Cole writes: "I'm not stupid or naive. I know that almost none of these 10 points is likely to be realized. All I'm saying is that these steps are what would be necessary for the achievement of peace."
Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment)
Top Ten Steps That Are Necessary for Lasting Gaza-Israel Peace (or, Good Luck!)
23 November 12
1. The Israeli blockade on Gaza exports and non-military imports must be lifted altogether. Ben White points out that the restrictions on goods brought into Gaza via Israel are still very substantial, despite Israeli assertions that the blockade has been eased.
And, the blockade on exports is almost complete, with some minor exceptions, and is devastating to the Gaza economy. Real per capita income among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is less today than in the early 1990s!
These Israeli policies are a form of collective punishment imposed by an Occupying power on a noncombatant occupied population. Israel also imposes restrictions on Palestinian travel outside the Strip (even, sometimes, unconscionable delays for patients seeking specialist medical care- delays that lead to their deaths). Collective punishment, obstacles to free movement as part of an Apartheid regime, and occasional Israeli attacks that show blatant disregard for civilian life are not only illegal in international law but constitute a set of systematic war crimes that rise to the level of crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statutes.
While it is unfortunate that small homemade rockets are sometimes fired by small militant groups from Gaza into Israel, it is impossible to expect social peace from a people being economically strangled.
2. Palestinians must be granted citizenship in a state. It is all the same to me if it is a Palestinian state or if they are given Israeli citizenship. The aggressive, far-right Likud Party is setting things up so that there isn't really a place to put a Palestinian state anymore. In any case, it is unacceptable for millions of Palestinians to be kept stateless by Israel. Stateless people have no real rights, since rights are enforced by a state. Gaza is lawless because it lacks a state, and Mr. Netanyahu won't let one be formed. Among the rights that stateless people lack is the right to security of property. Palestinian property is being daily stolen from Palestinians by Israelis, who use Israeli law, administration and the courts to deprive stateless Palestinians of their rights. Mr. Netanyahu played a central and self-admitted role in reneging on the promises made by Israel to the Palestinians as part of the Oslo Peace Process and Madrid conference, and the reason he could do so with impunity is that Palestinians are stateless. Treaty obligations to them don't have to be honored.
There are probably only about 12 million stateless people in the world. Many are individuals who get caught between countries (as with women who lose citizenship for marrying a foreigner and emigrating with him, but who are not eligible for citizenship in their new country either). Palestinians are the largest single group of the stateless, probably amounting to some 5 million. An additional 3.6 million Palestinians in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship for the moment, but it is apparently not necessarily permanent. Some 40,000 Palestinians from Gaza who had attained Jordanian citizenship have had it withdrawn again.
Statelessness was common in the 1930s in Europe. Franco made millions of Spanish leftists stateless. The Nazis withdrew German citizenship from the Jews. The Communists declared the White Russians stateless. Gypsies were often stateless.
I'm sure most Jews would not wish to be responsible for Palestinians being kept stateless in the way that the fascist German state rendered Jews stateless in the '30s. It seems certain that stripping citizenship from Jews and Gypsies was what allowed the Nazi state to genocide them. The stateless, having no rights, can be ethnically cleansed or killed with relative ease.
3. Egypt should broker a rapprochement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas. As long as these two are at daggers drawn, Palestinians are easily divided and ruled by Israel and the US, and they have fewer means to resist having their land stolen and having their lives blighted by the blockade.
4. Egypt's President Muhammad Morsi should put pressure on Hamas leaders to foreswear the use of terrorist tactics toward Israel. The US federal code defines terrorism as the deployment of violence by a non-state actor against civilians for political purposes. Deliberately killing innocent non-combatants is a war crime and always carries the taint of illegitimacy, and if Hamas wants to amount to anything politically it must take this step. Hamas's and Islamic Jihad's use of terror has deeply damaged the Israeli left and virtually killed off the Israeli peace movement- the people most likely to come to an understanding with the Palestinians.
5. New elections for the Palestine Authority should be scheduled, perhaps overseen jointly by Israel and Egypt. The winner, even if it is Hamas, must be recognized as the legitimate government of the PA.
6. Israel must return to a moratorium on its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, so as to permit genuine peace talks to start back up. Settlements are the number one obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Palestinians cannot be expected to negotiate over how much of the pie they get if the Israelis are digging into the pie and eating most of it while the negotiations are proceeding.
