I’m asking why they don’t just declare war.
What they’re doing now is pretty immoral.
I can’t imagine anything that would help them get their act together faster than Israel going WWII on Gaza.
And how dangerous has Hamas proven to be?
So if Hamas agrees and a splinter group continues to strive for the destruction fo Israel, can we have peace or will hamas have to track down and neutralize their former brothers-at-arms first?
What point was that, there have been several points made in that line of thought. You said that there are no possible permanent solutions because the two sides could never trust one another.
You likened adoption of the arab peace plan or the two state solution as “suicide” and you needed to keep your boot on their neck to “have a shot” This coming from the guys who don’t think that they need peace with their arab neighbors like Syria and Saudi Arabia because they’re really not a threat anymore.
In post 80, where this line of thought starts, i said:
“If you assume the other guy is crazy and bloodthirsty then no there is no solution as long as you have the upper hand. Perhaps we should work towards changing who has the upper hand.”
The deadlock seems to be the result of the fact that israel is basically calling the shots and they don’t seem to want peace badly enough to take a chance on trusting the Palestinians. maybe its time to start working towards levelling the playing field between the palestinians and the Israelis. Maybe israel will negotiate with a more powerful palestine where it won’t with a powerless bunch of refugees.
You’re the one that brought up the history of persecution of Jews in the Muslim world as some sort of excuse for Israel’s actions.
Sure its naive so long as Israel has theb upper hand. It wouldn’t be quite as naive if there was more parity. Israel can’t win and the palestinians refuse to lose. So it seems to me that we will nto see progress until the plestinians actually do become the existential threat that Israel deludes itself into thinking it is (in order to jsutify their actions).
Oh I’m not suggesting that Israel do this. I’m suggesting that others do.
Other countries have belligerent neighbors that have nuclear weapons and yet they seem to be able to keep a relative peace. What is it that keeps North Korea from throwing nukes at Tokyo or Seoul? Is it possible that having an autonomous state with the ability to exercise police and military power within its own borders would help stabilize the West bank, Gaza and Golan Heights? What is it that is making Syria and Egypt and Jordan behave after vowing the destruction of Israel?
I guess the difference might be that I don’t think the current situation is acceptable and you find it acceptable (although not ideal).
Very dangerous.
The only reason they’ve not inflicted more damage is because of the “boot on the neck”.
I would think the latter. Unless Hamas was genuinely opposed to that other group and committed to suppressing their striving and capable of doing so. Otherwise, it’s not peace.
I don’t understand your point here.
Hamas says explicitly that they will never make peach with Israel and they will not honor any peace treaties that anyone else makes on their behalf. If you sign a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia and Syria and the like which allows Hamas to strengthen militarily but does not commit them to actual peace, that’s suicide. I don’t see what you’re disagreeing with or how.
The line of thought started in your first post to this thread (#4) where you said “I’d get out of those settlements and give the Palestinians their own state”, which is about what you would do in this situation.
And that’s what’s relevant here. Because we’re discussing Israel’s actions in this present conflict.
Re “trusting the Palestinians”, the ones who are trusting the Palestinians are the Israelis. The Palestinians say they won’t stop fighting until they take over all of Israel and the Israelis trust them that they mean what they say. You’re arguing the Israelis should allow them to rearm based on the notion that they don’t really mean it, despite the absence of any shred of indication that they don’t mean what they say.
I was only responding to your claims that Palestinian violence is only the result of past persecutions, and noting that this applied to all sides.
OK, so we agree then. Right now the Israelis have the upper hand, and right now it would be naive for the Israelis to allow Hamas to strengthen militarily.
Again, you were, in post #4, which is how we got started.
I don’t think NK has ever been as committed to the destruction of Japan or SK as Hamas is to Israel. But in addition, the SKs are not in a good position either and no one knows how it will end. I don’t think the SK would deliberately do anything to allow the NKs to strengthen militarily if they had the option, in the hopes that if NK has a stronger military they’ll have more to lose and be more peaceful.
And in particularly in a context similar to this one, in which NK does not actually sign on to any sort of peace or concessions at all, and the entire basis for the SK concessions is the hope that they will on their own bring peace via the strengthened NK military.
Ditto for the other Arab countries you mention, which additionally have their own problems to deal with.
They are at war already. Hamas doesn’t believe in peace with Israel. At most, they agree to temporary “truces”.
