Mr Khan said: This discussion is highly thread derailing. Contain it, you two, or i'll report you both.
Not to mention as someone partly of Aremenian decent it's kinda hard to not butt in about the "compassion" of the Turks. At least the US is upfront about it and apologized about the Native Americans. (Though it took waaaay to long.)
RE: Birthrates as well, I hear the Palestinian birth rates aren't quite as high as often reported as well. How do you figure this? All reports I have read that the Palestinian arab birth rate (including Gazans, West Bank and Israel proper citizens) is higher than the Jewish birth rates. Still if it came to a one state solution I think Israel would probably just deport all the Palestinians. Thats about the stupidest comment ever and impossible legally. Aside from the fact that Israel is a democracy (though not always in practice) there are over 1M arabs in Israel proper who are recognised as citizens. Also, arabs have lived in Israel for a long time (longer than the current Jewish) and own their own land. Not to mention the PR disaster such a move would be - if the arabs dont like Israel now they will probably be fuming after such a move. Probably all to the Golan heights and then just hand the thing back over to Syria. (If they'd want it.) Israel will never give the Golan Heights back to Syria EXCEPT in the case of a treaty normalising relations (kinda like Egypt with the Sinai). GH is too strategically important for any war between the two.
It's hard to forget that the arabs biggest reason for supporting Palestine is that they don't want there refugees, as can be seen by the way they're often treated. No its not. Its true that this may be a factor in SOME countries but by and large, most arabs support the palestinians because they are arabs NOT becasue of refugees (similar to how jews all over the world support Israel)
A) It'd be a PR disaster... but nothing would come of it, even without US support.
As for the difference between Israel and Arabs... Jewish people are unique in that for basically all of history even going back to the earliest days of their own religious books, they've been pretty much beat up, mistreated and screwed by everyone at all times.
Probably best described by
The entire history of arab support of Palestine has been nothing but rank oppurtunism. Originally in a land grab, and currently for political and economic issues.
It's a lot easier for some arab governments to keep control with Israel around. Given the chance of fighting a purely selfess war where they would get nothing but the establishment of a Palestine state, I don't see one Arab government actually going through with it... outside a couple just to stick it to Israel, who had been sticking it to them. Arab governments would turn on Palestine in a heart beat if it was to their advantage. (And have, many times before heck if they didn't Gaza and the West bank wouldn't even be under Israeli control right now. Egypt and Jordan would be taking care of the Palestinians.).
As for birth rates, was an article i read about two years ago that used some statistical methods that showed the census didn't actually match up with the birth and death rates, and in general showed a dropping off of birth rates. There just aren't nearly as reported births in the Palestinian territories as there are projected births.
