Reflections on Israel, UN rule, terror groups and freedom fighters and tribalism.

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Mordea, you know so little of the history its unbelieveable.

the land known as palestine was a Jewish land. so, where did the Arab culture come from? could it have come from the conquest of the Jews at the hand of the Muslims? I already know it did, and not too long ago either, up until that time the majority of the people's of palestine were Jewish.

that arabs take it by force (and Im sure the Jews were treated so well in the conquest, especially by a people renowned for slavery), the Jew's take it back by force, whats the problem?

many Jews maintain their Hebrew culture, their language and their traditions, try talking to some.

just because someone owns land and assets in another country doesnt change their identity. Duncan Bannatyne owns assets in other countries and spends alot of time there, he still considers himself British and calls this his home.

Im sure you'd have a problem with the British coming to retake the UK from the Nazi's if WW2 went the other way.

to you maybe.

what truth? you're making it up with hearsay and conjecture.

People change, through generations of life and death, the natives change and are only native to the land at the time they live.

I didnt storm, I pointed out that you have no logical reason for your outrage, you dont give a crap about the people, Ragusa does, he has a logical reason for his stance, you are simply arguing because you hate every government on the planet.

oh, Im sorry, was that an uncomfortable truth? the people who inhabited the land were primitives, who became a part of the hebrew society. the entire land was inhabited by Hebrew tribes. The palestinian people as they are known as today didnt exist at this time, they came about after the Arab conquest of the land of Palestine.

weakest argument in the book

why? The histories of these countries show how modern civilised countries are established... they take years and years of nastiness.

many Jews were very happy, until they were taken from their homes and put into death camps, after this it was a logistical nightmare to find these people a home, most couldnt return to the places they were taken from. So they were returned to their homeland.

The only reason for this conflict is religion, muslims are very devout, if it wasnt for a certain conquest a little while ago, there wouldnt be a problem.

where the hell did you get the idea that there are no coloured people in Israel? infact many Palestinians live and work in Israel.

the comment was forenoted with this: "so try for once to explain your position instead of attacking others"

you have never explained your outrage, you have no reason for outrage because you dont give a **** about the people.

that would be harder, its not so easy to kill someone who is very well armed and trained to a better standard then most worlds millitaries.

what are you dribbling about?

 

Coming from you, that's rich.

False. The Hebrews were merely one of the many indigenous tribes quarreling over the land.

Invasion.

Yes. Your point?

Patently false.

Just as the Ottomans and Jews did. Your point?

Your point?

I've already been through this. Please refer to my previous posts, where I systematically blew your so called arguments out of the water.

And many don't have significant Hebrew ancestry. Some have *none*. And on this basis, you are willing to support them using force to displace the current indigenous inhabitants. How absurd.

Yes, but it does sort of invalidate that 'A people without land' spiel. It also shows that many Jewish people *were* at least partly assimilated into their host culture. So why did they feel the need to go and steal land from an indigenous people, essentially leaving them homeless and in poverty?

So? Are you trying to make some sort of argument, or is this just more obfuscation?

To anyone who isn't a Zionist.

I'm not the one acting oblivious to the fact that land was annexed by Israel. One need look no further than a map of occupied territories over time to realise that Israel has been slowly expanding its territory into former Palestinian territory.

Naturally this doesn't apply to God's Chosen People (TM), right? I mean, they still remain native even if they left the land 2000 years ago, integrated into host nations on another continent, and accumulated significant wealth and land.

You whined about me not caring about the people. You were playing the humanitarian. Which is quite a laugh, given how espouse a 'might makes right' philosophy. Or perhaps it is 'Might makes right, when the brown sand niggers are getting the short end of the stick'. I bet if God's Chosen People (TM) were getting driven off their land, you would be up in arms.

Even if I don't, so what? That doesn't change the fact that the Israelis are little better than squatters and invaders.

So? At least my arguments aren't ****, like yours.

No, it's a laughable one. You're welcome to claim that the Neanderthals are indeed the indigenous inhabitants of the Transjordan region. And I'd respond with a 'So what?'

Bzzt, wrong.

Bzzzt, pure BS. Go brush up your Middle-Eastern history before attempting to school your betters.

Which you wrote, no doubt.

