What should have israel done instead?

[melak]

What military operations are you thinking of, that killed tens of thousands of palestinians?

B’Tselem provides statistics but I can’t link it as of yet. 7,755 Palestinians killed by Israelis security forces from the time of the first Intifada and to the present day. Tens of thousands was a poor choice of words on my part, I thought the casualties could be a bit over 10,000 but I was too bust looking at individual operation casualty reports to figure out that someone else might have already done the work of counting the total number of casualties for me.

manual link old.btselem.org/statistics/english/Casualties.asp

[melak]

Im sure the people who lived under the threat of daily rocket attacks for almost a decade would disagree with you.

Doesn’t matter if they do. The Israeli occupation has hurt far more people than the corresponding Palestinian violence has. The numbers bear this up.

[Tim_Partlett]

And why is that? Its far less stupid then calling them reasonable.

Lum didn’t call “them” reasonable, because he doesn’t make stupid generalizations.

[Brettmcd]

Over 3000 isrealis are dead and over 25000 wounded by palistinian violence since 1948 (these do not include any war deaths). Just between 2000 and 2005 1,074 were killed and 7520 wounded.

Those numbers seem quite significant to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war

[Jason_McCullough]

Israel trying to effectively starve Palestine out has probably led to a lot more early deaths than actual military operations.

[Timex]

The biggest problem I see with the terrorist tactics used by groups like hamas is that they help justify actions like preventing palestinian access to roads and population centers.

[thrasymedes]

Those numbers seem quite significant to me.

And the greater numbers killed and wounded by Israeli violence against the Palestinians are, naturally, more significant. Right?

[Shiroko]

Israel trying to effectively starve Palestine out has probably led to a lot more early deaths than actual military operations.

That’s a lie, Palestinians don’t die of hunger (at all) and definitely not because of Israel. Tons of foods go every day into Gaza and this has been true even in the hardest of times. Sure they’re poor and you can reason who is responsible for that. But there’s enough food going into Gaza everyday. (And the situation on the west bank is of course much better)

[Jason_McCullough]

“Starve out” is a metaphor; they aren’t literally being calorie restricted. From what I’ve read Israel is attempting to keep Palestine at a feudal level; intentional restriction of industrial production, strict import restrictions blocking dwelling building, unreliable electrical power production, restrictions on medical goods, etc. There’s actually a wiki article.

Household items. A4 paper,[18] crayons, stationary, soccer balls, and musical instruments have been, at times, banned for import.[17] According to AFP other banned goods include toilet paper,[4] though the BBC lists it as permitted.[3] According to the Haaretz the following items were banned in 2009: books, candles, crayons, clothing, cups, cutlery, crockery, electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, glasses, light bulbs, matches, musical instruments, needles, sheets, blankets, shoes, mattresses, spare machine and car parts, and threads.[14]

I think it was a New Yorker article explaining how the initial “no military goods” ban has expanded into “market protection for Israeli exporters” has expanded into “make the bastards suffer.”

[Lum]

I wouldnt call a side that sends rocket attacks and suicide bombers as reasonable in any way.

So I guess you don’t believe Israel is reasonable in any way since they frequently attack Gaza (and occasionally Lebanon) with rockets.

Oh, wait, rockets delivered via aircraft are OK!

[Lum]

Yes one is clearly worse then the other, the rocket attacks and sucide bombers are worse.

You do realize far more Palestinians than Israelis, by an order of magnitude, have died via attacks by the other side in the past decade or so, correct?

Or are you just going to keep making completely stupid generalizations about an area of the world you only understand from Sarah Palin tweets?

[Lum]

“Starve out” is a metaphor; they aren’t literally being calorie restricted. From what I’ve read Israel is attempting to keep Palestine at a feudal level; intentional restriction of industrial production, strict import restrictions blocking dwelling building, unreliable electrical power production, restrictions on medical goods, etc. There’s actually a wiki article.

It’s out of date (your summary, not the wiki article). After the Mavi Marmara debacle, Israel greatly loosened the restrictions on which goods could be imported into Gaza and Egypt later opened their border completely making the whole exercise irrelevant. Right now the Gaza tunnels formerly used for smuggling consumer goods are now mostly used for smuggling construction material (the one class of goods still under complete Israeli interdict) and, probably, weapons.

[Jason_McCullough]

Ah, ok.

[The_Mad_Hatter]

You referred to Turkey as a being an enemy of Israel which is simply not true, and you seemed to blame it on the Islamic governing party. Israel is no longer enjoying a close relationsip with Turkey because they have shown a remarkable lack of interest in pursuing such a relationship. Remarkable because I hardly think Israel is in a position where it can afford to lose one of the few regional allies it has. Turkey has never shown any hostile intent towards Israel, not under the AKP government nor under any previous government, but if Israel is not willing to act in a friendly manner towards Turkey then they should not be surprised if the Turks give them the cold shoulder. Diplomacy is a two-way street.

