I’ve been watching the painful Israeli pullout from the Gaza strip, and it’s been heartbreaking. Settlers are doing everything they can (well, everything short of violence, an occurrence that must be unique in that region) to dissuade the soldiers from serving them with their eviction notices.
While I was watching it, a thought occurred to me. Shortly after Israel was established, about 800,000 Palestinians fled the country and became the original “refugees.” But a lot didn’t leave, and they and their descendants are Israeli citizens (albeit reluctantly, in many cases).
So, with that historical precedent, why don’t the settlers just remain behind and become citizens of Palestine? If they don’t want to give up their Israeli identity, then perhaps a deal can be worked out where they can hold dual citizenships. They can become living symbols of the common dream of “two peoples, two states, side by side in peace.”
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Hi Jay, I agree. A Prediction for Israel’s Pull Out.
I think it’s going to get very very ugly.
You are kidding about staying behind and going after dual citizenship, right?
Yeah, good idea! And maybe they wont ALL be executed by the Palestinians!
They shouldn’t have ever been allowed to build those homes there in the first place. Everyone knew that in order to have any kind of a peace plan the settlements would have to go.
rick13
You mean settlements like Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Eilat, or Jerusalem?
After all, Tel Aviv was built from scratch just like Gush Katif making homes out of total uninhabited wilderness.
From one of my friends, I’ve been told that the Gaza pull-out is just a strategic move to keep a better presence in West Bank and that Israel’s resources are strained and it just can not be everywhere.
He told me further that, of course, on principle Israel should not pull out; they have endured far too much to retreat. Pragmatically it is a good move as distasteful as it probably is. They either needed to pull out or get brutal and they chose the former.
As a nation Israel has mastered the no win situation. But we don’t know for how long this can go on.
For those of you who support the “palistinians”, I want all of you out of America. You are occupying our land.
You are kidding about staying behind and going after dual citizenship, right?
I’m too tired to look it up, but about two weeks ago I read a news story about a settler who was trying to get Palestinian citizenship in order to stay.
There has already been some reports of Palestinian on Isreali voilence during the pullout.
A few Palestinians not content with the fact that the Isrealis are pulling out lobbed some morters on settlers who were trying to leave. They made an easy target since so many people are being forced to travel the same routes all at once.
Hmmmm.
1. Frankly it’s clear that the Israeli’s should have enacted a policy of ethnic cleansing at the end of the 1967 War, as abhorrent as that idea is to everyone. If the Israelis had done so then their current problems would largely be non-existant. But I can’t believe the post-WWII Israelis could ever have started, or finished such a plan.
Looking backwards it’s difficult to see how things could have happened differently.
2. “From one of my friends, I’ve been told that the Gaza pull-out is just a strategic move to keep a better presence in West Bank and that Israel’s resources are strained and it just can not be everywhere.”
IMHO I think Gaza is being turned into a “honey pot”. A “honey pot” is a server designed to be hacked so that an administrator can track and learn how a hacker or hacking attempt works. In this case I think Gaza is a compound of several things:
A. It might draw terrorists from Iraq, reducing the pressure there. It might even change the focus point of terrorist’s ambitions.
B. Gaza is bounded on two sides by Israel and Egypt, the other by the Med Sea. Gaza is also very small so it would be easily possible to completely and utterly saturate the entire strip with electronic intelligence devices.
C. Israel is pulling out after a long presence, prime opportunity to plant or recruit deep-cover operatives and moles to penetrate terrorist organizations.
D. There is going to be a clash over who runs Gaza, a potentially lucrative position with great PR possibilities. AQ has already stated that they’ll be there along with Hamas and Fatah. Hamas and Fatah are already going at it over control of Gaza. Toss in every fanatical fruitcake with a massive ego and armed to the teeth. Frankly I wouldn’t want to live there.
Personally I don’t think it’ll be the disaster that a lot of people are predicting. *shrug* as always though, YMMV.