Coyote, et al,
Let's clear one thing up first. The Palestinian-American community is not in the same population of "people" as the Arab-Palestinian. And the threat the American-Palestinian communities presents is no greater a threat than does the Irish Community in Boston, or any of the so-called "self-radicalization" faces on the domestic terrorist scene.
The Arab-Palestinian Movements have established political parties it is seriously fragmented, chaotic and without direction. This generates frustration (political and Paramilitary) with no unified voice and the failure in achieving any real progress for peace. Although it is generally believed that the Peace would represent progress in the Middle East Process, that is not exactly true. If a Generalize and Working Peace Accord were struck between the Israel and the Arab-Palestinian, there would be some adverse ripples:
• It would spell the beginning of the end for the UNRWA, and many other income generators on the economy. and the vast number of employees of the UNRWA are Arab-Palestinian and there livelihood is dependent on the continuation of the UNRWA. Many Palestinians have never known a time when the UNRWA was not around. Remember, nearly 90% of UNRWA-designated refugees have never actually been displaced.
∆ UNHCR is present in 116 countries, has 262 offices worldwide with 6,260 staff members – 5,400 of whom are in the field.
∆ UNRWA has a workforce of some 28,000 locally-recruited staff, many of whom have spent decades in the service of their fellow Palestinian refugees.
• The Palestinian people, according to a recent study by the
Jerusalem Institute of Justice, have received per capita, adjusted for inflation, 25 times more aid than did Europeans to rebuild war-torn Western Europe under the Marshall plan after the Second World War.
• If the entire Palestinian Authority leadership lives off an international welfare check that arrives only because the conflict still exists, there isn't much incentive for ending the conflict.
Interesting and, I agree with the fragmented, chaotic, without direction aspect as well as the frustration generated and I can see the economic incentives towards perpetrating the conflict yet despite that, the Palestinians have sought representation and recognition in the UN. While I understand the arguments against their doing so, I also understand the reasons for it, including Israel's own lack of progress towards a two-state solution in recent years, a reflection of Netanyahu's personal beliefs and stated goal that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. If the Palestinians are seeking that recognition, then it would seem that the economic incentives for maintaining the statis-quo aren't all that strong.
Comparing aid given to the Palestinians vs the Marshal Plan seems disengenius. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone on since 1948, that's going on 68 years of off and on fighting, the
UNRWA has provided aid for 65 years.
The Marshall Plan was in operation for only 4 years. This makes me question the validity and bias of the source, unless I am misreading the claim.
The other claim I question is that "
90% of UNRWA-designated refugees have never actually been displaced" - where does that claim come from? For example, I can find this, in reference to
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon:
The USCR’s 1999 report on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon estimates the number of internally displaced Palestinians at 20,000. It is reported that between 1972 – 1988, around 90% of Palestinian refugees have been displaced once, 66% displaced twice and 20% three times or more (Khalidi, 2001: 10, - See more at:
Refugee Camps That is only for Lebenon.
Palestine refugees | UNRWA
Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
If 1/3 of Palestinian refugees reside in refugee camps they or their parents were clearly displaced. I don't see how this "90%" figure comes out unless children of refugees are not counted as displaced (yet residing in a refugee camp is itself a displacement and in many of those countries there are restrictions on their ability to find work and no citizenship).
From the political and economic standpoint, where would you - practically speaking - expel the belligerent Hostile Arab Palestinians. No country, not even the Arab League countries would accept such transfers. These people are volatile and dangerous for a whole host of reasons; as well as an economic burden with no real prospect of making a productive contribution.
What do you base that on Rocco? Palestinian immigrants to America have done well - the Palestinian-American community is economically thriving and certainly making a productive contribution as do Palestinian immigrants around the world.
(COMMENT)
The environment shapes the people; and, the people that shape productivity. If there is no one to shape the environment in a positive direction
(everyone concentrating on the continuation of conflict) then that fundamentally shapes the environment negatively --- which (like a rebreather) has an influence on the people.
Remember, the majority of any threat assessment comes from the study and close examination of the past. A similar effort to that of the Arab-Palestinian is the Sinn Féin; founded on 28 November 1905, just a little older then the first embryonic Hostile Palestinians efforts. And just as the goal of the Sinn Féin is to fight for the unification of Ireland and the abandonment of the Partition, so it is with the Arab-Palestinian and their goal of unification the the elimination of Partition. The similarities are many. yet the end development may be so different. The people of Ireland have learned that the armed campaigns of paramilitary groups becomes too costly for the people and their development. This diverges from the Hostile Arab Palestinian that have determined and reaffirmed several times that Jihadism is the proper method of negotiation.
NOTE:
I was quite surprised when General John de Chastelain (Retired), formerly the Chief of the Defense Staff, Canadian Armed Forces, and former Ambassador to the US, announced (2005) the completed decommissioning of the arms (much of it bought with American donations) in the hands of the Irish Republican Army, and the more generalized disarmament of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. But that threat is dwindling to near nothing.
