[Torie]

This is a walter mitty fantasy indulgence by the professor. He has no idea what the movement of 2 million people entails. It simply is very unlikely to happen. If it does happen, it might be the beginning of the end of the Israeli state.

[Davea]

Interesting article. I don't know if I believe this is Sharon's plan or not. What I do know is when we hit Iraq/Iran the Israeli's will strke hard into the Bakaa Valley/Syria/Damascus etc. in a concerted move. Regional war? Absolutely! World War? Maybe. This is the plan IMHO. They are taking care of their internal enemy at the moment and will strike out when we attack. The Israeli's on one end of the Mideast and the US on the other. A perfect pincer movement.

[McGavin999]

First of all, I don't think Sharon has this in mind. Second of all, Jordan has had fairly decent relations with Israel so I doubt Israel would "reward" it with a kick in the teeth.

There is NO doubt about what he says would happen should they be stupid enough to attack Israel. If that happens all bets are off.

[AmericaUnited]

shot down 100 Syrian aircraft

Ouch! At 10-30 million dollars a pop, that's billions of dollars worth of airplanes going poof.

[marron]

shot down 100 Syrian aircraft against the loss of one.

if memory serves, they did it in about an hour or so...

[Lion's Cub]

He'd better get started. An Israeli spokesman on Whorealdo's show just announced the terrorists have entered a Jerusalem hospital and shot up people there.

[Revolting cat!]

How long has it been since the last resettlements in the Western world? 55 years? (Of course in Africa, Asia these things happen place all the time and we're too civilized to pay attention.) It's us or them, folks. Western Europe and the US had better get on the ball, heads out of sand and see that what we're witnessing is a Muslim crusade at work, very successful thus far, and we're at the receiving end whistling past the graveyard (enough mixed metaphors for ya?) Resettlements? All for it!

[marron]

Arafat should have taken the Clinton-Barak deal. It really was the best deal he was ever going to get, and he blew it. Everything that has happened since, all the suffering of the West Bank Pals is on his head. They are complicit, of course, for allowing him within their midst, as is the US State Dept for cooking up the "Arafat solution" in the first place.

Pop Quiz, who was President when the "Arafat solution" was imposed?

[DentsRun]

It might explain why Mr Sharon, famous for his ability to plan ahead, appears not to have a plan. In fact, he has always harboured a very clear plan - nothing less than to rid Israel of the Palestinians.

Of course Sharon has always had a plan. He's waiting for the U.S. to attack Iraq. Saddam in turn will fire missiles at Israel. The Palestinians will go wild with ecstasy and launch massive sympathy attacks all over Gaza and the West Bank. Sharon will say, "I have no choice," and send in the IDF, ostensibly to quell the violence but in fact to drive the Palestinians out of the west bank and Gaza while the rest of the world is focused on the U.S. War with Iraq. When the dust settles, Gaza and the West Bank will be entirely free of Palestinians. Israel will be Arabrein. But the important thing is to get the U.S. to attack Iraq. Hence the year long drumbeat for war from Safire, Krauthammer, Podhoretz and Kristol.

[medved]

What about the Saudis? I mean, if I'm Sharon, then at some point I'd want to do something for the guys who're bankrolling all the BS and pulling the strings.

[TheDon]

The "Pakistan" solution is the best. Of course, giving the Arabs the West Bank makes Israel rather difficult to defend against the Arabs who have made their intentions clear. Moving the West Bank Arabs to Jordan, and giving the Jews the West Bank is a clean solution. The Arabs won't like it, but you can compensate the West Bank Arabs monetarily.

[Revolting cat!]

Resettlement, expulsion, whatever you want to call it, is a thoroughly modern idea, just like strictly observed national borders and picture id passports to cross them. (Oh I know, I know, they happened in 1492 and before but were never executed as efficiently and as humanely as the past century's expulsions.) Why we are so delicate now after the mass resettlements after WWII, which were justified and signed on by statesmen still regarded as heroes here and elsewhere, is a mystery to this cat. If we are to accept the legitimacy of Israel, a colonial state composed of people who had been born elsewhere and decided that is their ancestral homeland that they'll now claim after many centuries is in the Middle East (and, mind you, I do accept it, so no stupid flames!) then we must accept the next logical step and that is a mass expulsion of the current residents of those lands.

[antaresequity]

Few people, least of all me, want the following events to happen.

Not as few as he may believe. I say drive them all out and those that fight...should die. They are savages...

[Anticommie]

THE leading Israeli historian Martin van Creveld predicts that a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike at home could trigger a massive mobilisation to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs

That's the ONLY way to achieve peace, should have been done a long time ago.

[El Gato]

Israel drove 650,000 Palestinians from their homes into neighbouring countries.

They did no such thing. The Arabs states told the Palestinian Arabs to leave, and that they could return, gettting the property of the Jews as well as their own, after the Arab armies crushes the Jews. It didn't quite work out that way, and those Palistinian Arabs and their decendents live in refugee camps or dispered all over the Arab world as second class citizens, to this day. Only those that stayed in Israel are citizens of a free and democratic (small "d") country, with voting and other civil rights.

[Southern Federalist]

I think that the scenario in this article is very unlikely. Driving the Palestinians into Jordan would throw Jordan into chaos and probably bring down the Hashemites and with them a regime which, if not friendly, is willing to co-exist. The current regime could easily be replaced by a radical Palestinian regime bent on recovering all of "Palestine" - so all Israel would accomplish would be to go from having a small terrorist statelet on its borders to having a much larger terrorist state there.

There is one basic Oslo perception that I have not seen challenged by Israeli commentators: that Israel cannot rule the West Bank indefinitely without unacceptable costs of more than one kind. The frustration is that there is no present alternative to doing so that isn't worse.

Any two-state solution has to leave Israel with more defensible borders than the '49 borders, and acknowledge the right of Jews to buy land and live in the West Bank; it cannot mean the destruction of the Jewish state by millions of "returning" Palestinians or the establishment of a Murder Inc. with the resources of a state on Israel's borders. There seems to be no way to accomplish that with presently available Palestinian leadership and the nihilistic mood which they have inculcated in at least significant sectors of Palestinian society.

I don't think there is any solution to this without a major shake-up of the strategic balance in the region. Regime change in Iraq and Iran, and at the very least the thorough intimidation of Syria, could be the shake-up required. I don't have a plan; but change will bring new possibilities. What role might Jordan play if Iraq and Iran were no longer threats and Boy Assad lost control of body functions every time he thought about US Special Forces? A post-Saddam Jordanian-Iraqi Mandate in the West Bank and Gaza? Who knows? But instability is our friend and Israel's friend in a region where the status quo just festers and breeds child-killers.

See Is Jordan Palestine?, an older article by Daniel Pipes and Adam Garfinkle, which shows why the "Jordan is Palestine" idea is not really good for Israel.

[wardaddy]

Sounds good to me....don't think the boy king of the Hashemites will like it much.

[Steve0113]

bump for later

[SJackson]

Worth a five month later bump.