Senate Israel/Palestine

A cynical, albeit realistic view, one which is also reflected in the majority of nations within the Middle East.

It's also why the status quo is unlikely to ever change.

 

If the status quo will not change, then at least we have to make sure that people don't support the status quo. There are many people who actively support the fact that millions of people are stateless and live in Israeli-imposed poverty. People 100 years from now will judge this harshly, and the only way to stop that is to make sure that everyone was against it.

 

And then what? Get rid of Israel? Trade one set of refugees for another? You're doing a great job of appealing to "fairness", but that and $2.18 at the corner station near my house will get you a gallon of gas. I've always supported a Palestinian state, but let's be honest--when the moderates came close to a deal, the extremists took it out, on both sides. That has led to the moving of extremist views into the mainstream, and I'm not sure how to empower the sane middle. I believe it still exists, but it has fallen silent, and therein lies the problem.

Now, back to watching the Republicans make complete and utter fools of themselves.

Peace,

V-03

 

Yes,and frankly I think that'd not be the worst thing in the world to happen.

This ongoing killing and arguing is like seeing little children fight over a toy.

 

Uh what, how is this a response to anything I wrote?

 

Israel itself is making a two-state solution increasingly moot with each day, by continuing to expand settlements. It's amazing the enthusiasm with which they continue to shoot themselves in the foot. The only solution left at this point is to integrate the populations of the occupied territories into Israel. I know the Israeli right wing would prefer that they just disappear and are absorbed into neighbouring countries, so that Israel can just take the land that's left, but that's obviously not gonna happen. It's clear as day what needs to happen. They can't have their cake and eat it too. And there's less and less cake left with each day.

Of course, that will entail Israel becoming a pluralistic multiethnic and multireligious state. If that is a bad thing to be avoided, then they should stop making it inevitable.

 

Menace, what Israel is trying to do is expand its ring around Jerusalem, to ensure that it doesn't become divided again. However to your point, I do think at the end of the day, a line does need to be drawn in the sand as demarcating the proper boundaries of Israel and an autonomous nation of Palestine. This will be the only way to 1) protect the Jewish character of Israel 2) give a nation to the Arabs who want their own autonomous nation too. Israel's far religious right (Shas, United Torah and etc) are to be quite blunt, are more concerned about subsidies for the unemployed orthodox, avoiding mandatory conscription into service, and etc then care about the arabs. Like you said, they just want them to "go away"'; however, that may be. The internal politics and the different parties that make up the Knesset is fascinating to watch in general. With the Right and Center Right in control, but a strong opposition from Labor, Green Party, and the Arab block. It's amazing this country is about to operate, pass a balanced budget, and etc. But I digress

In the end, if it were Tongue's Perfect world... Israel would have borders similar to the 1967 armistice lines although including communities like Ariel, and the Golan would be retained under Israel sovereignty. Jerusalem would be unified under Israel. People would have a choice (both Jewish and Arab), could have a choice to live in whichever country they choose. However, Palestine could not be "Judenrein" meaning Jews can live there (Hebron, and Jericho) if they choose as Palestinians and Israel would need to retain its Arab minority too. I would love to see a world where free movement could occur, and long-term peace would happen. Gaza would be open and flourishing, extremism would flicker out (both Jewish and Muslim) and real respect and peace will take place. In a perfect world of course...

 

Jerusalem unified under Israel and Palestine extremism flickering out are mutually exclusive.
How can you suggest this? What right does Israel have to just go in and grab it?
Why Ariel? This is stolen land. If I come and build a house on your farm, and then declare it mine, is that Tongue's Perfect world? It's warlord world. It's a lawless world. There is no good reason to want that.

 

It wasn't, nor was it meant to be.

It was a general statement of how I view the conflict, as well as pointing out that your previous post wasn't doing anything to address the problem other than state how horrible Israel is. I understand how you feel, but what are your thoughts on how to fix things?

 

Your comment was right after mine and did come off as very hostile to me. I want you to know that. You even used the word "you" in it, which could only have been referring to me. You accused me of wanting to get rid of Israel and create new refugees.

As for how I would fix it? It thought you and I agreed that there was nothing that could be done.

 

Good lord, dude. It's a message board. No hostility intended.

