The unilateral pull-out by Israel from Gaza hasn`t increased the peace. Quite the contrary. The blockade on the Hamas regime, imposed by both Israel and Egypt, didn`t begin till a couple of years after the pull-out, when incessant rocket fire from Gaza led to about a dozen Israeli deaths.
The Hamas regime certainly doesn`t want a two-state solution. The PA regime in the West Bank is plainly ambivalent; their school textbooks and public rhetoric reject it, as do some key gov`t documents.
A hostile and militarized West Bank would not increase the peace. The distances are too close.
What well-meaning outsiders typically fail to comprehend are 1) the dimensions of the area are tiny, 2) the national identity of Palestinians is shallow and recent, and 3) the reason they have not been absorbed by their fellow-Arabs is because those fellow-Arabs wish to perpetuate war against Israel. That will for war would be only be potentiated by a stronger West Bank. And the UNRWA was always their tool. |
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