Kerry's Israeli/Palestinian peace talks

[Mor]

 

It certainly wasn't an armed coup if Hamas won the election and Fatah illegally kept power, it was a... well, there isn't really a word for it. If the international community had honoured its commitments there would be no WB/ Gaza divide but they disliked the results, so set them aside for to favour their horse in the race.

It certainly was Hamas military wing that took over Gaza, they polled the trigger, took out the official Palestinian security forces, expelled many of their political rivals and violently suppressed any opposition afterwards. If you don't like calling it an 'armed coup', I already offered you an alternative terminology "a conflict resolution with guns".

 

But again you sidetrack miss the point, because regardless of semantics above, the fundamental issue of Hamas situation in Gaza is that in the peace talk the Palestinian side represent only by half of the Palestinians(those in the Westbank), while Hamas ruling the other half opposes peace negotiations with Israel, don't accept the PA in Westbank as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and find any agreement reached by them with Israel worthless... So reiterating from my previous post, this is THE HUGE elephant in the peace negotiation room.

 

you, for example, ignore that half of Jordan's population is Palestinian refugees, you want them- a poor country with little in the way of resources- to basically "deal with it" and absorb them no matter what the practicalities are. I dare say if the US got 300 million refugees, or the UK 60 million they'd happily accept them... let alone Israel allowing them their right of return to and integration in their actual country.

 

There is an argument that refugees should be integrated, but it's usually made by those far separated from the actual place expected to accept them and by those who do not have to deal with the problems associated with such a policy, and always seems to involve them being integrated somewhere 'over there', Not In My Back Yard.

I haven't ignored or addressed any of that, but I do find it irrelevant, because your points about Jordan and refugee integration would be valid for all refugees host countries, where majority of "Palestinian refuges" wouldn't be considered refuges.

 

The point was that of all the places suffering refugee and dislocations since ww2, its the only place where the international community perpetuated a refugee problem and that political decision has backfired. Instead of defusing the problem through integration, their money created dependency on refugees camps, only exacerbated the problem with each generation(here after the fact children, grandchildren... also count as refugee in a never ending cycle). What we see today is the result of this decades old "refugee" regime, in which we sunk billions, it has nothing to show for other than a welfare class, a breeding ground for extremists and now a block to peace.

 

Also on a practical sided, there are ~3 million "refugees" let say they get this decades long for "right of return". Where would the "refugees" go, where would they live/work, what would they eat/drink? and once they realized that nothing changed, there nothing over the rainbow in the promised land, how do you think that they will react toward the relatively moderate Palestinian leadership in the westbank and that piece paper with word peace on it they delivered...

[Walsingham]

it would be a hell of a way to shake up a negotiation - actually taking a live elephant in with you.

[Zoraptor]

But again you sidetrack miss the point, because regardless of semantics above, the fundamental issue of Hamas situation in Gaza is that in the peace talk the Palestinian side represent only by half of the Palestinians(those in the Westbank), while Hamas ruling the other half opposes peace negotiations with Israel, don't accept the PA in Westbank as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and find any agreement reached by them with Israel worthless... So reiterating from my previous post, this is THE HUGE elephant in the peace negotiation room.

 

Literally everyone knows that. The fundamental problem though is that it is the unelected faction negotiating, not the democratically elected one. That instantly makes the negotiations illegitimate.

 

I haven't ignored or addressed any of that, but I do find it irrelevant, because your points about Jordan and refugee integration would be valid for all refugees host countries, where majority of "Palestinian refuges" wouldn't be considered refuges.

 

Nuh-uh, doesn't work that way. If, in the reverse position, the argument were made that all Israelis are squatters criticism of that position cannot then be defended by "but they're squatters!". That's a circular argument where the only defence of the premise is the premise itself, same as saying that integration would eliminate refugee problems because "they're not refugees, so not refugee problem!" as if the only problem is the label 'refugee'.

 

Also on a practical sided, there are ~3 million "refugees" let say they get this decades long for "right of return". Where would the "refugees" go, where would they live/work, what would they eat/drink? and once they realized that nothing changed, there nothing over the rainbow in the promised land, how do you think that they will react toward the relatively moderate Palestinian leadership in the westbank and that piece paper with word peace on it they delivered...

Ah, but you're quite happy to lay those problems on other countries. People need food and accommodation and jobs wherever they are. I imagine that many would want to return to the homes Israel seized in 1948 or later, even if that is impractical now. For the rest, so far as I am concerned they can throw every illegal settler out of every illegal settlement for a palestinian. Equitable, considering the homes and land Israel has seized arbitrarily over the years.

 

The thing is, with every single other refugee crisis in existence the general consensus is that the refugees should return home. Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Congo/ Rwanda etc, all places where the goal is to get the refugees home. But for the palestinians of course the rules change, they're different etc etc. 

[Walsingham]

But surely the point - and I find it hard to believe we as a pretty smart forum  still wasting time on this, given we've said so numerous times - is that neither side can deliver the desired outcome of the other.

 

No Palestinian body can agree to peace because it can't deliver it. And vice versa. Every time an Israeli government agrees to a deal it loses its mandate long before it can be implemented.

 

Are there really no other issues the members would rather talk about? Issues that are live, unpublicised, and potentially solvable? Kurds, Tamils, animists, Sami... bloody butterflies or endangered sloths... anything but rehashing the same pointless talk?

[Zoraptor]

Meh, that's an argument for never saying anything on the internet that isn't utterly trivial.

 

There's no wool from eyes moment possible for any of the other issues listed either, anyone going in expecting such is going to be sorely, but unsurprisingly, disappointed. That isn't really the point anyway, the belief that you can change the world by posting on the internet is a charming one, but unrealistic.