I don't know you in real life, but you seem like a sane, normal person. I was just making the point that there tends to be a lot of ranting in this thread about the horribleness of Israel, absolution of the Palestinians for any responsibility in the conflict, and not much substance. My comments were meant to elicit your thoughts, not your anger. I'd genuinely love to see some solutions that involve more than just blanket condeming an entire nation or nationality, respectively (and I'm talking about everyone here, not one single individual or group of individuals).

That's it. Nothing more. And you're right, I don't think under the current circumstances anything can be done, at least not until Bibi Netanyahu is out of office.

Peace,

V-03

 

Well, since you and I agree that there's nothing to be done right now, I stated that because of how the future will judge us, we should at least have the benefit of not supporting the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

 

Just out of sheer curiosity, what are you defining as "Israeli occupation" -- Gaza/illegal settlements, anything outside of pre-Six Day War lines, UN partition lines, or all of Israel?

 

"Sheer curiosity"

Occupation of the West Bank and the blockading of Gaza

 

No, it was sheer curiosity -- I assumed that's where you fell, but just wanted clarity. There are people who essentially think that all of Israel is illegal, and I was just curious if you adjusted your worldview to that extreme position as a function of the "future historical view of supporting Israeli occupation," rather than your current (more rationalized) worldview.

I'm mostly in agreement with you, though I'm not 100% up on West Bank-related activity (other than: "Settlements bad!"), though we obviously differ on the (at least) naval blockade of Gaza.

 

67 borders and East Jerusalem.
But then there's the right of return... no easy fix for that.

 

Well, Illegal or not, Israelis are there and can't just move en masse.

I don't see how you can support the blockade of Gaza. It's literally the thing that keeps Palestinians in poverty and is killing them.

EDIT: Actually nevermind, I do see how. You support a presidential candidate who thinks black people are out to kill police.

 

Lol.

Regarding the above, I think personal feelings of legality are really irrelevant, Israel is there regardless and the same applies to future borders, really. The borders will be those negotiated between the parties and will be dictated by the power dynamic between the parties, rather than by any notion of legality, if history is any indication. Which, in short, means the Palestinians are screwed. That is, if there is ever a negotiated outcome at all.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I am amused and annoyed in equal measure by calls by Israeli politicians and others for neighbouring countries to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Look, you exist. You're sitting there. Your neighbours don't have to like it. You won't disappear from existence because Egyptians scowl at you. When you move in to a new apartment complex, do you put up a notice demanding that your neighbours like you? If neighbours intended harm upon Israel, a signature on a piece of paper wouldn't stop them anyway.

 

That and Israel's won every war so no, that route isn't being tried again despite 1973 being quite close.

Also Egypt and Jordan have, Syria? Hafez al-Assad's condition seemed to be return of the Golan Heights, his son? Well, we know all about that other unholy ME mess, don't we?

 

There is almost nobody in the West who is calling for Israel's existence to be abolished, and even in the Arab world every single government has more or less come around to accepting Israel's existence (if not the people). If this were 1917, and Zionist Jews came up to us and said they wanted a mass population transfer of Jews from all over the world to Palestine with the intent of creating a state there and displacing the people living there prior...well, no. Such a thing just should not be done, and it's an instant recipe for conflict. Israel should not have been created. Obviously Israel has been created, and it's too late to turn back the clock, but the very least we can do is demand that Israel stop the goddamn land grabs. Is that so unreasonable? For demanding this, we are called "anti-Semites". No. We are not anti-Semites. The Israel Right is just greedy, has no regard for the rights of Palestinians, and won't let anybody get in the way of their desire for conquest.

Israel can either hear this coming from us...or they can hear it coming from the likes of al-Qaeda and Khamenei...the latter two of whom have considerably fewer scruples.

 

All I got to say is to state what many know. Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic. I agree with several professors and ministers that the mass slaughter of six million European Jews does not give them the right to wage apartheid against the Palestinians. It wasn't right in South Africa. It's not right in Israel/Palestine. As a result of this and other facts, I find Netanyahu unbearable and reprehensible. Definitely one of my least favorite people, among with certain American politicians.

