Blair Proposes Mideast Conference

[drdon326]

British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered Wednesday to host a one-day Mideast conference in the new year to help rehabilitate the battered Palestinian Authority, encourage reform and serve as a bridge to renewed peace talks, stalled by four years of violence.

Blair, the highest-ranking visitor to the West Bank since Yasser Arafat's death on Nov. 11, said a growing sense of hope must now be translated into action, while endorsing Israel's precondition for peace talks - an end to Palestinian attacks - and the Palestinian goal of an independent state.

Wednesday was the first time Blair talked in public about his proposed London conference, considerably scaling down the expectations of many who expected a full-blown British Middle East peace push.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19626-2004Dec22.html

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[The Magistrate]

1. It May Be Of Some Small Help, Doctor

Much as it pains me to agree with Mr. Blair in any particular, his overall point here is a sound one. The people of Arab Palestine will gain nothing by violence, and might gain a good deal without it. This has nothing to do with whether they have a right to use violence, or whether some particular act of violence in their cause is or is not criminal in nature: the fact is that if they desire a state, violence cannot deliver them one in the current circumstances, and throughout the eighty-odd years of the history of this conflict, on every occassion when the Arab Nationalist leadership of the people of Arab Palestine has chosen a violent course over one of negotiation and accommodation, the result has been a diminishment of the prospects for that people, whether territorially, politically, or economically.

One thing that needs to be explored is whether Sharon's condition of an absolute cessation of violence is meant as instruction or obstruction, so to speak. It may not be possible for any Palestine Authority leader to wholly check the activities of the various armed factions, and so it is possible this condition is meant as a poison pill. If a good faith effort by a Palestine Authority leader to do all in his power to break the armed factions, that shows signifigant if not perfect results were to be viewed as meeting that condition, and some progress were to result, that would greatly strengthen the prospect of wholly disabling the radicals, and be of great benefit.

[drdon326]

2. Excellent post.

If Abbas makes a good faith effort to break the armed factions (as you call it...I have a different word), I strongly suspect it would be of great benefit to the palestinians in the long run.


BTW...as I said before....GRRRREAT HAVING YOU BACK IN FULL FORM.

You were deeply missed by all.

D

[TheKingfish]

3. Are you saying

That if not one single act of violence was perpetrated by a Palestinian from 1948 till present - that there would be a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank?

[The Magistrate]

4. If The Arab Nationalist Leadership, Sir

Had in 1947 accepted the U.N. Partition, and declared statehood at the expiration of the Mandate, along with a recognition of the state of Israel declared at the same time, it is hard to see what grounds Israel would have had to war against it. Trans-Jordan and Syria might have, of course....

[TheKingfish]

5. You didn't answer the question

Let me ask this. If no violent act had taken place by any Palestinian against any Israeli citizen from 1967 to the present, would there be an independent Palestinians state?

[The Magistrate]

6. Of Course The Question Was Answered, Sir

You cannot take not liking the answer you get for not getting any answer.

Obviously, any exercise in counterfactuals cannot be conclusive, though it may be illuminating and stimulating to thought on the matter. So here is a factual question, susceptible of a clear answer, for you: going back to the beginning of the conflict, which may be taken as the English eviction of the Ottoman from Palestine in 1918, what concrete benefit, territorial, political, or economic, has a course of violence gained the people of Arab Palestine over the those eighty-six years? In what ways has their position improved in that time due to the use of violence?

"When a nation makes its appeal to the court of violence there is one thing it must not do; it must not lose."

[TheKingfish]

7. Ill take that as a NO, and i would agree

As for your question.

Violence has prevented the Gaza strip and West Bank from being annexed by Israel. It is also forcing Israel to withdrawl from the Gaza strip all together. Additionally had there been no violent resistance, the Palestinian population would probably all be living on land the size of a postage stamp.

[The Magistrate]

8. It Has Done Nothing Of The Sort, Sir

The fact is that every spasm of violence indulged in by the Arab Palestinian leadership, beginning in the first years after the Great War, has left that people in a more straitened condition than existed before the outbreak, and that every occasion when that people's leadership rejected compromise has been followed by harder and morer restrictive conditions being offered. It is a common and humorous definition of insanity that calls it doing the same thing time after time in the expectation each time the result will be different than before. Rest assured, Sir, that if the people of Israel decided once and for all that they wanted the territories of the Jordan Valley, or even Gaza for that matter, there is nothing the various armed militia bodies of Arab Palestine could do that would prevent the seizure taking place.