This is like Groundhog Day

Submitted by Jeff (United States), Nov 16, 2017 at 16:23

And you thought Groundhog Day was just a movie.

Camp David came and went. Like it never even happened.
Oslo? Oh, I remember. That was the end of all incitement.
Camp David again in 2000? Right, remember that too.
The roadmap? I think I remember that.

Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians, returning land taken during wartime. Surely after that, there would be peace, right? Wrong.

So let's make a list of all the countries in the world that have voluntarily given back land they won fair and square in a war:
1. Israel
2. USA

Mmm, rather a short list.

Yes it's a toxic mix but the most amazing element is the international support and cheerleading. At the end of World War II, millions of people of German descent were ethnically cleansed from eastern Europe as borders were redrawn. Thousands died on the road after expulsion and millions more arrived in Germany as refugees. Where are the German refugees now? Where are the German refugee camps and where's the zillion dollar UN bureaucracy to worry about them? And where's their right of return?

After the Hiroshima bomb, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, attacked the Kurile islands and promptly ethnically cleansed the islands of all Japanese residents. Where are their refugee camps? Why don't I recall discussions about their right of return? And where's the UN?

In only one case, people displaced in a war started by them and their allies have an everlasting right to return to land they lost in that war. And the world finances their endless efforts, including lifetime monthly payments to the families of courageous men like Mohammed Tarayreh, who willingly took on the might of a little 13 year old girl and managed to bravely stab her to death while she was asleep in her bedroom.

Peace would mean President Abbas would have to think about actual government services, an actual education system and maybe even an independent judiciary. Not to mention nurturing economic growth. Even with his PhD, this all seems a bit off-putting to our Dr. Abbas (as it was for his predecessor) and it's much easier to just keep the low-level war going, blame every problem on those awful Jews next door and keep the cash payments coming. If peace breaks out, who then gets the blame for mundane stuff like when the trash isn't picked up or the running water isn't running in Palestine? The democratically elected president? That might risk truncating Dr. Abbas' 4 year term to something maybe even less than 20 years. Can't have that.

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