 

Frankly though, there was scope for a deal, it just got killed off by Yigal Amir and some moronic grandstanding during the ensuing election. If we went back 20 odd years people were saying that Northern Ireland was an unsolvable issue too, and while it isn't completely solved now it is certainly a lot better than it was.

[BruceVC]

Meh, that's an argument for never saying anything on the internet that isn't utterly trivial.

 

There's no wool from eyes moment possible for any of the other issues listed either, anyone going in expecting such is going to be sorely, but unsurprisingly, disappointed. That isn't really the point anyway, the belief that you can change the world by posting on the internet is a charming one, but unrealistic.

 

Frankly though, there was scope for a deal, it just got killed off by Yigal Amir and some moronic grandstanding during the ensuing election. If we went back 20 odd years people were saying that Northern Ireland was an unsolvable issue too, and while it isn't completely solved now it is certainly a lot better than it was.

 

Or they would have said Apartheid couldn't have been ended without a civil war in South Africa. I don't think either side in the Israeli\Palestinian conflict has the necessary political will to achieve a long lasting peace.

[Walsingham]

Meh, that's an argument for never saying anything on the internet that isn't utterly trivial.

 

There's no wool from eyes moment possible for any of the other issues listed either, anyone going in expecting such is going to be sorely, but unsurprisingly, disappointed. That isn't really the point anyway, the belief that you can change the world by posting on the internet is a charming one, but unrealistic.

 

Frankly though, there was scope for a deal, it just got killed off by Yigal Amir and some moronic grandstanding during the ensuing election. If we went back 20 odd years people were saying that Northern Ireland was an unsolvable issue too, and while it isn't completely solved now it is certainly a lot better than it was.

 

No, it clearly isn't. Because I'm not saying don't say anything. I specifically listed a number of things which are less discussed and have the same themes. but with, you know, actual room for movement.

[Zoraptor]

Nah, there's no room for moving on any of the serious ones you mentioned. You aren't going to get the PMs of Turkey or Sri Lanka stumbling into this forum and going "hmm, why didn't I think of this solution? Nobel Peace Prize nomination incoming for Walsingham!", even if they did stumble into the forum.

 

Nothing anyone says here on any of those subjects has any point beyond the saying of it. You do it because you may believe in what you're saying, because you're a narcissist, because you want to know what other people's opinions are or because you want to be informed- or for a combination of all of them. You don't (or shouldn't) do it because you think you're going to change people's convictions/ opinions or actually solve anything, because you're exceedingly unlikely to do either. There's also the question of interest, those other issues don't tend to get discussed as much because there's simply less interest in them and their ramifications are a lot more local.

 

You could always start a thread on the Tamils or Kurds (or general 'little discussed issues' thread) if you want. It's probably a good idea*, rather like the random video games news in GG.

 

*I don't like megathreads much personally at least in theory, as they tend to cannibalise discussion from other threads, but in this case that seems unlikely.

[BruceVC]

Nah, there's no room for moving on any of the serious ones you mentioned. You aren't going to get the PMs of Turkey or Sri Lanka stumbling into this forum and going "hmm, why didn't I think of this solution? Nobel Peace Prize nomination incoming for Walsingham!", even if they did stumble into the forum.

 

Nothing anyone says here on any of those subjects has any point beyond the saying of it. You do it because you may believe in what you're saying, because you're a narcissist, because you want to know what other people's opinions are or because you want to be informed- or for a combination of all of them. You don't (or shouldn't) do it because you think you're going to change people's convictions/ opinions or actually solve anything, because you're exceedingly unlikely to do either. There's also the question of interest, those other issues don't tend to get discussed as much because there's simply less interest in them and their ramifications are a lot more local.

 

You could always start a thread on the Tamils or Kurds (or general 'little discussed issues' thread) if you want. It's probably a good idea*, rather like the random video games news in GG.

 

*I don't like megathreads much personally at least in theory, as they tend to cannibalise discussion from other threads, but in this case that seems unlikely.

 

Zor its not very nice to call yourself a narcissist. You do realize thats a negative word?

 

You should do what I do, you should only debate when you know you right as that way you aren't being arrogant. You are helping people learn something new

[Walsingham]

Nah, there's no room for moving on any of the serious ones you mentioned. You aren't going to get the PMs of Turkey or Sri Lanka stumbling into this forum and going "hmm, why didn't I think of this solution? Nobel Peace Prize nomination incoming for Walsingham!", even if they did stumble into the forum.

 

Nothing anyone says here on any of those subjects has any point beyond the saying of it. You do it because you may believe in what you're saying, because you're a narcissist, because you want to know what other people's opinions are or because you want to be informed- or for a combination of all of them. You don't (or shouldn't) do it because you think you're going to change people's convictions/ opinions or actually solve anything, because you're exceedingly unlikely to do either. There's also the question of interest, those other issues don't tend to get discussed as much because there's simply less interest in them and their ramifications are a lot more local.

 

You could always start a thread on the Tamils or Kurds (or general 'little discussed issues' thread) if you want. It's probably a good idea*, rather like the random video games news in GG.

 

*I don't like megathreads much personally at least in theory, as they tend to cannibalise discussion from other threads, but in this case that seems unlikely.

 

 

I've been trying to think of a polite way to put this but I can't.

 

Your negative attitude is symptomatic of the incredibly poor standard of discourse online. It ignores three things:

 

1) Important people do read things online

2) 'Not important' people write things online

3) 'Not important' people occasionally turn up in unexpectedly important places

 

Ordinary people make a difference. What we say, and what we read shapes us.

 

How do you think Israel Palestine got into the public awareness in the first place? The public talked about it.

[Malcador]

Nothing anyone says here on any of those subjects has any point beyond the saying of it

 

Finally!

