Polls, Palestinians and the Path to Peace (short article)

[nicky g]

Countries don't "own" lad. Don't you think the inhabitants of an area have any right to a say in who governs them? If Bush ceded Alaska to Japan would that be ok with you?

[MMMMMM]

What's moral or ethical isn't always legal, and vice versa.

The point I'm making is that the the "illegal occupation" doesn't appear to be truly illegal--the legal owners of that land signed it over to Israel.

The Palestinians have been cynically used by the neighboring Arab states to further Arab hatred against Israel. Pushed on one side by Israel, the Palestinians also have been screwed by their fellow neighboring Arabs on the other side, and are tragically caught in the middle, a disenfranchised people who receive very little aid from other Arabs except cash payments from Saddam to continue the propagation of the cottage industry of suicide-bombing. One might think that Jordan, which has a predominantly Palestinian population, ought to be more sympathetic towards the Palestinian plight, but instead Jordan actually took land which had been partitioned for the Palestinians. Later Jordan signed away to Israel land the Palestinians were living on. Yet Paletinian outrage is directed entirely against Israel (and the USA to some extent), not against Jordan.

It's a sad scenario all around. The Palestinians ought to have severe grievances against Jordan, but they don't seem to be concerned with this, and choose instead to vent all of their desperate rage on Israel. Their Arab brothers ought to help the Palestinians, but instead they cheer them on in their self-destructive aggression against Israel while doing little or nothing to offer them aid or land. It's a sad, cynical picture all around, and it isn't all Israel's fault or the Palestinians' fault--other Arab states share in the blame too.