Normally I agree with you mswas, but I will beg to differ on this point. To the best of my knowledge, most of the ultra-orthodox Jews live in enclaves in Jerusalem like Meah Sharim. The settlers (except perhaps those in Hebron and at other religious sites) tend to be the knitted-yarmulke ultra-Zionist “Shteh godot ha’Yarden” (two banks of the Jordan) Moledet types who are only to happy to go to the army to shoot some Palestinians. I don’t like their kind much (in case you haven’t guessed) since I think they are often guilty of dehumanizing Palestinians. Many in Israel think likewise, and also see them as sinners to a certain degree – they risk ordinary soldiers’ lives to protect settlements in places like Gaza where most of Israel has no desire to be.
The fact is that IMHO Israel should get out of the settlements, specifically so that they can establish secure borders and hermetically seal them to prevent Palestinian infiltration. But, the geography makes it a bit difficult, and it is not clear that a unilateral declaration of borders (and perhaps a Palestinian state) would accomplish anything, since the Israeli borders would probably encompass Jerusalem and other areas heavily settled since 1967 (Gilo and Ma’aleh Adumim, which are suburbs of Jerusalem, stand out, but there are many more.) It would also not include any guarantees for refugee right of return.
By all accounts, this (plus internationalization of Jerusalem and some refugees allowed to return with compensation for the rest) is what Barak offered at Camp David and again at Taba. It was turned down without a counter-offer. Arafat stated that anything but full sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the holiest Jewish sites, with full guarantee of the right of return for all refugees, was unacceptable. It is beyond Israel’s capabilities to even begin to conceieve an offer like that. There has been no reciprocation or negotiation from the Palestinians, just an escalation of violence.
IMHO Arafat can’t pull a final negotiated settlement because it would mean his head on a platter for Islamic Jihad and Hamas and PFLP and whoever else. He can’t declare all-out war on Israel because that would very quickly mean his head on a platter for Israel and a quick return to the 1967 situation, perhaps worse. So he is stuck basically prolonging the limbo situation. And that is where we sit.
To rebut tclouie’s END THE WAR TODAY: a full withdrawal may cause any number of things, but the chance of it ENDING THE WAR TODAY is slim. On preview DSeid has said what I was about to – there are Palestinian groups basically denying any Jewish connection to the land and who will not be content until Tel Aviv and Haifa are part of Palestine. These groups are not fringe extremist groups – they are some of the main political parties in the PA, namely the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and PFLP.
I’ll bow to your knowledge on this one Edwino. I must confess I knew little about Israel til I married an Israeli and had not most of my friends been jewish before I married her I would have known even less. So what I know is either what she told me or what I read about since marrying her. (I studied Israel a lot since then) so I must be misquoting her on the ultra orthodox jews in the settlements. However, she like you thinks that they should tear down those settlements. I tend to agree.
And yes Barak offered a WHOLE lot to the Palestinians and they turned it down. It’s not the Israelis that are the extremists here. (in most cases)
Huh? Israel has identified people they believe are murdering their citizens. As far as I know, they’ve been accurate; these particular Palistinians WERE murderers. The Israelis have carefully executed a small number of these murderers. Israel can be criticized for extrajudicial execution, but it’s nothing like mob justice. Note that in every case, the Israeli executions were in response to murders committed by Palistinians.**
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OK, I must have completely missed something, because the only referent I can find for “these particular Palistinians” [sic] includes the 11-year-old schoolgirl and assorted other Palestinian civilians in the figure quoted above.
I am confident (well, hopeful) that you could not possibly be arguing that an 11-year-old schoolgirl has been positively ID’d by Israeli security as a murderess of Israeli citizens.
Can someone please provide a cite of the Israelis firing on a school because I never heard about this and didn’t see an article. Usually when Israeli’s kill children it is because they are interspersed with malotov cocktail throwing rioters and Hamas riflemen.
I know that a few Palestinian children were killed in the past few days. I believe the 11 year old girl was “on her way to class” according to this CNN article:
These two incidents are far cries from Israelis delibrately targeting children. Also, no mention of school shellings.
