If the War of Independence had ended with an absolute separation of populations - the Palestinian Arabs on the east side of the Jordan River and the Jews on the west side - the Middle East would be less volatile and both peoples would have suffered less over the past 70 years. They would have been satisfied with a state of their own, not exactly what they wanted, and we would have received the whole Land of Israel.This is almost an identical repeat of what he said to Ari Shavit in a 2004 interview. There, he said:
If [David Ben-Gurion] was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.
Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.
'2nd EU referendum would take more than one year' claims govt, as Farage hints at returnSee also:
The UK government claims that a second EU referendum would take over a year to organize, according to official ministerial guidance leaked to the media, as Nigel Farage hints at returning via a different "vehicle."
The Telegraph's chief political correspondent Christopher Hope, took to social media to tweet that he had been given the official guidance drawn up by civil servants at the Cabinet Office. According to the leaked document, it would take a minimum of 14 months to pass the necessary legislation through parliament to carry out a second referendum.
Pro-EU campaigners and politicians such as Caroline Lucas from the Green Party, the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon and the Liberal Democrats' Vince Cable, have all urged UK PM Theresa May to keep the possibility of a second EU referendum on the table. May has been hostile to the idea up to now.
SECOND REFERENDUM TIMELINEA number of MPs have rubbished the government's estimations, including some of their own Tory politicians. Prominent 'people's vote' advocate, Dominic Grieve MP, called the timetable wrong and said that the government "must be aware of it themselves." Another, Dr Phillip Lee, who resigned his frontbench post over May's Brexit deal, labeled the guidance "nonsense."
- Primary legislation (seven months)
- Electoral Commission question testing (12 weeks)
- Secondary legislation (six weeks)
- Designation of campaigns and the actual campaign (16 weeks)
It comes as former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who quit the party in December, has said that he fears the UK is heading towards another referendum and that he is willing to fight another campaign - not with UKIP, but via an alternative "vehicle."
Farage told Sky News: "I think, I fear that the House of Commons is going to effectively overturn that Brexit. To me, the most likely outcome of all of this is an extension of Article 50. There could be another referendum."
May will present her 'plan b' Brexit proposal to parliament on Monday, with MPs voting on her alternative plan on January 29. She's been urged by many MPs to remove her redlines to get a deal through the House of Commons.
Comment: If the Democrats were serious about solving problems and ending the government shutdown, as they claim to be, then they wouldn't be taking lavish vacations in Puerto Rico while Trump is working in Washington.