Well, to be fair, capacitor, I think the current state of play is that some Jews and some Palestinians have been established (by DNA) as having shared heritage.
However, I’m not sure what percentage of the respective groups and sub-groups have been DNA analysed thus far. Certainly, in those tested, the correlation between the two suggests common heritage when, say, that between either group and Northern Europeans does not, or not to anything like the same degree.
Nonetheless, it would seem to make, IMHO, the ‘I was here before you’ arguments rather redundant. Be nice to concentrate on the future.
Yes, the settlements could be an additional causde of tensions, and I don’t question that they are to some degree. My assertion is that they’re not a major causes. Without them, Palestinians and neighboring Arab states would focus on some other reasons to attack Israel, like right of return. The excuse doesn’t matter. What matters is that it serves the purposes of various tyrants to whip up hatred of Israel.
Jodi asks why Arafat turned downed the offer of a Palestinian state. One would need to be in his brain to know for sure. Dennis Ross, who negotiated with "Arafat onbehalf of Bill Clinton said on TV that he believed Arafat would not have accepted any peace agreement at all.
Captaqin Amazing, has some sensibloe observations. Note that even without the settlements, Israel would have to pay close attention to Palestinin areas, since that’s where weaponsss are being assembled and where attacks against Israel are being iitiated. Regretably, the UN and the EU provide money, but no control.
Kimstu’s inaccurate guess about how checkpoints operate is understandable, given the overblown rhetoric one reads about settlements.
Henry B makes a moral case for the Palestinians, but that’s tangential to the OP. Suppose that the Arabs have every moral right to drive Israel out. If that’s their intention, then the settlements aren’t a key factor. The Arabs would be justifiably trying to take their land back in all of Israel
Yes, the settlements could be an additional causde of tensions, and I don’t question that they are to some degree. My assertion is that they’re not a major causes. Without them, Palestinians and neighboring Arab states would focus on some other reasons to attack Israel, like right of return. The excuse doesn’t matter. What matters is that it serves the purposes of various tyrants to whip up hatred of Israel.
Jodi asks why Arafat turned downed the offer of a Palestinian state. One would need to be in his brain to know for sure. Dennis Ross, who negotiated with "Arafat onbehalf of Bill Clinton said on TV that he believed Arafat would not have accepted any peace agreement at all.
Captaqin Amazing, has some sensibloe observations. Note that even without the settlements, Israel would have to pay close attention to Palestinin areas, since that’s where weaponsss are being assembled and where attacks against Israel are being iitiated. Regretably, the UN and the EU provide money, but no control.
Kimstu’s inaccurate guess about how checkpoints operate is understandable, given the overblown rhetoric one reads about settlements.
Henry B makes a moral case for the Palestinians, but that’s tangential to the OP. Suppose that the Arabs have every moral right to drive Israel out. If that’s their intention, then the settlements aren’t a key factor. The Arabs would be justifiably trying to take their land back in all of Israel
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Henry B *
**If You want to talk about the myth of the war 1967, feel free to post in the thread ”Palestinian bombers have NO excuse. Prove me wrong!”.
We are discussing the 1967 war on page 4, but I think You should read also page 3, or even the whole thread.
I will answer to the questions there, because I do not begin to paste about 2 pages here.
(And as I understand, I have no right to do so, because I should also paste what the other guys are saying).
There You can see what David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir, among others, says about 1967 war.
I give here the last post dates, so that You can easily find the threads: The last post of this thread was in Great Debates: 07-21-2002 10:04 PM by Halo13. A very good post.** But those cites were from Arab leaning sources. As Edwino pointed out
[quote]
**Your take on the 1967 war is also interesting. I won’t say that I am an authority, but there is ample evidence for an Egyptian and Syrian military buildup in the months before the war, followed by both militaristic speech from Nasser and closure of the Straits of Tiran. I can’t see how one could honestly make a point that Israel was in no jeopardy when three or four armies were perched on the border of a country in places less than 20 km wide. **
BARBITU8, are you having some posting difficulties? Remember, cut and paste once, post twice.
