And Barak tried it. What did he get for his trouble? The Palestinians

David Flood
went to

war and ensured his defeat in favor of Sharon.

Describing the Palestinians as having "gone to war" is rather startling. Are you referring to the entire population; mothers, children, toothless old grandfathers?

Or do you mean the religious fundamentalist nuts and extremist revolutionary types carrying out a heinous indiscriminate terrorist campaign against the population of Israel (not just Jews).

If the latter, then I'll have to refer you to modern Irish history - where a splinter of Fenianism (crazed beyond all reason) has always carried on its' own private war with the British state, even when the rest of the contemporary 'movement' has achieved acceptable terms.

Arafat, I suspect, is in the same boat - there will *always* be some fragment of Palestinian society harbouring the aim of evicting the Jews, and which will be largely beyond his power to prevent.

What we've learned is that the only way to marginalise this faction is to show the people that politics is working, and for that you need the stability of an intact PA, not the Israelis shooting up anyone who wears a headscarf and looks at them the wrong way.

In this thread, I've been in the position of defending Sharon, although I

do

not particularly like him. What I object to are those who say they Palestinians rightfully object to negotiating with him.

Who said this?

Even more so because it was the Palestinians who got Sharon elected.

Urr, no, I think that that's actually the Israeli citizens who voted for him, after Peres and Barak screwed the peace process up so *spectacularly*.

are a *quite* nasty bunch, who obviously much prefer a good ol' war, followed by some ethnic cleansing, as a solution to their problems.

This is precisely why I have little sympathy for the Palestinians. They purposefully caused Barak, the Labor PM who was negotiating with them, to

lose

the election and they themselves caused Sharon to win. They are therefore reaping precisely what they sowed.

I think Barak lost the election himself.

I would also be *quite* reluctant to state also that any people 'brought' something on themselves - if you go down that route, then you start blaming 'all' Afrikaaners, 'all' Ulster-Scots, or 'all' Jews (or even 'all' Americans!), for the failures of their respective political and societal establishments.

And that's when you start on the slippery slope of yourself doing something quite awful to *them*.