August 05, 2003
Dammit, Israel
Look, I understand the importance of maintaining a Jewish state. And I'd been sort of kvetching about this wall Israel's building, thinking it was sort of unpleasant, but only mildy, since it seemed like a not totally unreasonable security thing to put up along the border with the West Bank.
This had a lot to do with never having seen a map of where the wall was going in. This link points to such a map. Go follow that link right now.
What the hell do they think they're pulling? That's not a security wall along the border, it's a naked land grab. How can Sharon claim with a straight face that it's anything else? I mean, I guess I always knew that the Israeli leadership didn't really want peace, but I didn't realise they'd be quite so obvious about it. (Note, of course, that I said "the Israeli leadership"---I think that what the Israeli people want is rather different.)
Thankfully, US foreign policy in this regard has at long last recovered a measure of sanity: we're discussing decreasing our aid to Israel by the amount they're spending on West Bank settlement.
"I'm always on solid ground. I tend to break unsolid ground." --Sam Walker
Posted by blahedo at 5:48am on 5 Aug 2003