Why would you want to make peace with people who are not fighting? What purpose would that serve?
That’s my point. Hamas is doing the fighting, and Hamas doesn’t want peace, and you can’t make peace with a group that doesn’t want peace. Hamas’s goal is the extermination of the State of Israel and the murder of its population. That’s not a stance that lends itself to compromise. “Well, how about you kill half of us?”
It involves the state not supporting the use of violence and cracking down on it. If it isn’t able to and all we get is continual attacks, then by definition there isn’t peace, but violence.
That’s exactly how it’s worded. And you talk of Palestinian “refugees” is nonsensical. The UNRWA had to create a special set of standard for the Palestinians, one that isn’t employed to describe any other population in the entire world. By their standards, I am a German refugee and a Russian refugee. Can I get some land deeded to me?
Just because you are repeatedly ignoring that without the legal right to live on a piece of land, there is no right to return to it does not mean that the actual legal rights in question are immaterial. And your comparison to the Israeli Law of Return is nonsensical. There is a Law of Return because a sovereign state decided to legislate the use of its territory. Attempting to equate that with Palestinian demands makes no sense.
False. Yet again I’d ask you to please learn the facts of the matter before you make claims about it. According to the UNRWA anybody who lived in the area up to a few years before '48 is a Palestinian refugee. Whether they emigrated, chose to leave before the war or were displaced by it doesn’t enter into the metric.
Yes, it is. UNGAR 194 is what the Arab Peace Initiative took its verbiage from, directly.
Just trying to get you to address the actual facts, that people do not have a ‘right’ to be on land that they used to rent. The lack of any legal and factual basis of your claims has been at issue and I’ve pointed it out numerous times, but you refuse to address it, instead repeating that a “right” exists while you refuse to identify what its actual basis is other than that you privilege Palestinian demands as rights. . Please address the facts.
I understand that the power of the UN is a matter of faith to you and you are Witnessing about you beliefs, and that’s fine. But just like you can’t use faith to debunk evolution, you can’t use faith to rewrite history. The resolution played no role because it wasn’t enforced, observed, agreed to, etc… I’ve pointed this all out to you and you have no answer, because you are wrong on the facts. Likewise, I’ve pointed out that non-binding UN resolutions are, rather unsurprisingly, non-binding. Rather than address how you are claiming that a resolution that is not binding can be binding, you are acting as if “UN resolutions mean nothing to me.” UNGAR’s are quite a different matter from UNSCR’s written under Chapter VII.
Likewise, the Partition plan was at issue because it was hoped that war might be averted. It wasn’t because, yet again, it wasn’t enforced, observed, agreed to, etc…
Malthus pointed out to you, directly, that the British reneged on their promises in Balfour and instead tried to stifle the creation of a Jewish national home, largely due to pressure from the Arab powers in the region. I understand that for you it’s a matter of faith and you’re Witnessing about your views on the BD, but again I’ve pointed out the facts and how the British violated their own promises and you have ignored it because it doesn’t fit in with your Witnessing.
I has already pointed out to you that the British acted to stop Jewish immigration in appreciable numbers long before 1948.
It’s kind of funny to see you talking about “ignoring” things. There’s no need to ignore it because as long as the Jewish immigrants didn’t strip the Arab populace of their “civil and religious rights”, which they didn’t, then your use of that provision is a rabbit trail, at best. You can start, for instance, with the British violation of the BD via the creation of Transjordan and go on to British limits on Jewish immigration that were enacted due to racist pressure from some Arab powers in the region.
Really? When I’ve clarified time and time and time again that the issue is one of who has a right to residence on a piece of land? As for your wiki cite, it’s misleading at best and conflates Miri land with Mulk and waste land, for starters. Even the most strident anti-settlement groups within Israeli society have certified, for instance, that the clear majority of land involved in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank was never privately owned by Palestinians. Your wiki cite brushes over the very real dividing line between state-owned land and privately owned land.
To Finn Again.
I did not mention anywhere on this thread that Arab men were ‘sexist pigs’. You used both words not me.
Rather than cite for you views of Arab women, wouldn’t it be better for you to get yourself a passport and a ticket out of Texas and see what actually happens here.
True there are places like Saudi ( a regime which is heavily supported by the USA by the way), that restrict women in many ways but here in Egypt you’d be surprised just how much power and influence the woman here has in the family. It might just shock you.
When you’ve spent some time in the Middle East get back to me and then we can talk about this subject.
For some weird reason I cannot get rid of Finn!!
I am clicking on quote Damuri Ajashi and it keeps giving me this even though I have logged out and in again, and posted on another thread:confused:, so may if I post this it will stop???
Damuri Ajashi asked for a cite from Hamas.
I think the original poster put one zero too many??
Hudna can only be extended for 10 years due to Islamic Law but can be renewed.
