The day before Israel's independence day, Israelis take time to commemorate those who died defending the Jewish state. According to Debka.com, it's been 21,196 men and women since November 19th, 1947. (That's the day the UN General Assembly voted in favor of the partition plan that was to create a Jewish and Arab state on the remnant of the British Mandate in Palestine.) The number would have been much larger - by one or two orders of magnitude - if Israel hadn't done what everyone seems to hate her so much for: defend herself.
Nobody knows how many Arabs died trying to throw the Jews into the ocean. Probably a much larger number. And then there are the hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs. Add to that the cost of maintaining military forces on both sides, and the anxiety of being in a constant state of war, and it adds up, no matter how you measure it.
So I've gotten to thinking about all this talk of making reparations to the Palestinians.
The rationale for this demand is that a significant number of Palestinians unjustly lost their homes and livelihoods, and it's unlikely that Israel will allow any great number back. These refugees deserve restitution for their loss. It all makes sense, especially (it must be said) if it helps them get on with things, even if it is in a strange country that has the same language, culture, and religious composition as an (imagined) Arab Palestine.
On the other hand, if we're going to make up a balance sheet in the Arab-Israeli conflict, there are other items to consider.
For starters, the Jews expelled from Arab states deserve compensation. It's about the same number of people as the Palestinian refugees.
Then of course there is the cost to Israeli society of having to maintain a constant state of high military readiness since 1948. At one point -if I remember correctly - Israel had to set aside 40% of its GDP for defense purposes. There are direct, measurable costs here.
The largest cost is the opportunity cost of Israeli society having to allocate so many resources to defense rather than building their economy. Israel's per capita GDP ($19,500 in 2002) is comparable to Portugal's. Let's make a guess and assume that Israel could have been on par with the United Kingdom ($25,000) if she didn't have to fight all these wars. That's a lot of money over the years.
I think the right compromise would be this: Israel won't send the bill to the Arab States for trying to kill all the Jews if the Arab states agree to absorb the Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian refugees get to be resettled with stipends and start-up capital if they agree to stop killing Jews. In return for peace, Israel will eat the cost of being attacked all the time.
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