Jewish Voice For Peace Celebrate BDS "Victory"
Same again. You bemoan the violent methods often engaged in by some Palestinians to free themselves from Israeli domination and subjugation but crucially the none violent means as well. Revealing.
I replied to the whole thing above but wanted to highlight this point.
Because it is fundamentally wrong. If I was someone working for Palestinian independence what I would do is act like it. Even with constraints from the occupation, I would do my best to mirror the steps taken by the Yishuv in light of (illegal) opposition from the British Mandate. Develop a strong, robust, political system. Invest in political, social and cultural institutions. Invest in a narrative with the people of hard work and perseverance for a better future, not in the death cult indoctrination of children. Invest in works, invest in communities, don’t syphon a massive chunk of the budget to corruption and supporting terrorists.
In other words, keep building the civil society necessary to do 3 things - 1 ensure that once independence is achieved the fate of literally every single other Arab country can be avoided and a stable, robust, open, trading democracy can be born and survive to serve the needs of the people. 2 demonstrate to the Israelis that they have nothing at all to fear from the Palestinians and that, in spite of the past, the Palestinians look forward to good relations and collaboration with Israelis in the future as equals (like India and the British, Israel and the British, etc) and 3 the demonstrate to the rest of the world that the Palestinians are actually ready for statehood and to be a positive contributor to the community of nations.
It is interesting because in certain areas they are ahead of the game as a result of the occupation (that is easily demonstrated where they perform better than the Jordanians). On education they are among the top in the Arab world. Their infrastructure is generally better than other Arab countries. And their close proximity to Israel would allow for the efficient and effective development of additional common infrastructure to relieve any bottlenecks to expansion (eg desalination).
The guy who built that Palestinian city had the right idea. Act as if you are a country engaged in good planning and responsible governance and everything else will follow. Replace all of the “refugee camps” with new cities funded by the Europeans, who love throwing money at those things. Have a real talk with the population about the causes of their situation and a real, functional, responsible plan go move forward, including deconstructing these camps, turning towards building, civil and personal growth over protesting and terrorism and conflict, and tell them what the government will do even without independence while continuing to make their case that independence on that path is inevitable.
That, more than anything, would have made the Oslo process a success, but Arafat was completely unsuited to the task. Current Palestinian political culture and institutions all act against this approach, by contrast to the Yishuv which had all of its institutions moving towards the inevitability of statehood (and a successful one, as demonstrated by history).
So all you guys who seem to really care about the Palestinians and their future, here is your path. Take it, or don’t. But don’t mistake opposing BDS nonsense, the “peaceful protests”, etc as bemoaning both violent and non-violent means of seeking independence.
eace
