The NYT reports on a key issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Palestinians “right of return”.
Some 700,000 Palestinians were driven or fled from their homes at Israel’s founding in 1948, and their descendants number some 4.3 million, based on UN refugee numbers. So “returning” to Israel might be morally reasonable, but is practically extreme, as it would swamp the Jewish majority.
The article suggests some positive changes:
- While Palestinians insist on the right, more grant that it is impractical, or not what they would actually want to do if given the choice.
- Polling suggests that many Palestinians want acknowledgement of the justice of their cause, but would be willing to compromise if that acknowledgment was made, and most would not move back to the Israel if given the option.
A Palestinian shift could enhance the potential of a 5-year-old Arab League proposal to
offer the Jewish state normal ties with all Arab countries if it fully withdraws from land it occupied in 1967, accepts a Palestinian state and agrees to a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees.
If the Palestinians can step back from the more extreme versions of their national narrative, it can be hoped that the Israelis can do the same.
This long Washington Post article on the faltering of democratization in Egypt concludes that the movement is in shambles, unable to attract real popular support, articulate an alternative to the present, or stand up to the country’s authoritarian government.
The one countertrend is that independent media have emerged in the last few years, including genuine opposition papers. Citizen media are important too — an Egyptian estimates there are now 4,000 blogs, and many people are posting videos of police abuse on YouTube.
The article notes that the opponents of the regime have been strongly motivated by opposition to US Middle East policy, an illustration of the curious Bush administration policy of promoting democracy while taking actions that ensured that Middle Eastern democracies, should they emerge, will be more hostile to the US.
The remains of the opposition seem to have little hope. A reporter questions an opposition leader:
He turned glummer when asked if he would see democracy in Egypt in his lifetime. He shook his head. “No,” he said, tentatively. Then he repeated the word, this time more conclusively. “No.”
The WP reported today that the leaders of California (an American state) and British Columbia (a Canadian province) are discussing cooperation in alternative energy and climate change initiatives, with BC talking about pursuing ambitious green goals.
This is interesting from a couple of angles:
- It is an example of regions having more in common across borders than within them — evocative of the “Nine Nations of North America” concept.
- It reinforces the concept that the US and now perhaps Canada will be led forward on certain environmental issues by sub-national units. As the premier of BC put it, “If you wait for a whole continent to come along together, sometimes it takes too long.”
As the war in Iraq begins its fourth year, it is worth revisiting some of the views of France, which was one of the more vocal skeptics in the runup to the US invasion.
In this Washington Post article from February 11, 2003, Jacques Beltran, a French foreign policy expert, suggested that French President Jacques Chirac “believes a war is extremely dangerous. There’s a risk of destabilizing Iraq and the whole region, as well as Israel.”
A French official noted that “We are not pacifists. But we honestly think it is a mistake to go to war … You will pay the price in terms of terrorism, in terms of the Arab world versus the Western world.”
Future Atlas has a new map of an aspect of dyschronicity, the distance in time between places measured by culture, technology, or some other characteristic.
In this case, the map shows approximate distance between one place and the rest of the world in the area of values and attitudes.
The reference country in this map is Sweden, as it is notably further along in a number of social trends that many countries are now undergoing. The map is essentially an estimation of how long ago Sweden was like that place in its values and attitudes.
This kind of dyschronicity can illuminate some culturally-rooted issues. For instance:
- There is some logic in finding Denmark at the heart of the cartoon controversy of last year: it is centuries out of sync with most of the Muslim world at the cultural level.
- Turkey and Western Europe are at best decades apart at this level, helping to drive European reluctance to bring Turkey into the European Union.
- Western Europe and the US are also partially living in different times, with Europeans viewing Americans as backward on issues such as the death penalty, health care, and environmentalism.
For more, see this Future Atlas page.
On “Charlie Rose” last week, Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute noted that China is projected to be the largest carbon emitter in 3-4 years. This will “lead to a huge change [in] American politics,” he said.
When China is the largest emitter, the Americans are going to say, ‘the Chinese are wrecking our climate.’ All of sudden its going to be nationalism here. ‘How dare they wreck our climate. What are they doing about it?’ And of course that’s how the rest of the world has viewed us all this time. We’re going to see it finally from the others’ perspective.