Okay: I know I shouldn’t get all excited about the Middle East Peace process AGAIN breaking down in violence. It’s not surprising. But how stupid can this get?
What brainless twat thought killing four soliders would magically bring about Palestinian utopia?
(no link, but basically all the terror groups got together and threw themselves a murder party)
If anyone in this situation had any brains in their head, Israel would say to Abbas: hey guy. There’s this guy who speaks in favor of suicide bombings. (I’m assuming here, since Israel claims to only use this tactic in ticking bomb situations): he’s about to do something really fucking stupid. Let’s make a deal: you do what you are supposed to do, and arrest this fuckhead and his entourage, take them out of circulation. Otherwise, we’re going to to have to blow him up in a public street, killing innocent civilians, and the end result of that is that people are going to be asking for your head anyway.
I’m mean, the point here is not that Rantissi is a swell guy and deserves a reprieve. This was even possibly already in the works, thanks to him, and only became a “revenge” attack in retrospect: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/11/mideast/index.html
But let’s do the math: fire missles into crowded street. Kill 2 civilians, wound 20, and fail to acheive your objective (killing Rantissi). And for what? To totally enrage the nutcases that it’s supposed to be Abbas’ responsibility to curb? Granted, he’s not willing to go to war against them, and frankly, his position looks a little foolishly underpowered to do much of anything against them.
But can anyone in this situation think more than ten days ahead?
Niether side wants peace–they just want to keep on killing each other. The hardline Israelis think the invisible man who lives in the sky told them they could have everything west of the Jordan 3500+ years ago and it’s their duty to take it back. The hardline Palestinians think they were unfairly booted out of their land by the Jewish dogs and blame them for spending three generations in refugee camps. I feel sorry for the majority of people on both sides who just want to live in peace. Why can’t we just put all the extremists together in a big Thunderdome-type situation and let them hack each other to death until their fucking gods tell them to stop and let everybody else just get on with their lives? I’m just sick to death of the whole fucking thing–and I don’t even fucking live there!
Ah yes, because when the Israelis attempt to kill one of the top leaders of a terrorist organization which has explicitly rejected the “roadmap” (and on which Abbas refuses to crack down), it is quite the same thing as when that organization kills 16 civilian bus passengers. Keep repeating to yourself your silly little “cycle of violence” mantra.
Oh, and one more thing vibrotronica: if you think this whole thing is exclusively about religion, maybe you better reserve your opinions on it till you become a little bit more informed.
I think this was just seen as one of these “too good to pass up” opportunities. Rantissi is pretty high on the list of people Israel wants taken out of commission. The Israelis got over-eager
And asking Abbas to arrest him wouldn’t have done any good.
Fang, I am a Jew and, until recently, felt that Israel’s actions were fully justified. But when I read about the attack on Rantissi, I thought “What the fuck!!!” As the OP says, this latest attack is now a “reprisal”. It would have fucking happened either way. Without it being a reprisal, it would have been a card in the Israeli’s hand (in my opinion) showing that the hardline Palestinians don’t want peace and give Abbas a chance to do something positive.
This is a hard thing and I don’t have the answers but it reminds me of a story I heard in Israel. (Sorry for the long, somewhat-hijack):
An American, a Brit, and an Israeli are walking through the jungle and are captured by savages. They are told they will be killed but given one last wish. The American says “I want some apple pie.” They make the apple pie, he eats it, and then is thrown into a pot of boiling water. The Brit says “I want some fish and chips.” They make the fish and chips, he eats it, and is thrown into the pot. The American is in terrible pain - his skin is all red. The Israeli says “I want to be kicked in the ass.” The savages are confused. “This is your last request?” The Israeli says “Yes.” So the savage leader kicks him in the ass. The Israeli turns around, whips out an Uzi and kills all the savages. The American is near death (skin all blistering off) and the Brit is close behind. They say to the Israeli, “If you had the gun the whole time, why didn’t you kill them when we were captured?” The Israeli replies “What, I should be called the aggressor?”
Hey Fang: please don’t be a fuckhead. I mean, what’s your plan, exactly? More helicopter attacks on Hamas? Lots of good that’s done in the past. Lots of good that did this time.
