http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4783731Oh my.
For some really weird reason, I never suspected Chief S itting Bull, the bird-smacking stoned red-faced primitive, of being the peaceable type.
Redstone (1000+ posts) Wed Jan-07-09 01:47 PM
Original message
A four-step plan for peace in Gaza
(Mods, you can move this to Israel/Palestine if ou want to, of course. But please read it all first, and you might agree that it belongs in GD.
In order for this plan to work, Israel must immediately begin bombing Gaza (please keep reading)...with food. Israel has many cargo planes, and plenty of food. They should package tons of food, attach the packages to parachutes, and airdrop into Gaza City, other towns and villages, and the U.N. refugee camps. Israel should also paint the Red Crescent on a cargo helicopter (so it doesn’t get shot down), and deliver a slingload of medicine to the roof of the hospital in Gaza City.
This should be a protracted campaign, every day for five days. That’s step one.
Step Two would be an immediate, unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal from Gaza, in order to give Step Three a chance to work. They’ll have nothing to lose by doing so. Israel would also re-open the border crossings to allow supplies to be delivered into Gaza.
Step Three is for the United States to issue a direct appeal to the populace of Gaza, employing radio, television, and air-dropped leaflets, outlining the American proposal. The proposal would require extraordinary effort on the part of all ordinary Gazans, but if they truly want peace and prosperity, they’ll make that effort.
The first element of the proposal is that the citizens of Gaza would be required to remove Hamas from power. Only the citizens of Gaza can accomplish this. Israel cannot do it. America cannot do it. Fatah cannot do it, but once Hamas is removed, Fatah can re-establish its legitimate place as the Government of Gaza. Fatah, additionally, would be required to commit to supporting and carrying out the plan contained in the proposal in advance, and agree to be held accountable if they do not follow through on their promise.
Step Four, with its proviso, is the plan that, if carried out, would provide a lasting peace benefiting both Gaza and Israel, and raise the Gazans from their current state of abject poverty and hopelessness. But they would not gain those benefits without concerted effort and cooperation on their part. It would be their own opportunity to seize or lose.
The United States will offer, after Hamas is removed from power, to initiate a modern version of a Marshall Plan for Gaza. We would divert ten billion dollars per year, for fifteen years, from the financial aid we provide to Israel. We would add another ten billion dollars per year diverted from our spending in Iraq, since we’re winding down operations there. We would use that money to build infrastructure, schools, hospitals and other projects in Gaza, hiring Gazans to do the work in order to provide them with jobs and job skills.
But the most important things we would build would be factories. None of the projects mentioned above would be viable in the long run without establishing a real, productive economy in Gaza. This would also ensure that young Gazans educated in the new schools would remain there rather than emigrating, because they would have job opportunities at home.
The proviso to Step four would be essential to ensure cooperation by the citizens of Gaza: Immediately upon inception of the plan, for each rocket or mortar shell that is fired from Gaza into Israel, five hundred million dollars would be deducted from the funding for that year’s plan. That means, simply, forty rockets and there’s no money that year.
That proviso is what would guarantee that the plan would work. If you’re a Gazan, and you know that your neighbor is building rockets - endangering the funding for a new school for your children, and your job building that school - aren’t you going to be inclined to turn that neighbor in to the police, rather than turn a blind eye?
I think you would. I think most Gazans would. The proviso would be a strong incentive, indeed.
A modest proposal in terms of money, though requiring a great deal of commitment, cooperation, and effort from all parties involved. But what is the value of any price paid, by any party, compared to the incalculable cost of lives and resources that will inevitably be lost in the future if nothing changes in Gaza?
All we, and everyone else involved, can do is to try. If the plan fails, as least we can say we tried. And doing nothing would be accept failure as inevitable. That’s not the American way.
Stupid Chief S itting Bull.
The bird-smacking stoned red-faced primitive's making these proposals based upon his culturo-centric notion that the "Palestinians" want the same things we do.
The comments by other primitives at the bonfire aren't worth the wear-and-tear on the computer mouse copying-and-pasting so as to bring over here.
