markfiend wrote:the_inescapable_truth wrote:Why am I getting the impression that no one gives a flying f**k about innocent Israelis being murdered?
It's not that simple though is it?
Would the Palestinian territories be such a fertile breeding ground for suicide bombers if they had a similar standard of living as Jewish Israelis? This is what people mean when they talk about apartheid. Israel is making a rod for its own back with this situation.
I sympathise with your point of view though; I'd far rather deal with a nominally democratic society such as Israel (despite the unwarranted influence that the ultra-orthodox wield) than with an outright theocratic society as seems to be favoured in the Muslim world.
We ought to be careful about economic reductionism and the projection of Western motives onto non-Westerners.
I'm not so sure it's a question of standard of living than a question of what Tocqueville might call the social state. (Classically) Liberal societies tend to be stable and productive societies where wealth is created and distributed, and people are willing to work hard because they know that the fruits of their labor are secure under the rule of law. The Palestinian territories, however, don't really have the rule of law (think about the post-election running gun-battles in the Palestinian parliament when one party lost power and didn't want to leave), and because they lack that, their ability to be a productive society with a high standard of living is severely hampered. Mexico might be a useful parallel: the reason Mexicans come to the US illegally to work is that things are so bad in Mexico that even being here illegally, they are better off. Why are things so bad in Mexico? Because they have a corrupt government that is not interested in the rule of law, thus the "rational and industrious" Mexicans (to use Locke's language) come to the US, because the fruits of their labor are safer here, even when they're here illegally, than they are in Mexico (as an aside, I think fear of a communist revolution in Mexico is a major factor that keeps the US from actually doing anything about the border--better to have spirited young Mexicans here illegally than to have the pressure build up in Mexico if they stayed there).
George W. Bush was imprudent to support elections in the Palestinian territories as a panacea for this very reason. Liberalism is a social precondition for a functioning democracy, not a result of democratic governmental mechanisms. Elections are not a magic cure-all, and they may actually be harmful. A people that does not have and revere freedom of the press, property rights, or the rule of law are not going to be magically transformed into democrats overnight. They have to have these things before they can have democratic government--these are the preconditions of it.
The Palestinians territories are not, I think, a "fertile breeding ground for suicide bombers" because they can't afford iPods and Blu-Ray players (again, we ought to be careful about projecting our own Western materialism onto non-Westerners), but because they're not a liberal society. That's not to say illiberalism necessarily leads to suicide bombing, but it is to say that classical liberalism is generally speaking going to be incompatible with it.
As for Israel, she is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation." History has shown that when they "lighten up" on the Palestinians, Israeli civilians die. They respond, tit-for-tat. Thucydides, in his history of the Pelopponesian War, says that there are some conflicts that go on for so long that you can't determine who "started" it, and that questions of that sort no longer matter. That is precisely the case here. It doesn't
matter who started it any more. What matters is how it will end. The path to peace, it seems to me, requires a liberalization of Palestinian society and some sort of security guarantee for Israel. That in turn probably requires a liberalization in the greater Arab world. There are signs that it may be coming, but there are also powerful anti-liberal forces at work in the Arab world.
And you must strongly believe in the US democracy as well?!
i'm quite happy to admit that my post was only a superficial analysis, you've obviously given the situation a lot more thought than I have.