Can’t you at least admit that missle attacks in a civilian area aren’t the brightest way to get your man and get the Palestinian people behind the peace plan? Maybe they would make sense if the world was ending in a few days, but as a piece of a long term strategy, they are an ambysmally bad move, not in the least because this is about perception on the Arab street rather than the wankings of tactical intelligence teams with bullseyes on all the bad guys, hwoever accurate their information and desire to go in. The only way this is going to move forward is if someone in Abbas’ position can be convinced that they need to use civil authority to lock up the Hamas organizers.
Of course, like last time, Israel might then just bomb the jail, killing the guards but releasing the terrorist prisoners, but it’s at least worth a shot. What other options are there besides all out occupation and pacification?
I mean, I see the light creeping in sometimes, when people realize that, gee, it doesn’t really fucking matter who’s the evil nutcase. It doesn’t matter that Hamas and Jihad are way more insane and evil than anyone else in this conflict. What matters is that they react fairly predictably: you go and do something stupid that they can make major hay out of, and they will retaliate with suicide bombings. That’s a cycle of violence whether you like it or not, whether someone’s the good guy or not, and even if your entire focus is on stopping them, damn whoever else gets in the way, you have to realize that in some respects attacking civilians in PLA territory in such an indescriminate way plays right into their hands.
This isn’t about religion anymore, and the parts that are about religion don’t much matter anyway: people can be just as fanatical with or without the idea that their God says that they shold control the area.
They are certainly predictable, but they are not reacting.
Hamas explicitly refused a ceasefire. They do not want to stop the killing; they want it to continue so that Israel ceases to exist.
In other words, they do not wait for Israel to do something that they can make major hay about, and then send out suicide bombers. They send out suicide bombers no matter what Israel does. Israel offends them simply by existing.
Israel agrees to the roadmap, and begins dismantling a couple of the settlements. The terrorists refuse the roadmap, and continue attacks on Israel.
And nobody says boo about anything the Palestinians do. It is only when the Israelis act, that moral outrage becomes the Internet stock in trade.
Well, if it isn’t Shodan, the man that dries up and vanishes when cites come knocking.
Can you give me a cite to your claim that no one says boo when Palestians murder civilians?
Anyway: you’re off, largely because you’re missing entirely the whole value of the Palestinian street. When Israel does something like this copter attack, whether anyone thinks it was good or bad, it hands the floor to Hamas in a big gift wrapping: at a crucial moment in time. Especially when they botch it. Hamas certainly doesn’t wait for Israel’s lead, but if you don’t think that they are trying to goad Israel on, or try to derail the peace process by making Israel act out, I’ve got some more news for you: you are a clueless twat.
Hamas hates Israel already. Whether or not Israel does anything is not going to affect that. Whether or not Israel buys into the roadmap for peace or not, Hamas hates them and wants to destroy them.
So it doesn’t really matter what Israel does, whether it is killing civilians or acting as if they were a whole country of saints. Hamas is going to do what they do, because Hamas wants Israel to cease to exist.
So the premise of your post was wrong. Whether Israel gives them a pretext or not is not going to affect what Hamas does. There isn’t any way that Israel can manage Hamas into behaving reasonably - Hamas rejected negotiations for a cease fire out of hand.
If the Palestinian street reacts only to Israeli actions, and does not object to the terrorist acts of Hamas, what value is their opinion? And how is Israel committing suicide by not defending themselves, and thereby securing the good opinion of the “Palestinian street”, going to help the peace process?
A cite, you say? This is the sort of thing I was talking about. In particular, this:
Criticism, not of Hamas for waging the terror attacks, or of the suicide bombers of a year ago, but of Israel for reacting to them.
Of course I am exaggerating when I say nobody says boo to Palestinian terror attacks. But the reaction seems to me to be much stronger against Israel, even if they are striking against known terrorists, than against the terrorists themselves.
I’ve been listening and watching this catastrophe ever since I was old enough to understand John Cameron Schwase (SP?) on the Sunoco Five Stare Extra News (WLW, clear channel 700, at 5:45 PM week nights) in something like 1948. My conclusion is that the fanatics on both sides have finally achieved their goal–permanent and never ending war. I see no answer. The rational people on each side want something that the rational people on other side will not permit under any circumstances and the fanatics want the other side to just drop off the face of the earth. This is futile. It is also a continuing horror with no apparent end. They are all mad.
