[Drugmachine]

Continuation of my post #2:

As I was saying…In the particular case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it may be more proper to draw the dividing line, not in terms of leftists and right-wingers, but rather in terms of pragmatists and idealists. This, applied to the Geneva Accord would imply that it would be supported by both Israeli and Palestinian pragmatists and opposed by the idealists on both sides.

If we consider for instance the issue of the right of return of refugees; a Palestinian pragmatist might follow a reasoning such as this: - There is no way that Israel would accept a couple of million of refugees and not even a tenth of that. The only possible way of returning those refugees to their former homes is through a war; in the unlikely event that the Arabs win that war Israel would be devastated and to return them to a country in ruins is to place them in a position worse than their present one. Let’s face it: it’s a no-win situation. Better to drop it now and give a chance for negotiations to succeed- So, our fellow gets up from his thinking chair and goes to sign his support for the GA or the Ayalon-Nusseibeh declaration.

Against him comes up what we might call an idealistic Palestinian, exemplified perhaps by Mr. Bishara, the author of the article quoted in #1, a paragraph of which says:

Once the Palestinians compromise their history in return for a bit more of their geography, and barter parts of occupied Jerusalem in return for compromising the collective and individual rights of 3.7 million refugees, they lose the moral essence of their struggle .

On of my Dictionaries defines idealist as: "one guided by ideals; especially : one that places ideals before practical considerations". The ideals here are several: Palestinian History (history is of course not material) in the first place, the refugee’s rights and the moral essence of the struggle. See the point? If he is faithful to his ideals, if he places them first and foremost in his reasoning, he’d look at the GA document as an aberration.

( A note for any of my fellow Forum members that may happen to read the above: I’m using pragmatist and idealist according to their popular aceptions; I’m perfectly aware that its connotations in Philosophy are not quite the same so, please let’s not start a discussion about semantics)