Branson Suspends Negotiations Over $1 Billion Space Investment From Saudi Arabia
Richard Branson at the Future Investment Forum in Saudi Arabia in October 2017. (Credit: CIC)
Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson said he is suspending discussions with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which last year signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $1 billion in Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit.
Branson announced the decision amidst growing international concern over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Turkey. There are unconfimed reports that Saudi security officials murdered the dissident writer.
Branson also suspended his directorships in two Saudi tourism projects to be built around the Red Sea.
Branson’s full statement is below.
I had high hopes for the current government in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and it is why I was delighted to accept two directorships in the tourism projects around the Red Sea. I felt that I could give practical development advice and also help protect the precious environment around the coastline and islands.
What has reportedly happened in Turkey around the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, if proved true, would clearly change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi Government. We have asked for more information from the authorities in Saudi and to clarify their position in relation to Mr Khashoggi.
While those investigations are ongoing and Mr Khashoggi’s presence is not known, I will suspend my directorships of the two tourism projects. Virgin will also suspend its discussions with the Public Investment Fund over the proposed investment in our space companies Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit.
75 responses to “Branson Suspends Negotiations Over $1 Billion Space Investment From Saudi Arabia”
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Its time for the US to set the example of placing– high tariffs– of all products imported into the US
from nations that are not free and democratic and who abuse human
rights.
Free and fare trade with the US should be– restricted–
to nations that are free and democratic and who respect fundamental
human rights.
That’s the only way we’re going to build a better world
while providing a powerful incentive to spread freedom and democracy
throughout the realm of humanity.
Marcel
I agree. It surprises me that California works to attract business from Saudi Arabia given their treatment of LGBTs, including prison, flogging and execution.
Wonder who will protect them when we pull our military out? Would the EU step up? Japan? Both are dependent on their oil, but we aren’t thanks to the new fracking technology for oil recovery.
there is no protecting the Saudis they are the biggest of the states all created by the US and Europe that will collapse as WW1 works its way through the mideast.
Good for Sir Richard.
The Saudi’s were probably backing out long before this incident. News reports are that money is getting tight, why throw more down the Branson rat hole?
Maybe. Or perhaps they were waiting for SpaceShipTwo to actually get to space and back safely. I do believe a flight test will happen in the weeks ahead. For once, Branson isn’t bullshitting.
Your dogged coverage of Virgin Galactic means that when you say something like this, it is *highly* credible.
Well done. very well done
Its time for us to stop dealing with both of the devils in the mideast
So long as at least one of the several devils in that region that we won’t deal with is Israel, I can go for that. Sadly, that will never happen. And Saudi has lots of money, so the US will happily continue to deal with them.
one day we will cut that one off as well
Dream on.
coming soon
Who’s “we,” by the way? Are you a Turkish national?
no. Americans will cut the Israelis off, there is majority support for that now
Nope, the most recent numbers from the polls does not support that statement. Direct from Gallup.
https://news.gallup.com/pol…
“Sixty-four percent say their sympathies in the dispute lie more with the
Israelis, tying the high previously recorded in 2013 and 1991.”
“74% view Israel favorably, vs. 21% for Palestinian Authority”
thats one poll there are others…few Americans like us supporting the Israeli military we will see
Yes, the Atlantic Magazine discusses the issue, and wording of the poll questions.
https://www.theatlantic.com…
How Not to Measure Americans’ Support for Israel
“Americans are far more divided on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than they are on Israel or the U.S.-Israel relationship—and so when Israel advocates and Israelis themselves use this poll question as a proxy for American support for Israel, they are not doing themselves any favors.”
Israel is the only real democracy in the region. The Palestian problem is largely the result of the surrounding nations failing to integrate them or reach peace deals with Israel. It is a problem that could have been solved 60 years ago if the Soviets hadn’t intervened in the region.
that is not an excuse to tolerate their treatment of the Palestinians and their aggressive nature in the region. now they are helping the Saudis build a bomb at Yanbu
Given that Iran is their common enemy it is not surprising.