[Mor]

 

But again you sidetrack miss the point, because regardless of semantics above, the fundamental issue of Hamas situation in Gaza is that in the peace talk the Palestinian side represent only by half of the Palestinians(those in the West-bank), while Hamas ruling the other half opposes peace negotiations with Israel, don't accept the PA in West-bank as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and find any agreement reached by them with Israel worthless... So reiterating from my previous post, this is THE HUGE elephant in the peace negotiation room.

 

Literally everyone knows that. The fundamental problem though is that it is the unelected faction negotiating, not the democratically elected one. That instantly makes the negotiations illegitimate.

 

Then the "elected" Hamas opposition to peace negotiations(and the whole will not rest until complete annihilation of Israel, and nationalism as a religious creed) makes them the fundamental problem. Thus making Rostere's "no-brainers" at the very least 180 percent off i.e. we need to apply pressure on Hamas to forsake its violence and look for a peaceful resolution between the two side through compromise.

 

As for legitimacy and democracy, for most of us democracy implies liberal democracy, certainly not democracy of the rifles. However for Hamas(whose roots is in the Muslim Brotherhood), democracy was just a Trojan horse, using the process to gain international recognition allowed by delusional people who think that chanting democracy has magical effect, since then Hamas have been slowly eradicating any hopes of liberal democracy. Regardless Hamas the democratically elect has lost any legitimacy it had, the moment they used their militants to open fire on their political rivals and Palestinian security forces. Since then we have two Palestinian entities.

 

As for Palestinian legitimacy in the world and negotiations. It is PLO that gained international recognition as the sole Palestinian representatives since 79, they gained UN observatory status. They negotiated with Israel and signed the agreements that allowed that gained Palestinian autonomy under as the Palestinian Authority. More recently they have been reaffirmed as the sole Palestinian representatives and was upgraded to state observer in the UN. Fatah is part of the PLO, while Hamas... ultimately just a legitimate fundamentalist radical Islamic element, that hinders the possibility of positive outcome of peace negotiations also commonly refereed to as terrorist organization.

 

 

 

Also on a practical sided, there are ~3 million "refugees" let say they get this decades long for "right of return". Where would the "refugees" go, where would they live/work, what would they eat/drink? and once they realized that nothing changed, there nothing over the rainbow in the promised land, how do you think that they will react toward the relatively moderate Palestinian leadership in the westbank and that piece paper with word peace on it they delivered...

Ah, but you're quite happy to lay those problems on other countries. People need food and accommodation and jobs wherever they are. I imagine that many would want to return to the homes Israel seized in 1948 or later, even if that is impractical now. For the rest, so far as I am concerned they can throw every illegal settler out of every illegal settlement for a Palestinian. Equitable, considering the homes and land Israel has seized arbitrarily over the years.

 

No. That practical note, expanded on the consequence of the international community political decision backfiring and hindering peace talks, that I started with couple of post back. Not suggesting a current solution "to lay those problems on other countries", although I did stipulate that if for the last 60 years instead of wasting billions on camps, using Palestinians as political pawns, we used it as incentive to slow resettlement, like everywhere else, we wouldn't have this artificially inflated problem. Ironically today solution are exactly the same, only the problem got that much bigger.. and Palestinians are still being used by Iran, Turkey, Arab league, Arab Neighbors etc for selfish political purposes, but other than that they piss on them as always.

 

I am happy you understand how impractical most aspects of "right of return" are, I am certain that the Palestinian leaders know that, but I strongly doubt that Palestinian people understand that and influences like Hamas only moving the goal post further and further away from solution toward resistance(like angry teenagers, arguing for the sake of the argument)

. Already today you can see that while West-bank flourish, new infrastructure, new city, jobs etc Gaza lay in ruins. As for accommodation or let say compensation. Like I said before I am really not the bleeding heart in that respect i.e. just as many Israelis were kicked from Arab countries since the Arab failed invasion of Israel to date, with far more value in property lost than Palestinians, but they got nothing and built a lot. While the Palestinians got from us(UN) far more than they lost, and far far far more than any other refugees and only reaching for more to appease their sense of victimization.

 

 

No Palestinian body can agree to peace because it can't deliver it. And vice versa. Every time an Israeli government agrees to a deal it loses its mandate long before it can be implemented.

It should be noted that the deal that Palestinians were offered by Rabin is very similar to the one offered today(with the guiding hand of USA on their balls) and at least two other occasions in between.. Maybe I am biased in this but i feel that if the Israelis get a best outcome from a deal(per one of the independent think-tanks deals) they would jump to take it, and be able to enforce it. However, I doubt that if the Palestinians get a best outcome for them from such deal, that they would be able to take it and enforce it. Edited January 10, 2014 by Mor

[Zoraptor]

I've been trying to think of a polite way to put this but I can't.

Don't worry about being rude, I'm a big boy and since at heart I don't expect to change anything it is also very hard work to get me to take something personally.

 

End of story is that if, say, the PM of Sri Lanka were the type of person who'd read an online post (in english, on an english forum for computer games and all the rest of the stuff that makes the possibility vanishingly remote) you will not change his mind on Sinhala absolutism, triumphalism and political repression because if he was that sort of person there would not be a problem in the first place. If he's happy to ignore what India and other large countries and significant players say he'll blithely ignore anything else too.

 

You may be a unique snowflake, we all are, but we're a unique snowflake in a massive drift of other unique snowflakes.

 

 

As for legitimacy and democracy, for most of us democracy implies liberal democracy

Liberal democracy is a made up term. It's basically "democracy that gives results I/ the 'international community' like". There were free and fair elections- per GWB etc- and the 'wrong' party won, that's all.

 

Regardless Hamas the democratically elect has lost any legitimacy it had, the moment they used their militants to open fire on their political rivals and Palestinian security forces.

Nah, the PA lost all legitimacy it had the moment it set aside an inconvenient election result. Hamas won, they lost, they tried to retain power. End of Story.

