Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay (NY Times op-ed) [View all]Bradlad
(206 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 30, 2012, 12:59 PM - Edit history (1)
This is something that I think many commenters on the pro-Palestinian side fail to appreciate: Virtually all the deficit in living standards and living conditions of the Palestinian Arabs are the result of decisions they made to violently attack Jews. They had the power to make those decisions or to make better decisions.
Those decisions by the Palestinians caused Israel to make decisions for their self-defense against those attacks.
What happened was that the Palestinians used their power to change the environment for the Israelis by making it extremely lethal which was something they had the power to do before the separation fence was completed. The fence is a good example because it has impacted the Palestinian living conditions - in some cases very negatively. But this is an example of a key decision by the Palestinians that resulted in significantly worse living conditions for them.
In fact if you look at some articles about Palestinian per capita income, GDP and employment, going from the present and back for several decades, you'll see that all those figures track very closely with periods of calm, that result in steadily rising values in all those categories - and periods of violence, intifadas, etc., that result in steadily declining values for all those categories.
During periods of relative calm, Israel loosens the restrictions, checkpoints, etc. During periods of violence Israel does what it must to defend its citizens and restrictions increase, fences get built, etc.
I think this shows clearly that Palestinians definitely have the power to affect their own well being and living conditions in either positive or negative ways. And although I doubt this will make much difference to some here - it is obvious to some others of us that the more Westerners encourage and make excuses for and donate money for and wave signs in demonstrations in support of Palestinian "resistance" and intransigence against Israel - the more the Palestinians will suffer and the longer it will be before there is any peace in the region.
I would ask some of you (those to whom this applies) who claim to be concerned about Palestinian suffering - if your religious-like belief in the unassailable innocence of Palestinians who target the peaceful civilians of a neighboring state for death - is really more important than the great unhappiness and suffering on all sides that such groundless beliefs contribute to?