Sorry, hit “Submit” too soon…
No doubt deterrence is also part of the agenda. But a) it’s not reprisal against an innocent population, it’s against specific, guilty parties, and b) not “plain and simple.” The reasons are numerous and varied.
Paul Fitzroy:
And you don’t see the other side of that? The Israelis are engaged in ethnic cleansing and the Palestinians are fighting back with the only means the have at their disposal. The cannot just sit back and do nothing while their land is taken from them and their people are oppressed.
Reviewing the history of the situation is instructive, but we should be searching for justice, not blame. There is no solution but a solution. The Israelis should pull all their settlments out of the West Bank and the Palestinians should give up their claim to Jerusalem. This wouldn’t magically eliminate terrorism, in part because we’ve been making the Arabs very, very angry for a very, very long time now. But solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue in a way that’s acceptible to the Palestinians is an absolute prerequisite to improving our relationship with the Muslim world, which is an absolute prerequisite to reducing the terrorist threat.
fair enough,.
the water reference was hopelessly obsure and disjointed.
Translation:
The economic externalities that result from the presence of an industrially based and expanding Israel include soaling up a tremendous amount of the water table, which of course arises from aquifers which have no respect for surface political boundaries, and hence become an object of regional competition.
The practics of pouring concrete into wells dug in the occupied territories does little to dispell the sense that Israel’s policy towards this universally vital resource is one of sharing.
(I hope the part about dersh being a racist piece of shit was clear…)
if the Israelis were “engaging in ethnic cleansing” there would be no Palestineans.
The Israelis are fighting back, against a sadistic group of savages who have been offered everything from self-rule through citizenship in Israel.
But it isn’t about what the Palestinians want.
It’s about what they don’t want. They don’t want Israel to exist.
It “offends” them.
Around here, if you’re offended, you GROW UP and you GET OVER IT!
correction:
NOT one of sharing.
( and I was doing so well there, until I ventured into the forest of negatives…)
Now Waaiiit jus’ a minute here…
Citizenship in Israel? Bullshit. That’s the one state solution that makes Sharon wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.
But if Israel does not cut loose the occupied territories,it will awake some morning to find a Palestinian Gandhi (ok, I’ll wait for a minute till you collect yourselves–residual giggling will be tolerated but if you must guffaw, please leave the room ) conducting a death fast until full rights and the vote are granted to all inhabitants.
It’s unfortunate that the Palestinians needed a Gandhi and got an Arafat.
I don’t deplore the wall. I deplore the way it’s being build : encroaching on the west bank to include various settlements, cutting Palestinian villages in half, etc…
alaric:
Unfortunate both for Israel and for the Palestinians.
But that’s what Israel has to deal with on the Palestinian side. Until they actually have a Gandhi, Israel will have to deal with harsh realities…harshly.
That is a disgusting and smug characterization of behavior that is unsupportable and doomed to produce precisely the opposite of its purported goal.
ANd what exactly IS acceptable to the Palestinians, other than the dissolution of Israel?
I don’t know if you’ve seen, but the Israeli Supreme Court redrew a part of the wall around Jerusalem, saying the old wall lines violated Palestinian rights. More challenges are expected to be filed, so what the current wall line looks like is probably more troubling than what it will look like after it’s built.
I’ve seen it. Hence this ruling could from now on apply to the “cutting villages in half” part . But wouldn’t solve the “encroachment on occupied territories” part.
I feel roughly the same about this ruling than about the recent american supreme court about Guantanamo. First, it took a ruling for something which should have been blatantly obvious for both governments. Second, I fully expect Sharon’s government to do everything it can to limit the consequences of the ruling or to find a way around, as the US government is apparently doing in the case of Guantanamo. There’s in both cases an utter lack of consideration for the rights of people classified as “ennemies”. The response not being “how! I just didn’t realized it was wrong” (of course they knew it was), but rather “how stupid can they be? Why do they insist on granting rights to these people? What can I do to go on trampling on these rights they supposedly have”?
I suspect also that in the case of the wall separating the village from the cultivated land, for instance, the solution chosen won’t be to let the village on the Palestinian side of the wall, but rather to put the land on the Israeli side.
I’ve zero confidence in Sharon to do anything which is right, in case it wouldn’t be obvious.
I work for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
We build roads.
Whereever we build a road, no matter who asks for one, or how much it is needed, we get protestors.
And lawsuits.
And we divide communities in half.
And “violate burial places”. (Not that anybody knew that these places existed, until we accidentially found them. :rolleyes: )
Protests, riots, and occasionally sabotage dog us remorselessly.
Often committed by the very people who would most benefit by a new or improved road. :smack:
I’m not suggesting that the Palestinians benefit from the wall.
But build anything, and many of these problems occur, even here in the States.
First, separate the “Middle East” issues from the “Happens Every Time We Build Stuff” issues.
Hmmm… I doubt that when you build a road in the US, people are forbidden to cross it or going around it except in the case when their property happens to be on the other side, in which case they must show up at the pedestrian passageway situated 3 miles away, only at certain hours of the day, show their documentations and only then be allowed across, at least if nothing happened which resulted in the passageway being closed for an undetermined duration.
Plus have their fields cleared, trees unrooted, etc…in a wide band along the road and I’m certainly forgetting a lot of other differences. For instance your roads aren’t intended to change the limits of the local reservation, I would assume?
So, I think you should separate issues which are totally different.
clairobscur:
Don’t confuse “chief executive” with “government.” The Supreme Courts are part of their respective governments, and are there for precisely this reason, they are the branch of the government that tells the other branches when they’re out of line.
Again, don’t conflate Sharon with the entire Israeli government. Not only does he have the Supreme Court to keep him in check if his military instincts get too out of hand, but he also has his party to answer to to keep his position and the Knesset who must support him on major moves (e.g., the pullout from Gaza that he proposed).
Have you considered the possibility that the response is “Why do they insist on putting the rights of these people over the security of Israeli citizens?” No, of course not. He oppresses people because he’s an ogre; I’ll bet he has a bumper sticker that says “I’d rather be clubbing baby Palestinians.” :rolleyes:
It is. Is there any living Israeli leader (i.e., one who could theoretically replace Sharon) who you think could do things right? Peres, who lost what could have been a slam-dunk election (piggybacking on Rabin’s martyrdom) if not for a sudden spate of terrorist bombings? Barak, under whose leadership the Palestinians decided to end negotiations and begin the Al-Aqsa intifada?
At the risk of sounding “smug” (as alaricthegoth has accused me of), the Palestinians certainly don’t seem to do anything to support a more conciliatory Israeli government.