Day 2 of The Agenda on Israel/Palestine
Well, I watched Day 2 of The Agenda's week long program on Israel/Palestine. It featured an all Palestinian panel discussing the chances of Annapolis resulting in anything much. Up until tonight, I would have said, unequivocally, that the Palestinians should try to get whatever result is possible from any kind of negotiations, given their current plight, but after tonight's show, I'd equivocate.
That's because, a map, showing the shrinking area under Palestinian control over the years, tells a story that is in direct conflict with any claim that Israel has been anything less than aggressive in its takeover of Palestinian land.
It was telling, too, that the normally unflappable host lost his cool with a fairly uncompromising Palestinian guest who, when asked for his opinion on the claim that Israelis and Palestinians held inverse positions on accommodation of each other (based on an interview with an Israeli writer that had been taped previously and in which he very convincingly portrayed Israelis as being overwhelmingly more open to accommodating Palestinians than vice versa) said something along the lines of, "Well, just look at the map and you can see that what Israelis may say they want and what Israel actually does are completely contradictory".
He looked to be pretty right on, too. It was embarassingly obvious that he was, actually. So unless the writer was completely full of shit, and I don't think he was because he really seemed to believe he was telling the truth, then it looks like it's time for Israelis to vote for governments that respect their wish to accomodate Palestinians, rather than governments that take over more and more of their land while stripping them of their civil, and often, human, rights.
