Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East Conflict

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

What do you see as the problem, here?

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

What do you see as the problem, here?

I posted a new reply just now, right before your post.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I posted a new reply just now, right before your post.

No, I read that one. I feel like we've gotten off-track, somehow.

What is the problem? The problem is that the Palestinians don't have a state?

[Coffeehouse]

You're right, we are side-tracking a bit.

"What is the problem? The problem is that the Palestinians don't have a state?"
Getting warmer..

*I really have to read now. Exam tommorrow*

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

I don't want to play guessing games, I'm really asking.

Until we can define the problem, we can't really propose solutions.

Have fun on the exam.

[Coffeehouse]

It definitely is an important aspect of the conflict that the Palestinians get their own state where they can choose their own freedoms and govern their own lives independently.
But it shouldn't come at the cost of less liberty for Israelis, so that's a fine balance and since the geographical area is so small it makes the matter so much worse than if these were relatively large areas with decent endowments of resources (water particularly)
The primary responsibility of the Israelis as I see it is win back the trust of the general Palestinian population. Certain radical Islamic factions won't ever be persuaded by the Israelis, but they can be suppressed by their own Palestinians when the society becomes less radicalized. This is a job for both parts to achieve, a normalization of the society, particularly that the Palestinians, even though a two-state solution has not been compltely settled, at least are able to live decently enough and participate in society in a way that Israelis have done in their own country since 1948. That's a big difference, where the Palestinians have never since 1948 been able to live normal lives. And that engrains a sense of hopelessness and something rather unnatural, a fearlessness which sends young men into terrorist activities and sends kids on the street to throw rocks at tanks. Not because they are ideologically brainwashed but because they are willing to fight and die for Palestinian independence. It's a fearlessness that will make it impossible for Israel to win militarily, and so diplomacy is the only viable path, not rocket attacks and certainly not collective punishment.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

This makes no sense to me, Coffeehouse, and I'd bet it makes no sense to the Israeli's either.

I don't know why "the primary responsibility of the Israeli government should be to win back the trust of the Palestinians.' "Winning back trust" is not what governments do. That's too touchy-feely.They just operate services. Do the Palestinians want Israel to run their services, or do they want to run their own?

If they want to run their own, then the question is, "Where will they live?" Right now, all the land on the planet is spoken for, one way or another. So if they want their own piece, someone will have to give it to them. Israel is on the short list for doing that, but it isn't actually necessary, after all. Jordan is actually sitting on more of "Palestine" than the Israeli's are.

Howsabout they chip in?

"The Palestinians" have been participating in Israel since the begining...the ones that weren't too ornery to stay. The refugees are a subset.

The part about "Israeli's being able to participate in their society since 1948" whooshed right over my head, too. Their country was invaded by foreign powers the day after it was born, and at intervals, since. Neither the government, nor the population, has ever been able to trust that it won't be shot at (or more recently, blown up on a bus) since the get-go. If that was my neighborhood, my 'participation in society' would be a little odd.

In this country, when some folks got the notion they didn't want to play by the rule of law, we had a "Civil War" (also known as "The War Between The States".) Personally, I'd have let them go, and dug a moat between, but some people thought a 'United States' was worth fighting for. On the other hand, they weren't threatening to eradicate my family and way of life...I might have thought a mere moat inadequate if they had been.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

This makes no sense to me, Coffeehouse, and I'd bet it makes no sense to the Israeli's either.

I don't know why "the primary responsibility of the Israeli government should be to win back the trust of the Palestinians.' "Winning back trust" is not what governments do. That's too touchy-feely.They just operate services. Do the Palestinians want Israel to run their services, or do they want to run their own?

I hate to break it to you, but it seems to me an outmoded and ill-informed thing to say. And I will explain why

A cursory look at Israel's largest newspaper, the Haaretz, leads me to the article, written on the 14th of May, "We owe the Palestinians a state" written by B. Burston, an Israeli writer.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982960.html

In it Burston points out the following:
"We owe the Palestinians for keeping us honest. We owe the Palestinians for reminding us that we were never alone in this place. We owe the Palestinians what we expect from them: the recognition that they deserve, as a real people. We owe the Palestinians a state."

It seems to me that you aren't really understanding that the West Bank is in fact under Israeli occupation. And that does not simply mean Israeli troops patrolling the borders by Israel proper, but heavy Israeli presence in all the major towns and cities of the West Bank, hundreds of checkpoints, over 300,000 Settlers east of Jerusalem (that would be the West Bank). This is an actual occupation. It's involves everything the Americans are involved with in Iraq.
Being the occupier of a territory means certain responsibilities cannot be avoided. These are engrained in the Geneva Conventions and are present in the UN's Human Rights Charter (the world's commandments!). Thus the Israeli government is not only responsible for not trampling on the rights of ordinary citizens in the West Bank, but also responsible for proper water channeling, sewer channeling, and import of all the foods, gas, oil, etc that are a minimum requirement for a society to not fall into complete anarchy. The Palestinians of course would like to fend for themselves, but since the West Bank is occupied and since it is not far from complete disintegration (I also wonder if the Palestinians can live on the land for yet another year, yet another decade).

Again, the Israeli writer..
"Do they lie to us? Of course they do. Just as they lie to themselves. Just as we lie to ourselves. Are they the hostages of their own extremists? Of course they are. Just as we are the hostages of our extremists, the settlers who threaten to make our lives hell if we try to move them."

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

You seem to be fond of poets. I source more with historians.

Where did "the Palestinians" come from? When did they become "a people"?

I believe you and I have different answers to that.

