I’m not sure I understand - are you suggesting that the current peace proposal of the Israelis is the 1948 borders and Jerusalem as an international city? I suspect the Arabs would grab that offer in an instant.
No, we’re talking about taday. Today, according to former government strategists, the government has ZERO INTEREST in making a compromise with the Palestinians.
Are you suggesting there was nobody in Palestine between 150AD and 1900AD? Obviously not. So who was there, how long, and what their claims are is irrelevant. Somebody was there farming the land that was arable, or herding goats. whether you call them “Palestinians”, or Hashemites, or Ottoman subjects, or whatever, they were there. "There were no Palestinians until 1930"sounds like the sort of revisionist history needed to justify stealing the land.
Legitimate residents at the time of the war fled from the land they legitimately owned and were not allowed back. As a short-term strategic tactic that’s perfectly understandable in any war. As a long term solution - it has to be addressed better than that, and stealing there land under questionable legal pretext is not a good start.
Arabs - think “mother of all battles” - speak in bluster and boastfulness, not quiet modesty and realism. It’s part of their culture. In the bargaining atmosphere of the Bazaar, you do not start with “this is our bottom line”. As Sadat and King Hussein, and eventually even Arafat showed, they can reach some realistic accomodation given the right motivation. What they cannot do is cave in during negotiations and then face their home crowd, because their home crowd has guns.
I think it’s convenient for the radicals on both sides to keep the pressure up. Oh, and the Arabs are the crazier and stupider of the sides in this dispute, so it will take a lot of time and patience to undo this mess.
I just think Israel had better take the peace process seriously, before a more populist Egyptian government opens the floodgates to Gaza and allows all sorts of trouble to descend on Israel.
Not at all, I’m simply suggesting that the Jews have been willing to make concessions – big concessions. While the Arabs have not.
I doubt that they would if they had to make big concessions of their own.
Netanyahu himself said a few months ago that Israel was willing to make big concessions to get peace. Of course, you may think he’s lying, but why are you so sure that these “former government strategists” (whoever they are) are telling the truth?
No.
The word “stealing” suggests that the land has a legitimate owner. Seems to me that the land has been under control of so many different groups that it’s not reasonable to point at one particular group and designate that group as the owner. Unless your criteria is the oldest identifiable group, in which case it’s the Jews who are the owners.
I’m not sure what your point is here. There are few polities in the world with a “good start.” For example, many Jews were kicked out of Gaza in the late 40s and their land taken. Same thing with Iraq. Heck, same thing with Hebron and Jerusalem.
I agree. If Israel were run by followers of Meir Kahane, there would be no chance of a peace deal no matter how reasonable the Arabs tried to be. Well, the Arab side is run by the Arab equivalents.
Exactly what do you think Egypt might do or not do?
All conflicts are ultimately about land. When a society (defined loosely as all of the social systems in an area) has too many pressures on it (either through strained resources or large scale inequalities, or even just a need to create shared identities as part of the nation building process) it will start to crack. It will crack along whatever line is easiest- this may be by ethnicity, religion, language, or whatever. If there is nothing handy, people will make something up. The “ethnic” conflict between the Tutsis and Hutus were between people who shared a language, culture, and gene pool…in other words, they shared everything that makes an “ethnicity” an ethnicity. But it was the most obvious crack in land-poor, politically unstable Rwanda, so that’s where it cracked.
These cracks provide the breaking point, and they also provide the fuel. It’s hard to sell a land grab, but it’s easy to sell a higher cause. A lot of this stuff operates differently on different levels. Often the people on the ground have a very different understanding of the conflict than the people at the top. Both of these understandings need each other to keep the conflict going. You see this a lot in rebel groups- the leaders at the top are often thinking of the spoils, while the ground troops may buy the ideology.
The Middle East is still in the process of forming nations. It went through a lot of bullshit in the COld War (and after…) that has made that process a lot longer and more difficult than it should be. Forming a nation is often a bloody process, as the basic definition of a nation is founded in the idea of a single power being able to control violent force in a territory.
Hmmm. I seem to have annoyed you and prompted a snarky response by posting something I thought was uncontroversial. That makes me think I expressed myself poorly. I’ll try again.
The fact that, during most of their common history, Jews and Muslims have lived alongside each other tolerably well, I adduce as evidence that difference of religion does not necessarily give rise to conflict.
To answer your question, I do not include periods where one group was being attacked and having their homes and property destroyed in my definition of living alongside one another tolerably well. I would have thought that goes without saying, but apparently not.
I see that brazil84 is again pretending that there is no such thing as the Arab Peace Initiative, which offered normalized relations with Israel if it would go back to the 1967 borders, allow a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and negotiate in good faith over the problem of refugees.
If you think that is not conceding much, and if you think it was totally unreasonable of the Arabs to reject the original “generous” UN division in 1948, just ask yourself how reasonable Americans would be if the UN, with infinitely more justification, decided to give a third of the US back to the Indians.
A proposal which leaves this issue open is not a serious proposal.
Since you like analogies so much, here’s a proposal for you: You move out of your house; sign over the deed to me; and I will move in. Then we will negotiate in good faith over how much I should pay you. (Of course for years I have announced that I will never pay you a dime, but why should that matter? After all, I’ve given my solemn promise to negotiate in good faith.)
The issue was not what’s reasonable, the issue is which side – if any – has been willing or unwilling to compromise. Clearly the Jews in Israel have been willing to compromise while the Arabs have not.
Whether the Arab intransigence is reasonable or not is a different issue. Here’s a question for you:What significant concessions should the Arabs be willing to make in order to get peace with Israel?
