Arafat never missed a chance to miss a chance so the Palestinians remain stateless. I have this recurring fantasy whereby a Mandela arises among this dispossed people, turns them away from bitterness and leads them to the Promised Land. Literally. And then reality intrudes.

"...the Philadelphia Corridor, the dividing line between Gaza and Egypt,.."

A minor correction and an interesting historical note:

The name of the corridor is the PHILADELPHI corridor, i.e., without the terminal "a", unlike the city name.  I don't know when or why it was so named but it actually came into being early in the 20th century during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, as the outgrowth of negotiations between the Turks and the Egyptians to set the border between the Empire and Egypt.  Technically the corridor turns southward, continuing along the Israeli-Egyptian border, all the way to Eilat.

One of the great peculiarities of the P.C. (geographic, not ideological / sociological) is that the city of Rafiah is split by the Gaza-Egyptian border with part inside Gaza and part inside Egypt.  When the Hamas broke through the Egyptian border wall (gasp! a WALL) several months back relatives from both sides of Rafiah relatives from the Gaza side got to visit with relatives on the Egyptian side for the first time in a number of years  (I believe since the outbreak of the Oslo Accords War).

Invariably Israel is blamed, particularly by progressobabble speaking peoples for dividing the city and separating the relatives.  But although it may break the heart of the progressobabelians to learn that the fault lies not with Israel, but  with the Egyptians in general and Anwar Sadat in particular, that is the historical fact.

During the original Camp David negotiations under the auspices of Jimmy Carter (a.k.a. as JC -- just ask him) the question of Rafiah was deferred to the end.  When the time came to deal with Rafiah, Israeli P.M. Begin (from the Likud! (p'tooi, p'tooi, p'tooi)) turned to Sadat and said that he thought that Rafiah should remain intact and the border between Gaza & Egypt should be moved either north or south in order to keep the city in its entirely inside one jurisdiction or the other.  Begin then said that since Sadat out-ranked Begin diplomatically (a president is a higher suit than a P.M.), he Sadat should decide whether the border should be moved northward to shift Rafiah to Egyptian control or southward to shift Rafiah to Israeli control.

Sadat thought for a few seconds and said that it would be wrong to shift the sacred border, and therefore Rafiah must be split between the two jurisdictions.  Begin tried to persuade Sadat to let Rafiah remain intact and offered again to shift the border North so that Rafiah could remain intact under their Arab "brethren" to the south, but Sadat refused to budge from his Solomonesque verdict.  JC either backed Sadat or refused to take a position (I don't recall which).

And so Rafiah was divided and that is why Israel is blamed for separating families.

Hershel Ginsburg

Jerusalem / Efrata

P.S.   My familiarity with the various and sundry progressobabbelian allegations against Israel comes in large part for having hosted (with a fellow masochist) over a 6 year period about 20-30 Israel-hostile, self-described "progressive" groups (usually church related) who come through Efrata for a Q&A session.  They want to come see a "real" settlement and gawk at "settlers" to check out their horns & tails.  I have gone into temporary but indefinite retirement from this circus, but my co-host friend continues to host the groups and fills me in on the last "progressive" rants.  I guess he has a higher pain tolerance than I do.

So, Ginzy -- I get all kinds of reactions when I try accuracy here in the states. What responses have you and your friends gotten when you try and discuss things with these oh-so-well-meaning folk you've hosted?

"Let me admit that I was nearly apoplectic about many of the particulars of the offer." Not me, I was overwhelmed because I seriously believed Israel had gone to the last full measure in search of peace. It went beyond what even I considered to be fair and just into unparalled generosity. I am not jewish so I didn't feel any particular bias towards Israel (beyond a bias I have for any democracy) so it was beyond me to feel apoplectic about the peace deal. Let me just say it was then that the veil had been lifted for me when Arafat and his cronies turned it down flat. So in some small measure, for any fair person, the deal did a world of good. Anyone who now hurls accusations at Israel need justify the Palestinian refusal. And no one ever has.

Ginzy. Ha. great post. Your ending reminds me of when I lived in China and when previously desperately poor regions had some degree of modernization had to listen to tourists lament how few peasants they saw living in mud huts and working in rice paddies, and what a shame it was they went shopping in modern shopping centers.

And as I have said before, if you took a lot of residents of Shanghai and switched them with the Gazans, in 2 years Gaza would be an economic dynamo. And the Palestinians in Shanghai would still be a small percentage there would quickly adapt. It would be a win win for everyone.

I love your proposal , blackton. Rafah(standing in for the whole of the West bank) and Shanghai should couple as sister cities then engage in a massive exchange of people,  Hu Jintao could tap into, inter alia, Palestinian engineering talent, Hamas would go the way of unisex dress in China under Mao and the voluntary diaspora of Shanghai would cause a hundred flowers to bloom  next to that plucky democratic polity which would no longer be reviled by such large swatches of world opinion.

