Will the $7.3 billion help or hurt efforts to achieve peace

Daniel Pipes argues it will help in a strange sort of way.

    [..] For Palestinians, hope derives from a perception of Israeli weakness, implying an optimism and excitement that the Jewish state can be eliminated. Conversely, when Palestinians cannot see a way forward against Israel, they devote themselves to the more mundane tasks of earning a living and educating their children. Note that the Palestinian economy peaked in 1992, just as, post-Soviet Union and post-Kuwait war, hopes bottomed out to eliminate Israel.

    Exhilaration, not hardship, accounts for bellicose Palestinian behavior. Accordingly, whatever reduces Palestinian confidence is a good thing. A failed economy depresses the Palestinians’ mood, not to speak of their military and other capabilities, and so brings resolution closer.

    Palestinians must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before they will drop their foul goal of eliminating their Israeli neighbor and begin to build their own economy, polity, society, and culture. No short-cut to this happy outcome exists. Who truly cares for Palestinians must want their despair to come quickly, so that a skilled and dignified people can move beyond its current barbarism and build something decent.

    The huge and wasted outpouring of Western financial aid, ironically, brings on that despair in two ways: by encouraging terrorism and by distorting the economy, both of which imply economic decline. Rarely has the law of unintended consequences worked so imaginatively.

I totally agree. The money will not be used for peace but for war. It will maintain a culture of dependancy. It will sustain all the corruption and the bloated bureaucracy.

But without money peace would be the only option.

“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” Ogden Nash.

Thus drowning them in money will work but starving them will work quicker.

December 28, 2007 | 6 Comments »

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6 Comments / 6 Comments

  1. Oh Goody maybe now the can pay their electric, water and telephone bills and if they do < Maybe ours will be reduced accordingly!! I won’t hold my breath in either case!

  2. Oh Goody maybe now the can pay their electric, water and telephone bills and if they do < Maybe ours will be reduced accordingly!! I won’t hold my breath in either case!

  3. The Jews have already forgiven the Germans.

    Which Jews jerry are you referring too? There arE still Jews who have not forgiven the Romans, the Egyptians the Russians the Spanish and the Germans! there is a big difference between accepting a given reality and moving on and FORGIVENESS! JEWS HAVE NO RIGHTS IN THE FORGIVENESS DEPT.

  4. The Jews have already forgiven the Germans.

    Which Jews jerry are you referring too? There arE still Jews who have not forgiven the Romans, the Egyptians the Russians the Spanish and the Germans! there is a big difference between accepting a given reality and moving on and FORGIVENESS! JEWS HAVE NO RIGHTS IN THE FORGIVENESS DEPT.

  5. Dr. Pipes, I am certain, knows that the people to whom he is speaking understood the truth of his statements before he uttered them. The State Department is full of history and political science buffs. It does not suit their purposes to end the conflict with a Palestinian defeat. Better to end it on a Jewish defeat, since the Jews are better able to absorb it. The Shia Muslims still beat themselves over the defeat of Ali. The Jews have already forgiven the Germans. This is the reality confronting the Jews. Their strength is their weakness. The Jews forgive faster than the Christians.

  6. Dr. Pipes, I am certain, knows that the people to whom he is speaking understood the truth of his statements before he uttered them. The State Department is full of history and political science buffs. It does not suit their purposes to end the conflict with a Palestinian defeat. Better to end it on a Jewish defeat, since the Jews are better able to absorb it. The Shia Muslims still beat themselves over the defeat of Ali. The Jews have already forgiven the Germans. This is the reality confronting the Jews. Their strength is their weakness. The Jews forgive faster than the Christians.