General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

[Virus]

So maybe I'm a bit ignorant, but this:


http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/1...by-israel-may-have-lured-hamas-top-commander/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/15/israeli-politicians-back-jaabari-assassination

...I dunno. Doesn't doing this sort of thing maybe 'poison the well' in terms of credibility of future truce / ceasefire negotiations? If it's true, that is... I mean, isn't this kind of like something House Frey might do?

Or maybe I'm just ignorant. For example, I had no idea of how frequently rockets from Gaza were fired at Israel until today.

If a "peace activist" said it, it must be true.

 

[Doctor Evil]

The Gaza strip is 365 sq km, populated by 1.7 million people (over half of whom are children btw), so that's a population density of 4657 per sq km - only Macau, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong have higher population densities. Could you imagine firing a Hellfire missile into Hong Kong and not killing someone? The whole Gaza Strip is a "residential area".

Not true. Gaza is not populated uniformly. There are open areas.

 

[BenBurch]

I can't help but wonder how many of the Gazan people could have been feed by the money spent on those 120+ rockets

Simple artillery rockets are, sadly, cheap.

 

[BenBurch]

So Israel just picked that house at random?

Sometimes guided munitions do not function as intended. Could just be bad luck.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Help me out. The news here is rather anemic on this latest outbreak of violence and I don't want to sift through the Net news to figure it out.

Who started it this time and why now?

 

[PhantomWolf]

Well its never going to be over until they DO talk about it. And such an extreme group as one that wants to kill all Israelis would never have got control if only they (both sides - don;'t make the mistake of assuming me to be on the palestinian "side") had resolved this years ago. You are not going to get more moderate people in power by continuing the violence.



And pardon me for not declaring one side to be "worse" than the other. Violence on both sides in wrong and counterproductive.

Israel offered Arafat everything that the PLO wanted, bar one thing, the right of return, and he rejected it. There is no compromise from the Palastinian side, their only acceptable result is the removal of Israel. How do you talk with people who simply refuse to negotiate and reach a peaceful compromise?

 

[BenBurch]

Israel offered Arafat everything that the PLO wanted, bar one thing, the right of return, and he rejected it. There is no compromise from the Palastinian side, their only acceptable result is the removal of Israel. How do you talk with people who simply refuse to negotiate and reach a peaceful compromise?

People had property, ancestral homes. All seized as war spoils and parceled out. That is why they wanted law of return. They wanted to return home.

I suspect that those who still remember their former homes are tiny in number now, and perhaps that won't be such a sticking point. Perhaps reparations should be offered?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Israel offered Arafat everything that the PLO wanted, bar one thing, the right of return, and he rejected it. There is no compromise from the Palastinian side, their only acceptable result is the removal of Israel. How do you talk with people who simply refuse to negotiate and reach a peaceful compromise?

Israel is also demanding control of water sources and an unequal share of arable land making economic prospects of a Palestinian state dismal.

 

[PhantomWolf]

People had property, ancestral homes. All seized as war spoils and parceled out. That is why they wanted law of return. They wanted to return home.

I suspect that those who still remember their former homes are tiny in number now, and perhaps that won't be such a sticking point. Perhaps reparations should be offered?

Reparations were offered, and not all of the land was seized by forcing people out, about an equal part was abandoned by people who left thinking that Israel would be destroyed and once it was they could return.

As to the number of people, it's not just those that fled or were forced to flee in 1947 and 1967, but their entire families who have been forced to live in "refuge towns" because the neighbouring countries refused to let them intergrate into their lands.

 

[theprestige]

Perhaps reparations should be offered?

I wonder what reparations would look like, if Israel offered, "All 'ancestral homes', -1 'ancestral home' per rocket fired, -1 'ancestral home' per suicide bomber, and -1 'ancestral home' per arms smuggling tunnel".

I bet HAMAS already owes Israel a couple dozen 'ancestral homes' at least.

At some point, choosing a losing strategy doesn't entitle you to a win, just because you stuck with it.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Israel is also demanding control of water sources and an unequal share of arable land making economic prospects of a Palestinian state dismal.

They wanted to control the water sources so that they didn't have to worry about a group of people who had vowed to drive them into the sea deciding to cut off the water supplies and leave Israel without water. Would you willingly hand over control of your water to people who had declared they wanted your death?

As to the arable lands, they are arable because Israel made them so. Before Israel was established, the area was mostly desert with nomadic tribes and the few settlements were about the few lakes and rivers. The land that Israel wanted to keep in exchange for other areas they had control of were where the major Israeli settlements were, and it was those settlements that make the land livable.

 

[bit_pattern]

Not true. Gaza is not populated uniformly. There are open areas.

I suppose it would be too much to expect a source to substantiate this assertion? I mean, I understand that there is not a uniform distribution of population but > 4000 per sq km is a **** load, do you have some kind of evidence that puts these "open areas" into some kind of perspective?