My impression is that religious symbolism is part of the reason Israel was formed in the middle east rather than South America or carved out of some piece of Germany/Austria. IIRC folks might not have thought that a Jewish homeland in Brazil would have been as compelling or had as much of a draw as one in Palestine. The historic Jewish ties to the land are more symbolic than real, its pretty hard to say that a latent Jewish state persists on that land after thousands of years since the last Jewish state but there is some powerful symbolism there.
Right now, I don’t think the it is religion in the theological sense that is driving things in the middle east so much as it is tribalism. The only thing that would make the Israel situation messier would be if they discovered oil off Israel’s shore.
What I have never understood-Egypt’s meddling with the Palestinian-Israeli mess.
Egypt has its own problems (massive unemployment, falling standard of living, overpopulation, zero foreign investment). So why do they get involved in this? They got the Sinai back from Israel, and they (never) wanted to govern the Gaza Strip.
How many lives have they lost in war with Israel-for what?
Probably it would help to understand if you re-frame the way you perceive the conflict. It’s better to think of it as the “Arab-Israeli conflict,” not the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
See, the group known as “Palestinians” are a recent invention for purposes of undermining Israel. There was never a country called “Palestine,” there was never a “Palestinian” language; or a “Palestinian” currency; or any kind of separate “Palestinian” religion or culture.
The group known as “Palestinians” are actually Arabs. Linguistically, culturally, religiously, and ethnically they are essentially the same as the Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Unoriginal horseshit. Up until the 19th century, you could say the same about Italy or Germany. The fact that powerful empires, eastern and western, kept the Palestinians from forming their own nation has nothing to do with them being a fabrication to undermine Israel.
Well, I’m no expert on Israel/Palestine, but this statement is not really accurate. It may be that there were not any clear borders or legally separate entities that were internationally recognized in the Middle East in prior times. However, people in different areas did, and still do have differences culturally, linguistically, and religiously. If, for example, you were to take a group of Egyptian people, add say, one Lebanese guy, how ling do you think it would be before any one noticed he was different? I think not very long.
Similarly, you could take a group of people from say, Texas, add one New Yorker, people are likely to notice he is different. They wouldn’t be completely foreign, of course, and would have more similarities that differences maybe even. But I do believe the differences between people in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon may likely be wider that between two Americans. Palestinians, or whoever it was living on the land bordering the Mediterranean’s eastern shore, would have had their own differences as well.
I mean, Canada and the U.S. are similar but that doesn’t mean that those “so-called Canadians” are really Americans.
What are the main cultural, linguistic, and religious differences among (1) Arabic speaking people in Lebanon; (2) Arabic speaking people in Jordan; (3) Arabic speaking people in Egypt; and (4) “Palestinians”?
For some reason, you didn’t identify the very famous Palestinian leader who said that. I had to google it to learn that it was someone named Zahir Muhsein, who apparently was a member of the PLO executive committee. Big whoop. So his words are analogous to Congressman Allen West “admitting” that there are 80 members of the Communist Party currently serving in the House of Representatives.
I don’t know; I’m not a historian. But since they were dominated by powerful empires, they had no realistic chance to do so until after WW II. Kind of like India, which I suppose you also think is a fake nation, since there is no “Indian” language.
Um, the Ottoman and British, to name the last two?
It’s not a matter of whether they had a chance to do so so much as whether they had any interest in doing so.
Do you agree that between 1948 and 1967, there was no Jewish control whatsoever over the West Bank and Gaza, and that in fact these areas had been successfully ethnically cleansed of Jews?
And do you agree that during this 20-year time period, there was no serious attempt by the “Palestinians” to establish a “Palestinian State” in this area?
If so, then why do you think it is that there was not such an attempt?
Please show me proof that there was a serious movement to set up a “Palestinian State” which was suppressed by the Ottoman empire.
Well the fact that they do not identify themselves as all being just generically “Arab”, as you do, does imply that there are differences. You may choose to disregard that, but it remains a fact. Your assertion that they are all the same is foolishness. As far as your identifying them all as Arabic speaking thats just more foolishness. The languages, or dialects, are different. I will give you an analogy, Jamaicans speak English. However, if you are not familiar with the Jamaican patois, you are likely to have significant difficulty in understanding a conversation between two Jamaicans. It is similar to different Arabic dialects. If you regularly hear someone speaking a particular dialect, you would also, without necessarily understanding the language, be able to recognize that it sounds different than other dialects.
I don’t think you are willing to acknowledge any differences, so I will not try to argue with you. I maintain that there are, factually, differences. As far as your Palestinian leader’s quote, I think you would agree that he seems to have some bias and agenda, so, I’ll not take his words at face value either. Good luck, and keep up the good fight against ignorance!
Sure, and if I refer to myself as “His Royal Highness of France,” it implies that I am the King of France. But it doesn’t make me the King of France.
Then show me proof.
Is it your position that there is a “Palestinian” dialect, generally spoken by Arabs in Gaza, Israel proper, and the West Bank, which is both distinct and noticeably different from the Arabic spoken in Jordan and Egypt?
Of course I am, if you actually supply solid evidence that these differences exist. Simply asserting that my position is “foolishness” does not count as evidence.
Yes indeed, there are different dialects in Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine. Just because you can not notice the difference does not mean it is not there. I can’t tell the difference between someone speaking Spanish who is from Spain and a Cuban speaking Spanish, but I assure you they can tell the difference. Can you tell the difference between people speaking, say Russian and Ukrainian? Not sure how to prove that to you, I guess it would require some level of familiarity with the language, as opposed to ignorance of the subject. But it is true.
As for your being the King of France, I think a much less silly, or foolish, example would be along the lines of someone saying, I’m a Southern Belle, or I’m a UP’er, or I’m a Yankee. Laying claim to some royal title is not the same as claiming to identify with a particular culture.