Obama calls for independent Palestine, 1967 borders

Great Debates
521

You are assuming of course that there is such a thing in what amounts to an ethno-nationalist conflict as objective “equity” - that is, some sort of fairness that, where there a neutral arbiter to judge matters, could be chosen as the fair deal. What would that look like?

    • one side “wins” and the other “loses”, like a court case? If Israel is found “unequitable”, should its population pack up and leave? And if so, where is it to go?
    • Or, OTOH, should it be based on a recognition that history cannot be undone and that each party must make the best of it that they can through barganing?

Fair enough. I think that there is in fact an objectively fair deal under the cirumstances under the second definition of “equity”, which goes something like this:

  • the Palestinains to get the WB, subject to certain subtractions around Jerusalem and territorial adjustments elsewhere;

  • Jerusalem is not to be divided and is Israeli. The Palestinians to get rights over Muslim holy places, like the Dome of the Rock.

  • No “right of return”.

  • Compensation for Palestinian losses in the form of money for development.

The Palestinians are I think holding out for “equity” in the form #1 above - that is, hoping for a roll of the historical dice which will reverse the “disaster” of Israeli existence, and give them back everything they have lost … which isn’t gonna happen, at least in the near term, and certainly cannot be accomplished by “negotiations” since no-one can or will “negotiate” away their own existence - particularly, as you point out, if the Israelis have the stronger power.

The Palestinians will have to settle for “equity” of the second sort; and the sooner they realize this and act on it, the better for them and everyone.

522

Thats a pretty big IF. I think people generally include development in East Jerusalem as settlement activity.

523

Oh, so when you say “everything they wanted” you mean that israel was not willing to fulfill every condition that Palestinians asked for prior to negotiations? Is THAT the context of your saying they didn’t get “everything they wanted” before negotiating? I thought you meant ti a different way.

Not negotiating for not getting everything you want as a precondition to nenegotiations can be uinreasonable depending on what the preconditions are. I think halting settlement activity DURING negotiations is a reasonable request especially when that settlement activity is going on in an area that is going to be a subject of negotiations.

524

Surely you jest. There are many, many things that the Israelis want in the WB - first, several cities which used to have major Jewish populations and holy sites in them, but above all access to the Jordan river and its water resources.

I don’t think many Jews are going to buy the ‘if everyone hates you, the common factor is you’ argument. :smiley:

Why has Lebanon not asked for peace? Well, a factor may be the fact that Lebanon is hardly a united country. For years it was in Syrian fiefdom and to this day it houses several armed factions struggling for power, most notably Hezbollah (backed by the Iranians and Syrians).

It is no wonder that a peace deal with Lebanon is elusive. The Lebanese have to be masters in their own house, before they can make peace with others. The Syrians and Iranians are seriously, hard-core evil, and have no abstract interest in peace.

How can one “compromise” over whether or not to divide one’s capital city? You either divide it or not - and given the unhappy experience of a divided capital in the past, it is going to be “not”.

Well, they have to get rid of Bibi, that’s a given. He’s got no more interest in making a deal than the Palestinians. But previous Israeli politicos put their careers on the line to achive a peace - and failed.

525

Not if they want peace with teh palestinians it isn’t. Israel doesn’t get to negotiate with itself. There is another party at the table.

There is some consensus about West Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital, there is not about East Jerusalem as far as i can tell.

there is question about whether it is “theirs” at all.

Then there simply may not be room for a deal and we will have to wait until Israel commits genocide or the Palestinians get their hands on a nuke.

Sure, its speaks volumes, its why Israel is our ally antd the Taliban is not. If the Taliban had control over Jerusalem, they would have flattened every non-muslim holy structure and built a mosque on top of it or something. If your point is that Israel is better than the taliban or the militant arm of hamas, then sure, those guys are cocksuckers.

526

Hamas’ position has shifted over time. I believe they have offered a 10 year truce for 1967 borders and a 10 year truce can turn into peace. but, I agree, they are a huge impediment to the peace process. They’re looking for a fight.

527

I’m sorry if I butted in on your conversation. I didn’t see the do not disturb sign.

You raise an interesting but irrelevant point. But, yes I think the occupation of the West Bank and East J’lem was illegal.

If you want to go back in time to find a solution, I’d say we create the state of Israel in Germany. What claim did Israel have to what we now call Israel? Why should we give any of it to the Zionists, never mind half.

I don’t care about the Palestinians any more than I cared about blacks in South Africa. I am not pro-Palestinian, so much as I am anti-zionist. I care more about the actions of my allies than the welfare of every poor downtrodden person in the world. I care how that ally affects my positions on foreign policy and how support for that ally (regardless of its actions) brings death and destruction to my doorstep.

BTW, this is the sort of thing I am talking about when i say that Israel apologists resort fo accusations of anti-semitism. Oh wait, I forgot, Ibn is a critic of israel because he thinks that the Balfour Declaration was a mistake.