The worse thing is that Israel probably has the ability to implement their own ultimate solution. There may well soon come a time that we will have the specter of a liberal Western democracy pursuing a war of genocide. This thing, despite appearances, cannot go on for ever and no one seem to have a workable solution.
There’s a lot about this that I don’t understand, but what I really don’t get is: Why the bloody fuck did the Israeli’s fire missiles at the guy??? Huh? It seems to me, that a better solution, would be to use the helicopter’s machine guns. That way, you’ve got a smaller target area, and folks know that the Israeli’s aren’t just randomly blowing shit up, but are specifically going after one guy. Instead, they launch missiles, which even if they hit their target “dead-on” are going cause massive amounts of injury anyone in the area. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’ve been to the region a bunch of times, I closely follow the situation, I have family in the region. I can proudly state that everyone in this thread is mostly right – the situation is just that ugly and complicated.
The extremists on both sides control this. If the Palestinians entered a temporary cease-fire (there have been extended periods of relative calm even in the current unrest), the settlers would keep parking mobile homes on hilltops, and the Sharon government is mostly powerless to stop it. If the Israelis started slackening restrictions and talking peace (like last week), Hamas and IJ would still be bombing, and Arafat/Abbas/Dahlan/whoever would be powerless to stop it.
There indeed is a cycle here. There is of course mutual antagonism, but the justification is different on both sides. We on the Western Values side (not to stereotype) see the great evil done by suicide bombings and random terror on innocents, and can use it to justify increased occupation, missile attacks, bulldozing, and expanding settlements. The billion or so on the other side (not to stereotype) see endless occupation and oppression and use it to justify suicide bombings. There are no absolute rights and wrongs, and everyone looking at the situation would be well served to recognize it.
What is needed is some serious intervention – either something needs to happen deus ex machina or some bold offer that is too good to turn down. Solving the problem isn’t necessarily complicated, IMHO. What is needed is efficient short term separation (a big-ass border), monetary compensation for those displaced on either side, equal land trades, partial repatriation of refugees, and internationalization or fine division of Jerusalem (Muslims get the Temple Mount, Jews get the Western Wall), a mutual defense pact for Israel and heavy-duty economic assistance for Palestine. Tada, all the moderates are happy, there will be some rough spots from the extremists but when the moderates are happy these can be contained.
Give them 5 years of rocky peace and much of the incitement will disappear. There will still be the lunatic fringe (they never go away), but they will have far less sway. It happened after Oslo, it can happen again. Oslo failed because real progress got hung up in local politics. Have an outside force keep the deadlines (EU/US/UN military/economic aid will hinge on it), and things will only get better.
I’ve been saying the same thing for years – give it all to Disney, let them turn the whole country into a theme park, everyone who pays the fee can go in and have fun, anyone who misbehaves gets bounced out by Goofy and Dumbo.
If nothing else, the idea of a terrorist/soldier/whoever getting busted by oversized cartoon characters should go a long way into deflating the grandeur of warring and dying for a “holy land” … and it’d be amusing as hell to watch.
Every time this situation breaks down due to some terrorist outrage or hamfisted move, my mind wanders. I’ll admit it, terrible thoughts about what should be done enter my mind, and I entertain truly awful thoughts about certain groups of people that, in retrospect, really make me ashamed of myself. I despair that my future child will live in a world that produces such stupid violence.
But I still cling to the idea that freedom and rationalism in areas of insanity such as the Holy Land is like a weed growing in the crack of a concrete sidewalk. Given just a little bit of sunlight, the weed grows tall. And then I read articles like this gem and I slap myself for thinking some of the things I thought today as I read about the violence.
Somehow, the forces of rationalism (left and right alike) have to give people like this real muscle. Not just “hard” power, but the tools to give philosophy like this legitimacy among the Arab and Muslim masses.
I know it seems hopeless now, but I’m not giving up hope yet. Pessimism is for pussies.
Same as it ever was. There will never be peace as long as you have people who claim that god has expressly given this land to them.(both sides). It really makes me thing the only good thing that religion has ever given society is the catholic schoolgirl uniform with that short plaid skirt.
