You have a gift for seizing on the wrong point. Balkanization caused the war in Yugo. In 1990, most Yugos felt thay they were Yugos, not Serbs or Bosnians or whatever. The Alabanians in Kosova were different, but they were being oppressed by the rest of the Yugos. And eventhat was nowhere near civil war. Balkanization, encouraged by the US, Britian,a nd Germany, fed the flames of a natonalism that was cynically created by the Milosovic's et al to keep themselves in power after the collapse of communism. The treaties and the international presense made things much much worse. You can't jsut point to the ruins left by the policy you espouse and say, see! Everything's quiet!
Tacitus put it well long ago: solitudinum facit, pacem dixit (have I got that right? Johanna? Shane? Carrol? It's from memory, I haven't read Tacitus in Latin for 35 years, couldn't now) They make a wilderness and call it peace (Agricola speaking of the Romans).
Now in fact in the Middle East, the people are already divided and never considered themselves on people, unlike in Yugo. So it's not Balkanization tio divide them. In fact it would be a good idae, since tahtwoukd mean getting the Israelis the hell out of the West Bank and Gaza.
>
> > But, as a matter of fact, in the Middle East, I think that if
> > the Israelis were to pull back behind the Green Line, _and close down
>the
> > settlements_, then peace, if not brotherhood, would break out.
>
>I'll readily agree that Israel should take these steps, but I see little
>reason to believe that peace will break out on the off chance that they do.
Why not? Because the Palestineans are so crazed that even if they have their farms and shops they won't be able to stop themselves from warpping themselves in explosives and blowing themselves up in cafes and buses in Israel? Why do you think so?
jks
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