7. Israel must cease expropriating the property of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and must recognize that the status of Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. Likely, in any successful negotiations, part of Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine. There is no reason in principle that the city cannot be shared. Chandigarh in India is capital of both Punjab and Haryana states, which are rather more populous than Israel/Palestine.
8. Israel must cease demanding that people recognize it before negotiations begin. There is something pitiful about being that insecure, or too clever by half in being that Machiavellian. For Palestinians, some forms of ‘recognition' involve giving up basic claims and rights that they believe should be part of the negotiations. The Israelis are trying to set things up so that the Palestinians have to give away most of what they want to negotiate about before they even get to the table. The PLO recognized Israel as part of the Oslo accords. It was rewarded by being marginalized, emasculated and betrayed. Why should any other Palestinian political force wish to be taken for a ride that way? As for Israeli complaints that Hamas wants to destroy them, that is ridiculous. It is not ridiculous that Hamas might have such aspirations in the long term, it is ridiculous that a tiny poverty-stricken and militarily virtually non-existent entity like Hamas should be taken seriously as a military threat to nuclear-armed Israel.
9. Israel and the Palestinians, in the light of Hamas pledges of renouncing terror tactics and Israel's moratorium on land theft, must return to the negotiating table for final status talks and the swift implementation of Oslo.
10. The United States should cease blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. If the Israelis continue their illegal blockade of Gaza and their massive land theft from the Palestinians of the West Bank, the UNSC should place economic sanctions on Israel. The US moves to paralyze the UNSC on the Palestine issue are the height of hypocrisy, similar to the diplomatic cover it gives the government of Bahrain. Note that among the most severe sanctions in history are being applied to Iran, for doing things that Israel has also done. American hypocrisy on Palestine has long detracted from the moral authority of the US and the UN in the Middle East, and weakens American diplomacy and soft power, to the detriment of US interests.
I'm not stupid or naive. I know that almost none of these 10 points is likely to be realized. All I'm saying is that these steps are would would be necessary for the achievement of peace. They won't be taken, and therefore intermittent wars, bombings, attacks, and the blighting of human lives will continue. The US will likely at some point suffer further for these failures, just as it did on 9/11, which was launched in part to punish Washington for its treatment of the Palestinians. Given how many of our liberties we lost with 9/11, you worry that another such large-scale attack will finish off the constitution altogether.
That point is why George W. Bush and Barack Obama have not really served US interests well in the Middle East, since neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is at the center of the region's geopolitics. Both have kicked the can down the road, just as Mitt Romney admitted he would do. We know that US politicians behave in this way because the Israel lobbies, including those of the Christian Zionists, are a successful single-issue interest group. But in attempting to ensure that the Israeli right wing is never impeded in its ambitions, they are dooming Israel. Eventually the region will just become too hot and nervous-making for most Israelis, and more will begin leaving every year than coming in. Over time they will be diminished, as the once-dominant Christians of Lebanon have been, through out-migration. Unfortunately, this scenario will unfold over decades, and will cause us all a lot of headaches on the way.
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Comments
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Instead the Greater Israel (occupation) is growing and chance for Palestinians are shrinking. And with that also chance for of Israel survival.
USA is on the edge of economic cliff - will be not around to support Israel.
Dream on ... to bad the Palestinians cannot live in your fantasy world, it looks like there is plenty of "space!" ;-)
Not so sure about the significance of the economic cliff. Based on what we are hearing from qualified economists that is mostly hype.
Or does it just go one way for you?
After the Ottomans' WW I defeat the western powers promised Kurds an independent state, then reneged. There have been Kurdish secessionist factions in countries like Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and those groups have perpetrated violence of various kinds including terrorism. The governments have gone to extreme means at times to suppress the secessionists.
The oppression of Kurds by Turkey has been by far the worst, and is more racist than politically based. Turks have made speaking the Kurdish language, and any expression of Kurdish culture a crime, thought that situation has improved quite a bit in recent years due largely to pressure from the UN and the EU.
What a waste of time talking to you "people".
Then why do you keep doing it? You must have a great deal of time to waste.
And you could answer your own question if you wanted to. To colonize an area means to come as a group from a foreign land to a ew land and establish colonies there. It is not colonizing others' lands when a people demands an independent state in the territory they have been legally inhabiting for centuries.
Kurds and Turks are fighting.