Which, coincidentally, is being perpetrated against brown sand-niggers. Whew, thank god for that. And here I was for a moment, worried that innocent white Jews would be the target of that nastiness.

They were offered restitution, as well as homelands in areas other than the Transjordan area. They refused. Religious reasons, and the fantasy of a 'Greater Israel', drove them to commit theft and genocide.

By the way, need I point out the irony of a people who were dispossessed by a genocidal regime then going out and dispossessing a group of natives?

Plain and pure BS.

The irony is mind boggling. It was not the Muslims who spat on the ground whenever they saw the crucifix, or boycotted businesses whose owners and staff did not follow their particular religion.

Are you referring to the Jewish conquest of Palestine in the 1900's? If so, then yeah, I agree. If that conquest had not happened, there wouldn't have been a problem.

*yawn* Strawman. Next!

 

LOL, you make an entire post sighting no links or evidence what so ever and claim that mine is false.

Ill tell you what, you enliten me of the true history of the region then.

Ill hold back on my description of the history of cannan, the collapse of the cannanites into nomadic merchants, the egyptian rule and enslavement of a native tribe of cannan and the later release of said tribe which freely expanded its culture as the cannanites destroyed themselves with their infighting, until after you have enlitened me with the full history of the region.

 

I agree, I have no interest in continuing this pointless argument

I would also like to add that his posts boarder on personal attacks, and I have no interest in any further discussion

 

Apparently the kettle really wants the last word....

 

well, the "post reply" button still works, so anyone can make a comment

 

So, for a complete change of topic, it seems they're at it again. Peace talks, that is. Anyone think this time will turn out better than the last...*starts counting*...*still counting*... lots?

 

The Israelis insisted Hamas be excluded from the talks, because ... because they don't recognise Israel - as a Jewish State. Now Israel doesn't recognise Hamas, or their government. So they just keep killing each other because that's their preferred form of communication.

Since, to make peace, you have to talk with your enemy, not talking to your enemy in peace "negotiations" ... sort of defeats the purpose.

Israel is not willing to make the concessions necessary to make a deal with the Palestinian side (I start to believe that when Israel evacuates their major settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem), and the Palestinian side is not willing to compromise on their (legitimate) positions.Both sides expect each other to surrender, with the Israelis trying to rig the negotiations in their favour through their surrogates and their political leverage in the US. I don't expect much from this, but I would be pleasantly surprised if something came out of it anyway, and with the Israel acting in good faith for a change. That's unlikely though. Netanyahu's position is: Why give 100% when you can get away with giving 1%?

Both sides are not fought out, and the Palestinians are not able to hurt Israel enough to compel Israel into a compromise. It was only because it really hurt (hurt as in a couple thousand casualties and a nearly lost war in 1973) and because Kissinger sweetened the deal with arms and money) that Israel signed a peace with Egypt. The Palestinians are nowhere near in a position to inflict something like that on Israel.

 

Ragusa, I'm not sure the exclusion of Hamas is quite the killing blow to any hope that you make it out to be. The Palestinians are not a singular group. Fatah rules one major group, while Hamas rules the other. Fatah is willing to talk, and both sides may (or may not) be willing to make the sacrifices needed for peace. If something comes of this, it'll mean peace with one of two major Palestinian groups. It would also seriously undercut Hamas's diatribe of oppression if there were a working, stable, and mutually satisfactory peace between Israel and the West Bank Palestinians.

Hamas isn't willing to talk, and I think anyone reasonable hear knows the only thing they want in order to assure peace is the complete destruction of Israel as a nation. Israel is willing to recognize and talk to Fatah, which recognizes them as a nation, so I'm betting they'd be willing to talk to Hamas if it ever recognized Israel as a nation and wanted to talk as well.

I agree, though, that Hamas is far from 'fought out', and that Israel will likely never be 'fought out' at least in their opposition to Hamas's attacks. Whether they'll ever be willing to conceed anything to Hamas is something else, but I don't think they'll give them anything more until Hamas is willing to recognize Israel. I do, however, think there's hope for Israel and the West Bank.

