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General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

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Thunder said:
no, he did not. Even in his speech on Thursday, he referred to the 1967 borders with land swaps.
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Negotiations do not permit demands by either party. The swaps are what is to be negotiated. What will Israel be able to offer in exchange for what it wants to keep which will get an agreement to swap?

And unless it is a damned attractive offer before September a simple rejection of the offer is the end of it. The ball is in Israel's court to make the offer attractive. The Palestinians have expressed zero interest in any part of Israel inside the 1967 borders so it is unclear where Israel could start.
 
Virus said:
Asking the Palestinians to give up their war is like asking them to give up Islam. It's their identity. Even though they've lost and it's a hopeless cause, they can't give it up.
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No different from asking Jews to give up Zionism. Zionism is what started this murderous exchange with its open plans to steal private property from its owners using deadly force as required.

Jews are so dedicated to their murderous -ism.

Reply to the second URL in my sig if you disagree.
 
Puppycow said:
I think that what you are suggesting is political suicide.
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Absolutely. Any US politician advocating even an equal land/etc. settlement for Israel/Palestine is doomed. Ever read "The Israel Lobby" btw?

Err, wait. Is your contention that this politicial suicide should be the norm, and accepted/advanced? Every US President should enable Israel however they want? What does political suicide mean to you, versus, say, ethics.

Question: If there were a peace agreement based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, what land would Israel give up and what land would Palestine give up? Is there a hypothetical map?

(Already it strains my imagination to think that there is a swap that would be acceptable to both sides.)
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Of course there's a hypothetical map to such a situation. Perhaps neither Israel or the West Bank would agree to it, but there is certainly a landswap that would be approximately equal.

The real question is: should we insist on a two-state solution, or should we just abandon it as the last 4 decades have done?

Other though--If these last decades have really centered around the 1967 borders as inviolate, perhaps all our $6billion a year should have gone to reinforcing those exact borders against anti-Israel warmongering.

Oh, it didn't. It gave monies to Israel to further enter "Occupied Territories" with their settlements. And continues to do so.

Yeah, that's a great way to finalize peace.
 
Puppycow said:
Question: If there were a peace agreement based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, what land would Israel give up and what land would Palestine give up? Is there a hypothetical map?

(Already it strains my imagination to think that there is a swap that would be acceptable to both sides.)
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What is the point? No agreement, no swaps, discussion over. It should take a month at most if the offer by Israel does not get the Palestinians back to negotiations. No twenty years of talking about it. Israel makes its best offer and we go from there.

There is NO Palestinian interest in any part of 1948 Israel so it is unclear where Israel is going to go with this.

But we drop the bovine excrement here and talk plainly. Israel has no interest in returning to its internationally recognized borders, period. So it is an Israeli dictated stalemate.

So the question before the house is, does Palestine get its freedom or does it remain under a jewish dictatorship?

As they keep saying, the middle east is changing. Dictatorships are out of style. Will the jewish dictatorship be the last to go?
 
Doctor Evil said:
As for land swaps, Israel will want to keep several areas which have large settler population. Israel can offer land in various places. One option is some land bordering the Gaza strip. Another is some land at the southern part of the west bank. Other options can be found in papers describing the failed talks between Olmert and Abbas where various ideas where raised.

It is not the land question which would fail the peace talks.
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As we all know those "offers" are predicated on Palestine must accept else the jewish dictatorship will continue. It is a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" assumption. That is why they will not work.

BTW: Ross is a Jew before he is an American. He should be retired to Riker's Island real soon.
 
Dragoonster said:
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Other though--If these last decades have really centered around the 1967 borders as inviolate, perhaps all our $6billion a year should have gone to reinforcing those exact borders against anti-Israel warmongering.

Oh, it didn't. It gave monies to Israel to further enter "Occupied Territories" with their settlements. And continues to do so.

Yeah, that's a great way to finalize peace.
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Rubbish. The issue of economic aid, which has already been phased out for several years, that was transferred to the WB, had been solved even before the economic aid was phased out (solved predominantly during the Clinton administration). There have been minor infractions (2 occasions since post-Clinton), but reductions in loans/grants were made to adjust for these infractions.

