The Palestinians are one of the oldest Christian peoples in the Middle East. Indeed, Fatah is a secular-nationalist movement unlike Hamas.
Zionism was controversial in the Jewish community. Many were wary of nationalism, and many preferred co-existence in the existing political order. That was especially true in the Jewish American community. They argued for assimilation, believing that the secular nature of the government was the best vouchsafe for the Jewish community. The Jewish community in Palestine has seen serious violence since the 1920s, and the future there was very uncertain.
I can answer my own question from page 1.
Sadly, the answer to that is “no”. :(
therefore to pretend that refusing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state does not constitute a refusal of Israel’s right to exist is anti-semitic.
I missed the fact that Aceris was accusing people who disagreed with him of being anti-Semitic. If his logic made sense, which it doesn’t, you would be a hypocrite, but Aceris jumps straight in with accusations of racism.
You know, if Palestine did insist on shoving a proviso into a peace treaty that Israel not only recognize its existence, but also accept it as a Islamic state, and Israel refused for any reason, even just refusing because it was a Thursday, I would not think there was anything wrong in their refusal. That’s because such a proviso would be pointless, stupid, and designed purely to make negotiations more difficult and protracted.
Jag
3244
And saying the creation of Israel created more problems than it solved is beyond ignorant and completely myopic.
Well, I think it’s fair to say it’s fallen short of its goals. Sixty years of conflict wasn’t in the ad campaign back in 48.
Did anyone talk about the gas? I’d not seen this mentioned anywhere before reading this article, which has lots of links so presumably is not just made up?
‘IDF’s Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis’:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis
Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation “won’t end in just a few days,” he said, adding that “we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas.”
This morning, he said:
"We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command… The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy."
But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya’alon’s concerns focused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya’alon dismissed the notion that “Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state” as “misguided.” The problem, he said, is that:
"Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel's past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel…
A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement."
Operation Cast Lead did not succeed in uprooting Hamas, but the conflict did take the lives of 1,387 Palestinians (773 of whom were civilians) and 9 Israelis (3 of whom were civilians).
Since the discovery of oil and gas in the Occupied Territories, resource competition has increasingly been at the heart of the conflict, motivated largely by Israel’s increasing domestic energy woes.
I sure hope this isn’t the driving reason behind the recent push into Gaza? Rockets are obviously a big part of it, but concerns over the size of the oil/gas reserves? Clean energy can’t come soon enough right?
That analysis is simplistic. The Palestinians don’t have an EEZ, and Israel has allowed them to claim the Gaza Marine gas field. Or rather, to allow the PA to - Hamas don’t have any claim on it, and the setup is very unlikely to actually land the gas in Gaza.
The problem that is being referred to is that is the gas funds are given to the PA, not Hamas, the gas platforms could be struck by shore-launched missiles, fired by Hamas. They basically have a veto, and have said they’ll use it.
Also, even if you add it all together the totals are not huge by world standards. And the JPS as a “journal” is a well known hack-rag for attacking Israel (there are quite a few pretty nasty “critics” of Israel who only ever publish in it…), the Guardian are being useful idiots again.
What do you do when a terrorist group is shooting rockets from heavily populated areas, and also building tunnels to infiltrate terrorists into your country? Hamas knows exactly what they are doing by hiding rockets in schools and shooting from residential areas. Israel knows exactly what would happen to civilians when they go after the rockets and caches with bombs and missiles.
There are no winners in this. The biggest losers are the Palestinians who just want to live their lives.
So if both sides keep losing, the only winners are the terrorists. And it’s in their best interest to never sue for peace because they will be evil outliers who are always a danger.
The Palestinians are unwilling to accept the status quo and the slow creeping expansion of Israel. As such, they will continue to resist with whatever means they have. As bad as the blockade has been, and as miserable as the occupation certainly is, it can and will get worse.
What do you do when a terrorist group is shooting rockets from heavily populated areas, and also building tunnels to infiltrate terrorists into your country? Hamas knows exactly what they are doing by hiding rockets in schools and shooting from residential areas. I
That’s a specious argument. Hamas’s actions in no way void Israel’s responsibilities as an armed combatant. The laws of war apply to all parties. Indeed we should expect more of Israel and the ‘most moral army in the world.’
Reducato ad oil isn’t an argument.
In this case, the formation of a unity government was probably the driving force. That, and the murder of the three Israeli youths.
It was revenge, and it was an attempt to fracture the Palestinian opposition once again.
Timex
3252
The greatest threat to the Palestinians is the Palestinian leadership.
As long as they focus their resources and resolve on the destruction of Israel (indeed, from Hamas’ statements, the extermination of all Jews, even those not in Israel), then they are never going to have a real country, which means thing will always be terrible for them.
And frankly, they’re adults. If they can’t come to this realization, then there’s not much the rest of the world can do to help them.
Their primary goal is one which Israel cannot, by virtue of its existence, ever allow to occur… so it’s totally unreasonable. They either need to choose some other more realistic goal, or they need to prepare for continued misery.
There is a very famous quote about that: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
If Hamas had spent the past 10 years building something peaceful rather than tunnels and rocket factories in Gaza, the pressure on Israel would be growing every day to lift the blockade.
Or you’d think that some of them would have figured to try what the Indians did with Gandhi. Ya know, non-violence. That got them their country, fast.
They’re too divided. They can’t agree on a single course of action.
As long as they focus their resources and resolve on the destruction of Israel (indeed, from Hamas’ statements, the extermination of all Jews, even those not in Israel), then they are never going to have a real country, which means thing will always be terrible for them.