 

Already today you can see that while West-bank flourish, new infrastructure, new city, jobs etc

rofls.

 

Yeah, those who live in a prison have it easy! They have tvs and get fed, get to work, wow it's almost like a holiday camp! Except of course they do everything at the sufferance of the prison guards. Israel can and do arbitrarily seize land, detain people, force them to live in a series of discrete cells, divide communities and separate them from their land and generally retain the ability and desire to asterisk them up whenever and wherever it's convenient- eg flagrantly refusing to allow building consents in areas they consider Palestinians 'undesirable', even if they own the land. The current peace plan is barely comparable to the Rabin one in the first place and Israel has not the slightest intention of giving stuff up but rather delights in being deliberately antagonistic, hence the constant announcements of yet another new settlement increase every time someone so much as mentions peace.

[Rostere]

For the purpose of conversation right-wing/left-wing makes no difference, a radical is a radical, you can't reason with one.

 

This is completely ridiculous statement and you know it. Do you always do this when you argue with people on the Internet? "You're a radical, you know, and I don't care exactly what your opinions are I just wanted to tell you that since you're a radical you're impossible to argue with!" Please. Let's try - for our sake and for the moderators of this forum - to keep this discussion above "You're stupid" arguments.

 

 

As for my opinion of you, it was solely based on your post here, on this page. Though, I wondered if I am to waste my time and go over all the whole thread, will i find similar spontaneous "firm stance" taking regarding the Palestinians as well? or only when its inline with your POV..

 

Please do go through the entire thread if you are indeed interested in this discussion, and not just trolling this place by telling me I'm a radical in hackneyed English.

 

Secondly: PLEASE do not attempt to oversimplify the situation again. You can't talk about "the Palestinians" as one political entity. I also don't take a "firm stance" against "the Israelis" (or whatever you are insinuating), I take a firm stance against nationalism, violence, dispossession and political extremism by all parties. Like I have said before, please read through the entire thread so you can understand where the discussion is at instead of bumbling in and accusing people of being "radicals" for no reason at all. (If anything, it will only make you yourself akin to a monkey hurling feces, lacking any actual arguments for your stance.)

 

It doesn't mean that what you posted isn't factually true, only that in the context of this thread topic, it read as obsessive nitpicking that, completely and utterly lacks perspective e.g. even if your was right that "that tolerance and pacifism in Israel is pretty much going down the ****ter", it is still heads higher in every way imaginable than anything you'll find in the Palestinian/Arab arena(and more likely to be a symptom shared by both)

 

We are talking about the ongoing continuous ethnic cleansing of one people from their homeland. We are talking about pure, blatant racism fuelling a conflict that whether we like it or not involves the entire Arab and Muslim world and whose consequences have an astounding effect of burning away political capital and goodwill for the world's only superpower at an alarming rate. And you have the lack of perspective to dismiss complaints about this ongoing catastrophe as "nitpicking"? Truly, this is a new low, even considering the generally abysmal quality of your previous arguments with gems such as "You're A Radical And I Can't Argue With You".

 

 

It seems like your idea of this "very complex situation" simplified to blaming it all on Israeli, while the Palestinians are being innocent by standers, who just want peace and your help. In the picture you paint, the Palestinian are kept being associated with terms such as: "peace", "left, "Open for peace.. current leader is very much interested in constructive talks.. several smaller Palestinian parties.. even more progressive".

 

You seem to have missed all I wrote about Israeli parties with whom I largely share opinions (I'm slowly starting to believe you're intentionally trolling here...). Just this other week several constructive pro-peace parties in the Israeli Knesset introduced a bill which would have prevented any additional Israel land grabbing - illegal seizure of Palestinian land (for the purpose of establishing "Jews only" apartheid settlements) in the West Bank, which currently is the biggest obstacle to peace. However this quixotic effort was of course voted down by the largely Nationalist majority currently in government. Nevertheless, this is an important signal to the outside world that peace efforts could be going forward at a much faster pace, if not for the current Israeli government.

 

Nevertheless, Israel controls almost every aspect of Palestinian life. It's not like the Palestinians could change something at all on the ground, even if they wanted. It's not them who are continuously stealing land from Israel, demolishing Israeli homes, and so on and so forth. It's very clear this is not a struggle between two equals. Currently the balance of power and control is similar to the one between Canadians and Native Americans in Canada, with the important exception that Palestinians are more numerous (even more numerous than the Israeli Jews if you count refugees in nearby nations).

 

 

Even Hamas, basically your run of the mill religious fundamentalist, militaristic group, who govern Gaza, since it took it over by force, gunning down their political rivals in the streets. A separate Palestinian entity, who doesn't recognize Palestinian authority in west bank, PLO role as the official UN representative of the Palestinian people or the peace efforts(other than gaining more land). Whose charter equates nationalism to a religious creed and state they will not rest until complete annihilation of Israel, who had no qualms over targeting population centers and their state building is basically based on hate and hatred.(investments, schools, media even terrorist summer camps for kid..) You simply describe as "slightly less friendly toward" a solution! Though immediately contrasting them with Israeli who prefer no kind of solution.(as if the Israeli minority in the west bank who will have to abide by any Democratic decision is in anyway comparable to hamas  )

 

This has already been pointed out, but please stick to the facts and don't invent things like Hamas taking Gaza by force (when it's really the other way around - Fatah took the Palestinian-controlled West Bank with violence) if you want to remain in this discussion.

 

Hamas certainly is a run-of-the-mill aggressive religious fundamentalist group, there's no arguing with that. "their state building is basically based on hate and hatred" I'll have to hand that passage to Shakespeare when I see him.

 

Again, you should take care to NOT OVERSIMPLIFY my statements. When I talk about the Palestinians in Gaza being "slightly less friendly toward" a solution, I'm not talking about my personal assessment of Hamas, I'm talking about an opinion survey asking Gazan people about peace discussions with the 1967 lines + land swaps as initial parameters. So this is what the population of Gaza thinks. Which consists of people with many different sympathies, just like in every other country.