 

The creation of Israel would not have been necessary if the rest of the world hadn't stood by indifferently while Hitler annihilated European Jews. WWII was fought to stop fascism, not to save a minority faith, but the fact remains that no-one lifted a finger against the Nazis until it was clear that Germany would stretch from England to the border of China if the world didn't come together to prevent it. It calls to mind America's refusal to take in the boat of Jewish refugees decades ago (most of whom were children), that were then sent back to be slaughtered. It's an ugly chapter in America's history, up there with slavery, segregation, and the internment of American Japanese following Pearl Harbor. We talk about how awful right-wing Israeli policies are, yet conveniently gloss over the memory of attempted ethnic cleansing that enabled Israel's creation to in the first place.

And the Palestinians now find themselves in the same situation. For years, they have been brutalized, oppressed, and silenced. Not just by Israel, but by their supposed Arab "friends" along with the world at large. It wasn't until the rise of ISIS that the true instability that is the Middle East was finally laid bare and acknowledged by everyone. The Palestinians are proxies, a political football used by the dictatorships of the ME to keep their populations focused on something other than their own terrible circumstances. Arab-on-Arab violence in the ME has caused far more Muslim deaths than the Jews in Israel have, but there has been an imbalance in the moral outrage shown by the world at large in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is why solutions have remained maddeningly out-of-reach. Now, with ISIS having gone from terrorist group to true international threat, the decades-old hypocritical status quo may finally start to change.

Neither set of behaviors, either Israeli policies or the hypocrisy of the rest of the planet in addressing the situation, have been acceptable. If there is truly ever going to be peace, then there needs to be commitments from both sides to lay down their arms and learn to talk. That, and an insistence from everyone else that said talks be sincere, not just "yes we say peace but we really want war". Anything less is doomed to fail.

I don't agree that the Israeli Right is bent on conquest, at least not in the way that ISIS is; rather, they're taking a page from WWII concept of "Lebensraum" (breathing room) in the name of security. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. I don't know how to get the process started again, but an attack against Israel by ISIS will probably make things worse in the short run, but potentially open up avenues for real co-operation in the long run. Israeli intelligence is already helping the Arabs behind-the-scenes; perhaps circumstances will allow things to eventually move more into the open.

We shall see.

Peace,

V-03

 

I will posit that there are some, possibly even many, anti-Zionists who are not doing it as a cloak of respectability to anti-Semitism -- but that's not nearly the case. I'd even posit that most anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic in nature, especially when you look at bodies like the United Nations.

Clearly, Israel is there. Anti-Zionism at this point is somewhat counter-productive unless you're defining it as "breaking Israel up into a two state solution that preserves a state of Israel" which I very much doubt most people are, considering Zionism is just saying "a state as homeland for the Jews." I'm wholly against the bugnuts policies that Bibi is endorsing / enforcing -- but it's possible to be both pro-Zionist and pro-Palestinian (or two-state solution), since the leaders on both sides are functionally insane at this point. I sort of view it like the linguistic rationale arguing against the term Pro-Life and using Anti-Abortion instead... though in this case, I'd argue the other position.

Also, there is a similar argument to be made about BDS as applied only to Israel and not to any other country (especially in the Middle East), and not in a Black Lives Matter / All Lives Matter scenario.

 

The issue with Zionism and the relevance of Zionism today is that Zionism historically supported the concept of "Eretz Israel" which includes the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria, which as we know happens to form a good part of the West Bank which is of course under Palestinian Authority control. This is why the Israeli victory in the Six Day War was so important for the Zionists because it effectively represented the re-capture of Judea and Samaria and was generally regarded as being a step closer to realising "Eretz Israel" or "the Promised land" which as a concept is quite a bit bigger than the pre-1967 Israeli borders. This is effectively why Zionism is still a thing in the Middle East because most of the Palestinians regard it as the sole cause for the settlements and basic unwillingness on the part of the Israeli right wing to let the settlements go.

 

Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to acknowledge this post and make the comment that you seem to have come quite a long way in your thoughts on this conflict since this thread started in 2009 or so. When you go back and read your first comments and your latest comments I can see a definite shift. One of the main issues which is relevant to your point is that in the Palestinian camp the 'moderate' voice has been largely lost because of the civil war which continues to be waged between Hamas and Fatah. Without that moderate voice from the Palestinian side, the Israeli right wing can continue to promote an environment of fear and insecurity which feeds the Bibi propaganda machine. Whenever it appears that a meaningful truce may be reached between Hamas and Fatah, something happens to re-ignite tensions. Right now the Palestinians are very divided and are at war with each other. Nothing can happen until that situation is resolved, and that is looking very grim.