If they just did a "Ghandi" and passively resisted en masse, holding huge marches every day, going on hunger strike etc, then the Israelis would be out of the occupied territories within 18 months. Instead they go round blowing people up and thus give Israel the perfect excuse to continue their present policy. Same with Iraqis resisting the American occupation. Instead of trying to outfight the US Marine Corps and losing badly, they should just use nonviolent tactics, and once again they would achieve their objectives much faster. The fact is, western democracies have the weakness of being pussies who can't stomach repression, so nonviolent resistance will turf them out faster than anything else. Why are Arabs and Palestinians so stupid as to not realise that getting the moral high ground will give them a quick victory?
Are you kidding? You think the Palestinan's are stupid?! No! They're brilliant! They terrorize everyone, the only product they've managed to mass produce is suicide bomb belts, they blame everything bad on the Israelis, their leader is too busy flying around in his helicopter to bother actually leading his people by doing something productive..... and even with all that, the Palestinians still have most of the rest of the world on their side. Now how can you say their stupid?
yep. and if things didn't get settled out, they could go plum loco with the strapon bombs and justify it by saying "see? we really tried!". the path they're on now is just stupid, and allows israel to be (at times) just as stupid. gotta disgree with that one. we just put a saddamite back in charge of a sunni city while down the road a shia leader has his own armed city. and up north the kurds are essentially autonomous and laughing at everybody. everybody is getting what they want - except america, which wants something nobody else does.
I'll tell yah who I think is stupid: The Japanese. Think about this... Here we were fighting a world war, so the Japs send airplanes to Pearl Harbor to bomb it. WHAT??? What did they really think that would do?? Like, they are going to take over America by sending fighter planes to bomb Pearl Harbor?? To cinch stupidity matters up, where was their Government Intelligence?? They didn't KNOW we had Little Boy and Fatman? Come on, people, that is stupidity. And if they knew we had atomic bombs, they actually presumed we would not use them??? No slight to the Japanese people but... you're really stupid.
They just don't rationalize the same way we do: Two key words: HONOR & PRIDE above everything else. This is how the religious zealots (Hamas, Jihad) and the secular nationalists (Fatah, PFLP) are identical. Money, possessions, comfort, blood...even human life are all secondary, relatively unimportant values compared to the Muslim Arab man's all important sense of personal and family pride. This is why when an Arab Muslim's sister/daughter has premarital sex, the 'honorable' thing to do is to publicly kill her, in order to restore the family honor. Not all suicide bombers are devout Muslims. Take away the religious brainwashing nonsense, and there is still a massive sense of pride, accomplishment, and family honor when he blows himself up killing a few hated Zionists. Becoming a Shahid (martyr) is the highest honor in his society- much more dignified than becoming a successful businessman, athlete or entertainer. Point the sole of your shoe in his direction, and he'll be whipped into such an insulted frenzy, the Western observer would think you've just shot his dog or something. Compromise is never an option to him, only absolute unquestionable victory. Anything else would be an unbearable insult to his pride. Can you start to see why the very existence of the State of Israel in their own backyard is such an intolerable insult to the Islamic world? Why nothing short of the complete destruction of the Jewish state can begin to sooth their rage?
Rearden Metal is right. It is a CULTURAL CLASH, between west and islam. imho, undoubtedly it will result in a world war. The israel-pali conflict will be nothing but a random trigger. even if this specific conflict will be resolved, there would be some other trigger (e.g. - arabs will claim that the promiscuous western girls are trying to tempt arab men into becoming sinners, or something like that). fundamental islam's logic may look stupid to us, but you must understand that to them, the western logic looks stupid.
better make it USA and Islam ... neither "old" nor "new" Europe is going to actively support large scale American evangelical/fundamentalist/imperialist crusades