By the same measure a Hudna and de facto recognition is the best deal Tel Aviv will ever get.
Oh agreed. And they’d, in that scenario, had plenty of help inside and outside Israel. As it is, pretty much everyone hates Hamas, except Qatar (who are basically funding them these days). Fatah certainly does.
Hamas denounced Iran and Syria (and hence also Hezbollah) when they declared their support for the Arab Spring. You can image how little the Egyptian generals like them for the same reason, and of course the Saudis and UAE back the new Egyptian regime. Jordan finds them direct a strategic threat. Turkey uses them for PR points, but in the won’t lift a finger to actually help them as it’d damage it’s relations with the EU.
Even all but a very few of the Israeli left is done with them, because of repeated rocket attacks into the coastal regions of Israel where they live, the terror tunnels (and apparently a major attack has been averted) and as final straws the kids abduction and murder and the attack on Ben Gurion. Peace Now is focusing on fighting the Israeli settlements and staying grimly quiet on Hamas, while saying that Israel must keep talking to Fatah and Abbas.
They’re not even that popular in Gaza. A poll just before Hamas’s Ben Gurion attack showed 57% of Gazans wanted their government to “recognize Israel, renounce violence and honour all previous international agreements”, which is pretty explicit! When they polled at the same time for the Palestinian president, Hamas candidates got under 15% (the highest was Abbas, the incumbent, on 35%)
IL? Why should a business centre matter for this? It’s not the capital. Also, the same was said about Fatah - then came Oslo.
Is it bad that i no longer care?
Because i no longer care. Nothing changes, everyone is angry, and people will die. Here’s the new boss, same as the old boss.
I find it much easier to confront such issues through song (with apologies to Jerome Kern):
Who…
Now endangers the Jew
By colonizing land he has no good reason to
With Yankee lackeys helping through?
Who…
Makes anti-semites new?
Makes their ravings ring true?
Well, you ought to guess who:
Netanyahu.
(I also have an anti-American version of “God Bless America”, but I keep it for grand occasions.)
I find that it is usually a question of whether or not one wants to go back as far as “original sin.”
Most observers who believe that creation of a Jewish state in Palestine resulted in the unfair dispossession of Palestinians tend to accept the proposition that Palestinians have the right to use violence in pursuit of a homeland. While these observers may not believe that HAMAS is an ideal or even effective steward of Palestinian interests, they tend to take a dark view of Israeli security operations since, in their opinion, the most-legitimate option for Tel Aviv would be either to (A) eliminate settlements and retire to the Green Line, or (B) declare an end to the Jewish state and seek instead a unitary Israel. Israel’s steady march rightward and taste for settlement-building are merely a vindication that it is a colonial settler state in the mold of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia.
Most observers who favor Israel regard the Palestinians as an unfortunate minority that lost rightful claim to their land during a war. Israel’s post-1948 conquest of territory is either valid on the face of it, or because it was fighting wars of self-defense. Britain, not Israel, was the original transgressor, but it is hardly productive to rehash such an old and difficult problem. This perspective takes each skirmish and subsequent escalation on its own merits: here, HAMAS is to blame because immediate hostilities can be traced back to the murder of three Israeli teenagers. Israel’s increasingly right-wing political tilt and settlement-building are rarely considered, let alone mentioned. The Palestinians are merely reaping what they sowed in previous elections.
The tendency of many critics to try to measure culpability based on the number of war dead is bizarre. I understand why the media focuses on the body count – it sells – but the whole fixation on “proportionate response” smacks of misconceptions about the purpose of war that seems to be tied to the frankly unusual experience of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when cameras depicted a series of set-piece, stand-off bombardments that, on their own, seemed to constitute a fair, victorious, “correct” war in which Americans did not have to contend with intimate knowledge of enemy dead. We seem to forget that war is a political act – violence waged for the purpose of inflicting pain to bring about concessions on the part of a nation (in the collective sense) that no longer wishes to pay the price of its original preference. The experience with Iraq was misleading: we came to believe that we could restrict pain to uniformed militaries and individual “bad men.”
The more powerful party carries a greater obligation.
but the whole fixation on “proportionate response” smacks of misconceptions
Proportional response is rooted in Christian doctrine dating back to the fifth century AD.
I will just add to this that the tacit (and sometimes more visible than that) support of the US to Israel is not helping matters. Here in Canada, there has been a major controversy recently because of our (Conservative) government’s ecstatic support to Israel. What’s unfortunate is that the other parties sort of support the same line, except not as virulently:
Foreign Minister John Baird has attacked the United Nations for raising humanitarian concerns. And Vivian Bercovici, the pro-Israeli partisan named by Harper as ambassador to Israel, is raising eyebrows with her Tweets that look like the “communications channel of the Israeli government,” according to Roland Paris, director of the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa.
The Conservative Party is running a partisan campaign, through emails and on its website, with the flags of Canada and Israel, saying “Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canada’s Conservatives stand with Israel — are you with us?” The Conservatives suggest that anyone questioning Israeli policies is siding with “anti-Semitic terrorists and extremists.” This is in keeping with the sentiment that anyone questioning Harper or Netanyahu is either an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.
All this has prompted nearly 500 Canadian academics, lawyers and community leaders to condemn “the unbalanced and partisan position adopted by the government and federal political parties.”
Citing critical reports by UN agencies as well as such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, they write:
“While Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket firings are illegal under international law, Israel is still bound by basic international humanitarian law principles protecting civilians during times of war and prohibiting collective punishment. Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian life and infrastructure in Gaza violate fundamental norms of international law.”