And for Jews to had been colonizing they would have had to come for some other jewish home state which did not exist. The Kurds are an ethnic group. Palestine is a region not a people. They are Arabs and called themselves Syrians before the UN partition and Jordanians after Jordan annexed the West Bank. MOST of whom did not live on that land for centuries but are immigrants themselves.
And that has exactly nothing to do with Turkmen. That's the problem with trying to play smarter than you are when you are talking to someone who actually knows something. You will always say something to reveal that you really don't know what you are talking about.
The Zionists who came from Europe to set up Jewish colonies in Palestine were by definition colonizing the land, and, as a matter of fact, that is the word they themselves used.
As for the Palestinians, you are wrong on every single count except that Palestine is the name of a geographical region, not a people. That's how it works with language, you know. The land is called Palestine, the people are called Palestinians.
Palestinians are not only Arab, they are also Maronite, Armenian Circassian, Druse, and other groups as well. Palestinians have never called themselves Syrians or Jordanians, and I have no idea where you got that bit of nonsense.
The Jews deserved their homeland, they paid for most of it and now any other arrangement is impossible . The Arabs called Palestinians could be at home anywhere in 5 or so countries. Why won't they take them in.
And, Jews were kicked out of all these Muslims countries, their property confiscated.
Like the Kurds, the Armenians did not migrate to Armenia from another continent in order to create their own state on someone else's land. They had always been there as the majority when Armenia became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
If you had a clue what you were talking about, and what Turkmen are, then you would know that Turkmen have not murdered Kurds, or attacked them, or even annoyed them very much. If you are going to blather on about something, at least get a clue what you are blathering on about.
No one deserves a homeland created by establishing an artificial majority by ethnic cleansing, theft of land, and importing large numbers of people from another continent.
2. It is a lie that the Zionists - not the Jews, the Zionists - paid for most of the land. The Zionists purchased only a small fraction of the land. The rest they ethnically cleansed, and stole outright. That is so well-known it is difficult to believe anyone remains ignorant of it.
The Palestinians' homeland is Palestine, they have been the majority inhabitants of that land for over a thousand years, and they have a right to live there. Arab countries are under no obligation to "take in" refugees created by Zionist ethnic cleansing, and Palestinians would not be "at home" there.
It is a lie that Jews were kicked out of all Muslim countries.
You don't say? So jews struggling to survive in exile for nearly 20 centuries were unable to do so because they had no state? When they create a state in their former homeland they are called thieves because the thieves who stole it earlier had become the only rightful owners.
The "thieves" were the British in carving out their version of the Middle East post WW11.
Israel were obviously not content with a homeland after having nothing and -well the rest is history as illustrated by the maps attached to this very rational and well laid out article.
Your interpretation of these things is very much the owner-media and the likes of Joe Leiberman's wanton re-make of history.
Of course, the biblical land of Israel was itself stolen from its original inhabitants by the ancient Hebrews, as is exultantly chronicled in the Book of Exodus.
The Jews were not stateless. They were citizens of the states in which they lived. The majority of Jews in the world do not choose to be part of the Jewish State, but are still, by their own choices, citizens of states other than the Jewish State. Those Jews have rights conferred by the states of which they are citizens
Stateless people are those who are not citizens of any state, and therefore have no rights. That includes millions of Palestinian refugees, including those whom Israel holds under its brutal occupation.
The Bible is not a real estate deed, however much you would like for it to be. When you move into a land from another continent, force the legal residents off that land, and take it for yourself, that is thievery. When you occupy land belonging to another, confiscate land and colonize it with your own citizens, and when you take the natural resources of that land for your own use and profit, that is thievery, and it is a grievous violation of international law.
Having inhabited a territory in ancient times does not entitle anyone to come thousands of years later and claim it as their own. The Palestinians did not steal the land from the Israelites, and in any case few if any of the Jews living now in Israel and in illegal colonies in the occupied territories can trace their ancestry back to the ancient Israelites.
Political Zionism was a European Jewish movement, and the state envisioned was a state of, by, and for European Jews. The Zionist founding fathers of Israel looked down on Eastern Jews, and considered them "dirty Arabs", barely deserving to be considered real Jews.