U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel
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Israeli Settlements
Continued Israeli settlement building led the United States to reduce the amount of loan guarantees it has extended to Israel. By law, U.S. loan guarantees cannot be used to finance Israeli settlement building in areas occupied after the 1967 War. In the mid-1990s and then again in 2003 and 2005, the United States reduced loan guarantees to Israel by an amount equal to Israel’s estimated spending on settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (See Table 3 below).
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Love it how people use this magical $6 billion per year (usually 3 billion FYI) with total disregard of where it goes and the convenient exclusion of the over $30 billion per year Israel uses to buy US military hardware. Details mentioned in this very thread...

Let the crickets commence...
 
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bigjelmapro said:
Rubbish. The issue of economic aid, which has already been phased out for several years, that was transferred to the WB, had been solved even before the economic aid was phased out during the Clinton administration. There have been minor infractions (2 occasions since post-Clinton), but reductions in loans/grants were made to adjust for these infractions.
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So, I was hallucinating when the US gave $18 billion in emergency aid to Israel? Or is that a "minor infraction"?

Love it how people use this magical $6 billion per year (usually 3 billion FYI) with total disregard of where it goes and the convenient exclusion of the over $30 billion per year Israel uses to buy US military hardware. Details mentioned in this very thread...

Let the crickets commence...
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Uh, yeah, crickets.

In August 2007, the Bush Administration agreed to increase U.S. military assistance to Israel by $6 billion over the following decade. Israel is to receive incremental annual increases of $150 mllion, starting at $2.55 billion in FY2009 and reaching $3.15 billion per year for FY2013-2018.
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http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/foreign_aid.html

And more billions, as you say, for Israel to buy on the dollar, US hardware.

So, maybe Israel is receiving $3 billion a year from the United States government, in direct no-attachments aid, plus whatever it recieves in military aid.

What is this giving us? I've just been assuming you're a US citizen and thus have foremost in your mind national interests in our outlays. What interests is Israel giving us, at the tune of 6 (or 3, or 0.01) billion a year?
 
Dragoonster said:
Absolutely. Any US politician advocating even an equal land/etc. settlement for Israel/Palestine is doomed. Ever read "The Israel Lobby" btw?
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No, I don't obsess about this stuff, but I don't have to read The Israel Lobby to know that it is political suicide to do any of the things you say Obama woud have to do to earn your respect.

Err, wait. Is your contention that this politicial suicide should be the norm, and accepted/advanced? Every US President should enable Israel however they want? What does political suicide mean to you, versus, say, ethics.
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No. I go back and forth on this issue because I try to set aside my own prejudices and think about it from the perpective of each party. But at the end of the day, I have a hard time working up a whole lot of sympathy for Hamas, certainly, but also Fatah. After all, instead of peaceful coexistence, they chose war and this is the result. It's not clear to me that ethics dictate I support them despite this.

The real question is: should we insist on a two-state solution, or should we just abandon it as the last 4 decades have done?
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Should we insist on a 2-state solution?
No, I don't even live in that part of the world. Maybe a one-state solution is better. What's wrong with a secular democracy in which every person has an equal vote and equal rights?

Imagine there's no countries. Image no religion. Nothing to kill or die for.
 
Puppycow said:
No, I don't obsess about this stuff, but I don't have to read The Israel Lobby to know that it is political suicide to do any of the things you say Obama woud have to do to earn your respect.
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All my President would have to do was give an honest assesement on the Israel-OT situation, and move the United States forward based on this.


No. I go back and forth on this issue because I try to set aside my own prejudices and think about it from the perpective of each party. But at the end of the day, I have a hard time working up a whole lot of sympathy for Hamas, certainly, but also Fatah. After all, instead of peaceful coexistence, they chose war and this is the result. It's not clear to me that ethics dictate I support them despite this.
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Well, Hamas, at least in Democratic terms, chose Bush's Road Plan, and were elected, democratically. Then the US decided the elected Hamas shouldn't be the ones in charge and supported Fatah in their coup.

Hamas sucks, sure. But what on Earth should Palestinians be supporting? The US told them to vote, they did and elected Hamas, who was ostracized. Does democracy work for them? Or does it only if the US thinks their votes are good?


