Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The people who led Intifada I were NOT grateful to be under Occupation. They would always rather have been independent.
What they were rebelling against was the Occupation. And if your argument had any validity, democracy would have developed after 1987 anyway. Democratization was not stopped by Oslo, for God's sakes.
I would have been thrilled to see a genuinely popular alternative leadership to both Hamas and Fatah emerge-in fact, I still would be. But you can't seriously argue that re-taking Gaza(which I suspect is what you WANT me to support)could have a positive effect on Gaza now. What you still don't get is that Palestinians don't want Israel telling them who their leaders should be-and they never will want that. Is this really so hard to understand?
Finally, if the Occupation had the magical effects YOU ascribe to it, why did we NOT see a different and better leadership emerge IN Gaza while the IDF was still there? Why didn't we see the people of Gaza BEGGING the IDF to stay? Shouldn't those things have happened if your history of the situation was accurate?