I don't disagree with any of this, but "the deal" is what a final deal is going to look like, and the world better cram it down all the parties (broadly speaking -- i.e., includng the Arabs and Iran) throat or the technology is going to race ahead of the politics and those rockets in Gaza are going to start hitting apartments in Tel Aviv and will be carrying micronized anthrax.  Maybe that's going to happen regardless of whether their is a peace agreement or not, but if Israel is going to have to reoccupy gaza or the west bank, at least let it be under the unambiguous failure of a Palestinian state.  

lymon1: "the unambiguous failure of a Palestinian state."  Back to the question I asked Ginzy -- for those, especially the do-gooder politically correct, deliberately ignorant, victim-loving crowd -- what can ever be unambiguous enough to get them to lay off attacking and blaming Israel....?????

LISAH -- possibly nothing, but that's why some Arab commentators (and Marty I believe has linked to them) have said Palestine may not be ready for an independent state,because then they would be treated like an independent state.  It wouldn't be "resistance to occupation," it'd be an unambiguous act of war.  

LISAH: There are victims everywhere, though, but some victims are more equal than others. Compared to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, the world community spends little time making life hell for the thugs of Yangon who have Myanmar in a stranglehold. Anti - semitism explains some of this but as for the rest?

"We are once again in the clutch, and this time around it is the clutch of

the Bush administration trying to salvage the simulacrum of at least one

diplomatic achievement in its last year of office. So Ms. Rice is flying

back and forth to Israel to squeeze it yet again for more and

more."

About a week ago, Abbas came to the White House and offered nothing but scorn for U.S. and Israeli efforts (settlements are still growing, tsk, tsk, civilians are dying under IDF fire in Gaza.) No concessions were offered or requested of the P.A., as far as I can tell. Nothing about Shalit, nothing about weapons crackdowns, not even a declaration of good intentions.

Conversely, When Olmert met with Bush some weeks earlier, concessions were being wrung out of him like a wash cloth, including easing of checkpoints, release of prisoners, more humanitarian aid to Gaza, another donor conference...

Can someone explain why these diplomatic efforts are so lopsided? Because Abbas is powerless to make any concessions and the no one wants to mention that the emperor has no clothes? Or is it just the soft bigotry of low expectations?

Blackie: I'm with you on the apoplectic thing.  In fact, the strongest argument I can deploy against the "Israel needs to make more concessions" argument among my "progressive" friends is precisely this: Israel did make many concessions, but all of it was rejected on the altar of a chimerical "right to return" (if you think Arafat had a shred of decency or honesty, which I don't, may he burn in Hell) or for Arafat's business interests.  Or simply because he was comfortable buggering Rumanian rough trade and didn't want to give that up. (This last, a delicious rumour that I cannot verify, but it is the only part of Arafat's life that makes him vaguely human.)

Ginzy: great post.  For me, Sadat remains the most decent, perceptive and heroic of all Arab/Muslim leaders this side of - well, since Suleiman the Magnificent. (I still remember the image of him bending down to kiss Golda Meir in her wheelchair, on the tarmac - I think it was in Jerusalem airport.  For all his support of Israel, the Shah never went there.)  Sad to think that on this issue, his judgement might have tanked.

Lymon1: one of the essential criteria of being an independent state is to be in control of your own territory.  Who is in control of which territory in the Palestinian area?  I mean, assuming Israel evacuates the West Bank: which is Palestine and who controls it?  Gaza?  The West Bank?  Hamas, Abbas?  The roving gangs of Palestinian terrorists who kidnap and kill other Palestinians?

Icarusr: Anwar al - Sadat was an amazing person and I too recall the gesture of which you speak. When he was murdered by Islamic militants (one of whose number was Ayman al - Zawahiri) there was a tepid reaction in Cairo and elsewhere in Eygpt, compared to the feverent mourning of Gamel Nasser upon his death. Peace with Israel is not particularly popular in Egypt; it is a cold peace. Yassir Arafat was a plague on the Palestinian people, petty and corrupt.

Ehud Barak tendred the best offer that the Palestinians ever recieved and they replied with the second intifada. If Arafat could not get everything he wanted, he chose nothing. Mercifully he is dead now but Abbas has been neutered. Hamas is in the ascendent and it is once again time - as usual - to be depressed about the outcome of this interminable conflict.

icarusr -- I think everyone except Iran accepts the PA as the party with authority to make deals for the Palestinians, but any deal is going to have to be ratified by elections in both Palestine and Israel.  I think we're on the same page -- once Palestine is an independent state, there's no excuses for what happens inside it's territory.  I'm sure Israel would insist that this be explicit in any agreement.   At that point they either control Hamas or it's an act of war (i.e., permits troop entry).  