The short answer to your rebuttal is that I am not particularly interested in going back to the Big Bang to see who was parked out in that little corner of the desert first. Suffice it to say that the lands in question are and were in dispute regarding whose they are and should be, and therefore they should not have been permanently settled. This has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine, by the way, but merely recognizes that disputed lands very frequently have to be divvied up or given back as part of the cementing of a lasting peace, and the Israelis have blocked that possibility by going out there and settling the land, making it difficult if not outright impossible to ever give it back.
And yes, might makes right, all hail the conquering hero, if you take it you can keep it, etc. etc. That’s all true only so long as you are willing to be at war with your neighbors, however. I guess the Israelis would know better than I how long that will be. (Uneducated fed-up American’s guess, based on the behaviors of both the Palestinians and the Israelis: Forever.)
And DECEMBER, for you to stop by to simply reiterate that the settlements are not IYO a major cause, without additional argument, and when your arguments have previously been refuted one by one . . . pretty weak, man. Pretty weak.
December
You know as well as I do, that e.g. Arafat does not question the UN-boardes from 1947. So forget Your “suppose” and “if”.
It is Israel who does want to expand outside these boarders.
And that is a problem. Not in Your eyes, but in the Palestinan and UN and some crackpots’ like me. barbitu8
Yes I wrote:
“There You can see what David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir, among others, says about 1967 war.”
I clearly always tell if the sources are from “the other side”.
It is true that it is from a Palestinian source, but did You read what these top politicians/war heroes says?
The sources there are mostly Israelian, like Maariv, Jerusalem Post and some US newspapers.
Does it matter more who is collecting the info, than what actually has been said and done?
And about the 1967 war I answered also **with quotations from the Israeli leaders.
If they did not know how the war went, who does?**
Or don’t You thrust them?
I hope You do not just paste peoples answers from one thread to another, because in that way we can make any soup we want, without that “we are personally” saying so much.
Just comment in each thread.
There are many, many reasons for the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Settlements are a problem because they are seen as a sign that Israel is not acting in good faith (i.e. while they claim to be willing to return all the land to the 1967 borders in exchange for peace, the continuing permanent settlement of Jews on some of those lands belies that intention).
So yes, the settlements are a fairly major problem, because they give Palestinian extremists an excuse to say that Israel will never deal with Palestinians ‘fairly’, and therefore should be fought to the end.
** Jodi **, I don’t know how I had two posts, quoting you, with nothing I said. It should be apparent that I did not do that intentionally. In fact, I deleted from your quote everything but that you see at my 3d post. I never even sent the first two posts, but waiting to send the post I did, my computer timed out. So, I clicked the back button and resent it. Apparently, that must’ve triggered some error mechanism. I did not mean "resent it, " but “re-sent it.”
**Henry B **, I was in this post so I did not go to the other post, which I probably should have. My apologies. Nonetheless, if you cannot trust the sources, how can you trust what they state that Israel leaders actually said? Quotations from them by a slanted source cannot be taken at face value. Perhaps they said what these sources claim they said, but perhaps also they were taken out of context. I don’t know. I do know that the USA believes the Israel strike was preemptive. The fact remains that Israel was only 20 km wide (at its narrowest) with a build-up of Egyptian and Syrian forces, Nasser making militaristic noises, and the closing of the straits of Tiran. I wish I had a definitive answer to that question, and your posts put the pre-emptive strike in question, especially since Israel obviously intentionally attacked the American ship. But I don’t know.
Interesting interview in Newsweek with the new candidate and front-runner for the leadership of Israel’s Labor Party: Amram Mitzna
Of special relevance to this thread:
"The settlements are the core issue of the problem with the Palestinians. This is one of the most difficult issues, and I think it will determine whether or not an agreement is possible with the other side. "
Palestinians lead wretched lives in ways too numerous to list. Lack of economic opportunity is perhaps the greatest of their problems. Settlements are the least of their problem.
Settlements are small. They are built on unoccupied land. They are not visible to most Palestinians. They have no effect on most Palestinians.
Arafat has done far too little to improve the lives of the Palestinian people. He has stolen huge amounts of aid money, and the people know it. He has not created economic structure. He goes around with surrounded by his army of armed thugs. If people viewed him dispassionately, they wouldn’t like whaatg they see. So, he uses hatred of outsiders to help maintain power.
