The Israel/Palestine Conflict Mk. IV

Original post by anarchism101

Nice No True Scotsman there.

This is not a no true Scotsman. I am not moving any goalposts to maintain a disproven assertion. Rather, I am suggesting that you, personally, have a poor understanding of Israeli society, and going on to explain why your statements suggest that conclusion, by providing an explanation of the particular aspects of Israeli society which you appear not to understand.

Original post by anarchism101

What concessions? In 1993, the PLO gave up their claim to everything outside the West Bank and Gaza. They put their guns down and gave up fighting. In return, they got the power to deal with a few minor things in a few chunks of the West Bank and Gaza, and the promise of Israel that one day they'd probably get a state of some sort. But the occupation went on, the settlements kept expanding. As they do to today, there are more settlers than there have ever been.

You assume from the beginning something wholly false, namely that the PLO, now the PA, is somehow the default sovereign authority for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and even has claims to the rest of the land of Israel. In reality, the whole of the PA's administrative power over anything at all, and indeed it's very existence as an Authority, rather than an underground terrorist group, is an Israeli concession. Nor did Israel ever enter into any agreement with the PA that she would not continue to develop Israeli communities in the territories she did not hand over to PA control. This idea that there is any legal or moral imperative that the territories in Judea and Samaria which were not granted to the PA at Oslo should end up in their control, or that they somehow 'default' to the control of the PA, which has never had any control over them and certainly has no greater claim than Israel by any number of different metrics, is one of the most pernicious myths of this whole situation.

Add on to this the periodic releases of the most brutal terrorist murderers, who are celebrated as heroes by the PA, the denial, by Israel, of the Jewish right to even share their most important holy site in the whole world in order to appease both the PA and Jordan, the Israeli provision of free electricity and facilitation of aid transfer to Gaza even in the middle of a war, and you have a long list of concessions that have not bought even enough quiet to merely make up for the damage they have caused, much less brought true peace any closer. They have not even stopped the attempts of the PA to destroy Israel. They have switched (for the most part) to a diplomatic strategy for the first stage, the establishment of an Arab state in the Territories, but they have not given up the ultimate goal.

Original post by anarchism101

Expand a bit? It's kind of difficult to guess what exactly you mean by that?

This assumes (perhaps mistakenly) some basic familiarity with Israeli politics, and refers to the groups who continue to push for concessions. All the way from the left to the centre-right, you have believers in the concession model. This speaks not to the proven effectiveness of concessions, but rather to the great national yearning to believe that if we just give a little more, and a little more, and a little more, our enemies will somehow stop trying to utterly destroy us.

Original post by anarchism101

Try again, it should be obvious why that doesn't make sense.

On the contrary. I explained it fully.

Original post by anarchism101

That's what pretty much every militarised country claims.

This is outstandingly myopic, assuming that every society in the world is the same as western Europe of the past 40 years or so, and that there are no societies that revel in their militarism and see it as an inherent virtue, as opposed to a neccessity. Are you serious?

Original post by anarchism101

And every effort by the Palestinians to move towards having a viable state has been opposed by Israel. When Palestine held free and fair elections in 2006, they were immediately met with sanctions for electing the 'wrong' people. Israel opposes the PLO's efforts to negotiate a unity government with Hamas to achieve a basic state requirement of controlling their territory. They even opposed something as basic and symbolic as Palestine becoming a UN member.

So the first free and fair elections of this proto-state bring to power an Islamist terrorist group sworn to the violent destruction of Israel and the global destruction of the Jews, and active in pursuing this goal. And you think that Israel should have given this government, and their goals, full cooperation. And you think Israel should support further attempts to bring these people back into the PA, because otherwise it won't represent all the Palestinian Arabs. You are arguing that the democratic will of the Palestinian Arabs is entirely hostile to peace, negotiations, cooperation, and that a government which does not wage war on Israel and try to kill as many random Jews as possible cannot ever successfully and faithfully represent the Palestinian people. Let's think about that for a bit.

Original post by anarchism101

Hamas have been in power for less than 10 years. They're just an excuse - Israel was just as reluctant to make peace before 2006. In fact, arguably the most forthcoming Israeli PM in terms of peace - Ehud Olmert - came after the Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Hamas have existed for quite a bit longer. And, as noted, they're only the latest, and.far from the only, incarnation of Arab terrorism targeted at Israel and global Jewry. PFLP? Fatah? PIJ?

Reply 5868

Original post by hdaindak

well thats a load of ****... it proves that this is the genocide of one race as opposed to any kind of fair war between them

This is complete and utter nonsense. By the pervese logic which argues that greater body count = greater moral authority, Israel would have more moral authority if, instead of ordering civillians to take shelter during rocket attacks, she ordered them to go stand on the rooftops whenever a warning siren sounded.

