Israel/Lebanon situation

[toms]

If the Palestinians - with their own state - could build an economy where unemployment isn't the 50% that it is now, there would be hope that less young Muslim men would turn to suicide bombing when they have the chance to become electricians, doctors, and engineers instead. That's the bottom line. More people in jobs = less people in terrorism.

 

Thats what i was going to say. not so much the jobs thing.. but if the palestinian people feel they have a reasonable deal, with a functioning country, then there will be much less support for the terrorists. And its much harder for terrorists to operate without grass roots support.

 

Technically, even if the palestinians accept the proposed two state solution they are gettng the raw end of the deal.. as they are only getting about half their country back. Based on the inital population of palestine then israel should only be about half as big as it is in the proposed two-state solution.

 

But as i don't think we'll ever see a fair division, i think the palestinians will just have to settle for the one the UN has agreed to. If they then get their economy up and running there will be far less support for terrorism.

 

Of course, every time the support for terrorism drops, one of the terrorist groups sets off a bomb, israel reacts, and then the support goes back up.

 

Its hard for a government to do, but like the UK governemnt learned in the peace process in northern ireland, sometime you just have to NOT REACT. As the extremists become more isolated they become more extreme.. but if you react then you are handing the decision about peace over to a small group of extremists. If you ignore them then they become irrelevant.

[Nancy Allen``]

It's come to light that Israel had conducted a commando raid in Lebanon.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meast20s1.html

 

The whole situation there is truely a bunch of crap.

[sockerbit89]

Israel said the raid -- launched to stop arms smuggling from Iran and Syria to the militant Shiite fighters -- left one Israeli officer dead and two soldiers wounded

 

Well I think we all know the situation hadn't changed even if this wouldn't have happened. Altough congratulations to Israel for truely making sure things goes to hell.

 

I feel i'm going slightly apathic to most violence that takes place in the middle east right now. Everyone is so amped up on their religious believes trying to kill eachother that i just cant see anyway for it to stop.

[Nancy Allen``]

Truely the ****bites serve to enforce the stereotype that people in the Middle East live to fight, they enjoy it. Now I know that's wrong, but Israel please, thney can't even keepm a cease fire for a week. It makes their criticism of attacks from, say, Palestine, as wrong as these attacks are, much less sound.

[TK-8252]

To be fair, Hezbollah broke the cease-fire first when they fired a number of rockets that fell short of Israel. Possibly intended to hit withdrawing Israeli forces within Lebanon.

 

While it's risky for Israel to carry out commando raids, it's not like they're still doing the air strikes and shelling that killed so many innocents and destroyed so much of Lebanon. I predicted that skirmishes like this would continue past the cease-fire so I'm not very suprised.

[Nancy Allen``]

Really? The news I got was that Israel suspected Hezbollah of weapons smuggling. You're right though, this should really come as no surprise.