Ted Rall for August 19, 2013
Transcript:
Ignoring American complaints, Palestine has begun construction of new settlements on the disputed west bank of the Hudson. (Man: America has never really done much with these areas. They're grim and culturally barren, meanwhile, Gaza is overcrowded.) Americans say the Palestinians are stealing their land and making it hard to travel. (Woman: The Wa-Wa in Hackensack was run by my father and his father before him. But now it's behind their "security wall." But, noting their need to protect themselves from American terrorist attacks, Palestinians say that negotiations are pointless. (Man 2: We offered them almost everything, they wanted. But they keep attacking us! And they keep electing extremists.) Americans will pretty much keep throwing rocks and whining about U.N. resolutions. (Man 3: But the settlements are illegal!) (Man 1: Cute.)
The West Bank was part of Jordan until Israel stole it. Gaza was Egyptian until Israel turned it into a concentration camp. Golan is part of Syria, not Israel. Two decades of Israeli occupation in south Lebanon was the reason Hezbolla gained support. Russian Jews and those from Eastern Europe came in to settle the new nation of Israel after WW II, it is not any more a nation than those other Middle East nations, like Iraq where European outsiders drew the boundaries.
HAD the U.N. followed, and enforced a two-state solution using boundaries like the Peel commission suggested decades earlier, a more “peaceful” solution, including joint administration of Jerusalem (which Israel refuses to accept, at least the right-wingers in Likud) to create greater equality for the people whose families had occupied the land for two millennia.