People have different answers. Those depend on our life experience, our circumstances, our personalities, and our sources of information. Do you know anything about the conditions in Israel and the surrounding area in 1948? There are no contemporaneous sources for 'palestinians', meaning 'displaced Arabs from the area now occupied by Israel" at that time.

Mr Burston is an American-born columnist who writes controversial blogs. He's certainly entitled to his opinion. I don't, however, consider his opinion any more important than the opinions of people who disagree with him, who are many. It may be that the best way to finish all this mess is to give every person identified as 'Palestinian" a million dollars cash, and see where they settle. But that doesn't make it necessary in an ethical sense.

You are right that I don't consider "the West Bank under Israeli occupation"... in the way you do. I also don't consider California under "American occupation", even though territory there has been disputed with Mexico.

[Coffeehouse]

I really hope you take a look at the history of Palestine, and specifically the history leading up to the 1st World War, and the events between the two great wars (1st and 2nd).

Equating California as a state in the United States of America with Israel's occupation of the West Bank is completely irrelevant. They aren't event remotely comparable.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Do you know anything about the conditions in Israel and the surrounding area in 1948? There are no contemporaneous sources for 'palestinians', meaning 'displaced Arabs from the area now occupied by Israel" at that time.

Specifically this part is something that you'd find interesting to read into. You can even make it simple and Wiki it The internet is our friend

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I really hope you take a look at the history of Palestine, and specifically the history leading up to the 1st World War, and the events between the two great wars (1st and 2nd).

Equating California as a state in the United States of America with Israel's occupation of the West Bank is completely irrelevant. They aren't event remotely comparable.

I think they are. That's why I compared them.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Specifically this part is something that you'd find interesting to read into. You can even make it simple and Wiki it The internet is our friend

I don't need to 'wiki it". I even own actual paper books, and, as I said, I've been interested in this for a very long time. However, we disagree.

[Coffeehouse]

Please then show me why you would want to compare those two territories?

You speak of Palestinians as a recent people?
Yet the 700,000 Palestinians who lived in Palestine before the 2nd World War were the children of those who lived there 2000 years prior to that. In comparison, in the mid-1800s, there were only a handful of Jews in Palestine..

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

There are no contemporaneous sources for 'palestinians', meaning 'displaced Arabs from the area now occupied by Israel" at that time.

That's demonstrably false.

[Coffeehouse]

Israeli invasion of Gaza - So far:

According to the BBC:
More than 1,300 Palestinians killed
Thirteen Israeli deaths
More than 4,000 buildings destroyed in Gaza, more than 20,000 severely damaged
Tens of thousands of Gazans homeless.

According to CNN:
More than 1,300 Palestinians died and about 5,400 others were wounded during Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza, the Web site of the Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics said Monday.
The fighting largely stopped Sunday with a cease-fire. Israel has said 13 of its citizens -- including 10 soldiers -- were killed during the offensive, which started December 27.

[Nerdanel]

.. and Israel did not achieve what it said was the reason for the offensive (does this somehow remind anyone else of what happened in Lebanon in 2006?). The Gazans paid an extremely high price, but I do hope that in the end, Israel pay a lot too, mostly in loss of trust in them by the West that seems to want to be blind to the human rights violations that Israel has and still is committing.

[Earniel]

Was there even a decent reason for this offensive, I wonder? I too remember what they did in Libanon, and how it accomplished absolutely nothing, but leaving the world with yet another needless mess to clean up. We've still got squads over there to disable and clean up Israel's liberally strewn bombs.

But now they've really upped the idiocy by targetting UN-buildings in Gaza, and using weaponry that's illegal to deploy in urban areas. Geez, what were they thinking!? If they were even thinking at all.

Curiously how they made sure they were pulled back in time for the presidential switch in the USA. I suppose they thought Obama would not have been able to let this all slide the way Bush did.

[Coffeehouse]

It's very similar to the Lebanon war in 2006, but this seems even more hypocritical and counter-productive. Back then the stated Israeli goal was to liberate three soldiers from Hezbollah, yet they manage in the process to drop some ten thousands of cluster bombs on all of southern Lebanon, bombing several towns back to the Stone Age.

This war wasn't even taken on the spur as the Israelis argued at first, it was planned for months in advance. So it's curious isn't it, that they chose to spend the better part of january, when George W. Bush effectively was a lame duck president and President Obama was yet to become president, to bomb the Gazans out of their homes and humanity.

..to what effect???

[Ilfirin]

Is it that easy to choose sides?

I know whats easy. To have an opinion on the present or an immediate past. Why? To just have an opinion on anything under the sun is the easiest thing in the world. Yeah.

All I can do , when I read them papers or see those photographs, is, bow down my head for a second.

Civilizations and cultures are always rising and falling.

P.S: Its' quite pointless, my post ie.

[Coffeehouse]

Well I would say humanity is knee-deep in trouble if it's somehow improper to question the morality behind 1,300 deaths (whomever ethnicity, nationality or religion they may be).

The criticism here is not that Israel should not defend itself, it's whether invading a people, the Palestinians in Gaza, living in one of the most populated urban areas of the world, filled to the brim with children and women, using white phosporous and bombing UN buildings and vehicles. I question the morality of that, and likewise the effect it has on Israel's aim: safety for its citizens.

You have to ask yourself if a people that is so fundamentally inferior in terms of physical, mental and dignified well-being is going to be less likely to fight back against the Israeli occupation and if Hamas now is less likely to recruit new members for its heinous acts of terrorism??

My bet is the answers to both questions are an emphatic No.