Declaring war, without more, is meaningless. Without the invading part.
Whatever you may think of the morality of Israeli actions, going WW2 on Gaza would be a hundred times worse.
The usual reason people castigate Israel is for lack of “proportionality” - that is, responding with too much force to what Hamas is doing to them. Going WW2 on Hamas’ ass would be far more “disproportionate” than playing wack-a-mole with Hamas rocket launchers.
The Egyptian government already hates Hamas because Hamas is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whom the current Egyptian government is busy hunting down and sentencing en mass to death.
Syria is in the midst of a violent civil war. Ditto with Iraq.
You seriously think they will shelve all their differences, sing kumbaya together, and form a grand alliance against Israel - because of anything Israel does in Gaza?
They have their own problems.
So when did Israel not have the boot on the neck?
OK, here it sounds like you’re saying that trying isn’t good enough, they have to actually succeed in rooting out and eradicating a bunch of people that Israel has not been able to root out and eradicate despite 60+years of trying.
BTW, where are they going to get the resources to root out these terrorists? Is Israel going to give them guns and tanks and training?
I apologize, i am trying to make serveral related points at the same time. I guess the simple statement would be that Israel seems to be very worried about these Palestinians when theya ren’t even worried about Egypt and Syrai anymore. It almost seems like Israel WANTS something to be afraid of (or at least its leaders do).
True but the folks in the West bank seem to feel differently. And yet, rather than treating them the way that you seem to indicate you would treat a peaceful palestinian population, you encroach on them with settlements and your laws don’t seem to differentiate between palestinians from the good part of palestine and the hamas part of palestine.
I thought we had established that Hamas does not pose an existential threat to Israel.
I guess i would now amend that by saying i would also invest shitloads of money in the newly formed Palestinian state to build roads, schools and other infrastructure.
All Palestinians say taht or just a subset of them in gaza?
I have never been clear about this notion that peace allows hamas to rearm. How is Hamas prevented from rearming right now? Did they create the Syriana nd iranian rocket launchers out of tin foil and rubber bands?
Did the Palestinians invade israel or did they run away from fighting. Sure, they didn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with the zionists to fight and die for a newly formed Jewish state but would you really expect them to? Did they have any moral obligation to do so? The ones taht invaded Israel are offering peace and you seem to believe that their offer of peace is genuine, you are getting hung up on the fact that these people that you have been stepping on for 60 years are really mad at you.
In what way would they be able to strengthen during peace that they cannot right now? It almost seems like you think that a prolonged period of peace would result in war.
Oh thats a bit different. In post 4 I was suggesting the adoption of something like the arab peace initiative. here I am suggesting that peace might not be possible until the Palestinians pose as much of a threat to Israel as Syria or Egypt do. Israel is not approaching peace with Palestine as equals but as the guy with the guns who thinks he should get everything he wants.
All of this is true and yet North korea STILL doesn’t rain death and destruction down on Seoul despite having said horrible things about what they would do on several occassions. And its not that Palestnians need MORe to lose, they need SOMETHIGN to lose. Right now they have nothing to lose. Give Abbas the opprtunity and the abilty to govern his nation.
Korea frequently sends foreign aid to North Korea to help stabilize them and make them less desperate. How much foreign aid does israel send to Palestine… to ANYBODY?
The arab peace initiative was forged in 2002, the arab spring didn’t occur until much later. You were no really worried about the other arab states in 2002 either. Your focus back then was still this ragtag group that talked big but had nothing to back up its threats.
Well, then shit. Now seems like the perfect time to blast gaza back to the stone age. Why should Israel care what the rest of the world thinks? Get rid of the terrorists and radicalism once and for all, because killing palestinians would do that, right? Or is there some notion that killing lots and lots of innocent civilians might turn otherwise peaceful civilians into vengeful terrorists?
How about ‘Israel doesn’t go all genocidal on Gaza because to do so would be morally wrong - and that is not something that the Israeli public would tolerate’?
Why is that so difficult a conclusion for you? It seems obvious to me at least that the only thing restraining Israel from acting like a mid-20th century European nation is not the might of Palestinian arms (Israel could crush the Palestinians without a doubt), and is not the fear of Israel’s neighbours (all of whom are either weak, hostile to Hamas, or involved in civil conflicts of their own), and is not the weight of world disapproval (that it has already, no matter what it does). The restraint is primarlity moral. Israel, simply put, has no wish to engage in genocide.