Israeli treatment of “Palestinians” has been remarkably restrained considering the 70 years of continuous homicidal provocations by people of this invented non-nationality. Nor are the Israelis unique in their status as targets of “Palestinian” psychopathy. Having utterly failed to crush Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, despite abundant help from several Arab states, “Palestinians” next tried taking over the nation of which they had all been titular citizens prior to June 1967, Jordan. In more recent years, “Palestinians” have been fighting a low-level war against Egypt in the Sinai. Small wonder no other Arab nation has wanted any of them on its own soil since.
As for the settlements Israelis have built in the West Bank territory taken from Jordan, and those previously built in Gaza, it is traditional, as well as just, for the victor in a war of aggression started by its enemies to take some of those enemies’ territory in compensation and to enhance security. Consider the changing maps of France, Germany and Poland over the past 150 years.
In June 1967, in response to a war launched by a coalition of several Arab states, Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai from Egypt. Egypt took part of Sinai back in its 1973 war with Israel, then made a peace agreement that included return of the rest of Sinai. Syria never made peace with Israel and Golan remains in Israeli hands. “Palestinians” tried to take over all of Jordan in 1969 and were expelled back into the Israeli-held West Bank.
Israel gave back Gaza to the “Palestinians” some years ago. All they got in return was the accession of Hamas to leadership there, on-going rocket attacks and other incidents of terrorist violence and a slow-rolling civil war in both parts of “Palestine” between the Hamas butchers who run Gaza and the PLO butchers who run the West Bank.
Israel, in my view, would be entirely within its rights to take back Gaza as well as the remaining unincorporated portions of the West Bank and declare both Israeli territory. The so-called “Palestinian” populations in both places should be forcibly expatriated to Syria, where, with any luck, their Arab “brothers” will obliterate them as part of the on-going general genocide now in progress there. Never let a “crisis” go to waste.
“Never let a “crisis” go to waste.” <- That is the Zionist mantra, mind.
Seems to be the mantra of lots of folks, anti-semites included.
ahhh, there we go — I wondered how long until the “Anti-Semite” bomb was dropped. It is absolutely pathetic that no one can argue with Israeli policy for fear of being called anti-semite.
that is where people like you go when they are out of other thoughts
the Israeli government is one of the most immoral in the region and they are kept that way by American money which they get in massive amounts
If they had to float their own boat, they would come to a deal.
They would have to go a long way to match Turkey and it’s decades long campaign to eliminate the Kurds. Thank god President Trump was able to force them to release the American pastor they were holding as a political prisoner. Hopefully he will also be able to free the NASA engineer they have in jail.
Freedom House, which has been recognized since WWII as the best source of evaluating freedom and democracy in a nation, rates Israel at 79, the highest rating in the Middle East and only 10 points below the 89 rating of the United States.
By contrast Turkey is rated at only 32, Not Free. For further reference, the Gaza Strip is rated at 12, the West Bank at 28. Iran is at 18, a little better than UAE which is at 17, while Saudi Arabia is near the bottom of the scale, rated at a mere 7 on Freedom House’s 100 point scale.
So the facts just don’t support your statement that Israel is one of the most immoral governments in the region. In fact it’s the opposite.
Those are ridiculous comments. The Kurds are on the brink of a nation because of Turkish blood being spilled, obviously you dont know a thing about the PKK which is a terrorist organization..and we killed while we were in Iraq. The “pastor” was a political operative.
The European Court on Human Rights might disagree with that, which is why Turkey is being kept out of the EU. But I will leave it at that since we have wondered off the topic of Saudi Arabia and space.
What’s ridiculous is you. The Kurds are on the brink of a nation because the U.S. protected Kurdish northern Iraq after Desert Storm and gave them the breathing space to set up and run a rump state there. The PKK are still a minor problem, but mostly to Turkey which has been trying to ethnically cleanse the Kurds for decades. The PKK doesn’t rule in northern Iraq or in the Kurdish-majority provinces of Iran either.
I suppose you have to say such things publicly because you work in Turkey. As Kemalism is now a dead letter, there is no longer any real separation of church and state in Turkey. By the standard of Islamic nations in general, any representative of an “infidel” religion is also automatically a “political operative.”
no. not at all. you dont undwerstand the situation at all here…sory. the PKK does not rule in Northern Iraq or Syria because the Turks with American help (we are helping now stopped them)
you have no experience in the mideast. I do. 10 years last century and well so far 7 this century. dont talk about what you dont know.
Why does the terrorist nature of the PKK rule out the fact that they’re helping form a nation in Northern Iraq? For the most part, national governments are formed from successful terror organizations.
Israel and the US suffer from much the same problem. Israel does not know what to do with their victory after Arabian wars of destruction. They’re stuck with what to do with their success. The US suffers much the same issue with it’s victory of the 20th Cen. Both grew up under threat both physical, intellectual, and moral. Both won, and don’t know what to do with that. Israel has marked time playing with Meier Kahane
ism, secular humanism, and early 2000’s style republican vulcanism all at the same time. Both the US and Israel don’t have a real vision for themselves in the long term. Sure Israel has to deal with the annoyance of the Arabs, and to some degree so does the US, but it’s an annoyance and not a defining threat. In the end, neither side really knows where they’re going.
Speak for yourself and the rest of academic leftist ennui. I’ve got a perfectly clear notion of where the U.S. needs to go in coming decades. It isn’t going to go there if it’s run by fools who think the U.S. has no real enemies or that the nation can be bent into arbitrary pretzel shapes without consequence.
You’re right, people like you do know where you want to take the US. Transfer everything of value from the American industrial sector to foreign governments in exchange for their paper money. By the time the likes of you are done with your process of transferring American engineering know how to your Chinese masters, academics like me will be the only ones left with any industrial capability. But don’t worry, it’s good business.
I agree…the US was working “toward” a vision of itself post cold war under bush 41 and Clinton the guy…but Bush 43 killed that with his “empire of the mideast” thing
the Israelis are able to “be bullys” because the US floats their economic situation a great deal…they have single payer healthcare etc, because we pay for their military
the mideast now is going through a transformation where all the western created states are “ending” and that will include eventually Saudi Arabia and if they are not careful Israel.
Bush 41 wanted the give the USSR room to gracefully fall apart, and did a masterful job. Clinton was an internationalist assuming he was dealing with other internationalists, when in reality he was dealing with a bunch of nationalists. So long as the US was willing to give in the form of engineering know how and access to the domestic US market, the nationalists were willing to take in exchange for their paper money, their accepting and use of dollars, and using the savings of their population to back American debt notes.
It will be interesting to see how history treats the presidential cycle between Bush41 and I suspect Trump who I think, (Hope) will end it
In my view both Bush41 and Clinton the guy were “slouching” toward a post Cold War vision. Clinton steering the space stations to the Russians was a “clever” way to try and keep the program, which nearly died going…and also to geniunly try and affect Russian behavior
the cuts in military spending, the reinvest ment at home…but most important the “world response” to things that both proctored was I thought clever. Bush in the STorm and Clinton in OAF (ie Kosovo) both had a way to excersize American leadership but with enormous world/European involvement.
Then 9/11 came along and after that Bush43 grand vision (which he really had) floundered in the mideast and now Trump spewing his “we are special” rhetoric is deadly
in the end we were slouching toward some unified measure of “direction” with opposition to patently outrageous behavior…which might have been the first (or more likely the third) move toward some coherence in the world
well thats gone for now…and what is happening is that the American “empire” such as it is is bleeding to death and the Chinsese see a way for them to be the next “complete superpower”
Its now going all the wrong direction for the US…and at some point when the trains stop..ie the debt/paper money printing simply stalls out…watch out. it could make the 29 era look tame
To me this is the most glaring difference between the two nations. NASA and Israel have just signed an agreement on a joint Moon mission.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-…
Oct. 3, 2018, RELEASE 18-083
NASA, Israel Space Agency Sign Agreement for Commercial Lunar Cooperation
While Turkey, which is a member of the Moon Treaty is still holding a NASA engineer in jail.
https://www.houstoniamag.co…
Johnson Space Center Scientist Sentenced to Seven Years in Turkish Prison
By Dianna Wray 2/9/2018 at 4:30pm
“Golge, his wife Kubra and their sons were visiting their family in Ankara when the uprising against Erdogan occurred in 2016.”
