Ok, I’ll assume from your insistence that you don’t believe Jews should be treated differently thab others and your insistence that Jewish settlers deserve to be killed that you feel that Han Chinese in Tibet, even those who are civilians, deserve to be killed as, presumably, do White Americans and White Canadians who are settlers as well.
I suspect most will find your views loathsome, but I’ll salute your courage in expressing them.
Yes. If you want true peace, that is exactly what you do. You talk with the chosen representatives of the people who are destined to be your neighbors. Rather than use rhetoric as just another excuse to keep stalling, you recognize that it isn’t necessarily sincere and complete, and you set it aside and focus on each party’s interests. You collaboratively create the new shape of the neighborhood with your neighbors in ways that address all of those fundamental interests. As a negotiator would say, “Who wins in a marriage?”
To do all that, neither can present a list of non-negotiable items, or the process has failed from the start - that very act bespeaks a lack of sincere desire to achieve a result that may not be synonymous with just getting all you want, and if they don’t like it then too damn bad. It also means that those who dismiss any attempt to support the peace process in that way, the only one that works, with “These guys will never accept this” or “Those guys will insist that this other point be off the table” are not sincere in that wish, either. That isn’t how the RSA apartheid government made peace with the ANC or how the UK made peace with the IRA; those things happened because the desire to produce peace was stronger than the desire to continue stalling tactics, both rhetorical and violent ones. And to spread the rhetoric, even by implication, that the other party is just inherently violent and unreasonable and just not quite as fully human as your own actually sets the process back, rather badly.
Do you have a different plausible peace-negotiation process propose instead? Can you share it with us?
A Time editorial today goes into greater detail about what I mentioned earlier, namely that Netanyahu deliberately chose to ignore half of Obama’s statement and misinterpret the rest:
I would love to see a legitimate peace process taking place. I don’t think Netanyahu is the one to get it done. He doesn’t want peace and more importantly, he doesn’t need it. The Palestinians aren’t doing much to help themselves either. I think both sides need new governments before any real progress will happen.
You do realize that Israel did adopt that approach with the PLO and did make enormous concessions and went in many ways much farther than the British. For example, I don’t think the British ever were willing to sit down and negotiate with the people who blew up Mountbatten while the Israelis have negotiated with Abbas and Arafat who were involved with the Munich massacre.
Where it collapsed was because unlike either the IRA or South Africa’s Afrikaner government, Arafat refused to essentially admit he’d lost and try and cut the best deal he could. Instead, he decided to walk away from the table at Camp David and engage in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians after being offered virtually the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a state.
That IMHO is the main difference between the three conflicts. In the first two instances the Afrikaners and the Irish Nationalists were willing to admit they’d lost, whereas the Palestinian leadership continues to refuse to do so.
Did you type that with a straight face?
I suspect that folks from Mexico, (New Mexico, Arizona, California), Spain, (Puerto Rico at a minimum), Philipines, (independence denied for over forty years unless you want to put that in the Spain column), and a host of indigenous American peoples would consider your comment to be somewhat divorced from reality.
Negotiation isn’t possible without trust. The last two times Israel gave up land in Gaza and Lebanon they were met with even more hostility. This sets up the very real concern that if Israel withdraws again, the there will be even more violence.
Can you explain how any peace is possible when the Palestinians aren’t willing to do anything that will show Israel that they can be trusted to hold up their end of the bargain?
Peace is possible with the right parties in place. Netanyahu has done this round with Arafat before, remember? There’s a difference between negotiating with someone threatening to take you hostage and negotiating with someeone who is tired of fighting.
While Israel may employ some pretty punitive measures, it has given many concessions in the past. If you don’t believe me, look at their current policies in the territories. For a country that exercises some serious control over the land, they’re hardly despots. Right now I’m thinking of the recognition of the PLO, water, and aid that’s overlooked.*
Where else in the world do you see two peoples at war where the winning or stronger group actually allows the opposing group redress in its court system? Israel may roll its eyes at the international justice system these days (and I would, too - the U.S. isn’t being hauled to Hague on numerous accounts because it’s well, the U.S.) but the young democracy is impressive in this regard.
This idea that Israel is hell-bent on being the biggest asshole in the world is sorely misguided. I’m not just saying, “Oh, Palestinians could have it worse,” but I am saying, Israel does a lot of shit it doesn’t have to - in the interests of humanity, however grudgingly the Right has to swallow it. There is no ethnic cleansing, no genocide. The Palestinian quest for self-determination has failed because of poor leadership - within its ranks and in the larger Arab community.
Netanyahu says he’s willing to figure it out - but no, Palestinians don’t have an equal vote here. And they shouldn’t. It isn’t how conflict resolution really works, to be honest. Netanyahu was willing to talk a year ago and nothing came about.