War is not a game, and it's not supposed to be fair. Israel is under no obligation to apologise for her military superiority. Indeed, it is her moral obligation to her own citizens to ensure that superiority. In fact, it is even beneficial to enemy civilians, as Israel deploys fearsomely advanced technology, which could be employed to utterly destroy the enemy population, to instead minimize, as far as possible in war, casualties among enemy civilians. In this she works against Hamas, which works to maximise Arab civillian casualtie.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 5869

Person1001

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-faces-un-outrage-over-east-jerusalem-settlements-154232573.html

Seriously someone needs to send a drone on the Israeli government. Such a heinous state.

Reply 5870

Original post by Person1001

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-faces-un-outrage-over-east-jerusalem-settlements-154232573.html

Seriously someone needs to send a drone on the Israeli government. Such a heinous state.

Thank you for that ill-informed and morally-bankrupt, not to mention inpractical, suggestion regarding what to do to stop the most heinous crime taking place in the Middle East today: construction of new homes in Jerusalem.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 5871

sgtdavies

I think it's very clear that this conflict will never end and will only cause more and more deaths and suffering in the future.

The only solution I see is forcing either the Jews or the Palestinians to leave and surrender a 100% of the land to the "enemy".

I'm sure there would be arguments about who should get the land but I would probably vote for Israel as they are a democratic state that provide the most human rights in the Middle East and are the closest allies of the west. (Of course a Palestinian state might be just as good, but looking at other Islamic countries in that area suggests otherwise).

I know it sounds cruel at first but it's still better then the bloodshed right now.
Also, similarly unjust but necessary things have happened in the past e.g.
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon

What do you think?

Reply 5872

Yet another terrorist attack by the despicable 'palestinian' perennial terrorists.

The sheer consistent savagery by this entity knows no bounds.

Detestable

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Family-of-slain-terrorist-proud-of-Jerusalem-attack-Al-Acris-martyrdom-380890

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 5873

And another terrorist attack by the repugnant 'palestinian' career terrorists.

Despicable, loathsome Islamist monsters.

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/IDF-investigating-possible-terror-attack-in-West-Bank-380906

Time for Israel to hit them back HARD.

Reply 5874

The man murdered in the savage 'palestinian' Muslim act of barbarity, was an Israeli Arab policeman.

Reply 5875

Original post by Chindits

The man murdered in the savage 'palestinian' Muslim act of barbarity, was an Israeli Arab policeman.

A Druze, actually. Arabic-speaking minority ethno-religious group, generally very patriotic, who don't consider themselves Arabs and hate being referred to as such.

Nevertheless, there are Israeli Arab policemen. In basic training we had to watch road safety videos featuring an actual Israeli police commander named Jihad.

Reply 5876

Original post by AdvanceAndVanquish

A Druze, actually. Arabic-speaking minority ethno-religious group, generally very patriotic, who don't consider themselves Arabs and hate being referred to as such.

Nevertheless, there are Israeli Arab policemen. In basic training we had to watch road safety videos featuring an actual Israeli police commander named Jihad.

I've seen many of them refer to themselves as Arabs or at least acknowledge the fact when asked. I mean the term 'Arab' is basically anyone from the region whose native tongue is Arabic.

I know some Arab Christians in Israel hate being referred to as Arabs.

Reply 5877

Original post by Chindits

I've seen many of them refer to themselves as Arabs or at least acknowledge the fact when asked. I mean the term 'Arab' is basically anyone from the region whose native tongue is Arabic.

I know some Arab Christians in Israel hate being referred to as Arabs.

I've never encountered any Israeli Druze whose number one 'pet peeve' if you will wasn't being mistaken for an Arab. This may be different in the Golan communities that haven't properly reconciled themselves to Israeli rule, but I'm not sure.

Of course, there's no real place to take this discussion from here without getting swallowed up in a black hole of self-reference, since it's fundamentally about the replacement of the older 'tick-box' understanding of ethnicity with the newer, more accurate, 'identification-recognition' understanding, the Druze being a classic marginal/transitional case. Maybe you're familiar with the literature...? The upshot is that since ethnicity is fundamentally determined, not by a checklist of characteristics, but by a very soft sort of process of self-identification/external recognition, and the Druzim are a marginal case, we are contributing right now by which label we choose to use to the actual question of which label is correct.

Reply 5878

Edwina Lee

1

There is no good side in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

The ongoing phase of the conflict is mutual retribution.

Fighting will only stop when both sides come to the conclusion that mutual retribution doesn't work.
Afterall, previous civilisations have all been here before.

Reply 5879