 

[bit_pattern]

They wanted to control the water sources so that they didn't have to worry about a group of people who had vowed to drive them into the sea deciding to cut off the water supplies and leave Israel without water. Would you willingly hand over control of your water to people who had declared they wanted your death?.

It's exactly these kinds of histrionics that make any kind of rational discussion of the issues involved in this conflict. It ALWAYS reverts to a hysterical appeal to emotion of this kind that create a circular reasoning, THEY want to push US into the sea, therefore any concessions aids and abets that desire. End argument. It's this kind of painfully cyclical logic that just grinds any dispassionate discussion of the issue to a shuddering halt.

 

[PhantomWolf]

It's exactly these kinds of histrionics that make any kind of rational discussion of the issues involved in this conflict. It ALWAYS reverts to a hysterical appeal to emotion of this kind that create a circular reasoning, THEY want to push US into the sea, therefore any concessions aids and abets that desire. End argument. It's this kind of painfully cyclical logic that just grinds any dispassionate discussion of the issue to a shuddering halt.

Is it actually histrionics when it was actually tried? 3 times?

 

[Doctor Evil]

I suppose it would be too much to expect a source to substantiate this assertion? I mean, I understand that there is not a uniform distribution of population but > 4000 per sq km is a **** load, do you have some kind of evidence that puts these "open areas" into some kind of perspective?

Sigh. You could easily do some research yourself. This one is trivial. Go do google maps and look for the satellite map of Gaza. Around a 1/3 of the area is not built. Most of it is used for agriculture.

 

[Eddie Dane]

People had property, ancestral homes. All seized as war spoils and parceled out. That is why they wanted law of return. They wanted to return home.

I suspect that those who still remember their former homes are tiny in number now, and perhaps that won't be such a sticking point. Perhaps reparations should be offered?

I've sometimes wondered if Israel couldn't offer compensation in the form of urban development in the Palestinian state.

Israel has architects, reasonably efficient government organisation, construction companies.
Palestine has crappy housing, crappy infrastructure and massive unemployment.

They could use existing plans for projects that have already been built in Israel.

Some the (now forgotten) peace plans from the nineties included building industrial areas on the border between Israel and the Palestinian territories. they could start something like that after the building boom.

Will never happen, I know.

 

[JihadJane]

lol wat

If anyone's a psychopathic child killer, it's the one who purposefully keeps children around when firing rockets at his enemy just so he can use their inevitable deaths as martyr brownie points to fuel more hatred against Israel. -_-


Thanks.

Yes, psychopathic bullies invariably blame their victims. Where do you suggest that the people of Gaza relocate their children to? France?

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. - Golda Meir in 1957

Translation: "Submit because we don't mind killing your children if that's what it takes."

Another child-killing psychopath bravely speaks out! Disgusting.

 

[Doctor Evil]

Here is a picture distributed by the IDF spokesman, in which the launching site of a rocket is marked. It is located in a residential zone.

Locating such sites in residential areas is a strategic choice by Hamas. It is also a war crime. This approach has been used for quite a while, though recently they started to built underground launch sites from concrete. Anyway, this strategy aims to either use their own civilians as shields, assuming the IDF does not return fire, or to use the suffering of their civilians politically, if the IDF does take action.

 

[bit_pattern]

Here is a picture distributed by the IDF spokesman.

I saw pictures distributed by the US Secretary of State purporting to be of Iraqi mobile chemical weapon factories once...

 

[Oystein]

... the cowards who claim to be fighting for those people are too cowardly to fight from areas without civilians in them. The rules of warfare rightly say civilians are to be protected wherever possible because their assumption is no army/military would be vile enough to operate where civilians would be in danger. ...

To be honest I don't think it is cowardice, I think it's a cynical and deliberate decision to ensure that the world's media gets lots of pictures of the terrible Israelis blowing up innocents.

They know full well that when they launch an attack from anywhere then there will be a retaliatory strike. But they choose to launch from heavily populated areas. ...

I haven't read through the thread yet, so my apologies if this has been brought up already:

The Gaza strip is very densely populated: It is a bit smaller than the City and County of Denver, Colorado, but has more than twice Denver's population. The population density of the Gaza strip is higher than Berlin's, higher than Birmingham's (England). It's pretty damned difficult to find a spot within the city limits of Denver, Berlin or Birmingham where you could field an army without being too close to civilians for comfort, and it would be even harder in the Gaza strip. Just look at it at Google maps!

This is not to excuse the military leaders of Hamas, and I am not saying they aren't deliberately operating from civilian areas, just pointing out that they don't really have a lot of options if they must stage attacks from within the strip.

ETA: Ahhh it has been mentioned...

The Gaza strip is 365 sq km, populated by 1.7 million people (over half of whom are children btw), so that's a population density of 4657 per sq km - only Macau, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong have higher population densities. Could you imagine firing a Hellfire missile into Hong Kong and not killing someone? The whole Gaza Strip is a "residential area".

Not true. Gaza is not populated uniformly. There are open areas.