The attitude of Palestinians toward the settlements is like the attitude of old-time bigots living in an aii-white neighborhood. If an African-American family moves in, the bigots can be stirred to violence, particularly if that serves the purpose of some demogogue. The new neighbors are different, so they must be driven out.
Hey, who are those guys up on the hillside watching us ?
Oh, those are just the Israeli settlers
They live up there ?
Yep.
Nice views.
I believe if this thread demonstrates only one thing, it is that december has never been to the West Bank.
Fact is, If you live near one of those settlements, the settlers could tell you everything from what time your kids go to school to what time you go to bed. That does equal tension, and a lot more besides.
Believe me, it matters that you understand how influential is the topography. Talking about settlements on the West Bank without understanding that is akin to saying you understand the surface of the moon better than Neil Armstrong.
In short december, your views on the matter seem pretty close to meaningless.
They are NOT built on “unoccupied” land. They are built on ILLEGALLY occupied Palestinian land - illegally occupied by Israelis.
Get out of your fucking arm-chair, december, go to the bloody West Bank and find out for yourself what it’s like.
If you’re too gutless to do that - we have a Palestinian guy just started working for our company. His mother and sister still live in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. Post me some questions here and I’ll get him to answer them for you.
Incidentally - this must be the most goddamn stupid, inflammatory and pointless thread title I have ever seen. “Resolved” my fucking foot. By whom? By december. What a waste of cyberspace.
Uh, not to stick up for december, but in forensics, a debate topic is introduced with the structure, “Resolved: X.” Then one side argues pro and the other argues con. We can find lots of legitimate reasons to oppose december’s posts; this isn’t one.
I have been in the West Bank and seen a couple of settlements. The ones I saw were isolated from anything. They were on small hills. I would guess that the hillside location was chosen for defensive reasons. They did not have a view of any Palestinian homes or neighborhoods.
The key point of a settlement is economic. There must be a way to make a living in this small isolated community. That’s a challenge. The adults are busy working. The settlements I saw had only a couple of hundred occupants – men, women and children – hardly enough to constitute some sort of occupying force.
For all I know there could be other settlements with the characteristics that LC alleges, but I didn’t see any. Perhaps LC will tell us which settlements conform to his/her description, so we can evaluate his assertions.
Istara – They are built on land that is vacant. Nothing and nobody is there. It’s literally unoccupied. You claim that the land legally belongs to Palestinians. That’s a debatable point. But, regardless of the legality, the land is literally unoccupied.
1)unoccupied means that no one is physically living there.
2)Regardless of it being occupied or unoccupied, it is still under Israeli control.
If that is the case…What’s your point? Isn’t this all about control of the land there? And to say that it has no effect on the Palestinians is a bit, well, assertive, wouldn’t you think? You honestly couldn’t say that unless you were a Palestinian or took a poll of the Palestinian people to see what they really thought about it. (and if you do have a link to prove me wrong, I welcome it.)
Here’s an example. We have a large field in front of our house than used to be “unoccupied”. But the old guy that owned it died, and his kids split it up into plots and sold it off. Now, some people moved in on it, and some didn’t, but still bought it with the intent of moving in on it later. That bugs the hell out of me, because we used to view it as “our” field, even though it never belonged to us.
It doesn’t matter if the settlements are occupied or not. The fact of the matter is that they’re still there, and the Palestinians don’t like it. The Palestians do care about the settlements, or, more importantly, the land on which the settlements are built. And the land is where a very large portion of the conflict lies, (aside from out right hatred of Jews, or what used to be anyways.)
In the US, and bank or loan company will not give you a loan to build a house, unless you have clear title to the land. Since the West Bank land is (to put it mildly) of uncertain title and ownership, what kind of financial institution would be so foolish as to grant a mortgage on it?
I suspect that the Israeli government is talking out of both sides of the mouth-the government claims no authority over the “settlers”, but they are certainly providing the MONEY to build the settlements.
I also suspect that a good part of the money comes from the $6 billion annual “donation” from the US Taxpayers.
I can understand this, when the develpment is local. I’m disappointed to see farms in my town become housing developments.
However, does it bug someone when a field located in another town twenty miles away is developed? Of course not. That’s what most of the settlements are like.
