General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

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Just one day after a landmark UN vote recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state, Israel has moved to authorise the construction of 3,000 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The move, which has drawn widespread criticism, including from Australia and stalwart Israel ally the United States, is seen as punishment for the United Nations General Assembly vote.

A US State Department official says both the vote and the settlement expansion are counterproductive to reaching a peace settlement and a two-state solution.

State Department spokesman Tommy Vietor says Washington wants to be even-handed in its condemnation.

"We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlements and East Jerusalem construction and announcements," he said.

"We believe these actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution.

"Direct negotiations remain our goal and we encourage all parties to take steps to make that easier to achieve."

Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr has also condemned Israel's announcement of more housing in the disputed territory.

"The spread of settlements simply makes a two-state solution all the more difficult," he said.

"It complicates enormously the task of eventually creating a Palestinian state without which there will never be security in Israel. A Palestinian state is indispensable to the security of Israel."
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Bob Carr has been a long time support of Israel in the Labor Party.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-...-plans-counterproductive/4402412?WT.svl=news0
 
Another view on the recent conflict. A 'perpetual war' for both sides?

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4392088.html

For Hamas, insurgency is famously about the refusal to accept peace, even in the face of repeated battlefield defeat and conventional military domination. This is the famous 'war of the flea', which leaves the occupying power with a choice, in the end, between extermination and withdrawal.

Both the Sharonists and those opposed to the existence of Israel have turned Kant's warning on its head: always do something in the peace to make a return to war inevitable. This is why Hamas and its affiliates will never stop launching their ineffectual fireworks at Israel. It is why the Israelis chose to assassinate their best negotiating partner, just at the point when some end point might have been discovered. This is warfare, in Coker's sense, but it is not aimless.

Perhaps "perpetual" is too strong a word to describe this warfare. Since Aristotle, it has been asserted that the only goal of war is peace. There is also an end goal to Israeli policy, and that is the alteration of the demographics of the West Bank.

While the world is distracted by the response to rocket fire from Gaza, Israel quietly approves the building of further settlements in Judea and Samaria, between Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and the West Bank of the Jordan, the 'true' Israel, the footprint of David's Kingdom.

Likud does not think in terms of the next election. Like their opponents, their concerns are millennial. They are preoccupied with ages. In a few generations of persecution, the Palestinians will decline. In the same period, with favourable treatment, the Jewish settlers will increase. An authentic war would lead to peace. Gaza is a sideshow, a buffer, a distraction. Warfare provides covering fire for the real, big-picture program.
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a_unique_person said:
Another view on the recent conflict. A 'perpetual war' for both sides?
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In other words, no change from the past few decades.
JihadJane said:
Seems about right. It's starkly evident that many posters on this thread prefer to rant about Palestinian rockets than the nuclear-armed occupation.
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That juxtaposition is a hallmark dishonest statement. Par for the course.

It is similar to the nuclear armed occupation of Pakistan by the Pakistani government.
 
a_unique_person said:
How about some evidence, instead of sheer fabrication.
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Ah, so you have not read this thread which has already covered this several dozen times. Yet instead of reading the thread, you just asserted it to be untrue. How did you determine it to be untrue then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

It's not that they only rejected it, they insisted that ALL of the land should be for them and then launched a war on Israel.
 
Jonnyclueless said:
Ah, so you have not read this thread which has already covered this several dozen times. Yet instead of reading the thread, you just asserted it to be untrue. How did you determine it to be untrue then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

It's not that they only rejected it, they insisted that ALL of the land should be for them and then launched a war on Israel.
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You are mixing motivations. They wanted the land that they had lived in under occupatation for centuries for themselves. It wouldn't have mattered if it was eskimos or aztecs who wanted a state where they wanted there's. It wasn't that they didn't want to live next to Jews, they viewed Palestine as their homeland, Jews viewed Israel as theirs. There was a clash of cultures over land. The Zionsists who wanted to found Israel found the UN proposal no less unnacceptable. The claim was that the Palestinians didn't want to live next to Jews. That was not the motivation.
 
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You are mixing motivations. They wanted the land that they had lived in under occupatation for centuries for themselves.
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Are you sure it's "centuries"? The Palestinian area had lots and lots of migration, and as far as I know, the people we today call Palestinians had only lived there for a century.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Are you sure it's "centuries"? The Palestinian area had lots and lots of migration, and as far as I know, the people we today call Palestinians had only lived there for a century.
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A long time ago I told him that early Zionists worked with the Ottoman authorities who governed the territories, so after that he decided the Ottomans were also "occupiers". I believe he thinks that delegitimized any agreements the Zionists settlers may have had with them.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Are you sure it's "centuries"? The Palestinian area had lots and lots of migration, and as far as I know, the people we today call Palestinians had only lived there for a century.
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About 1880, there were about 600,000 people living in the area, most of them indigineous. The Ottoman Empire controlled the area politically, but it did not seek to colonise it. Most of the population lived in a type of feudal existence, where large estates where controlled by relatively few landowners.
 
a_unique_person said:
You are mixing motivations. They wanted the land that they had lived in under occupatation for centuries for themselves. It wouldn't have mattered if it was eskimos or aztecs who wanted a state where they wanted there's. It wasn't that they didn't want to live next to Jews, they viewed Palestine as their homeland, Jews viewed Israel as theirs. There was a clash of cultures over land. The Zionsists who wanted to found Israel found the UN proposal no less unnacceptable. The claim was that the Palestinians didn't want to live next to Jews. That was not the motivation.
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No, I most certainly am not. You have two groups of people. One willing to split the land and live together, and one that would only accept all of it despite the other having been there for thousands of years. The hed of the Arab league threatened to exterminate the entire Jewish population and every surrounding Arab country waged war on the Jews.