 

 

While in your post Israel associated with right-wing(or rather always "far"-right). Based on your political "expertise" they are anti-peace, who can't conduct serious or constructive peace discussions. A lot more about their "far"-right, linking with apartheid, mentions of Jewish terrorist, of Israeli human rights violations, intolerance in general and racism and unsympathetic with Christian minority in particular (I think I got most of the negative associations that you manged to cramp in your stance taking)

 

Damn it, would you stop and think for a minute instead of just replying with a garbled mess of nonsense. Think about what you are writing. You say I "associate" Israel with right-wing (or far-right) parties. Well. Why could that be? Think for a minute. Might it be that right-wing and far-right parties are currently holding the government, and I'm reporting what they're up to? Might it be so? Yes, of course it is so.

 

I say that they are averse to constructive peace discussions, or something roughly along those lines. First I need to add a disclaimer - I don't think the Yesh Atid or Hatnuah parties who are part of the government are averse to peace discussions. Yesh Atid are just trying to sweep the entire Palestinian problem under the rug and ignore it (otherwise having fairly constructive thoughts on peace), while Hatnuah at least try to look like one of the most constructive parties for peace, but it's hard to judge such a small and new party. Sadly, these are the junior partners in government to far-right Habayit Hayehudi - which is essentially like Jobbik in Hungary or Golden Dawn in Greece - plus Likud and Yisrael Beitenu, two right-wing parties where settler interests are dangerously overrepresented.

 

When I say these latter three do not constructively work for peace, it's not talking randomly about them, it's firmly based on what they say and do. The current leader of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, was agitating furiously during the Rabin years to sabotage that peace process. The terrorist who eventually shot Rabin likely attended at one of Netanyahu's far-right rallies where effigies of Rabin were burned as the crowd chanted he was a traitor to the state (which has certain implications considering the punishments for treason...). Another previous leader, Ariel Sharon, was as a military commander, among other (mis)deeds the enabler of the Sabra and Shatila massacres (read more on the excellent Mondoweiss blog here). Their idea of peace is built on relentless land grabbing and extending any negotiations in perpetuity while the Palestinians are evicted from their lands while Kerry travels around the Middle East seeking support for his never-ending carousel of humiliation of American diplomatic power.

 

I encourage everyone to read this excellent op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz discussing this issue.

 

This is a short excerpt:

 

 

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking about vague hopes. It’s a concrete approach. Messianic settlers and die-hard annexationists are absolutely certain that deliverance will come. They just don’t know exactly when or what form it will take. Give us one more generation, they say, or two at the most. It’s going to happen.

The government’s job therefore is to buy time, to appear sane, rational and accommodating, while never giving an inch. To negotiate as much as possible – negotiations waste a lot of time – without ever reaching a solution. In the meantime, the settlements, landgrabs and oppression continue. God can be relied on to do what’s necessary when he’s good and ready, but there’s no reason not to help him along a bit.

 

If you want to learn more about Israeli politics, what the different parties believe, who is currently in charge and so on I'd recommend you start on Wikipedia. Then read newspages and blogs, preferably Israeli newspapers (I recommend Haaretz). Personally I also read the Mondoweiss and Tikun Olam blogs. Tikun Olam is basically a... well, I don't know how to describe it, but a "news device" for Israeli journalists. Whenever a gag order is placed in Israel - a legal order forbidding journalists from covering certain unsavoury news items - the Israeli journalists leak what they know to Tikun Olam, because they can sometimes get away with citing what foreign news outlets have to say.

 

But maybe you don't have that much of a capacity or not so high ambitions - if you feel you're interested in foreign politics and what the "big boys" of the world are up to but start at such a rudimentary level of understanding, maybe it is more fitting you should start from the very basics with something like this first.

[Rostere]

Soo.. I hope I am reading this out of context( e.g. you got carried away with your argument with Walsingham or something), but from a bystander POV the picture your posts paint is come off completely biased, not as in lack of perspective, but as in WTF are you talking about?! and I haven't even started with your assessments of the situation and convenient poll data.

 

Dude, I hope for your sake you are not serious when you write your posts - that you're either drunk and irresponsible, a compulsive troll or both - but from a bystander's perspective I must say your posts come across as having absolutely zero knowledge at all about the conflict and the realities on the ground, and being completely spineless or even outright racist and immoral. Not only do you arrogantly dismiss criticism of dangerous nationalistic tendencies and ongoing war crimes as "nitpicking" but also you make bizarre statements about the history of Hamas and the Israeli far-Right being pro-peace.

 

How about the standard refugees vs unique "Palestinian refugees" definition in the world? Which I see as purely political move to create pressure over Israel. Politics aside, the problem is that over the decades, instead of helping the refugee population to assimilated into their new surroundings, instead they created a never ending problem, that have been festering for years creating new generations of "refuges". A welfare class that drinking billions of UN money in refuge camps(iirc they received far more than what they lost in assets and far far more than Europeans got after ww2) and with help of all the media attention, its almost as if they believe that they are only people who have been wronged, forgetting their own involvement or that for perspective Israel had as much Jewish refugees from Arab lands, only with less whining.

 

How about the standard refugees vs. unique "Jewish refugees"? The problem is that over the decades, instead of living in peace in Palestine or wherever, they have created a never ending problem that has been festering for years now, creating new generations of refugees and homeless Palestinians. Shockingly also, in this endeavour Israel, indeed a "welfare state among states" receive billions in military aid from the US (which also is a guarantor for their loans...), in order to safely continue the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and "Judaize" the area of Palestine. Meanwhile the Palestinians are forced to live in squalid refugee camps, waiting to be able to return to their home land.