528

This is the kind of thing I meant by “Give us almost everything. Once we are strong enough, we will kill you and take the rest.”

Regards,
Shodan

529

Damuri, I don’t know where you get your history from but you need better sources.

You’re apparently under the impression that Barak told Arafat at Camp David that he had to give up all claim to Jerusalem.

He didn’t.

You also seem to be under the impression that Arafat walked away from the table because Israel didn’t give him 100% of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

He didn’t and never claimed he did.

He walked away and started engaging in terror attacks again because Israel refused to grant the “right of return” to sever million Palestinians which Israel wasn’t going to do because it meant the end of the Jewish state and the Israelis would no more find acceptable a compromise that didn’t allow for the continued existence of a Jewish state than the Palestinians would find acceptable a compromise that didn’t allow for the existence of a Palestinian State.

Also you have yet to explain how outraged you are at the Hashemites stealing land and freedom from the Palestinians with the aid of your government and the West.

530

Damuri also doesn’t seem to understand that Hamas offered a “Hudna” and the significance of that term form Muslims.

As all Muslims know, Muhammad used a “Hudna” to give himself time to rearm, trick, and defeat his enemies.

Hamas when they make such an offer are doing so to A) send a message to their fellow Muslims that it’s part of their plan to defeat Israel the way Muhammad defeated and slaughtered his enemies and B) to get gullible westerners unfamiliar with the region or the history to believe that the want peace not large numbers of dead Jews.

531

…C) allow right-wingers of Israel to come up with Taqiyya-ish arguments for accepting the status quo, pushing off peace efforts into the dim future and allowing the continued growth of Israel into disputed land until whenever they feel like not doing so, and D) allow right-wingers to call those who are really interested in peace ‘useful idiots’.

532

I thought peace was on the table. My understanding is that right of return and jerusalem are not.

OK now that I understand what you mean by “everything” I think it the palestinianr eaction was justified. In refusing to halt settlement activity in jeruslaem, isn’t Israel effectively taking jerusalem off the table? If that is a deal breaker for the palestinians, then they are entirely justified in not negotiating.

I could say the same for the israelis.

I agree its not entirely israel’s fault but I have a hard time trying to figure out who is “mostly at fault” on the one hand you have decades of terrorism that has claimed the lives of hundreds of innocents and on the other hand you have a stolen nation and the oppression of a people. There seems to be enough blame to go around.

I think that practically speaking, everyone has to accept Israel’s right to exist. The placement of the state of israel is (IMO) an unfortunate accident of history but the state itself must survive.

I have said before that the only thing worse than 5 million Palestinian refugees is if they are joined by 5 million Israeli refugees.

Israel has the nuke and if the nuke can protect the sovereignty of a country like North Korea then it should certainly protect the sovereignty of a country like Israel.

In all likellihood that state must remain Jewish until the muslims in the area can be trusted not to oppress a Jewish minority (we might be waiting for a while to reach that Kumbayah moment but I have faith that we will get there one day).

Here is the Hamas position (as a political party) on the question of the state of israel:

“The question of recognizing Israel is not the jurisdiction of one faction, nor the government, but a decision for the Palestinian people.This was a major shift away from their 1988 charter”

They’ve got a long way to go but they’ve come a long way as well.

533

Point out exactly what it was that you wrote that you don’t think i’m understanding. The actual words you wrote so that we actually have something to discuss instead of you continuing to duck and dive.

Israel did not freeze settlement building in jerusalem. The original request, by the US and the Palestinians, was to temporaily freeze all settlement building regardless of where it was taking place. Israel refused to do this so the Palestinians refused to resume negotiations. What part of this don’t you agree with and if there is something you don’t agree with explain why with cites instead of continuing to duck and dive.

534

When has any peace offer ever been a contract? Like a legal contract? Most* peace offers are agreements put down on paper that then form the basis of peace agreements. israel didn’t produce anything resembling a peace offer.

*In fact I’d be surpeised if there was any other kind of serious peace offer that led anywhere that didn’t start out as a proposal set down on paper. Maybe somebody knows of one.

535

It is certainly grossly unfair to claim that “the Palestinians” don’t want peace, but anyone who think Hamas actually wants peace is absurd.

Remember, Hamas is not a nationalist organization. Their goal is not to give the Palestinians a state of their own, but to recover all the lands of the area that they feel, rightly or wrongly, belongs to the Muslim community.

As far as they’re concerned, it is more important that the Jews NOT have a state than the Palestinians HAVE a state.

That said, you’re certainly correct that right-wingers in Israel are pleased as punch with the idea of Hamas gaining more power and influence because the more powerful Hamas is the less likely there is for any sort of compromise.

536

Well, there’s your problem. Israel did not steal any nations.

You forgot the rest, which is “and to be secure within her borders”. Which is why the idea of a ten year truce leading to permanent peace is ridiculous, when dealing with terrorists like Hamas and Hizbollah.

The part where the Palestinians refused to negotiate unless they were already granted everything they wanted, as I have mentioned six or seven times already.

