After nearly two decades of not so benign neglect by Jordan, Israel made substantial improvements in the territories, expanding schools, sewers, and other infrastructure. By almost any economic and social indicator the territories were one of the fastest growing areas in the world during the 1970′s–literacy rate, especially among women, availability of higher education, infant mortality, life expectancy, by virtually any measure the territories were improving quickly.

I lived for a couple of years at a kibbutz on the road from Nablus to Haifa and in the morning and afternoon I’d see many buses taking people to jobs in Israel. I’d catch those buses a few times myself. Sometimes there might be an i.d. check but it would be fairly quick and cursory. A couple of times I went to Nablus, by myself, and had no trouble walking around.

Certainly there was some labor exploitation but most of the workers were subject to Israeli laws and benefits. By any measure “economic peace” was there and was booming.

And the Palestinians threw it all away because they hated Israel and Jews more than they valued their own well-being. It is patronizing to regard the Palestinians as helpless before forces they cannot deal with. They have chosen this situation.

I suppose this is a topic for another post but time and again you hear people repeat Abba Eban’s line about the Palestinians “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” This is likewise patronizing and assumes they are stupid or insane. They are neither.

They have taken the opportunities they wanted and rejected the opportunities they didn’t. Hate and destruction was what they chose, peace and prosperity was well within their hands and they rejected it.

The world could come around to understanding this and demanding that the Palestinians take the consequences of their actions. It could happen, but only in the sense that it could happen that Lucy Lawless is about to ring my doorbell and ask to come up and get out of these wet clothes, i.e. it is possible but highly unlikely.

He writes that like it’s a bad thing to destroy a threat of genocide against the Jes of Israel.

The Palis have never kept any of their obligations to Israel undertaken in the various agreements, even after Israel has turned over land to them or cut down on patrols and checkpoints. Time for the Arabs to come clean. No more Israel concessions until the Arabs have fulfilled EVERY condition they were supposed to fulfill over the last 15 years, and stopped all terror attacks on Israel and others (just in case they wanted to shift their focus from Israel to, say, Argentina, as has been known to happen). Until then, retaliation for every attack, ten-fold. And go clear out at least Gaza before Iran decides to order another war started.