Here is a cite from an Israeli news source no less.
So Hamas agrees to a 10 year truce in exchange for Israel pulling back to pre 1967 boundaries. Israel pulls back, then after 10 years ends, Hamas renews its attacks, and how does that deal help Israel at all? Why on earth would Israel agree to that?
Like many axioms there isn’t a word of truth in this, but whatever it takes to radicalize young Israelis and defile Judaism.
Well presumably to open up a situation where the majority of the population is more bought into the status quo of truce than starting up attacks.
It’s not as if one could not expect Israel to simply be able to crush Hamas again…
The present course of action after all is just so brilliantly successful…
So you think it will be a war until the last Israeli or Arab is dead? Humm. I don’t think I would buy any Israeli VIctory Bonds.
Except there’s no evidence that Hamas would even wait the full 10 years. It’s been cited and quoted, but here it is again in case folks missed it the first time.
So while some people here are claiming that Hamas has agreed to peace, they either should know better or are obscuring the fact that Hamas has never agreed to peace. They’ve agreed to a rest-break so they can rearm and reequip before they launch their war of extermination again. But of course that doesn’t make quite as good copy as the claim that Hamas is ready for peace.
Sure you did, let me refresh your memory.
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Of course that’s quite an insulting stereotype, and not at all true from my experiences since some Arab men aren’t cowards who have such a shaky concept of their own masculinity that strong women upset them. So you should probably cite your claims.
…women are also poorly treated.
So the Partition plan was meaningful and perhaps even imparted some legitimacy to the newly formed state along with a tacit pre-recognition of the state of Israel (which might have encouraged the formation of the nascent state)? It would have been a LOT more meaningful if the arabs didn’t reject the entire notion of a Jewish state in Palestine but it wasn’t nothing? OK I hear you. Perhaps I overrated the influence and effect of the Partition plan but FinnAgain seems to discount it altogether.
So Israel would be OK if Iraqi and Afghani refugees started pouring into Israel or does the “conflict” group include all arabs (or perhaps all muslims). At the very least it sounds like you are saying taht if half of Tibet showed up at Isreal’s doorstep as political regfugees, Israel would in principle not have a problem with a huge influx of non-jews into israel.
I tend to agree that if the physical right or return is not possible for whatever reason, you can probably monetize the value of the right of return and considering the complexity of trying to sort out all the claims, the money should probably be given to the New Palestinian state a running start (overseen by folks who will make sure that fatah doesn’t line their own pockets with the money). Of course you have to convince the Palestinians that taking the money is better than the physical right of return.
I think its probably too late to return the exact same property that was confiscated but the ability to travel freeely and even apply for citizenship in israel would probably go a long way to making a monetary settlement of the right of return more palatable.
TCBY. This could be you. If Israel makes paece with Fatah and the West Bank and as a result the West bank flourishes, people in gaza might want that for themselves as well.
I do have to say, though, that I’m surprised here. You seem to unerstand perfectly why the Arab Peace Initiatives of the past weren’t workable but why a negotiated peace with Fatah is most likely the best way to solve the conflict. Kudos to you for that.
If in response to statements like “it would have been meaningful if…” and “but due to history it was rendered meaningless” your response is “So, you say it was meaningful.”
Do you see the problem here?
This is part of the frustration here. You’ve decided that the Partition was meaningful, and despite all evidence to the contrary you are determined to try to argue for that conclusion.
And again you seem to have a strange view of what a resolution that wasn’t accepted, wasn’t enforced, wasn’t observed and informed nothing at all actually did (again, if Israel said that its justification for existing was God-given, would you now be arguing that Israel was an example of divine creation?) Stop and think about it. The British are leaving, there’s been no resolution to establish Israel… so in your view there’s a chance that the Jews don’t want self determination anymore? Why? Do you think that a nationalistic movement is dependent on approval or something? Not only is your gloss at fundamental odds with reality, it is a rather strange claim that ignores the very existence of Jewish nationalism and acts as if the Jews required the world’s approval before they could want self determination.
And again you need to explain how a non-binding resolution imparts anything at all. UN General Assembly resolutions do not establish legal fact, and the facts of sovereignty are not decided in committee.
I’ve also pointed out to you that many of the nations that voted yes on partition did not do it for ideological reasons but, explicitly, because they believed that Israel could defend itself militarily and they wouldn’t have to get involved. So again it wasn’t partition that justified military defense, it was military defense that justified partition.
30 billion was offered the last go-round.
So can the new state of Palestine have an army?
The peace plan says:
“Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194.”
If this says the exact same thing to you that you believe the palestinians have been asking for then OK fine.
There is not another refugee crisis that has lasted as long as the Palestinian refugee crisis in the entire world. If you are sitting in a German refugee camp because your grandparents fled Germany at the start of WWII and there has been noplace for you to go since then, yeah I think you have an argument for the right to return to Germany and if your grandparent’s land was confiscated because they fled, I think you have a claim.
