Senate Israel/Palestine

The US and Russia both profit off of Iran in their own way. The US has the GCC member countries scared ****less burning cash on arms, jets and armour out the wazoo. They've been big customers especially this past decade. Russia has Iran buying Russian arms in response. And Russia is one of the few who is willing to sell to them and their proxies.

They've got a nice racket going. The thing to never forget is that no matter who kills each other, the military-industrial complex is always the winner.

 

Ah the military-industrial complex.

The reason we will never see any meaningful change. Anywhere.

 

Like the song says: sad but true.

 

So these two things happened:

Only Power Plant in Gaza Shuts Down

Massive Hunger Strike

 

Both of which will likely change nothing, given the current occupant of the White House.

 

The effect of the Six-Day War was to erase the Green Line as even a de facto border, and to reunite the whole of Mandate Palestine under Israeli control. It would then have been open to Israel to declare that these territories were to be incorporated into Israel. But Israel did not do this. Instead the then Israeli Labor government offered to return all of the captured territory, except East Jerusalem, to the Arab states in exchange for recognition and peace treaties. That was the foundation for UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967, which called for “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” in exchange for “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
The Arab states, however, refused even to consider this offer. The September 1967 Khartoum conference of Arab states adopted a resolution which declared: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” It can therefore be seen that Israel’s refusal to comply with Resolution 242’s demand for withdrawal followed, and was caused by, the Arab states’ refusal to comply with the necessary conditions for that withdrawal, namely recognition of Israel and the end of belligerency against it.

 

At the end of the day, Israel is dealing with the Palestinians, not all the neighbouring states. If the Israelis manage to make the stateless Palestinians happy, surrounding state actors will have no more to say. They can't. After all, they can't be even more disgruntled on the Palestinians' behalf than the Palestinians themselves. You also overlook that two of Israel's neighbours, one of them an important regional power, have signed peace treaties with Israel and officially recognised it. Egypt in 1979 and since, and Jordan in 1994.

 

You also overlook that it is literally illegal to win territory by military conflict. So, no, they could not have incorporated anything into Israel regardless.

 

What a load of absolute rubbish. Where did you cut and paste that garbage from? If you really care about history, read Shlomo Ben-Ami's excellent book "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace- The Israeli-Palestinian Tragedy". You will find that the bumper sticker account of the aftermath of the Six Day War which you have regurgitated above is as mythical as the notion that Palestine was uninhabited in 1948 and the rag-tag collection of locals who were there all voluntarily left when Israel declared statehood. You know the saying "a land without a people for a people without a land". It's up there with unicorns and fairies and your stupid post.

 

I support a Palestinian state in principle. But I don't expect ever to see one. After repeated military victories, Israel holds all the territory and all the cards in this conflict. No Israeli government will agree to a Palestinian state until the Palestinians accept, in public, the permanent and legitimate existence of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. They also would have to cease incitement to violence against Israel, cease anti-Israeli propaganda in Palestinian schools and media, and accept the disarmament of the various Palestinian militias. I can't see any Palestinian leader accepting those terms. Certainly Abbas never will. This current stalemate has dragged on for 50 years, and I see no reason why it can't drag on for another 50. That of course suits the Israelis, who will continue the project of re-establishing Jewish communities in Judaea and Samaria, changing the demographic balance until no viable Palestinian state can be created there. This continues the pattern of the whole past century, where the Palestinians and their allies have consistently made bad strategic choices that have left them progressively worse off. Of course, any Palestinian leader seen to give into Israel would then measure their life expectancy in hours because of fanatics.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/kushner-trump-middle-east-peace-628859

lol.

This will go swimmingly...

 

So predictable. Cue the "Who knew bringing peace to the Middle-East would be so difficult" tweet

 

Well, also the US Ambassador to Israel was a particularly ridiculous choice... so we could have guessed sending Kushner to do this would have ended even worse than predicted...

 

It's like...the Trump team doesn't get how negotiations work. If you're going to oversee negotiations between two parties, you can't just blatantly show yourself as being on one side by literally being the mouthpiece of Israel and demanding the Palestinians give all concessions while Israel gives none. How are they this bad at things?

 

Jared Kushner has no idea what he's doing. Who would have guessed?

 

It's okay, he's the best man for the job, with his minutes of experience!

 

"We're gonna get the best people..."

 

Just when you thought a bad situation couldn't get worse, Trump gets involved....

 

I imagine them getting totally suckered by Israel.
"Those houses in those settlements are there already. We can't send those people away!"
"Yeah, that seems fair."
"And the permits for the new houses have already been distributed. Some American companies. We can't send those companies away!"
"Yeah, that seems fair."
"Such a hassle to have a divided capital. Best to have it all under one government."
"Yeah, that seems fair."
"We can't allow those people in the refugee camps back into the country. We'd lose our majority!"
"Yeah, that wouldn't be fair."

 

It's weird because many of the people I correspond with who work within the various Palestinian 'rights' networks have actually been very optimistic that Trump might be a 'wild card' who may disrupt the political deadlock simply because of the fact that he is not an 'orthodox' politician. There were rumblings that if anyone was going to upset the current impasse it was most likely Trump. Not because he is visionary for is wedded to the idea of justice or the rule of international law but just so he can leave office with a 'Legacy" and he doesn't really care if he upsets the Jewish lobby in the US.

Hmmm..not so much.

 

During one GOP debate Trump said he'd be neutral on Israel Palestine...to many boos. I think that ended that.

 

Who was the last president to really be neutral on this issue anyway? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Obama didn't strike me as the most neutral arbitrator either. Public pressure doesn't seem to allow for much leeway.

 

Continuing with the "this will go swimmingly" (also explaining the hard-line stance of the Knesset and Rabiinate):

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/...rael-western-wall-non-orthodox-jews.html?_r=0

Sure, let's piss off the vast majority of American Jewry, I'm sure that'll end well...

 

Well, it could.

Unless US Jews are so hacked off by this that they seriously advocate for cutting off the money supply to Israel - if they did it, cue mass political blackmail from Netayahu - I can't see it having any impact.