Should we insist on a 2-state solution?
No, I don't even live in that part of the world. Maybe a one-state solution is better. What's wrong with a secular democracy in which every person has an equal vote and equal rights?

Imagine there's no countries. Image no religion. Nothing to kill or die for.
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Good Lennon quote. But yes, what is wrong with a one-state solution? I don't see anything wrong with it. But is Israel championing this, where every "Palestinian" has an equal vote and equal rights?

Israel isn't. Because it can get the best of all worlds---continual monies from the US, continual incursian into the "2nd state", continual "what-me-worry" with continual US vetoes of any UN resolution against them. Israel is a superhero amongst states. Whether they should have this status is a big question.

My answer btw is not to upend Israel. The country should be secure, safe, and democratically or whatever upholding their principles. My only concern is that they are taking over the territory of another state, even if it hasn't been recognized as such.
 
a_unique_person said:
You can't talk to Netanyahu either, by the looks of it.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-has-invited-america-to-punish-israel-1.363226
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King Abdullah of Jordan disagrees;

"When he speaks to me, I see his vision of peace with the Palestinians, peace with the Arabs and I've always left those meetings feeling very optimistic," Abdullah said of his discussions with Netanyahu. "But unfortunately, the circumstances that we've seen on the ground for the past two years does not fill me with much hope."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obam...-borders-major-policy-shift/story?id=13658890

Same article has George Mitchel, recently Obama's envoy to the Middle East making less of a deal about Obama's speach than some of the posters here who apparantly want to whip up a frenzy.

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who resigned this month as President Obama's envoy to the Middle East after serving two years, said that while President Obama's comments on the 1967 borders were "a significant statement," they do not signal a major shift in policy, especially when land swaps are taken into consideration.

"The president didn't say that Israel has to go back to the '67 lines. He said with agreed swaps," Mitchell told Amanpour. "Swaps means an exchange of land intended to accommodate major Israeli population centers to be incorporated into Israel and Israel's security needs. Agreed means through negotiations. Both parties must agree."

"That's not going to be a border unless Israel agrees to it and we know they won't agree unless their security needs are satisfied, as it should be," Mitchell added of the 1967 borders.

Mitchell noted that Obama's Thursday statement on borders were identical to a proposal made by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who served until 2009.
 
Mycroft said:
Mitchell noted that Obama's Thursday statement on borders were identical to a proposal made by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who served until 2009.[/i]
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I read an interview with Olmert once, he said he couldn't believe that the above offer was rejected.
It seemed very generous, but he probably didn't give the whole story.

Does anyone know what the offer entailed, and why it didn't make it?
 
Dragoonster said:
Hamas sucks, sure. But what on Earth should Palestinians be supporting? The US told them to vote, they did and elected Hamas, who was ostracized. Does democracy work for them? Or does it only if the US thinks their votes are good?
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As it turns out, there are consequences when you elect an internationally recognized terrorist group as your government. Just because they were elected democratically doesn't make it OK to have a terrorist group as a government.

Yes, democracy worked. It laid bare and exposed the claim that most Palestinians really want peace. In fact, I doubt all the parties combined which advocate peace with Israel got even 5% of the vote.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I read an interview with Olmert once, he said he couldn't believe that the above offer was rejected.
It seemed very generous, but he probably didn't give the whole story.

Does anyone know what the offer entailed, and why it didn't make it?
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The issue with the map was that it didn't allow millions of Palestinian "refugees" to "return" to Israel and destroy it demographically, which according to The Fool would cause Israel to nuke themselves.
 
WildCat said:
As it turns out, there are consequences when you elect an internationally recognized terrorist group as your government. Just because they were elected democratically doesn't make it OK to have a terrorist group as a government.

Yes, democracy worked. It laid bare and exposed the claim that most Palestinians really want peace. In fact, I doubt all the parties combined which advocate peace with Israel got even 5% of the vote.
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You could just as easily say that most Americans wanted war in Iraq, they voted in Bush, or Australians, they voted in Howard. There is an old saying in democracy, oppositions are not voted in, governments are voted out. Were they only saying they were tired of Fatah's corruption and inability to resolve issue of peace? Last time I saw, the majority of Palestinians and Israelis want peace.
 
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