I don’t understand the question. “Boot on the neck” is your term, not mine.
In theory, it should be easier for their own people to root their own extremists. But in general, you seem to be presuming that the same “bunch of people” has withstood the Israelis and is now being tasked to Hamas. In actually, Hamas themselves are the extremists. You’re suggesting what about some other splinter group. You can make up whatever details about this splinter group you’d like, I don’t know. I’m saying a general principle: you can’t make peace with the people who are not at war. You need to make peace with the people who are actually at war. If you make peace with non-combatants and then give the combatant non-signatories a chance to up their strength, you have nothing.
Either that or they’ve noticed that a lot of their people keep getting killed by these people. Even if you don’t WANT to be afraid of something you might find that perturbing.
My understanding is that the Israelis do treat the WB better than the GS. But I don’t want to argue that point here. This is about what to do in the conflict at hand.
I don’t recall how the word “suicide” got into this exchange, or the original context. So strike the word “suicide” for purposes of the discussion at this point. Point remains.
Enough of them to put and keep Hamas in power.
The Israelis have blockades and control of the borders. Of course, nothing is perfect (and a lot more got through when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power in Egypt).
I’m not getting hung up on anything. I just keep pointing out that allowing people who have vowed to annihilate you strengthen their military capabilities because other people are willing to sign a paper is ridiculous. And the reason I keep repeating it is because you’ve not addressed it beyond a naïve suggestion that letting them strengthen would make them more peaceful.
As above, the Israelis have a lot more control of the Gaza borders than they would have if they were independent.
Well I’m discussing the current situation. I’m not willing to debate the broader conflict other than to the extent that it has a direct practical bearing on the current situation.
It may yet happen, but even if not, that doesn’t prove that the wise thing to do would be to let them strengthen militarily. It’s hard to imagine that you’re actually arguing this.
What’s the connection here? WADR ISTM that this is all one big anti-Israel issue with you, for which reason you keep tossing out general criticisms of Israel that are connected to the current discussion only tenuously or not at all.
Again, they kill as many people as they can, they say they would like to do more, and there’s no reason to think they won’t.
No, it was rather obviously an insult.
Beyond that, considering the fact that it’s been demonstrated that you often don’t read your own cites it’s a bit odd to accuse others of failing at reading comprehension.
Given that I said exactly the opposite of this, I have to conclude you are arguing in bad faith.
It seems to me that there have been several instances of Israel changing its behavior because of the internatinal reactions. Israel still needs world approval for survival. Israel would fare no better than anyone else if there was an international boycott.
how do you come to make this statement? It has grown over time and now has missiles capable of traveling 100 miles. There is no change in their mindset.
Until such time as the Palestinian government actively seeks out and destroys Hamas or whatever the flavor of the month is then the situation is one of a protracted gorilla war against an enemy that acquires ever more powerful weapons.
I believed the rockets to be small pipe bomb home made things, but they are serious, dangerous ordnance.
No wonder the Israelis were so tough on boats bringing things into Gaza.
Let me try it another way. Israel is acting like it has a tiger by the tail and it dare not let go for fear of being consumed. In Hamas’s wettest dreams, do they present an existential threat or even a significant threat to Israel? Is the threat so great that you can’t even stop settlement activity in the West Bank or treat the palestinians in the West bank a nation?
How did England make peace with the IRA? Do you not have enough of a core group of Palestinian that want peace to start down the road or are you going to insist that they guarantee the peace with the makeshift weapons they currently have (I assume your silence means you aren’t going to give them guns, tanks and training).
Were they able to beat them into submission? If people try to cow Israel into submission, they seem to think they would fight to the death but when Israel mistreat others, they think that their victims will capitulate so long as they treat their victims badly enough.
How many Israelis have the Palestinians killed in the last 5 years? Or since the last Intifada?
I think there is a difference, but wouldn’t it be more accurate to say they treat the Gazans worse than they treat the WB?
You likened a two state solution as “caving in” and you said that unilateral caving in was suicide. If you think that you may have gotten a bit excited and made the consequences of giving Abbas a state for his people is not quite as existentially self destructive as suicide then that’s fine.
I assume you actually meant to say that a two state solution without a guarantee of peace from Hamas would be counter to Israel’s interests. So why not just do it in stages. Give the WB their independence, help them build a nation and as they blossom, the Gazans will wonder wtf they are fighting for.
