quote:
Originally posted by Dave:


Anyway, Dave especially, enough finger poinitng - what's the solution? Should Israel stop building settlements in Pal. areas, and allow a two area state of Palestine (Gaza and West Bank) to come into existence?
To answer your other inquiry, I think the key is accountability and verification. When the Israelis or Palestinians don't follow through, there should be immediate pressure to resolve any problems and follow through.

For openers, I think Israel should agree to remove any settlements since the 1993 Oslo Accord, since this is a violation of the agreement.

I think Arafat should willingly allow himself to be replaced by a new leader who is not so questionably connected to the suicide bombings he is supposedly trying to prevent (which will hopefully happen in the planned Palestinian election).

I also would like to see hate propaganda removed from Palestinian schools. I don't need to explain this, do I? It's pretty well covered in the U.S. media, that Palestinian schools teach Palestinian children to hate Israelis, with a lot of Muslim rhetoric that puts them well on the road to becoming suicide bombers. This teaching began in 1993-1994, when Palestine was first negotiated to become an independent Palestinian state, again, under Arafat's leadership. Which further shatters the credibility of a peaceful Palestinian state, regardless of Israel's best attempt to honor the agreement.

So in a word, the solution to a peacedful settlement is verifiability, with immediate consequences and pressure to comply, if compliance does not occur.

But regardless, I think the world will be promised, and in the end Arab states will still find a reason to break the agreement and attempt to destroy Israel.