well become a convenient pretext for going to war when one is simply searching for a reason, as indeed Mr. Bush was doing in regards to Iraq prior to launching the invasion.

I would take from this that Mr. Roth would not have taken military action against Nazi Germany for the passage and enforcement of the Jewish Laws in the early and mid-thirties; however, had it been known that Nazis were sending Jews to death camps, then a humanitarian intervention would have been justified.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

27. The League of Nations' purpose was to settle disputes between countries

It did not have a stated goal of altruism. It's stated goal was conflict resolution. COULD they have? Yes, absolutely, but it was still not a common idea to intervene in the internal affairs of a country for the sake of protecting a segment of that country's population. Further, you still haven't brought up a case where humanitarian intervention occurred before 1945. Could have and should have are irrelevant to my point in that it was not the mindset for people to intervene for purely altruistic reasons.

And no, we had no altruistic goals in our invasion of Iraq at all. I wouldn't ever argue that.

On edit: Here is the part of the charter you refer to:
ARTICLE 23.

Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of international conventions existing or hereafter to be agreed upon, the Members of the League: (a) will endeavour to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women, and children, both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain the necessary international organisations; (b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control; (c) will entrust the League with the general supervision over the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children, and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs; (d) will entrust the League with the general supervision of the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest; (e) will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communications and of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all Members of the League. In this connection, the special necessities of the regions devastated during the World War I|war of 1914-1918 shall be borne in mind; (f) will endeavour to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of disease.
Unfortunately, it does not spell out any powers or repercussions regarding this section - only that member states will strive towards those ideals. Again, they COULD have, but it wasn't likely to happen no matter who was being killed.

[Jack Rabbit]

30. You asked

You asked if an humanitarian intervention was likely, not if one had occurred. This kind of benevolence in foreign policy was a new concept following World War I and was not likely to have occurred before that.

You missed the point of my bringing up the HRW report rejecting any claim that the invasion of Iraq constituted a humanitarian intervention. The purpose was to lay the ground rules for such an intervention and show that under this concept, there would have been no humanitarian intervention even under modern concepts of it in the early days of the Nazi regime. Under Mr. Roth's doctrine, it would not have been justified until Jews were actually being killed en masse.

However, that would not have precluded some kind of action against Nazi Germany as soon as the Nuremberg Laws went into effect (1935). At this point, sanctions could have been imposed and boycotts could have been organized. Certainly by the following year, when Hitler marched his army into the Rhineland in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, the Nuremberg Laws could have been used as a further justification to impose more formal sanctions on Germany.

Instead, the world listened to Hitler's rationalizations for moving into the Rhineland and just said, "Yeah, yeah, Adolf, it's all yours." The League provided means to to punish Hitler short of war and the League blew its opportunity.

Also, contrary to what you said, the League, like its successor, was involved in social policy. The League undertook efforts to raise the status of women and attack child slave labor. Unfortunately, it did very little to attempt to alleviate European anti-Semitism.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

35. You're still missing my point.

If you're going to assess likelihood, you have to bring up an example of where humanitarian intervention occurred in the past. If it's never happened prior to the Holocaust, why would one truly expect intervention then? If the doctrine had never come to fruition, how can you possibly say that it didn't happen in this case only because there were Jewish people involved? If you can't establish a double standard, you can't prove anything. In this case, you can't even prove a single standard existed ever at all. I'm still not saying there wasn't anti-Semitism, there was and still is a lot of it, but I don't think there's enough established fact to suggest the only reason the rest of the world didn't step in to help the Jews was because the rest of the world hated them.

And yes, the League of Nations was ineffective, precisely because the member states involved still had not adapted to this new form foreign policy. Don't forget that even though the League of Nations existed, it was the first time an alliance of this scale ever was attempted. Countries still primarily looked out for themselves, rendering the League of Nations moot. To wit, the United States was a member of the League of Nations, yet we were still holding a strict policy of isolationism until Pearl Harbor occurred. There was a war going on amongst our supposed allies, and yet we were still not interested in getting involved. Even on that basic level, the League of Nations was a failure.

[Jack Rabbit]

38. Dissent

It is not necessary to point to a particular precedent to establish the likelihood of humanitarian intervention, military or non-military, at some particular time. I am arguing that the precedent for that kind of action was more likely as Hitler rose to power than it was at any time before.

World War II is a poor example as far an a military humanitarian intervention goes. As I have pointed out, even under modern standards of humanitarian intervention, there would have been no military action before the Holocaust were underway; moreover, the war was almost over by the time the world really knew anything about the Holocaust.

