Comments on Bernard Avishai Dot Com: What Can Obama Do About Palestine, Meanwhile?

I am afraid that Tom Friedman has it right in his ...

2009-11-11T16:41:25.856-05:00

I am afraid that Tom Friedman has it right in his November 8th op-ed "Call White House, Ask For Barack".

Y. Ben-David your arguments are either a cherry picked version of the past and/or a reaction to extreme elements as though they were the whole story. You do not look for any positive way forward, nor see any disaster looming in it's absence.

These responses are simply excuses to rule out coexistence, and, I believe now, for fear of it. I have no hope that a thoughtful response will make a dent. But SY's is an excellent response above.

"...During the British Mandate period, the British...

2009-11-10T00:43:08.076-05:00

"...During the British Mandate period, the British encouraged the Arabs to set up an Arab Agency just like the Jews had the Jewish Agency which would have a great deal of autonomy to run the affairs of their community and which would have the power of taxation. THE ARABS ADAMANTLY REFUSED TO DO THIS. They asked why they should tax their people when they could get the British to give them the money. It is the same today..."

I have this friend of mine who bought this 60 year old house in Staten Island, NY. You know what I'm talking about. Brick and mortar, real plaster walls, slate shingle roofs. The whole nine yards. Anyway, we were remodeling one of the bathrooms (pull chain septic tanks, I shit thee not) and had to replace a few things. The two of us go to this plumbing supply house over in Brooklyn. He hands the clerk some calcified, encrusted, galvanized piece of crap and asks the guy; "Can you replace this?" The clerk looks at it and says; "Sure. Let me go to the stock room, climb into my time machine, go back to 1957, and I'll get it for you."

Likewise, the only way the aforementioned specious argument becomes operative, is if you get in YOUR time machine and go back to 1936. Because in 2009, that contention holds about as much water as that sixty year old rusty pipe.

In 1936, Arab Palestine was agrarian in nature, with a largely uneducated population, easily manipulated by any carnival barker that came down the pike, who when they weren't busy tip-toeing through the camel shit, were slaving as tenant farmers coaxing a few lousy shoots out of rocky top soil and then almost gratefully experiencing an early demise from any number of terminal maladies and contagion.

In 2009, Arab Palestine, while not utopia, is for the most part literate, has access to higher education. It has a burgeoning sophisticated, even cosmopolitan business class, a much reduced infant mortality rate, greater life span, and access to a much larger world of ideas by means of the internet and mass media. As their horizons have expaned, so to their creativity and imaginations. Not to mention the fact that in-door plumbing and electricity hasn't hurt either. I should also like to add that these changes are in no small measure, due to Israel and more to the point Israelis.

I remember a few years ago, my wife and I were watching a news show. There was some footage of Palestinian security officers going about their business. While that in of itself is not remarkable, what was remarkable was the fact that they looked identical to Mishmeret G'vul. Same cut of uniform, same afoadim, same baseball caps. The picture above Dr. Avishai's article looks more like Kiryat Ono, than Ramallah or Amman. While I'll grant you that bakshish and corruption are endemic to most arab societies, it would appear, at least in the modern era, that the Palestinians are taking their cues from elsewhere.

Jeff Blankforth- Dr Avishai's Palestinian entrepen...

2009-11-09T05:33:00.777-05:00

Jeff Blankforth-
Dr Avishai's Palestinian entrepeneur friend Sam Bahour said quite explicitly that ARAFAT did nothing to build a proper infrastructure for a properly-run state that would encourage business.
During the British Mandate period, the British encouraged the Arabs to set up an Arab Agency just like the Jews had the Jewish Agency which would have a great deal of autonomy to run the affairs of their community and which would have the power of taxation. THE ARABS ADAMANTLY REFUSED TO DO THIS. They asked why they should tax their people when they could get the British to give them the money. It is the same today...the Palestinian Authority is totally dependent on EU and American handouts to finance the Authority's expenditures. Why should the Palestinians pay for their government when they can get outsiders to do it? (call it a modern form of the dhimmi "jizya" tax). Arafat's regime was officially "socialist" which means the PA controlled the economy and set up a lot of monopolies who were given to friends and relatives of top PA officials. There never was any interest in setting up the kind of "entrepeneural class" that Dr Avishai is always pushing. This is not unusual in the Arab world...most of the regimes find it dangerous to allow independent entrepeneurs to operate because they can become a political threat to those in power...thus it is preferable to maintain tight control over business sector and are quite willing to hobble it in order to preserve their power. Same with the Palestinians. Dr Avishai's belief that somehow the entrepeneurs will "push aside" the armed FATAH or HAMAS people is a fantasy.
It is time to face fact...no contractual Israeli-Palestinian peace is possible because neither the Palestinians nor wider Arab/Muslim world want it. Sorry.

"Neither could the Obama administration endorse th...

2009-11-09T01:56:18.299-05:00

"Neither could the Obama administration endorse the Goldstone report, which Palestinians justifiably regard as a touchstone of others' empathy for them, without laying itself open to charges that it is cavalier about missiles falling on Israel."
Hardly. No substance in this claim.
As for Thomas Friedman, he's never been right before, and he's not right this time. This implicit notion of waiting for two (purportedly equally culpable) errant forces to 'come to their sense' is a joke.

One of the critical but less noticed differences b...

2009-11-08T20:38:55.344-05:00

One of the critical but less noticed differences between the British colonialists and their Israeli successors and counterparts is that the former did practically nothing to interfere with the building of both political and commercial Jewish institutions in pre-state Palestine whereas successive Israeli administrations have made it a point to prevent the Palestinians from doing the same under their occupation. Obama has neither the will or the power to confront the AIPAC-controlled Congress over this.

Rubenstein, BTW, was one of the first, if not the first, mainstream Israeli journalist to use the term "apartheid"to describe Jewish rule over the West Bank.

Good question. Interestingly, Thomas Friedman deal...

2009-11-08T20:33:42.992-05:00

Good question. Interestingly, Thomas Friedman dealt with this very question in an editorial "Call White House, Ask for Barack" in a N.Y. Times editorial on Nov. 8, 2009. The gist of his thesis is that prospects for peace now are zero. So the best thing that the U.S. administration can do is to disengage, and wait for the two parties of the conflict to come to their senses, somehow or another.
I don't usually agree with Friedman, but this is one of the rare occasions in which I think that he is right.