Because Donald Trump is the President of the United States. He’s supposed to be doing what’s best for the United States.
But those people are just violent, they just hate us, and you can’t reason with them. :rolleyes:
Who was elected by the same people who elect all our administrations. The role of honest broker, to the extent it exists, is played by the President, but only on behalf of the people. If the people of the US can’t be relied upon to elect Presidents with a sense of responsibility to the world, then the world can’t rely upon the US government over the long term.
If you actually mean that has been true for some time and the election of Trump just made it impossible to overlook any longer, then I cannot disagree.
As opposed to the Israeli leadership? Remind me, which side is swallowing up the other’s territory with settlements?
I believe that Israel is willing to negotiate and accept a peace treaty that results in the ongoing existence of a genuine Palestinian state that exists alongside Israel. I do not believe the same is true of Palestine. I believe that the overall goal of Palestine is the non-existence of Israel and that any peace treaties will be treated as short-term steps on the path towards that long-term goal.
Yep, and they will continue until the Palestinians stop putting terrorists in positions of power and negotiate in earnest, rather than political grandstanding.
More or less what Little Nemo says.
Based on what? The settlements say otherwise.
Nope. just the opposite. The settlements are a daily reminder the the isrealis are not infinite in their patience. Theta hte palestinians have to get to the table and negotiate in good faith starting with the fact that they concede Isreal has a right to exist and that Jews have a right to live.
Ghada Karmi, trotted out here as an example of reasonableness: “” Karmi also said that Israel does not deserve to continue as a state and that “We have no alternative but to act. The only way we can stop Israel is to act against it, against its interests, against its apartheid and policies".
“Abbas has since confirmed that he turned down an Israeli offer for a Palestinian state on nearly 95% of the West Bank.”
Of course, the settlements and their residents would be Palestinian after the deal, right? :rolleyes:
Let’s be more plain, then: Upon what facts can one be confident that Israel recognizes Palestine’s right to exist?
I haven’t seen any evidence that this is true. It seems to me that Israel is satisfied with the status quo.
That’s just a recipe for a vicious circle: party A occupies and oppresses party B, factions within party B respond with violence, factions within party A use this violence as justification for the occupation and oppression. Repeat ad infinitum.
Some might be.
Isreal has offered this several times. “Abbas has since confirmed that he turned down an Israeli offer for a Palestinian state on nearly 95% of the West Bank.”
Might. Sure. But I think you know better too.
Your justification for them is that they tell the Palestinians they can either accept subjugation or be subjugated. Um, no, peace doesn’t work that way.
No, Isreal has never asked for their “subjugation”. Isreal has made several good faith offers of a independent West Bank Palestine.
I believe Israel would like to exist in a peaceful relationship with the Palestinians. But peace requires both sides agree in wanting peace. War results if either side wants it.
So Israel takes the pragmatic view that if a hostile relationship with the Palestinians is inevitable, it’s better to have a hostile relationship with a Palestine that is weak and subjugated than to have a hostile relationship with a Palestine that represents a genuine threat to Israel.
I believe you believe it. But the *evidence *all seems to be to the contrary, doesn’t it? What should the world believe, and why?
Pragmatic, you call it? Inevitable? There are plenty of euphemisms available to those who prefer them, like DrDeth apparently, but not those. The conclusion and the premise are reversed.
I obviously disagree. The evidence I’m seeing is that various Palestinian groups have engaged in terrorist attacks against Israel since almost the day Israel was founded. A coalition of Israel’s neighbours declared war on Israel the week that Israel was founded. And there have been repeated calls for the destruction of Israel from these groups.
So I’d say the evidence is that Israel did not initiate the violence. It’s been responding to the violence that was initiated against it.
I’m avoiding euphemisms because I feel that would be biasing my position in favor of one side or the other. I’m using the words pragmatic and inevitable in their literal dictionary definitions.
Worrying about who threw the first punch almost 70 years ago, (or earlier, actually), has little to do with who is continuing the fight. As long as Israel, (in the form of Netanyahu and his cronies), continue to take Palestinian land for their settlements, it will present to the outside world an image of theft.
This is not a one-sided issue. As long as rockets keep being launched into Israel, the Palestinian extremists are going to invite retaliation. However, as long as Israel continues to take land from the Palestinians, the extremists will have ample opportunity to recruit new members. In addition, Israel’s Trump-like approach to attacks, hitting gnats with a sledgehammer, is doing nothing to ease tensions or allow moderates on either side to propose compromise.
(bolding mine)
Yes, but as far as many if not most Palestinians are concerned all of Israel is occupying “Palestinian land”. The PLO was formed before Israel took over the West Bank following Jordan’s rather ill-advised invasion in 1967.
As members of the BDS movement(which is certainly moderate by Palestinians standards) like to chant “Free Palestine from the Rive to the Sea”.
To people in the West like us it certainly seems reasonable to believe the Jews are entitled to an independent state of their own in the land where they as nation were born, but to virtually all Palestinians the Jews have no more of a right to an independent state than the Afrikaners have the right to an independent Boerstat within South Africa.
(bolding mine)
Except how do you define “moderate” on either side.
You can find some Israelis willing to offer the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but unless you could create a viable independent state within that area such a concession is useless and unlikely to stop the violence and frankly I see little reason to believe such a state could be viable.
As for “moderate” Palestinians, well if your definition are those who would be willing to settle for anything less that a solution which gives them the hope of recovering all the land they feel that the Jews stole from them I’m not sure they exist on the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Every poll I’ve seen has shown a rejection of the two state solution unless it was presented as a first step towards a free Palestine.
Perhaps some of our Israelis would disagree but I can’t imagine any Israelis agreeing to a settlement that wouldn’t at the very least allow for their continued existence as an independent Jewish State.
I think there is a legitimate issue of what was the cause and what was the effect. As I noted, surrounding countries declared war on Israel on the first week of Israel’s existence. Israel at that point did not hold any Palestinian land (as defined by the 1948 division). So there was no justification for the attack on the basis that Israel was unlawfully holding Palestinian land. The justification for the attack was that Israel existed at all, even inside its UN borders.
Israel can therefore legitimately ask if the surrounding countries would attack it again if it returned all Palestinian land and withdrew inside its original borders. Israel’s not going to withdraw back to some hypothetical borders unless it has reasons to believe other countries are going to respect those borders.