However, I haven't been arguing that extreme. Before the Holocaust, there were the Nuremberg Laws. The enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws did not justify military intervention by standards of then or now, but there should have been a response. Why were there no boycotts? Why were there no League-imposed sanctions? If such action against Nazi Germany were not taken merely over the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, why was little or nothing done when Hitler marched into the Rhineland the following year? It should have been obvious by 1936 that Hitler intended to plunge Europe into war and that he would have use the police power of the state to impose on Europe a hierarchical society in which one's rights as a citizen were allocated on racial lines. The world for the first time had the tools to stop such a madman before he went too far and simply allowed him to go too far.

On a minor point, the United States was not a member of the League of Nations. Joining the League was seen by isolationists as a way to become unnecessary involved in European entanglements. Powerful isolationists in Congress kept the US out of the League.

However, in the end you're right about the League; the League was a failure. It was a failure largely because it did not draw the line on Hitler when it could have and should have. It did, in fact, have some minor successes in resolving conflicts; but when it came to preventing another war in the face of one so obviously bent on one, it failed. The alarms that should have gone off at the passage of the Nuremberg Laws did not go off because a belief in racial inequality in general and European anti-Semitism in particular were far more fashionable at that time than they are today.

This discussion could be more useful if we turn to the subject of when action against a regime is justified. What measures do we use? I would suggest that wehen a regime that adumbrates an anti-democratic (i.e., inegalitarian) ideology, expresses a desire to impose a system grounded in that ideology beyond its borders and has the military power to subdue other nations, then we should be concerned.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

40. I only disagree with one part of what you're saying

The alarms that should have gone off at the passage of the Nuremberg Laws did not go off because a belief in racial inequality in general and European anti-Semitism in particular were far more fashionable at that time than they are today.

I still find it very difficult to draw the conclusion that anti-Semitism was the only reason the Nuremberg Laws weren't enforced when there's little evidence to suggest the Laws would've been enforced had this happened to another group of people. I don't think people genuinely cared about saving other people in general yet.

[Jack Rabbit]

45. We have no disagreement on that point

Anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism, trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism, as practiced at that time by France, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, are based on the same thing: an inegalitarian ideology. In trans-Atlantic slavery, the right to collect wages for a Black person's labor was transferred from the laborer to his "superior" White owner. In colonialism, natives of Africa or Asia have no more rights to the bounty of the land under their feet than "superior" Europeans grant them. Formal anti-Semitism excluded Jews from the best positions in society, reserving them for "superior" people; the Nuremberg Laws were simply an extreme version of this kind of anti-Semitism that excluded Jews from citizenship and even the right to sit in their private gardens after sunset.

As I said, it was a general belief in racial inequality at the time that precluded such action. Anti-Semitism is still part of that pattern. Other European powers in the mid-thirties were no more prepared to confront Hitler's anti-Semitism than they were to confront the racism inherent in their own colonial systems.

[Coastie for Truth]

31. Which is why

--because nobody - NOBODY will look out for the pariah minorities -- nobody--

1. There has to be independent Jewish, Palestinian, Armenian, and Kurdish states (to name the most egregious victims)

2. We have a Second Amendment - a "personal right" to bear arms --

Amendment II - A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

3. That's why I earned and wear-->

<><>

<>

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

34. Your post is absolutely mind boggling

Apparently, criticizing Israel for violating human rights is tantamount to saying they don't deserve their own country. Interesting... :eyes:

[pelsar]

33. popular decision......

as a way of deciding what is right and what is wrong is probably the most pathetic way of deciding. In fact its the decision of the weak...for those who cant actually look at the issues and decide.

and since when does a bunch of beurocrates the represent stolen countries (dictatorships, as I see it have stolen the countries from those that live there) have any moral ground to stand on? Such is many of the states in the UN today.

but this is too easy an argument to refute......just the fact that its being used represents lack of of knowledge.

if we go by voting by beurocrates for a distinct geographic area, then we can justify irans govt, saudi arabias, US Confederacy during slavery (guess the north was wrong to invade the south), etc.... tsk tsk tsk....

[Coastie for Truth]

15. Until His Holiness John XXIII said otherwise

the rest of the world said we are guilty of deicide, too. (John, XVIII-XIX)

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Standing somewhere in between the extremes

The most important thing to the Palestinians is that the Israelis leave. Once the Israelis are gone, then the Palestinians can decide what they want to do with the housing sitting on the land.

Frankly, if I were the Israelis and unless the Palestinians specifically request the housing be torn down, I would leave the housing standing and let the Palestinians decide. It is and ought to be their decision, regardless of how much haggling they have to go through to reach it. The housing could be just as easily occupied by Palestinians as Israelis; or it could be torn down to make way for high rise apartments, something that would make good sense in the world's most densely populated strip of land.