Turkey is a long-standing member of NATO, an important ally to the United States, and Turkish domestic politics are a lot more complex than the silly US - Populist axis you seem to be trying to draw.

If anyone is making blanket statements here it’s you. Turkey may not be a formal enemy in the sense of declared or undeclared war like most of Israel’s neighbors, but they are hardly friends in the way that they were ten years ago. You appear to assign all the blame for that change to Israel, which is a silly statement. Diplomacy is indeed a two way street. The current government of Turkey is simply less inclined towards western priorities like maintaining good relations with Israel than past ones - they are hardly a radical Islamist movement, but even a moderate democratic one will be more hostile to Israel. If we could magically wave a wand and transform Egypt or Syria into peaceful democracies along the same lines, the will of the people would be utterly hostile towards Israel.

This is not to condemn Turkey, if anything it reflects that country’s evolution into a true democracy after decades of military oversight. I’m also aware that it goes well beyond Israel - rejection by the EU, the Iraq war, the ongoing Kurdish insurgency etc all play into it. I’m not really seeing what the issue is here.

[The_Mad_Hatter]

The thing that gets me about Israel is that you’d think it’s one of the world’s worst places for human rights in the world. They are treated like a pariah state in spite of much worse countries in other parts of the world. If only countries like Burma or Zimbabwe received even a fraction of the attention of the world’s peace and human rights activists. Hell, these days I’d much rather be a Palestinian in Gaza than a Syrian citizen, at risk of being run over by tanks or machine gunned by government soldiers. Where are the boycotts, the activists running supplies into the country, etc? I guess it’s easier to target a civilized democracy than countries where the standard response would be fingernails ripped off and a bullet to the head.

This is not to say that Israel is in the right all the time or that human rights abuses do not occur. They do, and Israel has done many really dumb things lately to make it all worse. At the same time, they are far from the worst even in the Middle East.

[Jason_McCullough]

Palestinians are also at risk of getting run over tanks and getting tortured, so I’m not sure where you’re going with that.

As to why Israel gets lots of attention, activists running supplies into third-world dictatorships get immediately shot. There actually are activists in Burma, but they’re living incredibly dangerous lives. Israel is a first-world country that theoretically will listen to people complaining and where you can change something; I think the people in Burma are just committing suicide.

[melak]

If anyone is making blanket statements here it’s you. Turkey may not be a formal enemy in the sense of declared or undeclared war like most of Israel’s neighbors, but they are hardly friends in the way that they were ten years ago.

Which is still a very long way from justifying you lumping them together with the likes of Syria or Iran. Turkey is not Israel’s enemy and has no desire to be Israel’s enemy.

You appear to assign all the blame for that change to Israel, which is a silly statement. Diplomacy is indeed a two way street. The current government of Turkey is simply less inclined towards western priorities like maintaining good relations with Israel than past ones…

I would assign most of the blame on that change to Israel, yes. Turkey may have cooled relations some with Israel but Turkish PM Erdogan was at one time quite engaged in brokering a peace treaty between Israel and Syria. This was before the Gaza war which frayed Israeli diplomatic relations with most of world, the public humiliation of the Turkish ambassador over a tv-show and then the massacre of turkish civilians on the Mavi Marmara in the Ship to Gaza convoy.

The real problem is that the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a constant flashpoint and in countries that are sensitive to it it will never benefit Israeli relations. This is the case in most of Europe as well as the Middle East.

(can’t link yet. annoying. haaretz.com/news/peres-humiliation-of-turkey-envoy-does-not-reflect-israel-s-diplomacy-1.261381 )

[Lum]

Turkey is indeed asserting itself as a more pan-Middle Eastern diplomatic player (in large part thanks to internal politics and to the EU basically telling it to go hang) but that pales in comparison to Israel treating diplomacy in the past few years as a series of pimp slaps and frantic arm gestures.

Israel has essentially decided that it has no friends in the world besides the US and possibly Russia and that it’s OK with this. Bear in mind the leader of Israeli foreign policy currently is Avigdor Lieberman, which is the equivalent of Donald Trump being named Secretary of State. It’s diplomacy very much in name only.

[The_Mad_Hatter]

Our government loves Israel. I doubt there’s a more pro-Israeli leader anywhere than Stephen Harper.

[John_Many_Jars]

The only good psych band ever to come out of Israel was the Churchills, and they fucking sucked.