The thing to say about the President's speech is, these are NOT the 1967 lines to which Mr. Obama is referring. The 1967 borders include Retzuat Aza (the Gaza Strip), Yehudah, Shomron (the "West Bank"), Ramot haGolan (the Golan Heights, and the Sinai. Yes, the Gaza and Sinai that are now Judenrein (except for a few tourist spots in Sinai, the Egyptians like free money as well as anyone), and the "West Bank" where the OTHER Palestinian Authority (the one that is NOT Hamas, as though Fatah was such a deal) has autonomy and heavily armed "police".
He is referring to the 1949 armistice lines. The 1948 war was precipitated by a concerted Arab refusal to accept a SECOND partition. The first partition involved the British unilaterally amputating 80% of "Palestine", the League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, to give to Abdullah, one of the fugitive princes of Hejaz ejected from the newly "Saudi" Arabia. The same British created another country, Iraq, for his brother, Feisal. When the Israelis inconveniently refused to die en masse, the Arabs refused to talk peace, but only agreed to an armistice: an armistice which saw wholesale Jordanian sniping in Jerusalem, Egyptian generated "fedayeen" raids from the cesspools of Gaza, and Syrian shelling of farms and children from the Golan Heights for the next nineteen years.
Since territorial compromise is such a good idea, try asking the President how he feels about giving New Mexico back to Old Mexico.
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No, Hilda, I mean peace is not achievable by giving. It is not giving "back" at all, because there never WAS a "Palestine", nor was there ever an actual "Palestinian" people distinguishable from other south Syrian muslim Arabs, nor did most of the people from whom today's putative "Palestinians" descend live in the area of Israel before Jews started coming back in numbers big enough to have something worth stealing.Besides, giving hasn't worked real well. In exchange for the Sinai, there has been a very cold "peace" with Egypt, but they have cut off diplomatic ties (and now natural gas, even though it screws Jordan as well as Israel) many times, and now the man who put Sadat's assassins in jail is in custody, but the assassins are free. There is not peace in any sense anyone would recognize with Jordan, but the "West Bank" wasn't part of the 80% of the mandate the British stole for Abdullah's fief. "Palestinians" have control of Gaza and autonomy in most of the "West Bank". How peaceful are things in Sderot? How many times can the same thing not work before intelligent people understand the Einstein quote about insanity being doing the same thing again and expecting different results?
Golda Meir said we would have peace when the Arabs loved their children more than they hated us. It will take that kind of major cultural shift in the muslim world.
Great analogy about New Mexico. Or should we sell Manhattan back for $24.00...or how about Alaska...Seward's Folly. We could go on and on, Stuart, but does this mean we'll never have peace until we give back?
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