“the couple, who have lived in the United States for more than a decade, becoming citizens in 2010, decided not to cut their trip short since none of the family was involved or even particularly political.”
Any wonder NASA, under the Obama Administration, banned travel to Turkey for COSPAR?
http://spaceref.com/news/vi…
Letter From NASA Headquarters Regarding Travel Ban to COSPAR in Istanbul, Turkey
June 21, 2016
The travel warning is still in place for Americans at the State Department’s website.
https://travel.state.gov/co…
“Reconsider travel to Turkey due to terrorism and arbitrary detentions. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory.”
Robert, I pray you and your family stay safe as the Freedom House rating for Turkey is still falling. Sadly it looks like it is going the way of other Islamic nations in the region.
dont be silly all democracies are under enormous stress because of right wing religious groups and that includes the US with a nut for President…a bigoted, racist, sexist nut
“the Moon thing” is happening because the US is paying for it…thats all
the coup was a CIA thing that went bad.
you have no first hand experience in the region. my two young children have more than you do 🙂
What Bush 43 started was the destruction of Arab secular institutions and replacing them with nothing. Bush 41 knew not to do that. Saddam was the only thing sitting between the order that we had vs atomizing Arabian institutions to the level of the mosque. We had a dysfunctional national debate that said nation building was supposedly a failure. We of course ignored Germany, France, Japan, and S Korea. It can work. When we destroyed the secular institutions and refused to build a workable alternative we left the Arabs with the base of their society, the mosque. We put gasoline on the fire when we funded the Sunni Awakening (which would go on to join ISIL after it was created in US run prisons.). The Sunni Awakening needed to be pushed toward integration with the Iraqi Army and turning those militia into secular institutions. Now we keep playing whack a mole with ISIS/ISIL. ISIS is supposedly not in control of Raqa, however we keep hearing about them in Eastern Syria. Not to mention Libya. And the Egyptians cant seem to snuff it out in Sinai.
I agree with some of that but not all of it
Nation building ONLY works when 1) a foreign power ha the moral imperative to galvinize its people to do it, 2) a foreign power has the moral imperative to “crush” “the established order, hang/kill all the people who were part of that order and more or less 3) banish it from history
those times come along few and far between in history and they did not exist after 9/11. Or if they existed at all it was either to destroy OBL and AQ and or the Saudi government which funded it.
Instead we chose to attack the institutions which first the British and French and then us the US had suppoprted for decades almost a century…and in fact created…we had no idea what to replace them with, because the countries in questinon Iraq, Syria and Libya are to immature for a jeffersonian democracy AND (MOST IMPORTANt) ARE NOT REAL COUNTRIES ANYWAY.
they like the vast majority of the mideast are a collection of tribes assembled to be a country at the pleasure of the “Europeans” with no real cohesion as a country. Iranians and Turks think of themselves, no matter what ethnic background OR where they are in the country Iranins and Turks first and oh say in Turkey Armenian second
Not in iraq and Syria and Libya (and I would add Saudi Arabia and other countries of the pennensiula)
The British and French set the countries up (and we helped set Saudia Arabia up) where the minority runs the military and hence then is controllable by the foreign power. when we pulled that down, well every one went back to what they were…which was this or that tribe Sunni, this or that tribe Shia.
its kind of like L of Arabia (or I would have made Gertrude Bell of Iraq) without good music.
Foreign powers cannot fix this. They have to fix this domestically and that is happening now. Yes a lot of it is centered on religion, but for the most part 1) that is blow up of right wing American politicans and 2) overstated in reality…it is really all about local politics trying to find a support base that is larger than the politics.