Utterly irrelevant to the point. The composition of the current population is not at all what the Zionists envisioned or wanted, and the fact is that, although they have made significant gains, non-European Jews are still not considered equal to their European counterparts, and their standard of living, economic, and educational conditions show that. It is not a coincidence that dangerous border areas in Israel are populated mainly by non-white Jews since that is where Jews from Arab countries were settled if they were moved out of the tin shacks they were originally housed in.
"There is NO ethnicity in the word Palestinian. It is a name of a REGION."
No, Palestinian is not the name of a region. The name of the region is Palestine. Palestinian is the name of the people of the region known as Palestine.
"Emperor Hadrian renamed the area after a Roman Jewish war during his reign."
Factually incorrect, but if you want the name to be relevant, that's fine. The region was known as Judea for a relatively very brief period of history, and has been known as Palestine many, many times longer than that. The name Palestine dates back prior to the 5th century BCE when Herodotus called it Palaestina. That name derives from Akkadian, and predates Herodotus. In Aramaean the region was known as pelista'in.
"We used to call them [Arabs]".
What you call someone is not what determines their identity.
That is completely and demonstrably false. The book that fraudulent claim is based on has been proven over and over again to be a fraud. Its disgraced author, who was briefly the darling of those desperate to find any way to discredit the Palestinians' claim disappeared from the scene more than a decade ago.
"ARABS rioted in Palestine because Syria by the French was made into an independent Islamic state....The arabs living in Palestine...mas sacred Jews because they did not want a NON Islamic state. Churchill took SIXTY PERCENT of Palestine and made it into an ARAB ISLAMIC HOME STATE called JORDAN. "
ROFLMAO! Where do you GET this stuff? Did you make it up as you went along? It's hilarious. 1) Syria has never been an Islamic state, but has always been a secular state with a very strong Christian minority. 2) Palestinians did not want an Islamic state either, they just did not want their land taken over by a bunch of European colonists. 3) Jordan has never been an Islamic state, it has always been a secular state with a strong Christian minority.
The Zionists (not the Jews) did not riot, but they certainly did introduce terrorism into the region, including being the proud inventors of the car bomb, and the airplane hijacking. For years they committed hundreds if not thousands of vile acts of terrorism against both the Brits and the Palestinians.
Do you have a reference for that? If this is accurate it is something very new, and I could become famous by writing a paper about it.
"...they never curbed arab immigration..."
Because there wasn't any to curb.
"...only jewish immigration."
Yes, at times they did because it was creating multiple problems for thems.
"The Brits turned away MANY who came from Eastern Europe many of whom later were killed in nazi death camps. So post war there was an urgency."
Yes, this much has some truth to it, though "many" in this case is at most a few thousands. It IS possible that some of the European Jews who were turned away ended up dying in Nazi camps, which is hugely tragic and horrible. It is also true that the overwhelming majority of European Jews had no desire to go to Palestine, and the Zionists took measures to prevent them from being able to emigrate to other parts of the world in order that Palestine would be their only choice.
Ben Gurion himself said in 1938 "If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter..."
13,000 missiles fired into Israel with zero concern about who is injured or killed is just a cry to relieve suffering not to cause murder or mayhem?
Hamas will likely not abandon its charter's insistence on the destruction of Israel and the massacre of its Jewish citizens. They may claim they will do so but no sane person would believe it. It is part of Islam that lying is acceptable if there is a religious or political reason for doing so.
13,000? That figure has to be wrong (backup please) but these pea-shooter missiles are primitive compared to Israel's highly sophisticated technologically vastly superior, US supplied fighters, drones -and that's leaving out their nuclear warheads.
Rather look at the comparative death tolls; between 3 and 6 Israelis. 180± Palestinians, a large proportion of them children (so much for accuracy of high-tech weaponry); figures based on varying reports.
If that's not attempted genocide, I don't know what is.
ANY death on ANY side is a tragedy, especially non-military, with the possible exception of Nutty-Yahoo, whose popularity prior to the upcoming elections is dropping like a lead balloon.
By the way rockets now are hitting on the outskirts or Tel Aviv.
Yes, you do not know what attempted genocide is. Genocide on the Jew is what the Palestinian people wanted when they signed on to Hitler in WWII, same with most of the Middle East, particularly Iran which in the 1935s changed it's name from Persia to Iran ... i.e. Aryan in solidarity with Nazi Germany.
You and most here know nothing of this history, but you delight in making stuff up and calling silly names like Nutty-Yahoo, what's more, you don't care either. You are a disgrace.
