(no subject)
so israel pulled out of the gaza strip on sunday night. which i believe is a good thing, and not because i'm middle eastern. its just so weird that this conflict has been going on for about half a century and we've actually seen some progress, because i didnt believe there would be any in my lifetime. one thing ive learned from being a govt major is that "peace talks" rarely result in peace, and that conflict resolution takes more years than anybody really has patience for.
i dont really have a strong opinion on the israeli/palestinian conflict, but i was leaning towards palestinians just because the whole argument for why israel had a claim to the land made absolutely no sense to me. and of course everything dealing with IR is so, so much more complicated than we are made to believe, but from what i knew before and what i studied in my politics of the middle east class, the only claims israelis had was that they once inhabited the land (and of course the meddling efforts of the us and britain). how can you kick the palestinians out of their country because the jews once resided there? in that case, the persians also have a claim to it because they conquered the jews and took over their land, so they used to live there too. and italy should claim all the land that the roman empire conquered, and the far east should claim all the land that the mongols once conquered, because they used to live there. the israelis also justified occupation by saying that arabs were anti-semitic. which is absolutely ridiculous because arabic is a semitic language. so.... i dont see this.
i mean, i know a lot of people say that after the holocaust jews had no where to live and had a right to their homeland but it really annoys me that people refuse to acknowledge the conniving underhandedness of it all. the us and british forces did not try to place israelis there out of the goodness of their hearts. israeli intelligence was priceless to them! us/british forces teamed with the israelis in the 50's and 60's to create torturous secret police in iran, because they revolted against british investment in their oil industry. they used israeli troops in attempting to keep their foothold in egypt. it was all just a scam.
but then i was watching BBC news this afternoon (which i hate, but whatever) and they were showing the israeli people struggling against their own troops that were kicking them out of their homes, and it was so sad. but i guess theres no simple solution. just another example of how the us and the british fuck everything up.