I was not aware the right of return involved deeding land to all the palestinians, I thought it was siply the right to return and the right to reclaim whatever land they had before the war.
Land ownership is emaningless when youa re talking about repatriating a refugee population taht fled war. But just to see how far youa re going with this, are you saying taht teh right fo return might be valid for those Palestinians taht owned a piece of land?
From teh UNRWA website:
“Under UNRWA’s operational definition, Palestine refugees are people whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.”
When have I mentioned UNGAR 194?
We are talking about repatriating people to the place where they lived before a war. Why does it matter whether someone has possessory rights in land before we say they have some sort of right of return? Lets assume that only 80% of the Palestinians had land, would you be OK with a right of return for 80% of palestinians? As I have pointe out many times, Current day Israel was 2/3 palestinain by population and 90% owned by Palestinians by acreage, if I can prove that 80% of teh Palestinians refugees owned land or are descneed from landowers, do they have any greater claim to the right of return?
You seem to be doing it quite a bit.
Malthus pointed out to you, directly, that the British reneged on their promises in Balfour and instead tried to stifle the creation of a Jewish national home, largely due to pressure from the Arab powers in the region. I understand that for you it’s a matter of faith and you’re Witnessing about your views on the BD, but again I’ve pointed out the facts and how the British violated their own promises and you have ignored it because it doesn’t fit in with your Witnessing.
Like when? point to the moment when they acted to stop jewish Immigration in contravention of the balfour declaration 9rememebr tyhe words in teh balfour declaration about respecting the interest of the Palestinians)
How did transjordan violate the BD?
When did this happen? It also seems like you are ignoring the second half fof the balfour declaration: “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”
Your entire world view seems to depend on ignoring inconvenient facts.
How about who has rights to enter a territory? but putting that aside, would you be OK with Right of return for refugee landowners?
I didn’t write the wiki article and for better or worse it is subject to some level of peer review. the numbers are the numbers no matter how inconvenient they may be for you. If you are correct and most of that arab owned land was in fact arab GOVERNMENT owned land and not privately owned land i think I would need a cite for that because the arab owned land exceeds the jewish owned land by 10:1.
Because people might decide they like peace after they get 10 eyars of it, they mgiht not be ready to strap on explosive vests.
So we don’t even give peace a chance because of Hamas?
I agree that hamas has never agreed to peace but why are we holding the peace process hostage to the whims of people who will never be ready for peace? If tyhat is the standard then you are basically saying that you will never have peace. Aren’t you?
I think part of the problem may be this: modern folks are simply reluctant to acknowledge that the world is, at base, an anarchistic place in which the great issues tend to be solved by force. There is a great desire to see in the trappings of the various flimsy draperies that modern nations have created to clothe this distasteful reality - the United Nations, International Law, treaties, mediations, negotiations, etc. - a substance which is, in point of fact, lacking in the absence of military might to back it up.
This is perfectly natural, as people are used to living within a system in which laws are enforced by a (supposedly) impartial sovereign authority. Our international system is more akin to what “law” exists among groups of armed gangsters or Vikings. I remember vaguely that among the latter (or perhaps it was the Saxons) there was a system in which court cases were decided by “oath swearing” - each litigant brought supporters to swear that they were right; supporters were weighted in accordance with their importance; the person with the most “oath swearers” won. The point of such a system was not justice, but to provide an alternative to settling the matter with war-axes … since the person with the most support would probably win that, too, only with a lot more dead. Of course, the “loser” always had the option of resorting to axes by way of appeal!
That is more or less the purpose of our modern international law mechanisms, too. They do not produce justice, and that isn’t really their intent: it is to provide alternatives to fighting it out - but at base, the whole system is underlined by the ability and willingness of nations (or sub- or proto-national groups) to fight it out.
To get back to the point - the UN Partition Plan was an attempt, like Viking ‘oath-swearing’, to forestall the inevitable violence everyone could foresee when the Brits pulled out (and no-one was willing to take their place). The proto-Israelis accepted it but the Arabs, in effect, ‘resorted to war-axes by way of appeal’. Violence was not averted and the Plan was, thus, a total failure - it never had anything to do with justice, it was all about recognizing reality on the ground: if the proto-Israelis had no proto-army, it never would have even been an issue.
I’m entirely reasonable and if you didn’t impute the worst of intentions on my every time i said something you disagreed with, it might be possible to have a conversation with you, I’m not holding my breath.
No, I’m saying that it might have been MORE meaningful if it was respected but even as it was, there was significcance to the resolution.
Well, I’m not sure you’ve put it that way before. Its something to think about but it also seems to me that the implicit recognition that the resolution represented might have encouraged the military action
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There are 4.7 million refugees according to UNRWA, That’s about $6K per refugee. I wonder how far taht would go in a place like the middle east.
