More narrowly focused followup to this thread. The Israeli West Bank Barrier purportedly was built/is being built for purely military/defensive purposes, to protect the settlements west of it from Palestinian attacks. But, it could also be read (though it has never been officially pronounced) as a clear declaration by Israel: “This land is ours and not negotiable. These settlements will never be evacuated. A Palestinian state, if and when, will not include this territory.” Is that the general feeling among the Israelis? How big a sticking point will this be in negotiations? How important is the territory between the Wall and the Green Line for an economically viable, self-sufficient Palestine?
Considering that the Israeli’s have in fact abandoned (by force in some cases) settlements in the past, why would you read it this way?
Like in Gaza, right?
My guess is it would vary, depending on which Israeli’s you asked. If you have a house and a community there then your feelings are going to be different than if you don’t.
Looking at the history, if the Israeli government decides it’s in the best interest of the country as a whole for those folks (Israeli citizens) to be moved out of there…then out of there they will be moved, regardless of their objections.
Not sure. Seemingly not important enough to stop attacking Israel though.
-XT
On account of that great long honking wall. Has an air of permanency, that sort of thing.
You mean like the Berlin Wall? Like that?
-XT
Or, perhaps, how the vast, vast majority if the barrier is non-permanent fencing/electronic detection and the extreme majority is concrete? And even that can be taken down easily enough?
Bah, enough fact checking for now.
I’m sure there will be plenty to come.
The answer to the OP is that a negotiated settlement will (gasp! shock! horror!) include a negotiated compromise as to what specific territories are given up and/or kept by various parties. Something close to Clinton’s Bridging Proposal can be expected if the Israelis believe that the PA is serious about clamping down on terrorism, incitement to genocide/violence, etc…
Time will tell.
I suspect that in the final negotiations there will be some changes that will end parts of the wall. Will there be “final negotiations?” Yes, there will. Will some territory Israel has settled become part of Israel? Yes, huge amounts of it. Will some parts the wall have to be knocked down to make a more coherent Palestine? Yup. And some territory will be swapped, as well. At the end of the day do both Israelis and Palestinians hope that two or three decades from now all of the wall comes down? Yup again.
Oh, by the way, FinnAgain, the PA has no plans on genocide, or incitement to there to. For you to hint at that or allege it is not helping erase ignorance.
It’s like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” All the words are in English and in correct grammatical order, but in the sequence presented convey no semantic meaning whatsoever.
First of all I did notice the strawman you just used, switching “the PA is serious about clamping down on terrorism, incitement to genocide/violence” to “the PA has plans for and incited genocide”.
Further, I’m not sure wtf you’re getting at, but it’s positively strange. Yes, Hamas both calls for a holy war to rid the world of Jews in its charter, advocates geoncide and ethnic cleansing in public statements, educates children that that should be their goal, and PA members, as well, have made similar public statements.
You are simply wrong.
Claiming that the facts are “ignorance” is weird.
On the other hand Glutton, you did catch me in a cut and paste error, I should have pointed out that the vast minority was concrete.
But, of course, I have again caught you simply making shit up. Of course, rather than retract that you’ve adopted the strategy that another one of your fellow travelers now uses and, when your arguments are debunked, suddenly you pretend that you’re unable to comprehend English. Hope that works out well for you.
Hrm, I forgot, PMW has weird internal architecture and links there work funny.
This should work for a specific report.
Although browsing the entire site in order to clear up your ignorance is probably a better bet, as well.
I never said it was all concrete. I just said the Wall seems to strongly imply an intention of permanence.
“Wall” might imply that. “Barrier” might not. Which is why word choice matters. In any case the structure such as it is has a very impermanent quality about it given that most of it is not constructed very wall-like.
To address the op - IMHO (and by official Israeli statements of intent) there is nothing like a non-negotiable line being drawn with the barrier although of course the longer it stays with no other negotiated solution becoming apparent the more likely are vines to grow and root the thing down. Now which direction the final borders move is also an open question; I would not assume that final borders only move Green Line-ward of the barrier throughout the course.
Why, people often confuse fences with walls all the time. It’s just one of those things. And we all know how permanent fences are. And, of course, when something like 90+ percent of a barrier is a fence/ditch, then calling the whole thing not just a wall, but a Wall is totally understandable.
It’s just one of those mistakes that happens.
Well, to be fair, the people who use phrases like “border fence” to advocate a security barrier along the US southern border do think of it as something permanent and impermeable. I’m not sure that the distinction in meaning between “fence” and “wall” is as hard and fast as you’re trying to imply.
I can see why many Israelis don’t like the possible association of their barrier with, say, the Berlin Wall, but I don’t see that calling it a wall is ipso facto wrong.
Well, in this thread, post #6, Alessan (an Israeli) asserts that existing settlements near the Green Line probably will be included within Israel’s borders after Palestinian independence.
And what’s your point relative to mine or your own op BG?
That at least some Israelis – and Alessan is no radical Greater-Israel extremist IME – definitely are thinking of everything west of the Wall as permanently Israeli.
But that does not in *any way *follow from the statement that “existing settlements near the Green Line probably will be included within Israel’s borders after Palestinian independence” or bring any light to the question of how fixed the fence demarcation is. In fact the final agreement may extend to include more settlements and may move Green Lineward or beyond to include more Palestinian villages and new lands for PA once the issue is less security and more negotiated agreements.
Indeed it may. But the question in the OP seems to be whether Israelis in general think it will or should. I haven’t been able to find any comprehensive opinion surveys about that, but I did note that in 2006 then-acting-PM Olmert considered a permanent border would more or less coincide with the barrier: