Ah. I had the impression service people were required to have it with them at all times.
When they’re on duty; when they go home they can carry it from the base home, then leave it in a secure location.
When I was last in Israel I was staying with family who had a kid (my cousin) in the army (he still is, currently deployed…). When he was on leave, he would come straight home from the base, leave his weapon locked in a closet and lock the door to his room, and the family would ensure the alarm is set if everyone was leaving the house.
But if he didn’t have that kind of situation - say he had eight siblings and didn’t have his own room when he came home to visit - he might not have been comfortable doing that.
In the context of their times I doubt any of the recipients would agree. ‘Sweet deal’ is just propaganda and Israel is beginning to lose the propaganda war. A massive attack on a country you are holding under siege is not self defense. The hospitals were not Hamas control centers. The civilian population of Gaza is not the enemy. In contrast, even the genocidal, racist, land grabbing US Government never claimed it owned the rain over indian reservations the way Israel does over the West Bank. Really bad optics.
I support Israel as a political and economic ally. I don’t support it’s propaganda.
A viable 2 state solution requires that Palestine be given sufficient resources to maintain a state economy. That also requires free and total access to those resources. I don’t see that happening. So, what is the end game? Is the situation intractable?
Israel offered basically everything short of “We’ll jump into the sea for you”. What was missing from Israel’s prior offers? Be specific.
Permission for those Palestinians who fled the war to come back and get full citizenship.
That makes about as much sense as creating a Palestinian state but putting Israelis in charge of it. Like I said - everything short of “ok, we will jump into the sea for you”.
Why would a sovereign Palestinian state need to ask Israel for permission for anyone to come back, assuming those immigrants do not come through an Israeli border checkpoint where they might be stopped?
The Right of Return issue is for Palestinians to return to Israel as citizens, not to Palestine as a state.
The right of return for prior citizens who owned property and left temporarily to avoid the war. Or reasonable compensation for their property.
That’s a start.
Where does this right come from? My family fled Morocco after 1948, where is our compensation ir “right” of return?
This is what I am talking about. Israel offered a praceful 2 state solution, and you are echoing the arguments that led to its rejection - arguments that amount to “no, we cannot share the pie; I get my half and I get your half too”.
That’s a start and a finish, because once you do that Israel will not exist to give up anything else.
I don’t think the right of return is something that should last forever. As you point out, no one is human history has been able to “return” to their ancestors’ property generations later. At least, not without paying for it, or conquering it in military action. But if you want to understand why Palestinians who had just recently been driven off their lands didn’t accept a deal that didn’t allow them to return to those lands, or be compensated for them in some way, well, it seems pretty obvious to me. They lost territory in a war, and hoped to regain it in a new war. That’s a pretty common reaction.
Look, I don’t doubt that there are large groups of people on both sides who are opposed to a two state solution, and who want their side to drive out everyone from the other side. That includes Ben Gvir and Smotrich, as well as Yahya Sinwar. And their motivations aren’t difficult at all to understand - they are racists who think that if only given the chance to fight a big climactic battle, with God’s aid, they’ll finally drive out all the [Jews/Muslims] and secure [Jewish/Muslim] rule of the Holy Land for good.
What I don’t get is why the rest of us are enabling that attitude. People who reject peace because of a “right of return”, people who found settlements, people who want Israel to annex Gaza and the West Bank - all these people are enemies of the two state solution, enemies of peace.
You want Palestinians to return to Israel without there being a bloodbath? I’ll tell you how that happens. First you establish a two state solution, over time you encourage deep economic ties between the two states while supporting secular and liberal governments on both sides, and eventually you form an economic union with freedom of movement. Eventually, you do this in enough countries and as a species we move past the whole concept of nation-states.
But that’s not where we are today. If you think you could take all the Israelis and all the Palestinians and mash them together into one representative democracy and you expect this to result in a stable government that protects the rights of all its constituents - I’m sorry, but that’s delusional. What you’d get is a bloodbath.
Sorry I was wrong, not a right but definitely a bargaining point. Cash reparation was a possibility.
More important was water rights. Without control of water a Palestinian state cannot exist. Same is true of mineral rights. Also land swaps of wastelands for prime Palestinian lands occupied by Israelis were a non starter.
Aside from there being two million in Gaza, is this different from my city wanting to build a freeway and forcing me the sell my house and move? The West Bank is about 50-75 miles away.
That’s a huge aside, and the difference between an eviction and a war crime…
You and I are in complete agreement on this. Had Israel pursued that goal from the start we would be much closer to a solution. Probably wouldn’t have made it yet, but the situation would be moving toward a solution.
The objection in my post is the propaganda. Israel is not the persecuted under dog defending a precarious existence as they strive for an equitable settlement with the Palestinians. There were no sweet deals.
So, what’s real? Is the situation intractable?
Yes, they buy your house. Israel refused to.
Then negotiate a netter deal rather than lighting it on fire by starting an intifada. The Palestinian leadership committed a huge crime against their people by doing what they did.
Don’t you think if they had gone down the 2 state solution road that many of these additional details could have been resolved by now, rather than war continuing to this day?
The Oslo Accords included recognition of Palestinian water rights. Water is a major issue in the region regardless - Israel’s water flows in from sometimes hostile nations as well, and is shared with Jordan.
Perhaps one form that reperations could take would be Israel financing all the desalination plants a new Palestinian state would need, and helping with the infrastructure to transport water from Gaza’s coast to the West Bank.
We are talking about tiny fractions of the total amount of land. Look, I agree with you that settlements are incredibly unhelpful, that settler ideology is cancerous to Israeli society, and that more of the land that settlers settled on should have been offered back. But again. Negotiate those points; don’t burn the whole bridge by starting an intifada.
What’s with the mobs of people at the Hamas hostage transfers lately?
https://twitter.com/kaisos1987/status/1729893266202452456?t=RlvLDMTcs4DVCMtHjvswyA&s=19
https://twitter.com/ItayBlumental/status/1729932241713737857?t=Y-Lv56cu0AHbzqatiqtiug&s=19
https://twitter.com/Gloz111/status/1729928912749117866?t=-II9mvEoc9v5GnIjDJgPdw&s=19