It’s the same mentality you use when parenting or when ‘dealing with terrorists’. Basically, I’m not going to reward your temper tantrum.
And fuck yeah you can put conditions on the table. There’s, hey, we’ll talk if you want peace, and there’s, oh, I’m only talking if you give me $20m. Two different kinds of conditions.
Netanyahu said he’s ready. Where’s Abbas? Tune in next week.
*I’m all about a Palestinian state that has its own independent economy. It depends on NIS and most of its trade deficit is with Israel. Israel agreed to even out the playing field during the Oslo Accords - something awfully strange for a country who is so ‘against peace’. :dubious:
Edit: RSA never “made peace” with the ANC.
Exactly. Also, after Camp David, terrorist attacks in Israel rose. So it’s not just about placating two grownups with guns - it’s about making sure 16 million people are relatively agreeable enough that lawlessness doesn’t erupt. Hamas and PA had a dirty bloody fight in Gaza a few years ago. How come no one mentions this? The PLO acts as a representative, but its police force (one that Israel & the US helped train) only maintains so much law & order.
(my emphasis)
I don’t think the bold text is actually true. Deliberated slo-mo ethnic cleansing seems to be what it is all about.
Um, you do realize that the Palestinian population of the West Bank has actually dramatically increased since the Israelis seized it from Jordan don’t you?
That’s the opposite of “slo-mo ethnic cleansing”.
And yet, at the same time, Obama does not want the UN to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Actually sounds more like ethnic farming. (That is, if the Israelis had meant to do that.)
In related news: Egypt opens Rafah border crossing to Gaza.
Well, they’re doing a pretty shitty job of it. Why not just starve em out and cut off their water supply or allow them access to rockets or plant terrorists or anything that gives Israel a legit excuse to wipe them all out? Wait, that’s genocide, something that others in this thread have accused Israel of.
But why give Arab-Israelis citizenship? Why finally realize its error in treating the Bedouin – why now focus on their education, land rights, and health care?
I thought Jews were smarter than that when it comes to Total World Domination, no? Rumor has it we got lost en route from Egypt for forty years, but we can’t be that easily distracted.
Not without consensus; no. That would just cause another war and no one would suffer more than the Palestinians.
It’s the same argument the rest of the world gives Israel: You need to negotiate when drawing your borders.
There is a Palestinian people, a Palestinian leadership, and they get attention at the U.N. Hell, they even get permanent U.N. workers. It’s a matter of government, really. Israel is not their government (though they have some liberties under the government), the PLO is not their government, and statehood is now a matter of nuts and bolts and, yes, an agreement with Israel - something that can’t be recognized without footwork.
Like I said. Israel has border issues, all ye naysayers.
Errmmm . . . because they don’t live in Gaza?
No one is starving. Food insecurity is not the same thing. Food insecure means you’re not positive you can provide food in the future. Israel isn’t going to let Gazans starve.
edit: Gazians?
I prefer Gazers. Sounds kinda mystical. 
Okay, so this is from an English site that reports Israeli news, but wtfmate?!
AID SHIP REFUSES TO LET ISRAEL DELIVER GOODS
Ah, well, Israel also * intercepted *that Turkish flotilla, not withheld aid, but no one cares when they’re finger-pointing. No one cares that Israel gives Gaza aid, either.
Are you Gazin’ at me? :dubious:
Part of the process is either helping “the right parties” get enough standing with their people that their work can be accepted, or helping make those who do have it become “the right parties”. Now, what does Arafat have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that the situation is just the same today as it was when he was alive? Or is that using a strawman as an excuse?
Is there really? Can’t someone who’s tired of fighting, but sees the other party as still wanting to subjugate them, think it necessary to use whatever threats it takes to prevent subjugation?
The past has to be made to not matter anymore, hard as that is to create or even comprehend. Trapping oneself, or just one’s mindset, in the past, massaging one’s own’s feelings of self-righteousness by filtering out the things that the other party surely remembers, is part of the problem, not the solution.
The word you’re evading is “settlements”. And that’s why claims by you or anyone else that Israel’s intentions there are benign *cannot *be readily believed.
And the aqueducts, too? 
South Africa under apartheid, and Ireland under The Troubles, since we were discussing them.
Who do you see or hear saying that?
Yes, true as far as that goes. But leaders can only arise within the situation they have. And Israel can help shape a situation that allows strong Palestinian leaders to arise.
His actions belie those words, as do the votes of those Israeli people who endorse his actions and accept that he has to lie about them.
See my earlier comments about seeing your counterparts as less interested in peace, and less human (or, as you put it, less adult) than yourself. Can’t do that if you’re serious.