That’s right. Taking property. Forcing people to live in specified areas with their own kind. Demolishing houses. It’s just certain limitations when they travel.
That’s all.
Those damn Palestinians, taking Israeil land, making them live in shiny new - cheap - houses because the land, inexplicably, didn’t cost a thing. And then defended by US arms and financial support. No wonder they want to live in Gaza with those damn Palestinians.
well, yes, as a matter of fact, they do intend to take all the Israeli land they can get. You are aware that’s there’s a state of war, you know?
And the “moderate” Palestinian leader (Abbas) is the one who wrote his PhD thesis denying the holocaust. But he is a very weak leader. The stronger Palestinian leadership is Hamas–which doesn’t waste its breath denying the holocaust, they speak openly about carrying out a new one. Read their charters, please. Which part of “kill all the Jews” do you not understand?
In the spirit of Godwin’s Law, I think anything to do with ‘killing all jews’ ‘pushing the jews into the sea’ and the rest should be called Godwinstein.
The Middle East isn’t an episode of 24. s
Fwiw, Israel has all the solution it needs right now - lets call it steady state (literally a state); all gamed outcomes are manageable, the nation grows larger and stronger. All is good. Fuck the Palestinians.
That’s right.
Some leaders preach the re-establishment of their ancestral homeland. Through violence if necessary. Some of this group also carry out terrorist acts against the people.Such a group are are a clear threat to the people who rightfully occupy the land. No people could possibly be expected to exist with such a threat in their midst.
That justifies any atrocity necessary against the civilian population. Some solution is obviously needed, and this is, after all, a war.
Is this from 1946-48?
I agree that the legality is disputed.
What is not disputed is that the method of taking and holding such lands magnifies anti-Semitism.
And so the eternal circle of distrust continues.
As with every other such dispute, eventually both sides will find a compromise.
This could take many thousands of lives and many years of virtual warfare.
That’s true. It takes longer, and a lot more people die.
You know, people say that, but in my lifetime all I’ve seen is Israel shrink. It withdrew from the Sinai, it withdrew from southern Lebanon, it withdrew from much of the West Bank, it withdrew from the Gaza strip. All I see are maps getting smaller and smaller. At what point did Israel grow?
This is the key question. Israel is occupying land that a United Nations Resolution 242 says it should not.
The resolution says that Israel should withdraw from territory it occupied during the Six-Day War and that all nations and organizations involved should agree to live in peace with each other. Israel said it would agree to follow the resolution as long as it was the full resolution. It would not agree to follow part of the resolution by withdrawing from the territory while other nations and organizations did not agree to live in peace with Israel. The PLO denounced the resolution and said it would not live peacefully with Israel. So Israel said the PLO had taken the resolution off the table.
Technically speaking, the resolution said “territory”, not “all territory”.
We got some good lawyers here.
But, Israel is not at war with the Palestinian Authority. Is it?
If it isn’t at war, why does it need a peace process?
Link: The Meaning of UN Security Council Resolution 242
md2000
This is what prompted my two questions. Somebody told me that he read that Israel was illegally occupying land owned by Palestinians and preventing their access to it. I figured the easy way to find out was to ask the SDMB to find the straight dope. I did not mean to debate the decades-old issue of the settlements in the West Bank, which, I’m sure, has been debated often before on this board. Thank you, md2000.
That’s another issue. It’s ambiguous whether the resolution says Israel has to withdraw from some of the land that was occupied during the Six-Day War or all of the land that was occupied during the Six-Day War. And it’s ambiguous what constitutes a withdrawal.
The English text of the resolution says “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”. That’s open to interpretation. Does it mean some territories or all territories? And suppose Israeli armed forces withdraw and establish a demilitarized zone that’s full of Israeli settlers and under Israeli political control. Is that in compliance with the resolution? The resolution does speak of establishing peace in the region “through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones”.
And that’s just discussing interpretations of the English text. As a UN resolution, the document was issued in six languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish - and all six are considered to be equally valid. But you can interpret the meaning of the words in all of these languages differently.
Perhaps not, but Hamas and Hizbollah are certainly at war with Israel. And the territory in question was acquired thru war - Israel was attacked, and conquered the territory, and thus owns it by right of conquest.
Regards,
Shodan
Indeed. And that just illustrates my point - that nothing is simple and unambiguous about this conflict. Absolutely nothing.
I don’t think international law recognizes that any more.
It’s true that “right of conquest” isn’t much respected these days.
But who does have the best claim to the West Bank? Seems to me that Jordan has the strongest legal claim…and they don’t want it. That leaves either the Palestinian Authority – which isn’t a nation – or Israel, as military administrators.
What are the limits of a military administration seizing land? I think everyone, even Israel’s best friends, acknowledge there are limits. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled against some seizures.
Somewhere between “right of conquest” and “it’s a sovereign nation” must lie the truth. But where?
It depends on what you mean by “illegal”. By (some) Israeli standards what is happening in the West Bank is not illegal. Most of the UN, however, thinks otherwise. One of the tactics is to set up checkpoints and road blocks to make it difficult (or impossible) for Palestinians to access their farmland. Then Israel seizes the land under a law that says that land that is “abandoned” for a while (two years?) is liable to be taken by the government. You can read more about it at B’Tselem (a Jewish human rights group).
What is happening in the West Bank now is similar to what the US did to Native Americans during the 1800’s.
It doesn’t differ at all which is why I seldom go there.