Palestinians in Latin America
Here is a new and bizarre twist to the Palestinian-Latin America connection:
The United States proposed giving Palestinian refugees land in South America as a radical solution to a problem that has haunted Middle East peace talks for decades.
Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's secretary of state, wanted to settle displaced Palestinians in Argentina and Chile as an alternative to letting them return to former homes in Israel and the occupied territories. Rice made the proposal in a June 2008 meeting with US, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Berlin, according to minutes of the encounter seen by the Guardian.
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The proposal seems based on the fact that Chile has a large Palestinian community dating back a century and, like Argentina, has large tracts of sparsely populated land.
Did anyone ask whether Palestinians would prefer to be shipped out, or whether a very large number of non-Spanish speaking Muslims would automatically be welcomed? I suppose it is worth at least discussing all sorts of potential solutions, but this one seems particularly outlandish.
7 comments:
Why not Canada or Alaska? The weather?
The speed at which the US is losing its reputation gained after WWII is incredible...have you realized that guys?
Not so long ago there were some on this board who were promoting the "legendary" Brazilian diplomats as potential intermediaries in the Middle East. Those of us who criticized this line of thinking pointed out the general anti-American thrust of Brazil's diplomacy under Lula and how Brazil did not have sufficient interests to move the ME parties. Today the Brazilian “no limits” friendship with Iran is in shambles. Greg chooses to post about resettlement schemes of Condoleezza Rice rather than an article on Brazil's breaking relations with Iran on the basis of human rights. Selection bias?
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Rousseff/rompe/lazos/Brasil/regimen/Iran/elpepuint/20110129elpepiint_14/Tes
Anonyous #2
The article was written by Juan Arias. This is a man of the right who did a very Rousseff-hostile coverage of the Brazilian presidential elections, and he has remained biased against her even after the event. Some weeks ago Arias was targeted by a Brazilian NGO/blog - the Blog da Cidadania - over his misrepresenting Rousseff government's actions regarding the recent Rio de Janeiro floods. This fellow is not a trust-worthy reporter. It wasn't even a week ago that Antonio Patriota, the current Brazilian Foreign Minister, said that there would be no radical changes in Brazil's Iran policy. And it wasn't even two weeks ago that Rousseff commented positively on a letter she received from a Iranian woman MP over the Sakineh case. That Rousseff is not as interested in Iran as Lula was, is well known and has been noted by the Brazilian media. But Arias apparently has decided to exaggerate things. Considering that he writes for a Spanish newspaper, he can propably get away with misreporting, since most of his readers know nothing about Brazil or its polical landscape, or care about either.
One thing that I find seriously annoying as someone who has been blogging for eight years is when someone accuses you of bias because you're not blogging about something that interests them.
There is, of course, a simple solution. One need only click the preceding link and you can find out how to start your own blog for free.
You can even continue to call yourself "Anonymous."
Nice comment, Randy.
Thanks, Russell. I've just seen such comments so often that I'm fed up.
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