It’s an ages-old technique for keeping the things we fear at a hopefully safe distance. We close our eyes, we look away if we can’t close our eyes. We block our ears with white noise, with what passes for music, with environmental audio-trash. We hope the bad things go away. But they rarely do. The more real the danger, the less likely it is to vanish when we behave like frightened children.
Case in point: The refusal of Arab states snd the Palestinian authority to recognize that Israel currently exists as a permanent Jewish state whether or not the PA and its potential citizens like the fact. The PA leaders recognize that to accept Israel’s existence is to commit political and possibly physical suicide. The longstanding mob of presumed refugees will then have to face the reality that they’ve been lied to by a series of corrupt and greedy leaders who used them as cannon fodder and kept them believing that they would eventually eject the Israelis from the land. To acknowledge Israel in any manner is to have to admit to millions of currently stateless Arabs that they are not really refugees because of Israel, but because of the actions and inactions of various Arab states and leaders. Recognizing Israel means telling people who believe that they are refugees that they are not; and that they are never going to begin living in Israel.
There may still be some “refugees” who became displaced when Israel defeated five invading nations to prove its independence in 1947. If these “refugee” exist they are 61 years of age or older. Children born to them in the “camps” which were set up by the losing Arab states to contain Arabs who bore loyalty to no monarchy or oligarchy, and were thus dangerous to the Arab states status quo; are not refugees from what is now Israel. They are homeless/stateless people not allowed to become citizens of the nations that encouraged their parents to flee Israel. As such they are rightfully the problem of those Arab states that have kept them in squalor and used them for cannon fodder and for maintaining political unrest in the Middle East.
Israel is also guilty of hiding from reality. The Israeli right has deluded itself into believing that if a two-state solution is prevented from taking place; then the “refugees” will eventually magically disappear, Sarah Palin will win the Nobel prize in physics before the “refugees” give up their demands to claim land in Israel. There are millions of stateless “would-be-Palestinians who should become either citizens of their own state or one of the Arab nations. The Arab states owe them that much.
Israel owes them the land they were granted by the UN, minus the portion annexed by Jordan. Israel needs to stop the settlers now, by all necessary methods in order to turn that land over with any improvements that now exist upon the lands in question. Gaza rightfully belongs to Egypt, which wants it no more than does Israel. There can never be a safe highway passage between Gaza and the West Bank through Israel. Everyone needs to realize and agree to that..
The two-state-solution needs to happen now. The longer Israel delays it, the less likely it will be to take place; and the less likely it will be that Israel lasts to its first centennial celebration. The longer the PA delays it, the less they will receive in land, water, services, and potentially loyal citizens.
It is time for everyone to open their eyes, shut their mouths, begin to listen, and to create a viable Palestine that recognizes the Jewish state of Israel. Millions of lives in two miniscule nations will depend upon it. Any other response by any nation or group is just whistling by the grave yard.
The morning broke cloudy and rainy. We received over an inch of rain between midnight and 0800. The back roads are covered, in places, with sodden carpets of fallen leaves that are as dangerous under tires as is glare ice. The drive into town involved continual fussy adjustments to wiper tempos and lighting. Many of the higher mountains were fog-shrouded; barely showing through the low cloud deck that filled valleys and canyons with thick, gray mist. The trees have gained more color since Thursday. The ride home should be very pretty.
We may see temperatures in the 30’s tonight.
Dinner will be soup for Gloria and leftover chili for me.
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