(Our God was on both the North and South side of our second civil war)
I would disagree big time with your assessment of the Sunni situation. the failure in Iraq was not the Sunni’s but the failure was the Shia to go along with the deals that they made to get American troops to leave under Bush.
as his term drew to an end Bush really wanted to bring American troops out, and the Iraqis wanted us out. We tried to negotiate (the current Sec Def was pushing this) deals which had power sharing between the Sunni and Shia…because the Sunnies more or less still controlled the army (a function of the Anbar awakening)
I didnt give those deals all that long to last, and well they fell apart about 8 months into Obama’s term. The Shia assasinated almost all the Sunni army leadership (or the Sunni leadership left fearing assasination). The US under Hillary failed really to monitor the election all that well, which was a close thing anyway
In large measure because Hillary had drifted toward Biden’s “two state solution” with iraq becoming Shia and Syria becoming Sunni, 9first of course you had to get rid of the Shia leadership)
that had no chance of succeeding. now the entire “swatch” is more or less Shiaville with the Kurds (and Turks and now I see the US is patrolling with the Turks and Kurds)…northern Iraq/ Syria which is going to become Kurdistan.
Where will the sunnis go? South of course. that is why the Iranians are fighting in yemen.
I dont blame Obama (but do Hillary a bit) or Bush43…because once you are into the tar baby getting out is more important then how you leave the tar.
The locals will settle this…but new maps for the mideast are coming…
the key to stability int he region are Turkey and iran…which are emerging democracies…unlike anything else in the region
Empires die hard. the French and British had to get stuck on the tar baby in Suex in 56 and to some extent the last 17 years have been our version of that…but our day as a Middle East Empire is ending….
the question is can we survive as a super power at all now.
(sorry I wrote my MS on Middle East Studies on this in 1995 🙂
And I’m not going to disagree with your overall thesis. The specifics I’ll save for a face to face should it ever occur. But your post raises points that, while I admit I have not gone too far out of my way to research, I’m disappointed I have not seen in any press, right, left, or analytical.
* What are the tribes in the middle east?
* What binds them together?
* How do they make money?
* How do they organize their militia?
* How do they interact with existing states?
The closest I could find was watching Al Sadder in Basra during the occupation. Then watching the Sunni Awakening get funded/armed, and then begin their absorption into ISIS after the Maliki admin started pushing them aside. I did find one map that was illustrative. It was a Sunni vs Shiite tribal map. The funny thing was I had just been looking at a water well and oil well map in another book, and darn it, the Sunni had all the water wells, and the Shiite tribes the oil wells. On the side I’ve been looking for any history of the region to find out if in the past the Sunni pushed the Shia into the regions with the fouled water wells due to oil deposits.
Andrew. its all about understanding the culture and how it works into their religion
its accurate for Arabs, people in Israel (I am reluctant to label them as Jewishsince we will now get into anti S) and even in the US.
religion is a sub culture to “local tribalism”…ie the two or more or less integrated with each other. and that of course is further in the case of Islam divided into the Sunni/Shia thing which is “like” but different from the Protestent Catholic mix…ie they both worship the same guy and text but have some “domestic” differences…
Tribalism in the Arab world is a mix of whatever sect of Islam AND the local regional differences (think North and South) here. A good example of this…is say in the call to prayer…I can pick out Sunni or Shia differences…and can tell the differences between say Saudi (Sunni) and Turkish (Sunni) calls to prayer…
so what you have is local “groups” intermingling with their own “brand” of the religion. For instance all women in Saudi Arabia who are locals are covered or wear the Hijab or the Abyay..it very very rare here in Turkey and in Istanbul almost well never happens.