Look, I understand this isn't perfectly fair to Israel, but nobody is talking about the alternatives.  To repeat a phrase I use regularly, the technology is moving faster than the politics.  It's a bit like the energy crisis -- we can't afford to wait for "the market" to take care of things and Israel can't wait for the Palestinians to come to their senses.

Maybe I should have said "the world" instead of "Israel"

lymon1, liberal reformer and everone noting the lopsided approach to this -- that's of course the point, isn't it? The more unreasonable and intractable you are, the more everyone caters to you, and the less accuracy matters...no matter how many times, e.g., ginzy might make the points he makes, the "progressabbabble" crowd, as he calls these clowns, refuses to pay attention or to acknowledge accuracy when it hits them in the face.

Reminds me of an incident here in NY a decade or 2 back -- some  race or poverty issue -- don't recall the specifics -- but some upscale know-it-all issued her proclamation stating that the group she perceived as the victim -- and ergo deserving -- was correct. It was immediately clear that wasn't the case , but she just as immediately issued a statement that the facts didn't matter. All that mattered was the politically correct position she held....

LisaH: I have to deal with the perception issue all the time.  I really do think that what is happening is the hard bigotry of no expectations in respect of the Arabs and the Palestinians.  I mean, if you scratch the average Western anti-Israeli person, you are likely to find someone who has no intellectual respect for the Arabs or the Palestinians.  You can't constantly pretend that an entire people is so infantile as not to be in control of its emotions, not to be be able to negotiate properly, not to manage itself and billions of aid properly, and at the same time have any real love or respect for them.  Yes, they talk about oppression and all that nonsense, but at the end of the day, the excuses that are made on behalf of Palestinian violence is little better than how one would justify savagery by precivilization humanoids.

Meanwhile, Israel: well, they're a democratic country, they're like us, we don't bulldoze people's homes, Israel should not.  It boils down to that.  The "why", the whole question of proportionality, the endless barrage of missiles and so on - they almost never make it to the self-comparative calculation.

I think Israel needs better image/reputation management, above all.  Although, once Bibi becomes PM again, that might not be so easy ...

icarusr -- yes, agreed -- the level of condecension inherent in the PC crowd's attitude toward the "palestinians" is just plain appalling; it's bigotry pure and simple, coming from those who yell racism over nothing and worship the likes of an Al Sharpton. But I disagree on the bulldozing and similar Israeli measures -- the alternative to these measures and targeted assassinations, etc.. is all-out war -- which may at some point be what happens. And as bad as Israel's PR is, it doesn't matter, does it? No matter what the particular event/situation/action, Israel always gets hit on the image front. So why bother at all?

Anyway -- this is so central, this inability, refusal, really, to acknowledge reality on the part of so much of the world that it's hard to see any way of resolving this over the next several centuries... It just feels hopeless.

Oh well -- I'm off to a -- gulp -- meeting about something much less tension-provoking...

LisaH: I don't object to the measures - I was simply setting out the thinking behind much of the "Israel is behaving badly" arguments.

Peretz, you really need to stop with the idea that the Gaza disengagement was a result of American pressure. Sharon used disengagement as an alternative to the Road Map, which was what Washinton really wanted to pursue. They got on board with disengagement eventually, but the chief architects of the plan were Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

Remember the kidnapping story of the three young Jewish Brazilians in Poland?

Here is more info:

"Polish authorities charge Kuwaiti ambassador's son in Jewish abduction case "

The Associated Press   Tuesday, May 6, 2008

"WARSAW, Poland: Polish authorities charged the Kuwaiti ambassador's son with briefly abducting three Jewish teenagers at a hotel and claiming he had a bomb, police said Tuesday.

The 23-year-old son of Ambassador Khaled Al-Shaibani, identified only as Mohammad A., was charged with holding the teenagers against their will, Warsaw police spokesman Anna Kedzierzowska said.

Kedzierzowska said the suspect has confessed and faces a suspended sentence of 10 months to three years. The suspect will be released pending his court hearing. No date had been set.

The Kuwaiti Embassy confirmed the suspect was the ambassador's son, but declined further comment...."

www.iht.com/.../printfriendly.php

Marty where is Israel's 60th anniversary issue?

Here is a great article about it in the Wall Street Journal:

online.wsj.com/.../SB121003365007069313.html

"Israel's 60-Year Test"  By BRET STEPHENS

Speaking of anti-Semitism, has anyone here seen the cartoon on p. 114 of this week's New Yorker?  This offensive.  Pure and simple.  Of course, I could write a letter, but then, I'd just be some kooky, paranoid reader.  

LISAH:  You mentioned yesterday on some other thread that you work at home.  And I always had you pegged as some think-tanker . . . . Ah, the uses of imagination.