Quote:
Originally posted by Black Baron:
Mouse-note that Sharon did not retaliate for several long weeks against the palestinians ("Tkufat ha -havlaga"-the time of no retaliation, of containment). If you think that they stopped, you are wrong. Sharon showed the entire world that palestinians will carry out their bombings regardless of our action.
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Agreed. But its about breaking the cycle. If Israel stopped all agression towards the Palestinians, then sure, some attacks would continue because a minority of Palestinians hate the Jews for
irrational reasons. The difference would be that recruitment to these groups will almost cease completely because the average Palestinian would no longer see any justification for it.
It might take ten or twenty years; even fifty years for the current 'suicide bomb' generation to pass on. But eventually, it would stop.
I know your response is going to be "what rubbish, we can't just sit here and let people suicide bomb us without taking any action" and it would be a very reasonable point. But the alternative is to continue the cycle of aggression and then we will have suicide-bomb -> military retaliation -> suicide bomb etc for the next 100, 200 or 500 years. Somebody has to break the cycle.
The odds of convincing the Palestinians to do this are most small, plus as it is Israel in Palestinian territory rather than Palestinians in Israeli territory, the onus would naturally be on the Israeli's to make the first move.
If military retaliations stop, with every suicide-bomber that blows himself up there is one less terrorist left. With the current retaliation system in place, there are ten more waiting to take his place.
The best solution that I can see is to build your security fence, but do it all on Israeli land, and not use it to annex additional Palestinian territory. Stay out of Palestine for fifty years and Israel will have no more Palestinian terrorist problems.
Before you criticise this for being over-simplistic and completely unworkable, consider that Israel's tried it "your way" for the last fifty years and the security situation is now worse than ever. Surely anything is better than this...
[ 06-11-2004, 10:14 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]