Oh well, at least brux admits there is a Palestinian people - that's progress.
Yes, it was very provocative of the Palestinians on Nov. 8 to allow Israel to shoot to death 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa as he was playing football with his friends. It was so provocative of them also to allow Israel to murder four more unarmed youth on October 10. But worst of all was that the Palestinians allowed Ahmad Al Jaabari to expose himself to assassination by Israel by allowing him to work on negotiations toward a long-term truce with Israel. Those Palestinians are constantly provoking Israel.
"rockets now are hitting on the outskirts or Tel Aviv."
Well, then, Netanyahu certainly did the right thing by forcing the Palestinians to provoke him into attacking them so they felt forced to fire those rockets.
"...Iran which in the 1935s changed it's name from Persia to Iran ... i.e. Aryan in solidarity with Nazi Germany.
You and most here know nothing of this history, but you delight in making stuff up..."
This is pretty close to the most ironic thing I have seen here so far. You say most here know nothing about history and make stuff up, and then you reveal the most blatantly ignorant made-up nonsense ever. Here are two historical facts you need to know:
The name Iran goes back to the Sassanian period, centuries before the Nazis.
The Shah, who changed the official name to Iran was an ally of Israel.
Let us also not forget that the final provocation was the murder of Ahmad Al Jaabari, who was in the process of negotiating a long-term truce with Israel, suggesting that Israel's much-trumpeted desire for peace is nothing but a sham.
from 2008 to 2012 Israel massacred like 1500 Palestinians in Gaza (at least 400 Children included) using bombs and planes Made in the USA - UN called war crime - Israel intentionally targeting CIVILIANS.
"thousands" of rackets from Gaza killed about dozen in Israel - mostly Israelis - (most of them were NOT shot by Hamas, but their opponents ..).
Israeli organizations affiliated with the Israeli military have done studies and issued reports regarding the origins of the rockets, and Hamas' efforts to stop them, and found that Hamas was responsible for only a small minority of the rockets and only under very specific conditions. Gershon Baskin, who was a key Israeli figure in the recent truce negotions cut short when Israel murdered Ahmad Al Jaabari, who was negotiating on the Palestinian side, also reported that until the murder of Jaabari, and the attack by Israel, Hamas was not the one firing rockets, and the rockets they fired in retaliation for Jaabari's murder were generally fired at military targets or empty fields.
How many Palestinian children are killed by Israeli soldiers using them for target practice, shooting them like fish in a barrel as they play soccer, or walk to and from school?
The number of children casually murdered by Israeli soldiers is several times the number of Israelis killed or wounded by rockets from Gaza.
Did you stop to think that if Israeli soldiers stopped taking potshots at Palestinian children that could make a difference?
have you suggesting there should be no such crime as attempted murder?
And I am so glad you have such a solid Islamic education. Where did you receive it?
What about the Elders of Zion, do you believe in that non-existent document while you deny the PLO charter exists?
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a nonexistent document. It is a vile anti-Semitic fraud intended to turn people against Jews by claiming that there exists and international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It is, sadly, quite real.
I have never mentioned the "PLO Charter", but since you introduce the subject, there was a Palestinian National Charter drafted in the '60's that has been defunct for decades, and is now nothing more than an interesting historical document.
Where he misses the mark in this piece is in suggesting that Israel should oversee new Palestinian elections. That is like having the burglar oversee the inventory of what has been stolen. No thanks.
He also is deficient in geography since he cannot or WILL NOT say why the border with Egypt is closed or is it? So just why don't those who need medical care go to Egypt? AS for rappochment with the PA and Fatah, that is a long way from happening since Hamas has been engaged in mass murder of their people in Gaza. Tell Hamas to allow freedom of speech, press, religion, and ALL the rights that are supposed to be available. How about that? Tell Hamas to obey the rules that the PA accepted instead of killing their members and officials. The FACT is that until Hamas agrees to follow what the PA has accepted and return offices to the PA, there is NO point to any further talks since Hamas will not abide by them in any case. It is not the threat of Hamas militarily destroying Israel that prevents talks, but the willingness of Hamas to carry out ANY agreement at all.
I saw an interview with a Hamas spokeman and he refused to anwser the question can Hamas ever accept a two state solution. Until he can give an affirmative answer there is NO point to final talks.
chomsky.info/articles/20121104.htm
about whom Palestinians elected and PA (USraeli financed coup) to destroy Hamas.
