Israel/Palestine

Last edited Wed Feb 7, 2018, 02:42 AM - Edit history (5)

And it proves the Palestinians were not refusing to recognize and that the rationale for Israeli refusal to negotiate with them was bogus. It was simply never reasonable to expect Palestinians to recognize Israel BEFORE negotiations were even considered.

If recognition is what's important to you, than recognition should be worth the trivial compromise of waiting until the moment the talks started. Recognition is recognition is recognition.

Placing the concept of a "right to recognition" BEFORE the actual gaining of recognition is somewhere between pointless and perverse. It makes the assertion of the right to be recognized into an impediment to the actual achievement of recognition. And in what war, or what UNIVERSE, does that ever end up even making sense?

And it has ONLY been the Palestinians who were expected to accept the RIGHT of Israel to be recognized as a precondition. Why them and ONLY them?

If Sadat and King Hussein(you remember them-the heads of state of the countries who STARTED the Six-Day War? ) didn't have to recognize Israel's "right to be recognized" at the outset, if it was enough that they recognized when the negotiated agreements were signed, it should have been enough for the Palestinians to do the same. And what you either forget or refuse to acknowledge recognition was the ONLY bargaining chip the Palestinians had. If they recognized before negotiations, that would have guaranteed that the Israeli government would never, under any circumstances, have accepted a Palestinian state.



If they recognized a "right of Israel to be recognized" before there were any negotiations, Israel wouldn't bother negotiating with them. Whatever the Israeli government of the day happened to be would simply proclaim that it had won and would simply fill the rest of the West Bank settlements, while offering the Palestinians nothing at all, would do nothing but humiliate them, would forever deny Palestinians any right to vote in Israeli elections(the only elections in which voting rights would have mattered-local elections in that scenario would have been meaningless).

And the end result of all of that(since it was never possible that Palestinians would have accepted that state of affairs as their natural station in life and since it would have been utterly unreasonable to expect them to leave their homeland) would inevitably have been the emergence of a newer, more extreme, more desperate Palestinian armed resistance-a resistance the IDF could never have defeated militarily.

And that resistance would immediately UNDO any recognition of any right to be recognized.

All of that would be the unavoidable consequences of the useless assertion of a "RIGHT to be recognized".

Why put the assertion of such a "right" above everythign else? Above ACTUAL recognition? Above repeated chances to end the fighting? Above any possibility of Israelis getting to live in a country that is not sliding(as it now irrevocably is)towards reaction, ethnic supremacism and authoritarianism? Above even the preservation of the somewhat domestically progressive character of that country's past(a character now almost totally lost)?

How is "a right to be recognized" more important than life itself?

Do you actually WANT this conflict to come to an end?