> Gertus wrote: . At the risk of stirring > up a hornet's nest of discussion about a subject I know little about>
You just might, but I'm ready anytime. > Twisted normalities Nothing in this or any conflict is normal. > There'd been another 'amaliyya' or operation inside Israel. > Sharon's government assassinated Ra'ed Karmi on Monday, knowing full well > that this would provoke an attack from extremist groups, the excuse Sharon > needed to escalate and consolidate his occupation of the Palestinian > territories: Sharon is not interested in peace, and the calm from extremist > groups in the last month has not been in the interests of the current, war > mongering Israeli right-wing government. > Let's not discuss the chicken or the egg theory about escalation. I guess Arafat has clearly demonstrated he wants peace when he turned down Ehud Barak's generous offer to go back to basically pre-67 borders in exchange for peace, and then he brought up the "right of return" demand which he knew could never be accepted by Israel. > > Our vulnerability stares us in the face: what resistance to this tank > deployment? None - what are the pathetic automatic rifles Arafat's men have > going to be able to do faced with this show of American sponsored and > supplied might? > How about the boat with 55 tons of missiles, launch rockets, etc which Israel intercepted in the red sea last week? Everybody on the boat was from Arafat's party, but he never heard of it. Brilliant, this almost sounds like Reagan or Nixon, doesn't it? > The tanks have moved further in. The stronghold on Palestinians tightens, > the occupation - the root cause of the problem - has moved up yet one more > notch. The root cause of the problem is Arabs want it ALL, they've always wanted it and always said so if you make a little effort to look at history. In order to achieve their objective they are willing to expell and/or kill all Jews who live there. So let's stop the b.s. on this topic. It's all about self-defense for the Israelis from day one. If you want to talk about "occupation": when did it start? 67 Did the Israelis initiate the conflict? Hell no, armies from Egypt, Jordan, Irak, Syria were trying to invade Israel. For what? To free up the Palestinians? Of course not, there were no such things as Palestinians in 67, they were all under Jordan rule. Then you tell me why 50 million arabs wanted to invade Israel in 67 if there were no occupied territory whatsoever? Believe me, Israelis crave for peace, even Sharon. You think they want to stir up this conflict and make it last so they can invade 100 million arabs from surrounding countries? You think they don't understand that if Palestinians were the only issue then it could be solved fairly easily in order to achieve lasting peace? Laurent