The insanity of having two minute pieces of land as a single country is ... well, insane. the whole thing is insane and a solution must probably be looked at outside of anything that has been mentioned so far.
It's very possible there is no solution to this.
Why did I think of that?!
Second with trillions of dollars in oil wealth, why wouldn't the good peaceful Muslims of the surrounding states take in the Palestinian refugees, like Israel was forced to take in the Jewish refugees from those states when they kicked out most of their Jewish population and took their land and possessions too?
Got some fast, quick, pat answers for all of that too?
And those Palestinians continue to keep bringing it on themselves by refusing to go away, and by objecting, sometimes violently, when the descendants of those European colonists flaunt international law steal and colonize more and more and more of their land, exploit more and more of their natural resources, deny them the most basic necessities of life, imprison them, and violate their fundamental human rights.
Those Palestinians deserve everything they get. The Christian Palestinians deserve what they're getting, too, of course.
The Jewish State "forced" to take in Jews? And what about Jewish refugees from European states? Was Israel forced to take them in too, when other countries, such as the United States would not accept them?
Rabbi Michael Lerner has a lot of very astute things to say on the subject of reconciliation of the two sides.
chomsky.info/articles/20121104.htm
If one were to accept this conclusion then all would be peaches and cream if Israel dropped the blockade and Hamas would discard its charter and work on building up the infrastructure and commerce. BAH HUMBUG!
And how do you expect Hamas to work on building up the infrastructure while Israel first periodically destroys that infrastructure, then blockades the materials and equipment needed to repair and rebuild it, and prevents Gaza from exporting any goods, so there is no money to buy what is needed for repairs?
Maybe you would like Hamas to also reproduce the miracle of the loaves and fishes every morning? Israel won't even allow enough food to enter Gaza to provide the population with adequate nutrition. Israel also destroys crops, agricultural fields, slaughters the farm animals Gazans use for meat, eggs, and milk, and razes flour mills, and bread bakeries so that they cannot even produce enough of their own food. Even for people who have some money there is often little or nothing on the shelves.
As for that tired reference to the so-called Hamas Charter, get a clue. Hamas has never adopted a charter. That is an obscure document written by an unknown person - perhaps a Hamas member, perhaps not - and is not an official Hamas document.
What was the cause and good reason for Israel to assassinate Ahmad Al Jaabari while he was in the process of negotiating with Israel for a long-term truce?
What was the cause and good reason for Israel to begin Operation Cast Lead by bombing a graduation ceremony for police cadets in Gaza City, killing the entire class?
What is the cause and good reason for collectively punishing the entire Gaza population of 1.7 million by, among other things, as Dov Weisglass put it, "putting them on a diet" that will keep them undernourished, but not starve them to death?
What was the cause and good reason for sending Israeli soldiers into two children's zoos where they slaughtered the helpless animals in their cases, the razed the place?
What is the cause and good reason for regularly sending Israeli soldiers into Gaza to destroy food crops, make agricultural land cultivatable, and slaughter food-producing animals?
What is the cause and good reason for destroying sewage processing plants?
What is the cause and good reason for all this>
No government, including Israel, can control every action of the people it governs even in the best of conditions. Hamas has for the most part done a good job of controlling those fringe groups under the circumstances - and this assessment comes from studies commissioned by the Israeli military. Hamas operates in extremely difficult conditions, most of them imposed by Israel, which severely limit its effectiveness in policing the population. Israel has, in fact, systematically targeted Hamas' ability to police the population, as it did to the PNA in the West Bank some years ago. Recall that Israel's opening salvo in so-called "Cast Lead" was an attack on a police recruit graduation ceremony in Gaza City. One has to wonder why Israel persists in demanding a level of effectiveness in policing that even it is not capable of while at the same time destroying the Palestinians' ability to police.
The root problem is not the rockets, the root problem is that Israel is holding 1.7 million human beings imprisoned under siege at starvation level, regularly sending soldiers into the area to to attack the people trying to survive there.
So, that's OK, the rockets are nothing.
Murdering an Olympic team in front of the world is nothing.
Yet you complain because you think Israel is treating Palestinians like nothing.
This is just war, and as it is war, there is nothing outsiders should say about it if they are not willing to help end it fairly.