the best comparision I can come up with (and I am not Catholic) but Irish Catholics are different then say US Southern CAtholics…
they all have milita’s they all are worried about some other “group” coming in and taking their water, oil and farm land…and how they interact with the government is always tenuous. The governments in Iran and Turkey are really strong, but in Saudi Arabia there is a substance “religious police” influence
the problem is trying to intergrate all this into a nation state motiff…and its hard particularly when Oil comes into it. How the foreign powers did this was by finding a leader in the minority (or creating a minority…aka the House of Saud) and governing through that and kind of turning a blind eye as to how they did it
Turkey and iran are strong national governments…What makes Turkey unique is that Attaturk got rid of all the foriegn influence…and what makes the Mullahs strong in iraq…is that they got rid of the “quadgis” something no other Iranian government in the last century could do
and if everyone agrees on anything, other than the minnorities who we lilke to rule, everyone in the region more or less wants the Europeans and Americans out of their governments.
I still want to see a list of tribes, an assessment of their identity, the nature of their economic power, the capabilities of their militia, and why and how they fight. 🙂
I will see if I can find my old paper on the subject…
the PKK is not liked by anyone…even the Kurds in Erbil dont like them
the PKK are a group of Kurds, probably less then 50K who believe that Kurdistan should include parts of turkey…not even the Kurdsin those parts of Turkey think that…the Kurdish persmergaa will eliminate members of the PKK wherever they find them (and blame it on someone else)
Sure, but they did the heavy lifting of Kurdish independence during the latter Cold War era and were the most functional expression of Kurdish nationality against the Turks, Iraq, and Iran. The firebrands of many revolutions get nudged out by the folks who actually end up running the new nation and make it work. Sorta like a start-up company. If George Armstrong Custer were alive today, most Americans would wish he was killed at The Little Big Horn.
NO not really. The PKK has always been a very very small group and always an outlier. when Saddam was alive (peace be upon him) the Pershmerga took help from anyone, Much as the Kovoso Liberation Army was about to take help from AQ…but they have never had the same goals and never really did the PKK have critical mass
without a doubt they the PKK are thugs, terrorist and basic outlaws. we tried to kill as many of them as possible in my time there. the only reason Trump liked them for awhile is that they would fight Assad…not well but they were the only group we could find who would. The pershmerga made their peace with Assad a long long time ago
I remember the PKK back in the 80’s with respect to the raids they conducted in Iran. That’s when I found out who the Kurds were. They were the only Kurdish group I knew of until I started seeing the groups that rose up against Saddam in the late 80’s and into Desert Storm. I’m of course no expert, just remembering the news cycles from 35 years ago of what I would have read in newspapers of the day.
Custer…is a complex person 🙂
Israel is a free, civilized, prosperous nation beset by hordes of homicidal tribal barbarian religious fanatics. The rest of the nations in the region are repressive monarchies or theocracies. The only place outside Israel in the Middle East that isn’t a complete pesthole of tyranny is the Kurdish north in Iraq. If anyone is looking to stand up a new country in the region, it should be an independent Kurdistan, not a sociopathic Palestine.
Things would be incomparably worse in the Middle East were it not for Israel’s presence. The money provided Israel by the U.S. gov’t. is not massive and saves us having to spend a lot more garrisoning the region to a much greater degree to keep the local nutbars in line.
As for “deals,” the only one the so-called “Palestinians” want is for Israel to disappear. Israel has tried to make many “deals” with these unregenerate scum and have, in every case, been refused because the bottom line is always that Israel must cease to exist.
lol thats all that tirade warrants
Israel is trying to do with the Palestinians what the US did with the indigenous tribes and nation remnants that were here pre United States. The maximum extent of the reservations are set, now it’s a matter of whittling them away. Pre-wall it was a question if the Palestinians would be tolerated in Israel as a underclass to be exploited for cheap labor. That’s not going to happen for a while. So is it immoral what the Israeli nation is doing to the Palestinian nation? It’s as immoral as what the US did to the pre US natives. But just as essential. And the immorality is justified by outcome in the eyes of many Americans for various reasons, some silly some on a balance of outcomes. Israel today is a far better nation than Palestine would have ever been had Jordan, Syria, or Egypt ever let it exist in the absence of the creation of Israel.