On another note, Arafat has arrested 33 PFLP members. This has very interesting dynamics – on one hand it shows his willingness to crack down on militancy. On the other hand, PFLP has been part of the PLO since 1967 and has wide popular support. This will definitely strain his leadership even more, and indeed there have already been violent demonstrations on the street in protest. This could very easily destabilize his government and we could have a dead Arafat and the territories in chaos in short order. Again, this is still yet another ambivalent situation because it would give the Israelis an excuse to march in there and once and for all get all the militants. But, it would cost lots of lives and would not go forward towards the ultimate goal of both sides, peaceful coexistance.
I heard about both those deaths, the one of the little girl and the little boy picking up the shell. It was the “shelling a school” idea that I didn’t believe, which is apparently not true, so I am right. Whenever a child dies from errant fire in Palestine Israel “shelled a school” whenever a bomb is dropped into a baby’s cradle in Israel, it doesn’t even make the headlines here.
I would hate to see full on war in Israel, but part of me thinks it might be the final option. I hope that the US doesn’t try to hypocritically distance itself from Israel at this point, that would be a shame.
The BBC states it as a fact that an Israeli shell hit a classroom, and killed the girl in her classroom. If that is to be believed, then yes, the Israelis were indeed firing on a school.
I think I read in the Jerusalem Post that the witnesses (Palestinian, of course) reported a shell killing the girl in her classroom, and the army (of course) denying it. I think an officer was also disciplined for moving his forces “too far” into civilian areas.
There is a lot of “we say, they say” quality to this, of course. The different news sources can’t even agree on the girl’s age.
The BBC article says a shell hit the school. It does NOT say that the Israelis INTENDED to hit the school.
Common sense says that it was unintentional, becauase Israel hasn’t been using this sort of terrorism as a weapon. OTOH some Palistinian groups HAVE been intentionally targetting civilians.
december – they’re not bombing from 20,000 feet in the middle of the night. According to that report, it was a tank shell in daylight, presumably in the same damn street (otherwise it really would have been stupid).
I’m trying to say that the cited article carefully avoids any mention of intent. I presume you agree, LC.
Other than that fundamental fact, we’re both making assumptions or deductions. You can deduce that the Israelis wanted to hit the school (although you haven’t said so.) or that they were careless. I have deduced that they didn’t intend to hit the school.
What is your point, LC? If you are saying that the Israeli military isn’t totally perfect, then I agree with you.
If Israel didn’t mean to kill the girl, so what. She is still dead, because Israel had shelled a school. This is not the first time Israel had “accidentally killed” a Palestinian and won’t be the last. In their thirst for “cowboy (in)justice” they have killed another innocent person.
These are not things that they deny too, the Israeli Gov. has a policy of assassination (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
And in this time that the Israeli Gov. went out to commit murder (this act in itself should be outrageous) they “accidentally” committed another murder. How is this acceptable to her people and the world?
If these acts are not terrorism in themselves then what is? The Israeli Government should be better then that, they should be held to a better standard then terrorism. But unfortunately they aren’t, because of our (the worlds) inability to open our eyes.
I have no idea if it was intentional and nor have you. What we both do know is that this is the first response Israel has made in retaliation for the killing of an elected official. IMHO, at the very best it was extremely reckless and inexcusable.
I guess my point is that trained tank crews from an allegedly highly professional military force should know to take more care. Especially given;
It was daylight
They had driven into PA territory
The most highly emotionally and politically charged atmosphere
The Israeli Governments public policy of ‘Targeted killing’
From a personal perspective, I do sometimes have difficulty deciding on the definition of State sponsored terrorism but if this tank commander isn’t court-marshalled (and the chances of that are…?) I fear I’ll find it difficult to come to any other conclusion.
The extrajudicial killing of Afghanis are just as heinous as the extrajudicial killings of Americans. A life is a life is a life.
But America is not assassinating prominent Afghanis their main point is to capture the heads of the Al Qui’ta and bring them to trial. At least, I think that is their main goal.
There is an odd kind of argument here, some folk here are saying that Palestinians are terrorists for killing random citizens, true enough, but then go on to condemn them for targeting the type of politician who has made his position perfectly clear about Palestinians, at the same time the targeting of exteremist Palestinians by Israel is fine, seems hypocritical to me.
Fact is that Israeli governments have been held in thrall to right wing Israeli groups following elections and this has hampered moves to peace dialogue.