Why this silly comment, you just said yourself “TCBY. This could be you. If Israel makes paece with Fatah and the West Bank and as a result the West bank flourishes, people in gaza might want that for themselves as well.”
Why then claim that since the facts all show that Hamas doesn’t want peace, that there can never be any sort of peace with anybody involved. Does that make any sense to you?
You think that Palestinians are stupid or something? You think they don’t already know that “not being at war and having freedom of movement is a lot nicer than being at war and not having freedom of movement.” They already know that they like peace, that’s not at issue. What is at issue is that Hamas would use any hudna as a period to simply rearm and it’s doubtful that it would last more than a year, at the outside, let alone ten.
Yes, that is what most people mean when they talk about the RoR, and as you cited the UN as giving them the RoR, I assumed you were doing the same. You can still cite and quote which UN documents you claim set up the RoR, as you haven’t yet.
I have my family’s land back in Russia and Germany? Or are there other “refugee” populations that are just as old, but their host nations allowed them to settle and we don’t call the grandchildren of refugees, “refugees”?
You’re contradicting yourself. If people who didn’t actually own the land there (the fact that you’ve argued shouldn’t matter as land ownership doesn’t enter into your calculus) can “reclaim” land, then obviously they’re being given land since they never had land in the first place.
Seriously, most land in question was never privately owned, it’s not a question of “reclaiming” what’s theirs.
No, it isn’t. If I have no legal claim on a piece of land, and no legal claim to citizenship, then I do not have a “right” to citizenship and to live on a piece of land.
As was already pointed out, most Palestinians didn’t actually own the land they were living on, and much was communally held. So if you lived in a village and then left in '47, and later that village lost most or all of its land, you had “your home and means of livelihood yadda yadda yadda.”
When you’ve repeatedly argued that the UN created the RoR (although without citing or quoting anything at all). UNGAR 194 is the document that’s understood to be setting forth the RoR.
Because if they weren’t citizens of the country and they don’t have any valid claim to land there, then you’re not “repatriating” anybody and you are gifting them with land.
No, this is simply fictional. It was never 90% privately owned at all and that figure is only reached by assigning everything not Jewish owned to the Arab populace, while the actual land ownership laws showed that most of the Arab populace didn’t actually privately own anything.
You can point out a fiction as many times as you want, but the claim that 90% of Palestine was mulk is simply laughable.
Considering the degree of ignorance you have about history and current events, you might not want to be so quick to claim that I’m rewriting things. To say nothing of your Witnessing about the effect of a non-binding resolution that was never enforced, observed, etc, etc, etc… We’ve been over this. The facts of history don’t enter into your argument on certain points because they get in the way of your narrative.
This is what I mean, these are basic facts of history. You can’t talk about the issue in an informed manner if you don’t even know about the White Papers. And your non sequitor serves no valid purpose. Allowing Jewish immigration was not in opposition to full civil and religious rights for the Palestinians. Why we should keep that phrase in mind while ignoring British attempts to keep Jews out of the region, up to and including imprisoning them without charges, is kind of surreal.
Here too the issue is a basic factual command of the history: if Britain promised the Jews the right to close settlement and a national home in all of the Mandate territory, and then gave most of the Mandate territory to Jordan which was not the Jewish national home and didn’t allow close settlement by Jews… did the British implement or violate the BD?
That’s rich coming from someone who hasn’t even bothered to learn the history in question before making claims about it. And despite what you may wish, your distortions don’t become “inconvenient facts”. Allowing Jews to immigrate did not violate anybody’s civil or religious rights. That you’re claiming it did isn’t proof that I’m ignoring facts, but that your argument is a rationalization of your faith-based Witnessing and you’re working backwards from your conclusion and trying to find any data that will support it.
Again, you don’t even know the facts and yet you’re claiming that non-facts are “inconvenient”. Ridiculous. The “numbers” are the “numbers”, but they have no passing familiarity with the facts.
As already explained to you, even the most strident anti-settlement groups in Israel have certified that the clear majority of land involved was never privately owned.
The claim that 90% of land in the area was mulk is so wildly false that no serious scholar, anywhere, would support it. If it wasn’t mulk then land was a variety of miri or waste lands, which weren’t privately owned and whose ownership rights weren’t inalienable. The 90% figure you’re using explicitly includes massive amounts of uncultivated land. And yet under the Ottoman Land Law (which was upheld by the British and the Jordanians), the only way to gain a temporary right to the use of land that wasn’t mulk, *was to cultivate it.
*
If you want a basic cite so you can start doing some research before you argue the issue any more, here:
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You might also want to research the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 which specifically said that the communally used land wasn’t valid and individual residents had to apply for title. And even then, it wasn’t mulk.