There is no defensible reason, other than the religious-fundamentalist God-gave-Judea-and-Samaria-to-the-Jewish-people-for-all-eternity kind, to condone the Israeli state annexing occupied Palestinian territories while denying Palestinians equal rights.
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Let the Jews deal with the consequences.
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What that’s really saying, though, is “Let the Palestinians suffer the consequences”. That kind of shoulder-shrugging just shifts onto the Palestinians the burden of either helplessly enduring their permanent dispossession and denial of rights, or violently resisting it and being denounced as terrorists.
Oh, undoubtedly. The consequences of not going along with such a deal would have been too damaging for them. But petty displays of their dislike they can get away with.
Well, sure it can; it can choose whatever governmental/legislative structure it wants. It’s just that such discrimination calls into question its status as a democracy.
This is an astute and accurate answer to the OP’s question. Kerry’s speech says that America no longer supports Israel, and prefers to create a Palestinian state.
So , to answer the OP: the implication is that we have just seen a huuuuge turning point in history*. Trump will delay it for a few years, but the die is cast.
*(which in my opinion will eventually lead to a massive war in the middle east,when Palestine tries to destroy Israel. But,folks, no hijacks, please. this thread is NOT about an upcoming nuclear war…it’s about the implications of Kerry’s speech).
Since no actual policy changes were made, that would be literally untrue, since the U.S. has historically, has very recently, and will continue to (even after Trump) provide Israel with billions in military support each year.
With what, rocks, knives, and whatever rockets Hamas has left in Gaza? There is no question that the Palestinians can inflict damage and casualties on Israel as well as make any urban fighting with the IDF somewhat costly. But they are certainly no existential threat to Israel, except in the form of demographics if they were given voting rights in Israeli elections under a one state solution.
I dont think you understand what Israel being a Jewish nation means. Its not a religiously Jewish nation; its a culturally Jewish nation. And Israel does not discriminate on the basis of religion. It has done nothing to try to either reclaim or share the Temple Mount, the most sacred place in Judaism even though Jews arent allowed to visit it. There are also 1.65 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and about 84% are Muslim and another 8% Druse. They do live peacefully in Israel with the same rights as Jews.
I don’t really disagree, although I would point out that Israel’s Arab neighbors are hardly friends of the “Palestinian” people.
Yes, the Palestinians will suffer, but what Jews seem unwilling to understand is that, ultimately, eliminating Palestine brings them face-to-face with tougher neighbors who can actually stand up, fight for themselves, and inflict pain on Israel. The moment Trump takes office, the Iran deal is over and you will quickly see (or maybe we won’t “see”) Iran go into full-on nuke development mode. Israel can slap the Palestinians around, and they can easily win conventional wars. But Israel’s neighbors are preparing for Israel’s worst behavior, and they’re not going to take it lying down next time.
The idea that Palestinians want a two-state solution in which Jews can live with the same rights as Arabs do in Israel is severely deluded to say the least. There is no solution that Palestinians will accept that preserves Israel as a Jewish state, period. And before anyone complains about theocracies, all Arab countries are in fact exclusively Muslim and vehemently so.
In the year 2000 the Palestinians were offered the best deal since 1948 (basically Kerry’s idea) and they rejected it.
Dennis Prager put it best.
If the Palestinians decided to stop fighting, there would be peace.
If the Israelis decided to stop fighting, there would be genocide.
I don’t understand this distinction, given that Israel defines “Jewish identity” halachically, i.e., according to Jewish religious law.
If a halachically non-Jewish person decides that they identify as “culturally Jewish”, that gives them no standing as a Jew according to the Israeli state. They have to qualify as Jewish according to Jewish religious law in order to count as Jewish as far as Israel is concerned.
This is incomprehensibly at odds with the demographic realities of the Arab League countries, to the extent that I can’t even tell what point you were trying to make.
Lebanon, for example, is demographically about 54% Muslim, 40% Christian and 6% Druze. Egypt is about 90% Muslim and about 10% Christian. Most other Arab nations have non-Muslim minorities ranging from about 5% to less than 1%.
Yes, all Arab countries are demographically majority-Muslim, most overwhelmingly so, and some are officially “Islamic Republics”. But how do you get from that to the factually inaccurate claim that “all Arab countries are in fact exclusively Muslim”?
Who is fighting at the moment? Hamas is basically in a cold war with Israel at the moment, but is the PA and the West Bank? If actual, regular ground combat in the West Bank was so continuous, how could Israel have built the barrier?
You’ve got that backwards: religious thought and action should not be such that permitting it is a threat to secular society. Over half of the Palestinian population is openly in favour of exterminating religious minorities. When your religion is also a supremacist political movement, there is nothing unethical about treating it the same way you would any secular supremacist political movement.
That is only to qualify for automatic Israeli citizenship. Atheists born from a Jewish (by birth) mother qualify. There has to be some definition of what constitutes Jewishness just as there is a definition of what constitutes Britishness for the purpose of qualifying for citizenship.
The polls ask about a hypothetical solution. When actual proposal are asked, the numbers drop. Also, being “in favor a of something” and actually getting it done by their leaders is a different thing.
Lebanon, agreed. I wanted to mention it and forgot.
By exclusively Muslim I mean that the government is Muslim and enforces Islam over other faiths.
Try being an active Christian anywhere else. Egypt’s Copts are scared shitless every day, and they are 40%.
What do you mean “going along with”? It was the Obama/Kerry State Department that actively negotiated the $38bn aid deal.