Can you even imagine the Palestinians ever coming to that negotiated end?
I hadn't thought of comparisons to the Irish Troubles, but that is a good one.
Yes, I can imagine it - BUT - does Israel really want it (witness Netanyahu's statments and actions).
On the Palestinian side, you have groups working towards a negotiated solution and towards peace (you don't much about them, perhaps because they don't provide good propoganda platforms for Hamas or Israel's hardliners).
Combatants for Peace | There is another way!
Palestinians for Peace and Democracy
Israelis and Palestinians march for peace in Jerusalem - CNN.com
Seeds of Peace
Palestinian public opinion polls are interesting and contradictory on this (I can't find how questions were worded so it's hard to know the methodology) but there are some glimmers of hope despite the negatives. For the first time, non-violent approaches seem like they are gaining traction.
(1) Popular Palestinian-Israeli confrontations:
- 67% support and 31% oppose use of knives in the current confrontations with Israel. But about three quarters (73%) oppose the participation of young school girls in the stabbing attacks and a quarter supports it.
- 37% believe that the current confrontations will develop into a new armed intifada, 18% believe they will develop into wide scale peaceful popular confrontations, and 13% believe they will develop in both directions. By contrast, 19% believe the confrontation will stay as they are now and 10% believe they will gradually dissipate.
- 66% of the public (71% in the Gaza Strip and 63% in the West Bank) believe that if the current confrontations develop into an armed intifada, such a development would serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.
- 50% of the public (61% in the Gaza Strip and 43% in the West Bank) believe that if the current confrontations develop into wide scale peaceful popular confrontations, such a development would serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.
- 51% of the public (62% in the Gaza Strip and 43% in the West Bank) believe that if the current confrontations stay as they are now, they would serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.
- 51% of the Palestinian public (67% in the Gaza Strip and 40% in the West Bank) believe that most of the Palestinians who fell after being shot by the Israeli army or settlers have in fact stabbed or were attempting to stab Israelis. But 47% believe that most of those who were shot have not stabbed or were not attempting to stab Israelis.
- We ask the public in an open-ended question what reason it believes behind the lack of large popular participation in the current confrontations. The largest percentage (43%) said that the reason might be fear of the PA or the occupation; 19% thought the reason is despair and the belief that the confrontations are likely to be in vain; 6% said that most people are busy providing for their families; 5% said it is due to lack of factional leadership for the current confrontations; and 4% said it has to do with the lack of friction points with the Israeli occupation forces.
- We also asked the public in an open-ended question about the motivation of the little school girls who participate in stabbing attacks: 41% said they believe they are driven by national motivation; 26% said the motivation was personal; and 16% said the motivation was religious. 11% said it was a combination of national and religious motivations.
- When comparing the level of support of various parties for the current confrontations, Hamas comes on top with 71% of the public believing that it supports them, followed by the PFLP, receiving 66%, Fatah (59%), and al Mubadara or the Initiative (53%). By contrast, only 33% say president Abbas supports the confrontations, 28% say Jordan supports them, and only 14% say Egypt supports them.
In 1950, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, established a new Parliament that was composed of 50% Palestinians of the West Bank --- and --- 50% of the Jordanians representing the Kingdom East of the Jordan River. It was then that the Arab-Palestinians exercised their right of self-determination and accepted Annexation. It is understood that there is the concepts of Articles 47 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prevents coercion of the West Bank from being coerced by the Jordanians. But in that effort, the Hostile Arab Palestinians (PLO Fedayeen and insurgents of the PFLP) formed an armed rebellion against the Jordanians that granted citizenship, and called for Regime Change -- and the establishment of Palestinian control in Jordan. While Syria, Yemen and Iraq may not now have all that much to lose today (each having been ravaged by war: Arab on Arab) Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt do not want to become another smoking wreckage of a nation, all because the Palestinians (solving every dispute by conflict), first began with an insurgency and gradually working up to a full blown insurrection against the very people that came to their aid. Certainly, none of these countries, being much higher on the Human Development Scale than Palestinians, want to suffer the economic loss and commercial setbacks that come with conflict.
I can see how they would be hesitant - their stability is a fragile thing in the current landscape.
Another aspect to making a positive contribution in the booklet:
Making a positive contribution – being involved with the community and society, and not engaging in anti-social or offending behavour. What is different in the changes is found in the molding of the future: children. Example:
HAMAS Bashes UNRWA Human Rights Curriculum
Curriculum. First, he argued, the curriculum was “completely detached from the reality of an Arab Muslim Palestinian student.”
“The vast majority of examples [in the books] refer to [Mahatma] Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Helen Suzman, the Soweto Uprising, the Magna Carta and Apartheid, even though Islamic-Arab-Palestinian alternatives exist,” Al-Minawi said. “There are many models which could be used which are closer to the students’ understanding.”