[Colorado Blue]

11. I agree. It could also be used as a resort, as has been

suggested by Shimon Peres and others.

This would make money for the Palestinians.

And, since they are so overpopulated, maybe the Egyptians would throw in some real estate.

[Jack Rabbit]

16. Mr. Peres' suggestion is one the PA could take under advisement

However, Egypt is certainly under no obligation to throw in any real estate. We shouldn't assume that they will.

Once a Palestinian state is established in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians in Gaza should be able to move freely to the West Bank and alleviate some of the overcrowding in Gaza. Otherwise, as Mr. Pelsar points out, high rise apartments will suit the immediate needs of the residents of Gaza more than resorts.

[Colorado Blue]

44. Of course Egypt, Jordan, or any of the other 22 Arab states

are under no obligation to help the Palestinians with practical benefits such as property.

But it would be nice, wouldn't it. Some practical assistance, in the way of trying to resettle people, integrate them into their populations, financial aid for businesses - surely the Saudis and the Emirates can spare a few bucks? Instead, we've had people living in cages for decades. Offers of statehood and restitution have been scorned.

Generations have been born in cages. People have been used as a weapon against Israel instead of being helped in practical, meaningful ways. Meanwhile, Israel has absorbed those hundreds of thousands who were expelled from THEIR communities, decades ago.

How badly has this damaged the long-term prospects for peaceful statehood? And what has this done to the people involved?

When Israel is accused of human rights violations, I say, in cases where that has happened - far out. Accuse. It's important that the rights of people everywhere are respected EVEN IN WAR ZONES, even where there's been brutal provocation. But I ACCUSE, in the case of the Palestinians who've been kept in cages, subject to exploitation and used as political pawns. I accuse.

[Coastie for Truth]

46. There are some Arabs who are helping (investing in peace)

There are Arab leaders who are working with Israelis to industrialize Gaza and the OT's. Examples include Venture Capitalist Professor Ayman Kandeel and both "Prince Talals" - Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdulaziz and His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

There are "Zionist" in the US who are working with Palestinians and Israelis to to industrialize Gaza and the OT's and build a modern nation for the Palestinians. Former Citibank CEO Sandy Weill comes to mind.

[Colorado Blue]

47. True!! And enterprise zones exist and more will be set up in

the future. One will involve Egypt and Israel.

Jordan, Israel and the P.A. are cooperating on a huge water/power/environmental project.

There ARE people of good will in the world. I'm just afraid that the haters are going to outshout (and shoot!) everybody else.

I did read an interesting article the other day, about the son of Muammar Gaddafi (of Libya). He apparently doesn't share his father's opinions about "Irastine", believes Libya is part of the AFRICAN states, and says he's far more worried about the Sudan(!)

This reflects other articles I've read about the Maghreb states, and their essential difference from the West Asian states. They have a very different history and outlook. Unfortunately there are terrible problems with poverty, so along with very sophisticated artists, writers, intellectuals, there are slums producing violence and despair. Water shortages are aggravating EVERYTHING.

Water is truly a key here, I think.

[Coastie for Truth]

23. Gaza and the Sinai are one of the few habitats of the

"Sand Cat" felis margarita - cute but mean. The zoos in Sinai would be a great draw for a Gaza resort.

<><>

The only place they are bred in captivity is at a really neat zoo in the Sinai Peninsula near Sharm-El-Sheik.

[Colorado Blue]

42. These are beautiful. Thanks! nt

[pelsar]

12. the palestenains...and their decision...

acutally I really dont understand the problem...given that gaza is so crowded, hi rise apartments seem to be in order.

and in israel there have been quite a few discussions..some based on emotion some logic...but what bugs me is the palestenians not taking any responsability here. Granted, its new for them, going from the arafat era which was based on a pseudo concensus system (everybody being broken up in to conflicting groups made him the decision maker....) to a govt where decisions may have real consequences is tough, but that is the essence of an open govt....throwing it back upon israel is a cheap way out.

as far as my new "friend" here, who put me on "ignore" (my 14 yr old daughter does that too sometimes....)...well running away and hiding is one way of handling conflict. and of course using the argument "well everybody thinks so"......reminds of how she wants to put some additional holes in her ears, because "everybody else is doing it".....gotta love the logic behind those arguments.

[Jack Rabbit]

14. You hit some nails on the head

Even apart from his toleration of some particularly heinous and cowardly acts of terror, Arafat was not a healthy leader of the Palestinian cause. His style of leadership was too far personalized. He milked the cow for what it was worth, but wherever he is now, he doesn't have the milk with him.

The only way the Israelis could make a decision for the Palestinians would be to tear down the buildings. By leaving them, they leave the final decision to the Palestinians. So that is what I believe they should do.