Palestinian Distractions

Obama just met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House.  Interestingly, the two agreed that Israel has the right to police arms entering Gaza from the Mediterranean Sea.  But, Obama also pledged $400 in aid for school construction, clean water, and business development, among other aims.  Obama does not have $400 million in tax money to give, so this money is probably more money to simply be printed up, or possibly to be borrowed with the consequence of depriving the private sector of even more loans and saddling it with future interest payments or watered down dollars.

This new pledge of $400 million of aid simply makes it easier for the Palestinians to continue a belligerent policy with respect to Israel.  Their schools, water supply, and businesses are in a sad state, yes.  But this is because they have not focused on these primary needs of life for many decades as they pursued, with fanatical religious fervor, the goal of either removing the Jews from Israel or returning them to a sub-servient Dhimmitude status.  They have neglected their children's education, their families' health, and lived in relative poverty for decades in order to recapture land which prior to the settlement of many Jews in Israel after WWII was worth much less than Gaza and the West Bank are today.  In fact, Gaza and the West Bank today are worth much more than they were after WWII largely due to the development of Israel.  If the Palestinians had determined to live in peace and collaboration with Israel decades ago, they would be much, much better off today.  Our $400 million aid offer is simply wrongheaded, as most of what Obama does is.

Obama has made a big deal out of trying to solve the Palestinian-Israeli stand-off.  This problem has lingered and festered through the last five Presidencies, while distracting each of those Presidents from other problems.  Our federal government suffers terribly from a failure to focus on those issues which will protect the right of the American individual to equally enjoy our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This decades long effort to broker agreements between Israel and the Palestinians has been a waste of effort and money, which has actually distracted the Palestinians from addressing their own needs and rational interests.  A President who simply ignored this issue would do it more good than any President has done in his attempts to meddle in these matters of irrational religious strife and, now, endless decades of killing and revenge. 

I am not an isolationist.  There are many problems in the world that do deserve our attention.  For one thing, every American has the right to trade with every person beyond our borders.  They have the right to trade goods, services, and ideas.  A legitimate government recognizes promoting this right as a part of its purpose to protect the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Of course, our government cannot mandate that every other country will allow its people to trade with our people under threat of arms.  This would create other problems which would impose upon our own citizen's rights.  But, there are many ways that the government can encourage other countries to enter into free trade or nearly so with the U.S. in a manner fully consistent with our People's general welfare.  There are also nations that threaten the U.S. with weapons of war, such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea do now.  There are terrorists such as al Qaeda and the Taliban whom we must observe and hunt down.  There are countries whose future intent is unclear and who seem to offer some considerable need for close observation, such as Venezuela and China.  We need to be out there observing and monitoring what is going on.  There are many cases in which it does make sense to offer some countries an incentive to move in the right direction. 

But I cannot see any good coming of our efforts with the Palestinians until they themselves decide that behaving rationally is in their best interest.  For decades, there has been little to encourage me that the Palestinians have any intent of being rational and giving up their addiction for war and belligerence.  There appears to be as much chance of that as there is for a man who has been a drunk for decades deciding that he will sober up.  It does occasionally happen and we should be quick to come to his aid when it does, but there is no point in trying to intervene or offer aid until he has decided he no longer wants to be a drunk.  At this time, the Palestinians are badly addicted to belligerence and have no real desire to be free of that addiction.