Monday, December 29, 2008

On the problem of Palestine

The shabby treatment of the Palestinian people leaves many a decent Muslim feeling aggrieved. I believe this issue is at the centre of the conflict between militants of a Muslim persuasion and people that they view as their oppressors.

The problem has dragged on far too long for a solution to come from within. It is time for out-of-the-box thinking and the imposition of a solution from outside.

Let us accept that the Jewish people need a home. There are only 5.3m of them living in Israel, so that is not too large a number. The problem is that the state of Israel is too small. Israel's Law of Return accords any Jew and eligible non-Jews with immediate Jewish relatives, the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, as well as automatic Israeli citizenship.

The implosion of the Soviet Union in 1990 resulted in a huge influx of people of Jewish ancestry from that region. According to statistics by the Jewish agency for Israel, a total of 985,400 people migrated to Israel from Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2007, alone.

The steady inflow of people puts pressure on resources, particularly land, hence the need for Israel to colonise parts of the West Bank and Gaze Strip for settlements. What is needed is therefore more space.

Israel's many supporters often point out that it is almost the only functioning democracy in the Middle East and this points to an important truth. Although geographically located in the East, in habits, behaviour and spirit the people are of the West.

Israel's most important ally the US and until recently, the country with the largest Jewish population (according the Jewish Virtual Library, the US has 5.275m Jews against 5.313m in Israel) holds the key to the solution.

There are no closer allies than Israel and the US. Britain, the EU and others are important but none enjoy the warmth and real friendship that exists between these two. Naturally the US does not want to abandon its small ally, hanging on precariously amidst the large and unfriendly states of the Middle East.

The solution therefore is to bring them home. The US is a vast and sparsely populated land, they can easily afford to give up to provide for a new home for the Jewish people. The US is 9.6m sq.km. in extent, Israel is 20,770 sq km in extent, about 0.2% of the US.

The new state of Israel could be located in the Southern-most states: Texas and the adjoining states bordering Mexico. In anycase the state of Texas was seized barely a century ago from the Mexicans so giving up a bit of it will not hurt too much.

Better still, the new state of Israel could stretch the entire Southern border with Mexico. Israel could then be encouraged to construct its security barrier along the Mexican border which would have the added benefit of keeping out the pesky Mexicans not to mention the drug smugglers, so we have a win-win situation all around.

The cost of moving the state of Israel will no doubt be gladly borne by the Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other allies of the US. Indeed given a chance, sworn enemies of the US such as Iran and Libya may contribute even more than their allies to see the back of Israel.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha!

Now we just need more solutions like this for our own little island.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't it be far easier for Jordan which has a Palestinian ethnic majority to absorb the displaced Palestinians, rather than move the Jews halfway across the world?

CJ, my point is that your solution suggests the removal of one people in favour of another, and is therefore unfair and not really a solution, given that both the Jews and Palestinians have equal rights to the land. We might as well say that it was OK for the LTTE to push out the NE Muslims since there's so much room in the south, or that we should send the SL Tamils to Tamil Nadu since there are so many Tamils over there.

Jack Point said...

The post is written mostly tongue-in-cheek.

It is impossible to move anybody now, but the repeal of the law of return will help.

The historic claim of the Jews to Palestine is however rather dubious in my view, most of those present are immigrants post 1918, but that is another question altogether.

Sam said...

There is no problem in Palestine at all. Problems are the things that have solutions and can be solved. Palestine nor Israel do not have that sort of things, they have deferent set of characteristics than most of the countries. But they are not problems. Tibetans do not look at mountains as problems or Russians look at snow as problems.
If you really want to analyze this situation, you have to stop looking at America, libraries and that sort of mortal things and go in to reading holly books. If God want Jews to be in America, he could have done that in the first place? Isn’t he?

Unknown said...

Interesting post albeit the cheek in saying certain things, :) have a minute to see my latest post if time allows you. I will respond to a few comments that have been posted,.

Unknown said...

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Anonymous said...

I guess that would start the next war, The Isreal-US war simply because the jews would turn down the request. And oh the poor americans, it's like they have to solve every problem out there.

TheWhacksteR said...

ah well, i suppose dreaming did no one any harm. But the problem is greater than that. They (the isralis) have a hold on power man. They will never let up. The problem is greater than a mere territorial fight. Its pride. Maybe thats why its ruinous.