November 06, 2000

Does Israel Need World Policing?
Arizona May Tell Developers: Stay Out
Mandatory Gun Ownership in Utah

Does Israel Need World Policing?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak today rejected Palestinian calls for an international protection force to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is to raise the issue of world intervention to stop more than five weeks of bloodshed when he meets President Clinton at the White House on Thursday, an Arafat aide said. Barak will see Clinton Sunday.

"I am asking for quick international forces...to protect us," Arafat said in an interview Sunday on the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes."

Barak, commenting on an Israel Television report that Washington had sounded out his government on the idea, said: "There was no request like this. If there will be a request for international forces, we will completely oppose it."

In "U.S. Should Stay Out of Arab-Israeli Conflict," Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies Leon Hadar argues that the conflict does not threaten any significant national interests and that the United States would be best served by staying out of the looming war.

"Unless the persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict harms crucial U.S. national interests, Washington should allow the violence to run its course," Hadar writes. "What is now taking place in the region is a civil war between Jews and Arabs that will determine the borders and the demographic makeup of Israel and an independent Palestinian state. In other words, it is a parochial conflict similar to many others around the world."

Arizona May Tell Developers: Stay Out

Tomorrow, Arizona voters will decide the fate of a sweeping ballot measure that seeks to apply the brakes to the explosive of that state, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Proposition 202 would draw strict boundaries to limit development over the next 10 years. Changes would require approval by a four-fifths vote of local government and by a public vote if 20 acres or more were involved. Developers also would be charged higher prices for public facilities such as schools and sewers that accompany new homes and businesses.

In "Critiquing Sprawl's Critics," Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson demonstrate how "smart growth" measures serve to exacerbate many of the problems they aim to remedy. In "Smart Growth at the Federal Trough: EPA's Financing of the Anti-Sprawl Movement," Peter Samuel and Randal O'Toole outline how the EPA is financing non-profit lobbying groups to build public support for the war on sprawl in what amounts to subsidizing one side of a public policy debate.

Mandatory Gun Ownership in Utah

The town of Virgin, Utah, has enacted an ordinance requiring a gun and ammunition in every home for residents’ self-defense, according to the Associated Press.

The ordinance was passed despite the fact that most of Virgin’s 350 residents already own firearms. Residents had expressed fear that their Second Amendment right to bear arms was under fire so the town council modeled a similar measure passed by a Georgia city about 12 years ago.

Virgin residents who don’t comply will not be punished, Mayor Jay Lee says. Also, exceptions will be made for the mentally ill, convicted felons, conscientious objectors and people who can’t afford to own a gun.

Utah lawmakers may be taking to an extreme the adage that an armed society is a polite society, but evidence suggests their law could reduce crime more than measures that restrict gun ownership. In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun," Jeffrey R. Snyder shows that crime-rates are reduced in states that adopt concealed-carry laws.

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