I thought hamas took power because of the perceived corruption of Fatah, not because the the palestinian voters agreed with the notion of driving Israel into the sea. AFAICT, Hamas provides a lot of the humanitarian aid that relieves the suffering caused by Israel’s policies. I can see how someone in Gaza might see hamas as the good guys and Israel as the bad guys. Can’t you?
I also don’t think Hamas of today is quite like the Hamas of the 1980’s. In fact I thought that in the lead up to the election, hamas said that:“Hamas could refer the issue of recognizing Israel to a national referendum. Under the heading “Recognition of Israel,” it stated simply (AFP, 3/11/06): “The question of recognizing Israel is not the jurisdiction of one faction, nor the government, but a decision for the Palestinian people.” This was a major shift away from their 1988 charter.”
They have offered a long term ceasefire (up to 20 years I think) for a two state solution. And 20 years from now if things are going peachy keen, you think they are going to want to throw all of that away to attack israel again? 20 fucking years? Thats at least a generation in palestine isn’t it? The young men won’t even remember a time when palestine was not a state. You don’t think that there was resentment at Japan from all the neighboring countries that it colonized? The resentment is still there but South Korea and China haven’t invaded Japan yet. If israel helped Palestine economically join the first world, it probably wouldn’t hurt either. AFAICT, the IRA hasn’t set off a car bomb in a long time.
Then just make peace with the west bank and give them their country.
No I’m not arguing this. I’m arguing that if North korea ever has nothing to lose, then South Korea is in trouble so South korea frequently sends aid to north korea to make sure their back is never up against that wall. The Palestinians have had their backs against the wall and a boot to their neck for a long time now. That is how people behave when they are in that situation. Its not like Palestinians are the only ones that have engaged in terrorism.
I think all the shit going on with Israel and the Palestinians is connected.
I’m sorry, I meant to say had they just let the Zionists do whatever they wanted and there wouldn’t have been any problems at all.
IOW, if the other arab states just went along with the creation of the state of israel and just welcomed their new neighbors, then all of this could have been avoided. /sarcasm.
You are basically blaming the arabs for starting all the shit when the zionist movement is clearly the precipitating factor.
Or are we talking past each other?
I thought existential threat means they have the ability to destroy Israel, you know, it threatens their existence. I don’t think hamas has the ability to destroy israel. Or is it enough to jsut say you want to destroy Israel to be an existential threat?
Seems like an untenable situation. What happens when they get a nuke? If they were really an existential threat, Israel wouldn’t treat them this way, perhaps that is when we will achieve peace in the middle east.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, judging by your ignorance of other aspects of this area, that you are not aware that Palestinians, at the start of the Oslo process, were, in fact, given substantial weapons and serious training for their police forces, both by Israel and by the United States. Those weapons and training were later turned on Israel.
the entire region was under various Western rule at one time or other. As the ruling nations relinquished control the Jews carved out their little plot of land.
The people doing whatever they want are groups like Hamas. Israel should have taken all that land years ago after repeated attacks. There is no control over Hamas and I don’t see any indication there ever will be.
I think so. I never said, and do not believe, that unfettered and unimpeded Zionism would have resulted in “no problems.”
I place much of the blame on the Arab nations for launching the war against Israel, as that set much of the pattern for the subsequent sixty-some years.
I don’t believe it is the source of all the problems. That kind of oversimplification doesn’t help here.
I think the Arabs, in making war, made the situation far worse than it had any need to be. I do not believe that Zionism, itself, is responsible for the problems today to anywhere near the same level. I don’t excuse Zionism from all responsibility.
I got cranky with you when you used the phrase “Then there wouldn’t have been any problems at all” in characterizing my views, especially as I had already taken care to reject that idea.
That said, yes, I am largely blaming the Arabs for escalating “the shit,” by making war against Israel in 1948. It was not the right reaction, and it has led to vast sorrow and hardship and tragedy. Like the Hamas rocket attacks today: it serves no possible legitimate purpose, neither strategic nor diplomatic. It doesn’t destroy the enemy, and it doesn’t make friends and allies.
The problem with that is what to do with the people who live there. The Palestinians have seen fit to expel the Jews from the West Bank, but Israel lives up to higher standards of obedience to international law. For them to incorporate the West Bank and to eject the Palestinian populace living there would be a criminal act of “ethnic cleansing” and would not be well-received by the world’s industrialized democracies.