A Palestinian State

Some of the things coming out of Israeli politician’s mouths I just can’t believe.

From the BBC:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a major policy speech, accepted the creation of a Palestinian state but only if it was demilitarised. He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons.

Well I’m sorry, but if the country is demilitarized I don’t think it counts as a state. If it is imposed by an outside power, or as the condition of receiving state hood, then it amounts to nothing more than a protectorate. I wonder how the Israeli government would take it if the world decided that they should be demilitarized…After all, we could just leave some UN peacekeepers there to make sure everything was in order. I bet that they would rail against an unacceptable violation of their sovereignty, and they would be correct to do so. On the last point, I’m even more confused. Currently the Palestinian’s don’t have an army, or control over its airspace, or borders and there is still smuggling. How will imposing those conditions on a new state change the situation?

Now I understand that Israel doesn’t want the Palestinian army buying weapons only to have them sold or given to terrorists. Fine. At the same time, when weapons arrive to a government I assume there is some sort of control regime in place. If those weapons are used, they should be easily tracked back to whoever is distributing them, and that person can be dealt with. I doubt that there are the same rigorous controls on weapons arriving from Iran presently.

If the Israelis are concerned about an attack using conventional weapons, this must also be a mirage. If a terrorist manages to steal a tank, I would hope that the IDF would be able to deal with that in very short order. In fact, the IDF should be able to deal with any conventional threat as they have ably demonstrated in the past. If Palestinian tanks start rolling towards the border they would be quickly destroyed, and no one would have anything ill to say to Israel.

It’s just frustrating that the Israelis are attempting to impose the same basic conditions that already exist, on a future Palestinian state in order to solve problems which are currently unsolved. I can’t believe that the politicians in Israel are all more blind to this reality than me, so either I need to go there and run the government, or they don’t actually want a peace deal. One way or another, the international community should call them on it.