Re: what's the reason for pullout of gaza
I think pragmatism has as more to do with it than a random act of knidness. Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere, but I believe the following is a fairly acurate, abbreviated summary of the situation.<br /><br />GAZA STRIP<br />Area total: 360 sq km, slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC <br /><br />Population: approximately 1.375 million Palestinians; somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 to 7,000 Israeli settlers in 21 Jewish settlements.<br /><br />USA helped mediate 1993 peace process agreement between Isreal & Palestinians which included Israeli pullout of Gaza.<br /><br />The current Bush administration also has an independent Palestinian State as part of it's outline for a middle east peace plan. <br /><br />Actual current pullout initiated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Most Israelis support the pullout. <br /><br />As far as pragmatism goes, seems to make sense. Israel was spending billions of dollars a year protecting a relative handfull of settlers. And where and how (both physically and taking into account the opposition of the rest of the world, including the US) would Israel displace almost 1.4 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip? <br /><br />No offense Erik, but saying that "the Palestinians (Muslims)have much of Africa, Southwest Asia and the equatorial islands of Indonesia, etc." is somewhat akin to saying that "the Dutch (Christians) already have most of Europe, the Americas, Australia, etc." It doesn't make sense to equate a nationality with a religion.<br /><br />And as far as making (keeping?) the Gaza Strip a formal part of Israel: Does anyone think the Israelis want (or could survive) with millions of Palestinians as Israeli citizens, with full rights and the ability to seek formal government representation? Or, alternatively, that the world would continue to tolerate another South Africa type apartheid, with two classes of people inhabiting a country, one of which has little or no rights compared to the other? That would be somewhat hypocritical to our 'Democracy Principle', no?<br /><br />Let's just hope that this thing isn't sabotaged by the Palestinian radicals. Or Israeli radicals, either, for that matter. Yeah, they have some as well, as demonstrated by the Jewish extremist who opened fire on a bus recently killing four Arabs. Or the Jewish law student who assasinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 in order to sabotage the peace process going on at that time. Or even the demonstrators who don't live there but still snuck into the settlements in order to undermine the Israeli Governments attempt to pull the settlers out of Gaza (which again, is supported by the majority of Israeli citizens).
<br /><br />There are no guarantees that there will be no more suicide bombings from the extremists among the Palestinians or no more spraying of machine gun bullets into mosques and buses by Israeli extremists. The withdrawl from Gaza is dictated by demography and the move by Israel in unilateral.