But they just wanted land so not a big deal to try to commit genocide. TIL Genocide is OK if you claim it's about land and it clearly wouldn't have anything to do with not wanting to live next to someone else.
 
Jonnyclueless said:
No, I most certainly am not. You have two groups of people. One willing to split the land and live together, and one that would only accept all of it despite the other having been there for thousands of years. The hed of the Arab league threatened to exterminate the entire Jewish population and every surrounding Arab country waged war on the Jews.

But they just wanted land so not a big deal to try to commit genocide. TIL Genocide is OK if you claim it's about land and it clearly wouldn't have anything to do with not wanting to live next to someone else.
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The claim was :-

They could have had full statehood over 60 years ago but they rejected it because they didn't want to live next to Jews.
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I am asking for evidence that this claim is true. A gish gallop of misdirection, hand waving and errors in logic does not provide evidence of a motivation of their actions. According to the claim, it all comes down to not wanting to live next to Jews. I have seen no evidence that this is true. From what I have read, the motivation is a common one, the right to self determination for a group of people. Exercising this right has been the cause of many violent conflicts through history.
 
a_unique_person said:
From what I have read, the motivation is a common one, the right to self determination for a group of people. Exercising this right has been the cause of many violent conflicts through history.
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Why didn't they just vote "yes" on the UN resolution that offered it then?
 
There are several parts to this claim, which need to be identified for it to be argued logically.

They could have had full statehood over 60 years ago but they rejected it because they didn't want to live next to Jews.
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Concept 1. "They", that is the Palestinians, are the only party responsible for their state. Is this true?
Concept 2. "Full statehood". What state is this to occur in? Is the area the state is in under dispute? Which parties are disputing the borders of this state? Does the idea of "Full statehood" makes sense when the state is not in fact what they negotiated? How was the state offered negotiated with them? Did they get to make a claim for their right to self determination?
Concept 3. "rejected it because they didn't want to live next to Jews." Is that the only reason, it is the only one put forward. Were there in fact other reasons than this one, is the reason offered even true?
 
a_unique_person said:
The claim was :-
I am asking for evidence that this claim is true. A gish gallop of misdirection, hand waving and errors in logic does not provide evidence of a motivation of their actions. According to the claim, it all comes down to not wanting to live next to Jews. I have seen no evidence that this is true. From what I have read, the motivation is a common one, the right to self determination for a group of people. Exercising this right has been the cause of many violent conflicts through history.
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You're right, I don't know how anyone could come to such a conclusion when a group of people calls for the extermination of another. It's not like you're focusing on some minor comment and ignoring any kind of important issues. It's the whole not being nit picky over whether it was about land or not wanting to live next to someone else that is the cause of the violence, not the call for genocide on one side.
 
a_unique_person said:
There are several parts to this claim, which need to be identified for it to be argued logically.



Concept 1. "They", that is the Palestinians, are the only party responsible for their state. Is this true?
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Yes, that is true. If the Palestinians had rejected Arab offers to help exterminate the Jews they'd have had their own state, and Israel would be much smaller.

a_unique_person said:
Concept 2. "Full statehood". What state is this to occur in? Is the area the state is in under dispute? Which parties are disputing the borders of this state? Does the idea of "Full statehood" makes sense when the state is not in fact what they negotiated? How was the state offered negotiated with them? Did they get to make a claim for their right to self determination?
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It means they'd have their own country, just like the other countries created by the UN at the time. Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine.

Except the Palestinians and other Arabs couldn't bear to live next to a Jewish state so they went to war instead to externinate the Jews and take all the land for themselves. But a funny thing happend on the way to their glorious extermination of the Jews, damn bastards fought back, and won! And can you believe there are consequences for failure when your genocide plans fail?

It still astonishes me that people like you think Israel should just pull out and let the Palestinians arm themselves to give another go at an attempt at Jewish genocide.

a_unique_person said:
Concept 3. "rejected it because they didn't want to live next to Jews." Is that the only reason, it is the only one put forward. Were there in fact other reasons than this one, is the reason offered even true?
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Yes, that is in fact the only reason. Extreme militant anti-semitism. Note no one is compaining about the creation of other countries at the time, like Jordan and Iraq. And the reason is they're not Jewish.
 
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Virus said:
Why didn't they just vote "yes" on the UN resolution that offered it then?
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What was the UN process? Were they consulted at all, were they asked at all to vote on their own future?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Committee_on_Palestine

There was an historical force at work that overwhelmed the rights of the Palestinians, the horror of Europe and the rest of the world at what had done to the Jews living there. Were the rights of the Palestinians overlooked in the rush to deal with rights of the Jews to their own state?
 
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