Seahorse, your above article from
The Guardian is one-sided against the United States. It uses a recurrent journalistic tactic: saying
what the U.S. government did, without explaining
why the U.S. chose this course of action.
Like how the European press covered Bush's withdrawal of the U.S. from the Koito treaty. Bush explained that he was not going to make the U.S. be the only nation to conform to the Kioto environmental standards, while the rest of Europe, and the world, did not do the same. He said this was unfair, and would hurt America's economy, and Bush said he was withdrawing from the treaty until other nations either conformed to the treaty, or re-negotiated a treaty that all the contracted nations would conform to.
BUT IN THE EUROPEAN PRESS, it was portrayed as the U.S. being greedy and not willing to conform to a treaty the entire world had signed. Little if any mention was given to the fact that NO OTHER NATION was conforming to the environmental standards of the Kioto agreement.
The situation with Israel and the Palestinians is much more complicated, but the press treatment is essentially the same. The origins of the situation date back to Pogroms against Jews in the 19th century in Russia, that resulted in migrations that made Jews resented throughout Europe, that culminated in the desire to form their own state instead of being an unprotected minority in a hostile Europe, a gradual move toward Israeli statehood that was first organized by Jews in 1897.
The article, and many articles here from The Guardian and other sources, ignore the obvious: the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab nations want Israel destroyed. They've fought four wars and endless skirmishes against Israel, and as I said above, they have never renounced their desire in the PLO accord to have not only an independent Palestine, but ALL OF ISRAEL under Arab rule. Never renounced.
The Guardian article also ignores that the PLO leadership has fully participated in organization of suicide bombings and other terrorism against Israel, even as they have "negotiated peace" for an independent Palestinian state.
Israeli President Ariel Sharon visited the White House last Monday (May 6th, 2002), and handed President Bush a 100-page document of the evidence gathered from Ramallah, Jenin and other palestinian terrorist strongholds, that conclusively shows Arafat has, far from doing anything to prevent terrorism, has instead endorsed and orchestrated the suicide bombings and other aggression against Israel. Just because some reporter in The Guardian says Palestine has been negotiating peace and wants peace with Israel doesn't make it so.
Israel has presented the evidence that Arafat and the PLO have waged terror (and thus, the PLO themselves destroyed the independent Palestine that Israel would have fully released authority over in 2000, had the PLO made any attemt to contain terrorism and proimote peace, and the PLO's combined inaction and outright aggression necessitated Israel's neutralizing terrorist strongholds in the West Bank). And yet this state of events is blamed on the U.S. ? Please ! The evidence has been presented by Israel, and the burden is on the PLO to prove its innocence. Blaming this situation on the U.S. is absurd.
And why are the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation anyway?
Because of a little thing called the 1967 war, where the Arabs attacked Israel, and Israel defended itself. Israel occupied these areas (West Bank and Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai desert) in response to an Arab offensive.
This occupation didn't happen in a vaccuum, it was defensive on Israel's part, not Israeli aggression. And Israel set up defensive areas to prevent a similar invasion.
And as I said in above posts, Israel has received no more than empty "assurances of peace" (in contrast to the evidence seen in Arab/Palestinian actions, that contradict the lip-service to their desire for peace) for the areas Israel is expected to give up.
I haven't rushed back here to post in response to Typhoid Dave's post (three posts above this one) because it's frankly exhausting responding to all this. I'm the only one defending Israel here.
I think Israel should withdraw its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza (except for maybe the ones directly on the Israeli/Palestinian border, for defensive reasons).
And I also, as I said before, think the U.S. should provide direct economic aid to the Palestinian refugees, completely bypassing any participation by the PLO, to build a peace economy and jobs for Palestinians.
But I wonder if even this will make the Palestinians give up their aggression against Israel. These are people whose children are taught to recite the names of cities and addresses, as they existed prior to 1948 in what is now Israel, even though these cities have not existed in over 50 years. I've never seen a group of people so seethingly hell-bent on long-awaited vengeance.