The Palestinian narrative was also marginalized in the books, Al-Minawi complained; presented in a “superficial” and “distorted” way. For instance, the reason given for the Nakba, or Palestinian “catastrophe” of the inception of Israel, was the Ottoman alliance with the Germans in World War I rather than “the Zionist occupier.”
But perhaps worst of all, the books focused on “peaceful resistance as the only way of achieving freedom and independence.” The entire eighth grade curriculum, Al-Minawi lamented, is “not dedicated to human rights but to domesticate the psyche of the Palestinian pupil, fostering negative feelings toward armed resistance.”
I'm not understanding totally on how this is bad...and given it's source article, it sounds like there could be some interpretation being given on some of these comments. For example, There is an ongoing pro-Israeli narrative (that has become propoganda in my opinion) that the Palestinian textbooks are rife with intolerance, anti-semitism, violence. Several studies have indicated that is not the case when they
did a comparison of Palestinian and Israeli textbooks. They found the largest number of negatives in text books used by the ultra orthodox schools, and
Hamas. What they found was that
both books tended to marginalize the other.
Israeli propoganda is trying very hard to erase Palestinian's indentity and history, by maintaining a pro-Israeli spin. A people have a right to their history whether Jewish or Palestinian, and Nakba is a part of the Palestinian history. Trying to deny it was a result of Zionist territorial aims and the conflict that produced Israel is deceptive. Hamas does have a point with that. (Probably, given the article I found, their only point since their particular textbooks are questionable).
This is the transmission of terrorism by succeeding generations: Article 15: It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses). It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah el-Din (Saladin).
"Terror glorification is highly visible in Palestinian society. A Palestinian child can walk to school along a street named after the terrorist Abu Jihad, who planned a bus hijacking that killed 37, spend the day learning in a school named after Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, in the afternoon play football in a tournament named after suicide terrorist Abd Al-Basset Odeh who killed 30, and end his day at a youth center named after terrorist Abu Iyad, responsible for killing the 11 Olympic athletes in Munich. A young woman can join a university women’s club named Sisters of Dalal, after Dalal Mughrabi, attend a week at Al-Quds University honoring suicide bomb builder Yahya Ayyash, and participate in university rallies named after numerous terrorists. Honoring terrorists envelops and plays a significant part in defining the Palestinian world."
Taken From Palestine Watch
I disagree that it's - as a whole - a transmission of terrorism to succeeding generations. If you make that claim, it would seem that Israeli textbooks are questionable as well given what the study uncovered.
Second, the question of "honoring terrorists" comes up often yet there is an inherent hypocrisy there. The Israeli's honored their Irgun terrorists - naming public squares, yeshivas, building and streets after them - they are still honored and their actions have never been repudiated. I agree, it's not a good thing to do and perpetrates a toxic culture that can invision no future beyond conflict, but how do you untangle it from what is viewed as a legitimate conflict against an occupying power such as the Jews vs the Brits.
In this thumbnail view, releasing the Hostile Arab Palestinians into the international community, only exacerbates the threat condition by spreading the virus of indoctrinated children into a generally uninfected group. This is a threat of the worst kind; because in the West Civilizations, it is almost insidious to target children for re-indoctrination. This is only considered as last resort measure in cases of (self-destruction) drug use detoxification and the breaking of Cult indoctrinations.
Most Respectfully,
R
You make good points - however, I offer the following.
Palestinian immigration has been and is occurring, often through highly risky channels because they see so little future for their children, no jobs, no hope.
Young Gazans risk lives to escape to Europe - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
According to economic analyst Maher al-Tabbah, “The main reasons pushing Gazans to consider emigration are high unemployment rates, low political stability and frequent wars, in addition to the intensification of the siege.” He noted, “If a foreign country expresses its willingness to receive Palestinians, thousands will leave the Gaza Strip.”
The Palestinian diaspora around the world has produced some interesting results and viewpoints that I think could broaden perspectives and economic opportunities within the Palestinian territories, for example:
Interview: Latin America's dynamic Palestinian communities
What role can the Latin American Palestinian diaspora play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?In my opinion, Palestinians in Latin America can play several roles. Politically, they can lobby their governments for stronger support to the Palestinians. They are already doing this. Their mobilization partly explains the wave of recognition of the Palestinian State by almost all Latin American countries. This kind of support is important for balancing the pro-Israeli bias of US foreign policy in multilateral organizations, like UNESCO, the UN General Assembly, etc. Economically, the wealthiest businessmen can bring their financial support to important projects and institutions. Some are already contributing to the development of the University of Bethlehem. This is good, but more could probably be done, not only in terms of charity but also in terms of productive investments.At the level of ideas, intellectuals and artists of Palestinian descent could play a greater role. We have not seen the emergence of a Latin American Edward Said yet, and I think it is a pity because their Latin American experience could certainly enrich the political debate in Palestine.
