The evacuation of isolated West Bank Jewish communities outside of the settlement blocs could cost the government more than NIS 250 billion, the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip said on Monday.
NIS 250Billion is roughly $70 Billion dollars.
It would cost $70 Billion just to evacuate the small settlements in Judea and Samaria (the contested areas).
Even that would not be enough to bring peace. It would still leave Judea and Samaria filled with large settlements that no Palestinian could accept. When other other costs are added in, the numbers rise to the hundreds of billions of dollars (in US dollars), up to a trillion dollars.
That is even ignoring the violent settler backlash which would occur.
The cost of evacuating enough settlers in order to make the Palestinians happy would be prohibitive.
I am not going to get into a debate here about who is right or who is wrong. At this point, it is meaningless. It is too late to correct, now.
Okay the Cost is Prohibitive, but what about the large Number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria?
If one assumes that the Israelis are (or ever were) serious about a two-state solution in the Mideast, please dispense with that idea forever.
The two-state solution is dead.
There are roughly 600,000 Settlers in the contested areas. To move even a portion of the them would cost tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. It is not going to happen.
So it boils down to this:
Israel is not going to leave Judea and Samaria (what the world calls the West Bank).
Yet, there are roughly two million hostile Arabs in the contested area.
What should be done with these Palestinians.
Maybe the Palestinians could go
SOUTH AMERICAN WAY
A) Israel refuses to enfranchise the Palestinians.
B) Martial Law is not sustainable. One cannot expect a people to remain quiet under military rule, especially after decades.
C) The Muslim states refuse to absorb the Palestinians; they want the problem to fester and overwhelm Israel.
So what is to be done with the Palestinians?
No one wants them. Not the Israelis; not their fellow Muslims.
NOTHING IS WORKING.
LETS THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!
I am going to suggest that South America might welcome them if they came in with enough cash.
I know it sounds crazy. But I will develop these ideas over a serious of posts.
PAY ATTENTION!
It should not be dismissed as crazy. Nothing else is working.
May 12, 2017 – Edited: Added series list at bottom. Updated some data. May 1, 2021 – Edited: Made mobile friendly. Corrected errors. June 16, 2022 – Edited: Had to reload/re-insert page, fix bottom menu
This was preached in the United States. However, America has over 30 Million Latins; a greater population than many Latin countries.
The preacher is giving a standard Evangelical line.
The Palestinians do not exist. They are merely Arabs from somewhere else.
I understand his point. He wants to assert Israel’s right to the land. I agree with that.
However, I am not so sure you can say an invented people do not exit.
America invented itself in 1776. Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and a large section of Latin America invented themselves in 1810. Belgium invented itself in 1830.
Nations invent themselves all the time.
There was a considerable Arab population in the land before 1900. Even Jewish sources admit that. About 500,000 non-Jews.
Natural birth rates could explain most of their increasing numbers up to 1948.
Was there migration in during the Mandate period, as Joan Peters asserts? Yes; but most of the Arabs there were not immigrant stock. Joan Peters was not wrong, but she did exaggerate.
The Palestinian-Christians of Chile certainly feel they are Palestinian. They formed a soccer team in 1920 called the Palestinos – Not the Árabes, or Syrios del Sur (South Syrians). They considered themselves Palestinian as early as 1920.
That does not mean the Palestinians have a greater claim to the land than the Jews. It means only that the line of reasoning of the Preacher has its flaws.
One can say the Jews have a better claim. One cannot say the Palestinians have no claim.
When Chavez died last month, much of the world mourned his loss. Though many in the West were glad to see him out of power, it is hard for us in the West to fully appreciate that not only to the Latin world, but also to the Arab World, Chavez was a lion.
To the Arabs, Chavez was a lion.
His pro-Palestinian stance especially endeared him in the contested areas.
Yes, he helped the poor with subsidized education, and assistance. However, like typical leftists, he did it in such a war that it wrecked much of Venezuela’s economy.
In 2002, Chavez withstood a US supported coup against him, which endeared him to the left all over the world.
If he had been previously anti-Israel, and anti-America, after the coup he barreled on, full steam ahead.
He brought in Iranian influence and trade to Latin America; and set up a de-facto alliance between Iran and Venezuela.
Due to Chavez, Venezuela now runs a very anti-Israel transnational television network – TeleSUR – which broadcasts throughout all of Latin America. Even though transnational, Venezuela owns the largest share; and ultimately, a large share of the editorial control. TeleSUR also has a running arrangement with Al Jazeera. One does not have to speak much Spanish to know what effect this is having in Latin America.
Famous 2010 speach where Chavez condemned Israel.
Why was Chavez so anti-Israel?
Was it because Venezuela was 6% Arabic?
I doubt it. The Arabs in Venezuela tend to be elite; and would probably have been his opponents among the better off classes. Besides they are almost all Christian, not Islamic; many from Maronite Catholic ancestry.
Rather, it was probably because of Chavez’s leftist tendencies. Tendencies which had been shaped by a notoriously slippery, politician named Norberto Ceresole, who was a Holocaust denier and anti-semite.
During Chavez’s watch, anti-Semitism increased in Venezuela, and the Jewish community dwindled.
Chavez was merely following a trail that had been blazed a generation earlier by Che Guevera – the premier leftist of his time; and a hero of Chavez.
How could Chavez not follow suit?
In 1959 Che Guevera visited the Palestinian refugee camps in the then Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip. This is a time when most of the world, outside of Araby, favored the Israelis. It says much about Che Guevera, and about Chavez who would idolize him.
Che Guevera meets Nasser
So when Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador in 2006, during the Lebanon War – a war started by Hezbollah, not Israel – he was just doing what leftists do naturally.
In Chavez’s case, he mixed his toxic political brew into a still heavily Catholic culture, where there was a reside – albeit declining before his rise to power – of anti-Semitism.
“The world has enough for everybody, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, and of those that expelled Bolívar from here and in their own way crucified him… have taken control of the riches of the world.”
-Hugo Chavez
In Chavez’s case, his rhetorical went beyond mere anti-Zionism and became borderline vicious. It gave anti-semitism a new breath of life and respectability in Latin America.
Right now, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are run by neo-leftists, all of who worked with, and followed in the footsteps of Hugo Chavez. He has done considerable damage to the world body politic. Worse yet, he has left a large propaganda network to carry on after him. His alliance with Ahmedinejad has given Iran a door into the continent.
Chavez was not the totalitarian in the brutal way that Fidel Castro was; but neither was he a real democrat. He was more of bombastic demagogue. The closest historical analog of Chavez was Juan Perón; but even Juan Perón was never personally anti-semitic – in fact, Perón had a Jewish advisor, José Ber Gelbard.
Chavez’s real power was the power to persuade the masses. Unfortunately, he persuaded them to ignoble hatreds.
Chavez had imbibed the genuinely anti-semitic beliefs of Norberto Ceresole, and it affected his administration. He had aligned himself with the genocidally crazy, President Ahmedinejad of Iran. Through Chavez, anti-Israel bile broadcast out into Latin America, and changed the opinions of much of the Hispanic world.
No wonder the Arab world idolized Chavez!
Chavez did hep the poor, who did need helping; but he under his administration, crime rates soared. He bungled the economy with his regulatory controls. His price controls and subsidies just encouraged smuggling.
As is often the case, bombasts like Chavez fix one problem, but create many more.
It is to be hoped that with his passing, Latin American media will get a little bit less ugly; and find some more reasonable reformers.
April 14, 2020 – Edited: Had to find a new video link for a dead video. September 2, 2020 – Made mobile friendly.