 

So what would you feel if the land you was living in was under foreign occupation, and your home was demolished along with a government edict which confiscated your land. What would you do? And what about all the other refugees? Try to think for a moment what you would have done if you were a Palestinian.

 

Around 1878, the Jewish population in Israel was about 5%. From there onwards to just after WW2, more Jews arrived in Palestine with the express intent of forming a Jewish state. Now what would you think if Jews, or Norwegians, or Hindus, or Mexicans, started showing up at your place talking about how they will establish a state of their own on your land? Hell, what would you think if Palestinians showed up where you live with an intent to create a "Muslim" state? Would that be A-OK with you? And to think that this very moment Kerry scuttles around in the Middle East vainly trying to get Arab support for declaring Israel an uniquely "Jewish state". Who the heck think this is a good idea? The Palestinians are not going to disappear. They are going to want to go back to their homeland both in 10 years and in 100 years. The only endgame solution involves the Palestinians moving back to their homeland, while the Israelis preferably get to stay as well. But I've written about this extensively earlier in the thread.

 

The entire train wreck that is the Israel/Palestine conflict builds upon that in the 20th century (or in the 21st century!), some people believe that one people can go to where another people live and declare their own state. For example, the US gives Israel continuous support to the tune of billions of dollars annually and shields Israel from UN sanctions for ongoing war crimes of ethnic cleansing. This is completely mind-blowing to me. There are lots of injustices in the world indeed, but no other like this where the world's sole superpower bends itself over backwards to support injustice, in spite of international criticism, in spite of all common sense, in spite of their own economic and political interests.

 

Would you support Scottish people going to England, demolishing English houses, stealing English land and seeking support for Britain as a "Scottish" country?

 

Would you support Germans going to Poland, demolishing Polish houses, confiscating Polish land, seeking international support for Poland as a "German" territory?

 

Would you support Jews going to Palestine, demolishing Palestinian houses, confiscating Palestinian land, seeking support for Palestine (or "Israel") as a "Jewish" nation?

 

If you don't, congratulations, you are a sane person.

 

IMO for the Palestinians this has also backfired, because with time their political bargaining chip, became apolitical chain, their leaders can't afford to backdown which will make him weak in the eyes of the people, especially in light of their internal conflict with Hamas in gaza, but neither them or Israelis can afford this to be anything other than symbolic.

 

It's very hard for me to understand your garbled English here. What are you trying to say?

 

 

Well, you make some interesting suggestions. But I put it to you that your attempts to fine tune a response will be instantly scuppered by one factor: Vlad Putin.

 

Cutting US support to the right in Israel would gift wrap them for Putin's _existing_ foreign policy platform of backing 'conservative'/right wing groups anywhere within spitting distance. A Russian-aligned Israel next to a Russian aligned Syria (as looks likely) would be a nightmare for us, and for the Palestinians.

 

The morality of what you're trying to change would be moot. Because it wouldn't change. If anything I imagine the Israeli right wing would go completely bananas.

To sum it up more or less, it wouldn't be constructive toward a peace between the two sides. (and IMO those "no-brainer" suggestions show lack of understanding that it takes two sides to make peace and both of them need to compromise and both need encouragement)

 

Yes, Netanyahu needs some form of encouragement, seeing how they have nothing to lose from the status quo, which involves the current government expanding on "Jews only" apartheid settlements on stolen Palestinian land until all the Palestinians languish in refugee camps, dependent on foreign aid.

 

 

It certainly was Hamas military wing that took over Gaza, they polled the trigger, took out the official Palestinian security forces, expelled many of their political rivals and violently suppressed any opposition afterwards. If you don't like calling it an 'armed coup', I already offered you an alternative terminology "a conflict resolution with guns".

 

But again you sidetrack miss the point, because regardless of semantics above, the fundamental issue of Hamas situation in Gaza is that in the peace talk the Palestinian side represent only by half of the Palestinians(those in the Westbank), while Hamas ruling the other half opposes peace negotiations with Israel, don't accept the PA in Westbank as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and find any agreement reached by them with Israel worthless... So reiterating from my previous post, this is THE HUGE elephant in the peace negotiation room.

 

What is it that you don't understand with "winning an election"? Stop lying. Even a quick look on Wikipedia would have revealed that you are wrong. Hamas has never seized control of Gaza by violence.

 

What are you going to claim next? Obama took control of the White House through an armed coup? If you want to discuss your own schizophrenic crackpot fantasies about how things happened, you can do that in your head, with yourself, and not in this serious discussion on this forum.

 

On the other hand, Hamas have certainly oppressed other political parties, but that's when they already were in power.

 

 I haven't ignored or addressed any of that, but I do find it irrelevant, because your points about Jordan and refugee integration would be valid for all refugees host countries, where majority of "Palestinian refuges" wouldn't be considered refuges.

The point was that of all the places suffering refugee and dislocations since ww2, its the only place where the international community perpetuated a refugee problem and that political decision has backfired. Instead of defusing the problem through integration, their money created dependency on refugees camps, only exacerbated the problem with each generation(here after the fact children, grandchildren... also count as refugee in a never ending cycle). What we see today is the result of this decades old "refugee" regime, in which we sunk billions, it has nothing to show for other than a welfare class, a breeding ground for extremists and now a block to peace.

 

Also on a practical sided, there are ~3 million "refugees" let say they get this decades long for "right of return". Where would the "refugees" go, where would they live/work, what would they eat/drink? and once they realized that nothing changed, there nothing over the rainbow in the promised land, how do you think that they will react toward the relatively moderate Palestinian leadership in the westbank and that piece paper with word peace on it they delivered...

 

No - of all the refugee problems since the end of WW2, Israel/Palestine is the only place where the problem has been solved by giving a privileged class of refugees a "country of their own" - where another people already lives. Maybe you should offer the Israelis your country instead if you're so horny for ethnic cleansing? Or why not to the Palestinians, since they are the ones currently without a country.