The Saudis and Israelis have gotten notably chummier in the past couple years. If the Israelis are helping the Saudis build nuclear weapons, one hopes they are doing so in a way that makes Israeli acquiescence a precondition for their use. Given the very considerable threat to both nations posed by a resurgent Iran determined to rebuild the long-dead Persian Empire, I find it hard to view such activity – should it actually be taking place – with much alarm. The Middle East would be a much-improved place if the Israelis and Saudis jointly administered a beheading to Iran.
If they then beheaded themselves, I’df agree with you.
ridiculous comment. Iran is the gateway for democracy to the mideast
Iran is not a democracy just because it has a legislature any more than the Soviet Union was. Like the Soviet Union was, Iran is run by a cadre of self-selected old men who are answerable only to one another.
The Saudis and Israelis have a common thread of heavy trade with “western block” nations, while Saudi Arabia has very outdated views on civil rights, culturally they are probably the second closest to western nations in the region behind only Israel, especially when you look at their industry. Working with Israel grants Saudis improved trade relations, working with Saudi Arabia grants Israel one less immediate threat and easier access to key strategic resources, its a win-win.
Being a democracy doesn’t justify decades of appalling behaviour and ignoring international law.
What appalling behavior? What international law?
Well, illegal settlements for a start. The clue is in the word “illegal”.
Illegal according to whom? There is no nation of Palestine. Theonly law applicable in the West Bank is that of Israel. If the government of Israel finds extant settlements okay, they are legal.
Well there was no nation of Israel until the British and French handed it over…
But since you ask, Illegal according to the United Nations.
The problem with the area is the Palestianian’s won’t admit defeat and grant Israel a victory, and the problems with the Israeli’s is they won’t give the Palestinians a honorable defeat. In the 70’s and 80’s Israel was holding onto land they intended to grant to a Palestinian nation in exchange for living under Israeli economic control with no military to defend what they had left. It of course came close in the 90’s but we all know what happened. At the same time that was going on a upstart-crack pot out of Brooklyn left the NY Metropolitan area in the mid 80’s with the idea of taking all that land for Israel, and they got a lot of play. As for the Palestinians not being a people … well, in the bible they’re called Philistines. They go way back. But they lost, Israel won, is making much better use of the land, and they’re not going to be thrown off any time soon. The sooner the Palestinians can come to accept economic servitude to Israel and being defenceless the better off they’ll be.
they will never do that
And so it goes……
Eventually, they will either do it or they will all be killed. The world has pretty much run out of room for tribal barbarians to go on being tribal barbarians. The only real unknown is just how many tribal barbarians are going to have to be killed in order for the rest of them to get the message and start to behave. My suspicion is that the number will be quite impressively large.
coming from a stay at home…thats pretty bold talk
the real trick I think will be in trade and missed opportunities thereof, as well as cultural combat fatigue, no one wants to be left behind, and what trade they do get may encourage cultural shifts, unfortunately, it will be slow.
Good luck with that. But the “Palestinians” are not the Philistines. The “Palestinians” are Arabs. There were essentially no Arabs in the region in biblical times, just a lot of peoples who have long since been either slaughtered and erased or absorbed by the Arabs who swept out of Arabia under the banners of Islam starting in the 7th century. Arabs are, in their essentials, still very much the tribal barbarians their ancestors were. Among tribal barbarians, the only final victory over another tribe is that of rendering the enemy extinct by killing the men and taking all the women and children into one’s own tribe. That’s what the “Palestinians” want, and will never get, anent Israel. Over a sufficiently long period of subordination, they might learn civilized patterns of thought and behavior, but not so long as they are permitted to pretend to self-rule and reinforce and renew their immemorial bloody-mindedness.
It’s not the responsibility of neighboring states to absorb the displaced Palestinians. After what the PLO and Syria did against Jordan, why would any sane nation want to?
Religion sucks big time.
all of it
Abso-bloody-lutely, Bob. 🙂 Regards, Paul.