 

NOG,
you have made a couple of silly points and assumptions there, and since we went over that a couple times, to no avail, I'll just write this, briefly:

#1
You probably do not remember Bush's roadmap for peace, so I'll sum it up in a nutshell: The deal was that the PA under Abbas ceases violent activities, and Israel ceases building settlements. The PA has stuck to their side of the deal. American-trained PA security forces are enforcing a ceasefire. Despite that, Palestinians seem no closer to independence. The Israelis on the other hand haven't stuck to their end of the deal. Settlement activity is continuing, as Netanyahu himself has repeatedly stressed.

That means the current ceasefire between the PA and Israel is a one sided concession by the PA. Understand that. Understand also that that is a problem.

If Israel doesn't compromise on (read: stop) the settlements (which I consider unlikely) the negotiations will fail. Netanyahu could block settlement expansion, but that would cost him politically, and he'd have to seek another coalition partner. Netanyahu's coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann, head of the Russian immigrant right-wing party Yisrael Beiteinu, opposes both talks and a settlement stop, let alone a roll-back of settlements. So far, Netanyahu prefers to tell Washington he is politically hamstrung (by choice). I suspect he likes it that way.

If they do reach an agreement however, that will weaken Abbas substantially, because it will be perceived as a 'sell out' in the West Bank, since he has made further concessions without receiving anything in return. That means on a practical level that it is very hard to sell. Palestinians aren't dumb. Reciprocity is the difference between negotiations and surrender. They understand that.

The other point here: The continuing expansion of settlements and the insistence that Israel is a Jewish State don't go well with each other. In combination the two make a claim to Palestinian land - which must be anathema to any self-respecting Palestinian patriot.

# 2
The state of affairs vis-à-vis Hamas is pretty much the same. There was a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel before the Gaza war of 2008, with the condition that Hamas ceases the attacks, while Israel eases the blockade. While Hamas has stuck to their end of the deal - there were no rocket attacks by Hamas in that period - Israel not only didn't ease the blockade, they continued attacks into Gaza, mostly air strikes, and eventually attacked Gaza around Christmas 2008. There are currently no talks between Israel and Hamas. Current communications are limited to exchanges of violent acts.

Beyond that Hamas is in the same position as the Abbas government of the PA - they will have to make concessions without the guarantee of getting anything in return, in hope that Israel may perhaps make concessions themselves. That must seem as unattractive to them as it does to the Palestinians in the West Bank.

With that record there is little basis in reality that Israel all of a sudden starts to act in good faith.

#3
Just yesterday, I read how Israel under Barak a decade ago, in 2000 with Clinton's arbitration, failed to make peace with Syria. Everything was worked out, all contentious issue were solved - the Israelis were ready to give away the Golan - but the talks failed anyway. Basically, Barak simply chickened out, said his chief negotiator.

 

As I understand it (and feel free to correct me), the agreement was to not build any new settlements. Instead, the Israelis have chosen to expand existing settlements (though still at a drastically reduced rate). Call that a breach of faith if you will, but remember that legalities and details are critical in negotiations like this, especially with any middle-eastern people.

You said earlier he'd have to find himself a new partner? Who else is there that has enough clout? Would they be willing to halt expansion? The only group I know of in Israel that is proposing that is the liberals, and I don't think they have enough clout. That's just the impression I've gotten from some things I've read, I don't know details.

Ragusa, you're wrong. The truth is that neither side stuck to the ceasefire, they both just decided to tone down their attacks instead. The ceasefire dissolved in Deceber 2008 (despite your use of the present perfect tense for Hamas's 'sticking to the deal') when a small Israeli force invaded a few hundred meters in a pinpoint attack. The IDF claimed it was attacking a new tunnel being built to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Even Hamas claimed it was a defensive action. Regardless, they claimed it was a gross violation of the ceasefire (despite previous attacks by both sides that had already resulted in casualties).

And you conveniently forget that Israel has made their own concessions without return. You may remember Israel's complete withdrawl from the Gaza Strip in 2005. It resulted in a violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas and years of violence and kidnappings.

The truth is that all sides have credibility issues here, and this has been proven time and again through the negotiations. Still, at least Fatah's animosity toward Hamas suggests there's some hope. Israel has proven it's willing to let palestinians self-govern (with Gaza), but the Palestinians haven't proven they're willing to let Israel exist. Fatah has a better record on that point so far.