Eliminating such folk is without doubt distateful, murder even, but hardly surprising given the support that such folk give for targeted killing of Palestinian leaders.
In the UK we realised long ago what the result of targeting IRA leaders would be, and if you do take out those who hold an organisation together it makes peace talks difficult since there is no-one strong enough to hold these groups together.You need someone credible to negotiate with.
The UK government has been condemned by such as amnesty international, and even by the US itself for targeted killings AKA ‘Shoot to kill’ policy, the Spanish were condemned for the same thing with ETA terrorists and some in their Police were disciplined for it.
I wonder why we then accept that Israel should be immune form such approbrium, I do not think they should be, in fact as a democraticly elected and accountable government they should hold themselves to higher standards than those of the terrorist, else what are they but just the same.
Imagine, if you will, a WTC equivilent bombing every year. Across the country. By people who want you just plain gone.
It may happen. This has been Israel for YEARS.
The group that is responsible is not shy about admitting their culpability.
Your choices are:
a) Give them what they want.
b) Try to capture and/or kill those responsible, before they strike again … “dead or alive”. Even if some bystanders might get hurt. (The current US policy)
c) Passively accept your fate to be picked off.
I’d love it if the US and Israel could waltz in and arrest folk. The PA turning over those responsible, the Taliban turning over Bin Laden … would be nice.
What do you propose the US should do? Should Israel be held to a different standard?
Yes, I would like to hear what people’s opinions are on the current US actions, because I haven’t seen people like Efrem posting anything condemning the current actions. So if you are against what Israel is doing, how do you feel about what the US is doing? I want to find out who’s a hypocrite, and who has a legitimate argument that can then be reasoned with and discussed. It seems like everyone is gung ho about the US’s bombing but when Israel shoots anybody then they are terrorists.
As for the IRA example that’s a really stupid example. The Israeli’s are not killing the Palestinian authority, they are killing the people who they have good reason to believe will be targetting their civilians in the near future. Also, I would like to point out that in the last 50 years negotiations with the IRA have yielded results. Imagine if you will that the UK had been completely and totally willing to give up Northern Ireland in it’s entirety, which is basically the equivalent of what the Israeli’s have tried to do because unfortunately they aren’t an imperial power with a homeland that is not disputed as their homeland. If all Palestine wanted were an area like Northern Ireland there would be partying in the streets of Israel and they would be moving out tomorrow.
In answer to mswas’s question, I am an American who is opposed to the actions currently being undertaken by my government. In my opinion, aerial bombing has always been an atrocity in itself. It was invented for the purpose of terrorizing civilians on the ground, and it has been used that way constantly since the days of Guernica. Perhaps there is a way to wage war without large numbers of civilian casualties, but aerial bombing insures them. There is no such thing as “precision bombing.” Perhaps in WWI some military types still thought it was “un-chivalrous” for planes to attack people on the ground, even soldiers, but that has become so common that it fails to even shock anymore. Nowadays, in any bombing campaign, the military coldly accepts that they will be killing civilians, and when they do, they apologize for it and then do it again, making the apology meaningless. This is what my country did, over and over again, in Yugoslavia, and I’m still ashamed and angry about it.
"Nearly 20 years ago the man who is now Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, sent Lebanese militiamen into the Palestine refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. When they left 36 hours later at least 800 people lay dead after a rampage of murder, torture and rape.
The massacre provoked international outrage. In Israel itself 400,000 people took to the streets in the largest demonstration the country had ever seen. Ariel Sharon was forced to resign as Israel’s defence minister."
-BBC's Panorama
Click here to sign a petition that calls Mrs. Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to look into the Ariel Sharon’s crimes against humanity.
For more information on the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla BBC’s Panorama did a through investgation called “The Accused”.
tclouie, thanks, I do not agree with the bombings either. How do you feel about a campain at all though? Do you think it’s necessary, unecessary etc…?
and efrem, you strategically avoided my question to post some more inflammatory rhetoric about Israel. Sharon is no saint and many of the people do not like him there, however they had lost so much faith in Barak that he was the choice left. Now it’s kind of how Bush is here, he was hated by at least half of the population until he took a tough stance with bin Laden and now he’s liked. I am pretty sure he will be hated by history though. So please answer my question, I think it’s relevant.