The only ducking I have seen is from answering Ibn Warraq’s question about Jordan illegally occupying the West Bank. Your crap about misrepresenting what people post and then pretending they agree with you doesn’t count.

Regards,
Shodan

537

Let’s say that both sides agree to make J’lem an international stateless city.

Who governs?

What citizenship do the inhabitants have?

Who pays for things?

What court do the inhabitants report to when they commit a crime?

What about Gilo?

If you want to separate E and W J’lem, then you have an issue of Jews, Christians and Arabs and their citizenship. The Palestinians will not want Jews on their ‘side’, and the Israelis will object to keeping (perceived) hostile Arabs on their ‘side’. But you can’t enact a population transfer without impeding on one’s citizenship rights, and as I posted before, about 30-40 per cent of Muslim Jerusalemites want to keep their Israeli citizenship. But Israel may use stuff like this + the new Palestinian state as an an example of why ‘they’ shouldn’t be ‘allowed’. (Note that Zionist Arabs are usually OK.)

So instead of saying, ‘Israel is such a boob for the Jerusalem issue! Dicks!’ maybe we can address some concerns? There are plenty of secular Israelis who don’t give two squats about religious movements but don’t want to see their capital city split up.

Damuri, you said that Israel doesn’t negotiate with itself, but you are incorrect. In a democracy, that’s how it works. If Netanyahu just said, “Okay! Let’s get 'er done, now what can I do for you?” his government would fall apart. The U.S. has a different form of government, but even Obama’s foreign policy is tied to Congress.
Senators Oppose 67 Lines

And what about Bethlehem? Do the Palestinian Christians prefer Israeli or PA control? Will their security change with a new and uncertain PA state? Didn’t the U.N. originally plan for part Bethlehem to be an international zone?

538

Comparing the Palestinians to black South Africans is utterly moronic. To give two examples that would be obvious to all familiar with both situations, Palestinians aren’t living in shanty towns and are quite well educated while most black South Africans lived in shanty towns and the vast majority were completely illiterate. In fact the first elections in which black South African participated in required all ballots to have pictures of the candidates to make sure that voters didn’t vote for the wrong candidates.

Moreover, if you’re concerned about how Palestinians are treated by “our allies” I’d point out that Jordan is a close ally of the US as is Kuwait, which ethnically cleansed several hundred thousand Palestinians following the end of the first Gulf War.

So, please point me to some of your posts where you’ve raged against those countries and how they’ve treated the Palestinians.

Dude, I’m not accusing you of anti-Semitism. I’m merely pointing out that you have weird ideas about Jews since you’ve demanded of posters if they’re Jewish and claimed you can predict a person’s political beliefs if they’re Jewish.

That’s not remotely the same thing as anti-Semitism.

539

Once again, I will ask you. WTF are you bothering with negotiatoions for. Just try to commit genocide in a way that the world will not totally freak out over. It seems to be the only long term solution you are leaving room for.

540

He appears to be a bit…Judeo-phobic. He doesn’t seem to understand that Jews in America are sympathetic the plight of Israelis due to Islamic anti-Semitism*. Not many are ‘Israel apologists’. If they are, they aren’t serious academics.

There was much talk about the Arab-American vote and Obama as Arab Americans are concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These Arab-Americans aren’t necessarily Palestinian - it’s about personal identification, religion, and fear of persecution based on one’s ethnic/religious background. Why isn’t there outcry on SD about how Muslims want to ‘control American foreign policy’?

Alan Dershowitz is no more an apologist (well, I’m basing this on The Case for Israel) of Israel than Khalidi is of the PLO. They offer different legal perspectives. They are both biased and can cause offense, but neither are hateful.

What Hamas, the PLO, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. project is hatred. When MK Leiberman says that only Orthodox Jews should be allowed aliyah or that Muslims should be deported to Palestine, that’s hatred.

But…if someone’s rejection of your argument is, “Oh, well you just want to cry antiSemitism because you are an apologist!” I have to wonder if they do hold questionable views, are ignorant, or are just extremely sensitive to disagreement.

Criticism of Israel is often a euphemism for anti-Semitism. I believe one can have anti-Semitic views and be very sincere about it - they’re just ignorant of facts. But Jews and Israelis are critical of Israeli government as well. If I were in Israel, I wouldn’t vote Likud, but because I’m Jewish and am disagreeing with someone in this thread, he sees me as religious Zionist/Israel apologist/god knows what.

Israel isn’t ruled by some despot who has had control for the last 60 years and can be judged as one government. Usually, when talking about the “Palestinian” side, we are talking about the PLO (unless we distinguish ourselves and mention Hamas) as they been the representatives of the Palestinians since Jordan named the West Bank, well, the West Bank. That’s limited to a few people.

Finally, the idea that America is ruled by someone else’s government doesn’t even make sense. America does what is in its best interests. If America did not need Israel, it would not care.

*and the history of people hating Jews for the last few thousand years