Poll: Israel or Palestine?

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

What you have cited as well is an instance of short-term racism and xenophobia in a country currently running on mob mentality and lacking a rational state actor visage, as well as acting against an individual, which afflicts many countries that, as states, are still rational actors.

Except there's nothing short term about it, and it fits perfectly into a larger pattern: that of an Islamic world which was never very tolerant to begin with (unless compared to medieval Christendom) but which over the past century has managed to backslide even further, turning into a seething basket case.

Short-term was perhaps the wrong phrase. National attitudes will translate to how a nation acts on the world stage, but the point i've been stressing is that state actors, when adequately informed of their surroundings, make rational decisions which, given very high costs imposed against them, prompt them to act in a certain way.

To get back to the point, my whole line of thought has run to the idea that a Palestinian state that isn't hopelessly crippled (due to being crisscrossed by Israeli-only highways) or isn't still being occupied or blockaded would have a people who, while they resent their Israeli neighbors, are willing to live with them in the sense of not trying to kill them, and who will marginalize Hamas because they know that listening to Hamas will jeopardize their stable statehood, since stable statehood is preferable to the current situation, despite being less preferable than what they would desire in an ideal world