Coming Soon: A Palestinian State?

Well it seems we are finally on our way to statehood for the Palestinians who left and were removed by Israeli forces in the wars of 1948 and 1967.
For those that don't know after Israel's declaration of Independence the surrounding Arab armies declared war on the new country. Fighting back, Israel managed to overcome the odds and proclaim victory, however there was a dark side to the celebrations. Confident of wiping out the new state the Arab governments convinced the Arabs that lived in Israel that they should evacuate and return to their homes once the fighting was over. Those that didn't choose to leave were incorporated into the new State of Israel as citizens.
In 1967, with another major war on the horizon, Israel launched preemptive strikes against it's enemy neighbors and claimed victory within 6 days. However, when they beat the odds they also became responsible for the welfare of over a million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, territory captured by Israel.
Over the last 40 years this has caused significant headaches for the Israeli government as the Palestinians living an squalor blame Israel for their mess. They have, on hundreds of occasions, launched terror strikes against the Israeli populace leaving thousands upon thousands of civilians dead in their wake.
Their latest weapon of terror is constant barrage of missile attacks (there have been over 3000, with 700 in the last 12 months alone) that are leaving more and more people dead.
The recent peace conference in Annapolis has led to a very recent conference of world economic leaders who are raising money for Palestinian statehood. The world has so far pledged 7.4 billion dollars (with Australia pledging 45 million) to see the creation of infrastructure and to raise the standard of living for Palestinians.
I'm personally quite skeptical about this, the last Palestinian leader to be in control of the economy ended up on the Forbes Rich List.
However this could be a step forward for peace. Once the Palestinians living in Gaza see how good the West Bank-ians have it then they'll throw off the shackles of the oppressive HAMAS government.
Lets hope that in the next several years we will see a strong, stable Palestinian economy and an even stronger Palestinian state.

Shooting in East-Jerusalem....on youtube.

Following an earlier post regarding the emergence of the internet and its effect on society here's another example of how times they are a'changin. It seems that police shootouts are put on the internet 3 days after they happen. This was done to quell any rumors of impropriety by the Israeli police.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22235073-401,00.html

Israeli police have released video footage showing a fierce firefight between a Palestinian man and an Israeli security guard in the Old City of occupied east Jerusalem which left the Palestinian dead.




Once the article explains the shooting it then mentions at the very end :

Ateret Cohanim, founded in 1978, is one of several ultra-nationalist organisations that have bought land and homes from Palestinians through various means in order to place Jews in the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

What did that have to do with anything at all? It seems that it was placed at the end of the article by a journalist for no reason. The article didn't talk about occupation or Palestinian rights, just that a Palestinian had grabbed a gun, shot a soldier and ten bystanders and then been shot by police....fairly simple story. If they had mentioned Ateret Cohanim why didn't they talk about HAMAS, Islamic Jihad or any of the other ultra-nationalist Palestinian terror groups. I've never heard of Ateret Cohanim before but according to news.com.au they buy houses and put other people in them.
It seems that the papers seem to be having a go at Israel again.