 

There can never be a peace without a Palestinian right of return. That's crystal clear. As long as these people do not get to return to their homeland, they will remember. And the world will remember the atrocity which made them refugees in the first place.

 

Considering the free housing and various incentives certified Jews get who migrate to Israel as per Israel's current race policies for migration, I have zero doubt Israel could economically provide for the Palestinian refugees.

 

 

Already today you can see that while West-bank flourish, new infrastructure, new city, jobs etc Gaza lay in ruins.

 

I'm sorry, but just what the heck are you talking about here? The West Bank is "flourishing"? And "compared to Gaza"? This line of reasoning is just so insane I don't even know where to begin.

 

First, Gaza is a hell-hole which has been bombed to smithereens ever since Israel withdrew from there, and even before that with the policy of house demolishing. Gaza is smothered under sanctions, largely deprived of the fishing industry which was the most important food source, and the smuggling tunnels which were the only hope for homeless Palestinians wanting to live in a house and not a tent are now largely sealed. Think this. Only with way tighter security. You can be shot by an Israeli sniper for walking within a kilometre of the separation wall.

 

So if any place is better off than Gaza... Well, that doesn't say much.

 

I'll give you the list of the typical income sources in the West Bank:

1. Working as uninsured, unprotected labour in Israeli factories over the green line
2. Working with aid organizations
3. Working with construction of Israeli apartheid settlements
4. Working in the Fatah administration, typically as a police

The West Bank is a place where any day you might wake up to see your land has been confiscated, or your house is to be demolished, your property has been destroyed by rampaging settler zealots. It's certainly better off than Gaza, but a place where the population lives at the whim of occupation authorities with that awful human rights record can never flourish. The new city is being paid for by foreign aid (what else? lol), but would you please link to me anything about new infrastructure?

[Mor]

OT: This reminds me a guy I met on the subway, I asked him if the train has passed, which he took as conversation starter(not light talk), and for 10 minutes! he ramped from something about a girl intentionally spiting him with her cigarette, to his world views, politics, conspiracy to hide the truth jumping from topic to topic. I was in shock, he was completely oblivious to social cues or hints, jumping from what I must assume was his favorite talking point to another, though to me it sounded like a hard case of diarrhea.

[Rostere]

OK. Sadly I haven't had a lot of time to post lately, but I just saw this hilarious video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBsePXQmMGI

 

The original one was rather quickly brought down, so as of writing the clip I link to only has 161 views.

[Mor]

I wonder why it was removed, YouTube generally don't remove anything. Anyway, It reminded me a recent post which might actually relevant here:
 

Well, it is selective criticism, and Low Hanging Fruit. The gulf states for example have far more repressive laws regarding homosexuals yet get barely a murmur. [..] But there's no doubt the outrage over them is applied selectively, and not universally. Because something like boycotting the Gulf would mean actual sacrifice on the part of the boycotters, whereas boycotting Uganda involves avoiding... basically nothing identifiable for most people, and boycotting Russia involves, rather bizarrely, buying then pouring luxury Latvian vodka down drains.

 

EDIT: actually let me supplement it with several youtube link for context:

 

Understanding UN Bias Against Israel

 

Banned Speech: Hillel Neuer Takes on U.N. Human Rights Council

 

UN Watch's Hillel Neuer Confront UN Terror Apologist

Iran interrupts U.N. racism session; UN Watch exposes hypocris

Edited February 27, 2014 by Mor

[Rostere]

I wonder why it was removed, YouTube generally don't remove anything. Anyway, It reminded me a recent post which might actually relevant here:

 

Well, it is selective criticism, and Low Hanging Fruit. The gulf states for example have far more repressive laws regarding homosexuals yet get barely a murmur. [..] But there's no doubt the outrage over them is applied selectively, and not universally. Because something like boycotting the Gulf would mean actual sacrifice on the part of the boycotters, whereas boycotting Uganda involves avoiding... basically nothing identifiable for most people, and boycotting Russia involves, rather bizarrely, buying then pouring luxury Latvian vodka down drains.

 

EDIT: actually let me supplement it with several youtube link for context:

 

I'm not necessarily saying I'm for boycotting Israel entirely. Well, I certainly would be if I was sure you would be able to reach results that way, but it's a question of what actually works.

 

Let's give some examples of boycotts: We have firstly the boycotts of SA, which worked wonderfully well in reaching it's stated goal. How come? It's due to two factors: the cultural closeness and the strength of economic ties of SA to the boycotting community. When the boycotts ended, SA was 100% sure they would be eagerly accepted into the Western fold again. Secondly, the boycotts had a great power in striking hard against powerful economic interests. In pretty much all modern countries such groups - most often big companies - have the ear of the politicians in power. This is not necessarily undemocratic in any sense, on the other hand quite important since big companies often create a lot of wealth. So when the pragmatic business-minded people in charge of these economic interests say to the politicians "**** you, I don't care about your race policies or any of that superficial nonsense - either change or this place will be a backwards third-world country in no time".

 

Then we have the boycotts against for example Iraq during the nineties. I think that is the best example of a completely, utterly counter-productive boycott policy. See, in this case both of the crucial factors for the success of a boycott are not there. There are no significant Iraqi (private) economic interests to pressure the state. Secondly, Iraqi culture is far removed from Western culture - they will not perceive the boycott as friends trying to make friends make the right choice. The public will just think the boycott is a harsh and unjust punishment, especially since Iraq was a dictatorship back then. It might make some sense to boycott a democracy (or a pseudo-democracy like Iran), but boycotting a dictatorship is just playing into the hands of the oppressors, who get more external enemies to deflect blame on. A boycott is generally always counter-productive for changing public opinion, but good for creating pressure from economic interests. The awful humanitarian effects of the Iraq sanctions, the support for Saudi Arabia and the biased approach to the I/P-conflict were the original motivations of Al-Qaeda, and the root cause of the existence of the global militant Islamic movement today.