Clearly your end game is the destruction of Israel, so mine in the clear reaction to the fact that after 60-70 years the Palestinians and radical Islamics refuse to budge is that the only logical alternative it to be against a Palestinian state.
I'm not a Christian, I'm not a Jew, I'm not a Middle Easterner, this is just my opinion after reading and seeing the history of this unfold through my lifetime. Muslims have used every wicked evil tactic and lie to destroy Israel and appeal to the stupid around the world, with Holocaust denial, turning their people's hate to the West.
We have secular societies in the West that I assume most of the idiots here say they support, but when it comes to looking objectively at Muslim countries and their hostile socialization process that turns their people potentially violent, you say nothing. You should just quit pretending and admit you are virtual Nazis.
And now, since you are turning to anti-Muslim hate rant in place of even an attempt to have a conversation, I am finished talking with you.
Thank Goodness for small favors, you never talked anyway, more of a irrational rant.
Over a hundred thirty Palestinians dead in their shrunken, deprived concentration camp.
What is one supposed to do with nothing left? No safeplace for children to play, no safe places to go to market, pedal goods, do laundry. What would you do?
The Palestinians deserve our support. Hamas is the legitimate government. It would be like Israelie heads of state meeting not with President Obama and his administration but with Romney/teabagge r Ryan as if they won the election...
Maybe US should just come out an say we support homocidal Facists everywhere b/c we, in fact, do!
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented...."
The Palestinians are the party being oppressed here. They are the party who have been and are being displaced (aka ethnically cleansed), dispossessed, oppressed, tormented, and deprived of their most fundamental human rights. Neutrality is inappropriate and will not bring peace.
Why do YOU think it is all right for Israel to attack the Palestinians, force them from their homes, take their lands, and imprison them in a small piece of land, allowing in only a minimum of food, and destroying their ability to produce food for themselves?
To put it concisely, how about if Israelis simply started complying with international law, and the laws of humanity, and accepted the land inside 1949 international boundaries as their territory, as the vast majority of Palestinians have done for decades?
I don't attack you for your beliefs or opinions, what I attack you and most on this board for is your lying attempts to pretend you are leftist, or liberal, when you plainly you support what you call the oppressed people of Palestine, not so they can be helped, but so they can attack and destroy Israel. Or maybe you are just deluded into thinking if they were secure and stronger they would attack Israel less. What I object to is the hypocrisy and anti-semitic bigotry here on the part of the left.
Because I am a staunch leftist, Liberal, Progressive and your sort of lying and hiding your true nature among truly well-meaning people is disgusting and criminal.
Really? I should not write anything more. That makes the case that the writer has no clue. The steps are would would if a woodchuck could could chuck chuck wood.
The problem here is that regardless of whether you are a supporter of Israel or the Palestinians - pick Hamas or Fatah - points 6, 7, 9, and 10, "colonization," "expropriation of property" "land theft," "illegal blockade" vs points 4 and 9, "terrorist tactics," "terror tactics" and "war crimes," to characterize ways in which each side sees the other, is a sure way to lose the negotiations before they begin. Mr. Cole does not have the mindset of a mediator.
Recognize Israel? Well, in a sense, having the parties at the negotiating table is a form of recognition, hopefully of Israel on the one hand and the need for a state for the Palestinians on the other.
What this piece misses is balance.
More importantly, all players involved missed a big chance in 1948 and again in 1967. It's 11:59 pm now but still not too late.
Consider what might happen if Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Russia, China, and Germany as surrogate Europe created a state for the Palestinians, with housing, factories, schools, colleges and a working economy. People with something to lose avoid losing it.
What you "remember" and the facts of what actually happened are diametrically opposed. Please update what you "remember" to reflect known reality.
The facts of what took place in 1947-49 have been well-known since the 1970's when classified Israeli archives were opened up for the first time. Israeli historian Benny Morris's wrote the seminal work on the subject in the 1970's. Numerous works have been written since then, mostly by Israeli historians, and based on studies of primary documents in the Israeli archives. Read them.
Oddly, no one has ever been able to produce anything at all to substantiate the propaganda that the surrounding Arab states encouraged the Palestinians to leave. In addition no one has been able to produce a plausible explanation for such behavior.
And you really need to get your facts straight. not one of the "surrounding Arab states" has ever set Palestinians up in refugee camps. The U.N., not the "surrounding Arab states" set up and still maintains refugee camps for Palestinian refugees.
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