Making More Land

A QUICK GlANCE at a map of the middle east quickly reveals the obvious; that the nation of Israel is tiny, squeezed into a few hundred square miles along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. And,as they say, they aren't making any more land, except for the Chinese, who seem to be making more on floating platforms in the south China sea for the purpose of building military bases offshore with which to dominate the Asian Pacific. But Israel is stuck with what she has now; no matter how much her population grows, her land mass, presumably, will not. Her only option would be to seize even more Palestinian land, and Palestine has precious little now.Then consider the fact that the modern Israeli state came into existnce in 1948, it is a wonder that anyone was able to find any place to locate it at all. People who resent its existence sometimes suggest that it would have been appropriate to locate it within the borders of its primary creators and benefactors, Great Britain or the United States. By 1948 all the good, usable land in the world had been long spoken for. The land upon which Israel sits is no prize; mainly desert, desert which has been, over the decades, magically transformed into a virtual paradise by Israelii genius, inrepid hard work, and foreign assistance, combined with modern agricultural methods. But Israel was established on land which already was spoken for, a new nation, conceived and established on somebody else'national sovereign territory. And that, as Shakespeare said, is the rub. Another interesting fact emerges by looking at a map of Israel and Palestine at ten year intervals, starting in 1948, and continuing to today. At the birth of Israel, Palestine was already left with less than half of its original territory, whih was smalll to begin with. Then, at every ten year interval, you notice that the amount lf land owned and occupied by israel has increased, and the percentage of the land owned, controlled, and occupied by Palestine has decreased. Israel, over the decades, has been expanding, and Palestine has been shrinking. And this is true of the interior of Israel, where msot of Palestine is squeezed into, not just the Gaza strip. Israel has grown, Palestine has shrunk, drastically. Everytime violence breaks out between the two enemies, Israel seizes more territory, and never, or rarely returns it. A current map of the two nations reveals that as crowded as Israel is, Palestine is much more so. Several million people are stuffed together in a small area, making Palestine among the highest population density regions of the world, without the agriculture or industry to sustain the population. Thus, it is a nation in perpetual poverty. When modern Israel was invented, the accomodations accorded Palestin ewere wholly inadequate. There was really nothing to do. There was no acceptable solution as to how to accomodate Palestine, no way to create more land for Palestine; so, nothing was done. To this day, nothing has ever been done to help Palestine, whch has kept losing more and more of their land. The current war, like all the others, will prove to be drastically one sided. As always, hundreds of Palestinians will die for every Israeli citizen. Such is the beneift of having access to western military technology and weapons, and the support of the United states and Europe. The United States and Europe are, in a sense, trapped into supporting Israel; they are, after all, responsible for its existence. I recall once hearing a young conservative Hasidic rabbi express his opinion that the modern state of Israel should not exist, because the Hebrew faith,Judaism, is not a nation state, nor a military super power, but that it is a religion, and only a religion. That is worth thinking about.