 

So in the case of Israel, let's look at the effects of a boycott. The economic interests certainly are there - a complete boycott would completely annihilate the economy of Israel. All the Israeli export-oriented companies will be standing in queue to the Knesset with death threats if the politicians won't end the occupation. So far, so good. All the people in Israel who already believe in a peace settlement with the Palestinians will get more energy to argue their cause (this can already be seen even with the current tiny BDS campaign), but the ones who don't will be react with anger and estrangement towards the boycotting countries. They certainly won't change their opinions - overall, the public opinion will just be further polarized. So as far as that goes, with the generally nationalist, pro-apartheid occupation current regime things will only get worse.

 

The real question is really whose voice will be amplified the most by a boycott - the pragmatic economic interests, or the angry nationalists. And even as much as I know about the conflict and the current situation, I must really say that I don't know for sure the answer to that. This will perhaps seem counter-intuitive to some, but if this was 1994 I would be very much for a complete boycott of Israel, or at least the threat of it. At that point I'm sure that pragmatism would have won the day. These days, there are so many religious fundamentalists in the Knesset you have no idea how things would pan out.

 

Another point of view would of course be that we must take our chance and boycott now, because if we don't, then things will only get worse. This is the perspective that is increasingly often taken by many pro-peace American Jewish activists. There is a growing divide between the modern, secular American Jewish community (who have all the ethical and humanitarian considerations secularism entails) and the increasingly religious, ultra-nationalist Jewish community in Israel who is now shares power in government and whose most important pillar of belief is that God gave Israel to the Jews (the "Chosen People") with the command to remove whomever happened to live there at the moment.

 

 

Understanding UN Bias Against Israel

 

This video is typical of all the cheap argumentative tricks which often figure in Israeli pro-apartheid propaganda. It reads like a textbook of fallacies.

• Start off by making a point for garnering sympathy, something everyone can agree on: Why weren't these dictatorial regimes condemned more? Well, sure, I wouldn't mind if every UN session would start by condemning North Korea. But North Korea is already ostracized from the international community, so there is little to do there. Everybody agrees on most of the world's repressive countries. On the other hand, there are a lot of misconceptions regarding Israel in countries such as the US where people have a grotesquely distorted picture about what's going on. It's a pity they won't continue this bizarre argument further to show how stupid it is: "You can't prosecute a thief before you have caught all the murderers", "You can't give Christmas gifts before you have helped all the poor in Africa", "You can't boycott Apartheid South Africa before you've brought down Pol Pot's Kampuchea" This is the classic fallacy of relative privation.
• Then, continue with some facts which paint the picture you want. "COMMUNISTS and MUSLIMS have tried to condemn Israel!". Yeah, sure, but why not mention all the European nations and other democratic nations which have also formulated that criticism? By this point it becomes clear that the video is aimed towards Americans, the only people of which a fraction believe that Muslims and Communists are always necessarily wrong in everything they say. Here's the continuation of that type of argument: "MUSLIMS also revere Jesus! We must reject Jesus!", "MUSLIMS boycott Apartheid South Africa! We must support Apartheid!", "COMMUNISTS want to decrease social inequality! We must strive to increase social inequality!" This is the trite guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy.
• The point about the definition of Zionism however, is not as fun to discuss as it is simply based on an outright lie. Zionism is, and has always been, widely defined as something along the lines of "the national movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the creation of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the Land of Israel". Maybe the video's definition of Zionism is from their own crackpot dictionary which they have written, but really... I'd like to see them talk to hard-line Israeli Zionists explaining that Zionism has nothing necessarily to do with the State of Israel. They would be fuming out of their ears with indignity. Of course nobody sane would argue against Zionism if it meant "anti-racism". But currently it doesn't - it means the presumed right of one people to declare their own state on the land where another people lives. On a logical level, Zionism does not necessarily imply racism. On a practical level however, I personally think it is completely impossible to be a non-racist Zionist if you are aware of all the crimes which are begin committed in it's name.

As a side note, I have actually seen that video several times before and as you know... or might have guessed... I spend parts of my free time examining this kind of propaganda as a means of understanding the motivations and the "logic" behind the actors in this conflict.

[Walsingham]

Even if I actually read that, I'm not sure I could remember it, let alone agree with it.

 

Haven't you bastards ever heard of an executive summary?

[Meshugger]

I think that they are trying to say that Israel is the root of all evil and should be subjegated to the will of the honorable peoples republics of middle eastern muslim compassion. There's also some references to logical axioms that no one in the UN use becuase they are dumb or something.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Meshugger

[Oerwinde]

To summarize Rostere, boycotts are only effective on countries with significant private enterprise, and the video was crap because it was essentially "if you criticize israel you support muslim extremism and communism, and Zionism = anti-racism, so if you don't support zionism you are a super racist."

[Mor]

if you criticize Israel you support muslim extremism and communism, and Zionism = anti-racism, so if you don't support zionism you are a super racist.

We must have seen different videos, because the ones I seen by UN watch were about the UN and the UN Human rights council in particular i.e. its composition, corruption and cynical message. Which might leads to wrong perception of the issue in the world pushed by its main perpetrators.

 

To summarize Rostere, boycotts are only effective on countries with significant private enterprise, and the video was crap because it was essentially

This is true in case such as Iran Nuclear program, Iran economical dependency on oil/gas exports is a much needed leverage for a productive boycott policy to advance the cause of world nuclear proliferation or Iranian human rights. However, in Rostere example the cause is about taking sides in a conflict, a political Advocacy through delegitimization if you wish.