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And it is not my inclination to shed a great deal of blood over small details.
The negotiating ploy you refer to is, of course, a familiar one. It cannot be used as a one size fits all device, however. It works only where both sides need to make a deal with the other, and neither has the power to force its chosen solution on the other. Those conditions do not obtain in this situation. The Arab Palestinians need a deal much more than do the Israelis, and the Israelis do possess the power to force a chosen solution unilaterally on their opponents, who have no power whatever to prevent their doing so. Therefore, the advancing of unreasonable demands by the Arab Palestinian leadership, and their insistence on the Israelis providing them concessions first, will simply convince the Israelis, and many on-lookers to the process, that the Arab Palestinian leadership is unreasonable, and cannot be dealt with in any reasonable manner.
You are correct that cash compensation is not particularly popular on the Israeli side. The formula prefered there is that there should be compensation for the properties lost by Jews forced to flee Arab countries to refuge in Israel in the years after '48, and that these funds should be used to compensate Arab Palestinian claims. While there are certainly grounds for such claims by the descendants of Jews who were forced out of Arab lands at that time, it does not strike me as anything likely ever to materialize, and raising it in this connection seems more an attempt at evading the issue that has to be dealt with than anything else.
It is generally, Sir, a poor move to call anything in debate over this conflict "stupid religious nonsense". There is a great deal of religiousity at the bottom of this matter, on all sides, and the charge can be made in too many directions to be really useful. Moslem insistence of Jerusalem as a holy center, to the point of rioting in vindication of the claim, is just one point on the other side that couild be similarly described. The attachment of the Jewish faith to Jerusalem is a matter of historical fact, and a central element of the religion for at least two and a half millenia. This is something a little different than the idea of fighting to preserve honor and pride; the latter in particular is a damned poor guide to conduct, and one frequently used to justify self-destructive and criminal behavior in individual lives.
It seems to me that it matters very much what Arab Palestinian leadership does, as this has great effect on the politics of Israel, and the politics of the matter in the United States. Reasonable behavior by the Arab Palestinian leadership strengthens those elements in Israel who desire a peace of compromise; unreasonable and violent behavior strengthens those elements in Israel who desire a total victory. Unreasonable and violent behavior by the Arab Palestinian leadership hardens the predominant conviction among the people in the United States that Israel is the side to be supported, and that no concession to its enemies can be made.
Nonetheless, Sir, the solution you suggest, both in its outline and in the means of achieving it, is the only practicable solution to this conflict. An exercise of force majure imposed on both parties is necessary, and the United States is the only power in a position to carry it out.
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