Obama proposes 1967 Palestine borders-Israeli PM rejects it

[Elfdart]

Why are the '67 borders such a sticking point? Why not insist on the '48 borders?

At this point in time, insisting Israel return to its pre-1967 borders seems like a non-starter. There are very few Israelis who will willingly give up the Golan Heights - giving up the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was already a significant concession that hasn't really benefited Israel.

1. Israel hasn't given up the West Bank, they are still building even more settlements.
2. Isn't the Golan Heights a dispute with Syria? I don't think it's relevant to the Palestinian issue.

I'm sick and tired of hearing on what Israel feels entitled to. They have no right to the land outside the 1967 borders. Full stop. By letting them keep the land they squatting it just sets a precedent that colonialism and ethnic cleansing are okay.

Why do they have a right to the 1967 borders? Why not force them back to the 1948 borders?

The 1967 borders represent a compromise between the 48 line on one hand, and Greater Israel on the other. Of course compromise with expansionist Lebensraum regimes isn't really compromise so much as appeasement. They take the compromise position and assume the right to expand from there.

When Obama's administration stops vetoing UN resolutions, and holds Israel to the same standard it holds other countries, then I'll consider his speeches something other than hot air. Until then...

[bobalot]

This talk of Isreal''s borders being "indefensible" is a load of bullshit. Israel has the most advanced army in the middle east and 200 fucking nuclear weapons.

The chances of any Arab army attacking Israel today is zero. However, it is a nice excuse for more ethnic cleansing.

BTW, wasn't this the same excuse for the Soviet Union when it attacked Finland? It wanted to make its border around Leningrad more "defensible"?

[fgalkin]

This talk of Isreal''s borders being "indefensible" is a load of bullshit. Israel has the most advanced army in the middle east and 200 fucking nuclear weapons.

The chances of any Arab army attacking Israel today is zero. However, it is a nice excuse for more ethnic cleansing.

BTW, wasn't this the same excuse for the Soviet Union when it attacked Finland? It wanted to make its border around Leningrad more "defensible"?

Who says anything about attacking armies? From the 1967 borders, any militant with a rocket would be able to hit any point in the most populated part of Israel, including Ben Gurion airport. Is Israel going to use those nukes against Hamas?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Bakustra]

From the current borders of the US, it is possible for dangerous Canadian militants to bombard Niagara Falls or Detroit, and for Mexican terrorists to attack El Paso. From the current borders of France, it is possible for menacing, scowling Germans to shoot rockets at Strasbourg. There are a hell of a lot of borders as "insecure" as the Israel border would be in parts, but if the US seized Windsor or Juarez or Niagara Falls or Tijuana or Sault Ste. Marie as buffer zones and refused to give them back, would you really defend that?

Ah, but there already is a militant group, I can hear you object. But this methodology, at best, treats militants as being essentially forces of nature that are eternal. At worst, it suggests that Palestinians are so incapable of living in peace with other people that they will never stop trying to fight Israel. In other words, rather than using Hamas as an excuse to hold onto its illegal settlements for eternity and keep Palestine from ever gaining any spark of independence or sovereignty, Israel, were it serious about peace (and it isn't, or at least isn't serious enough), ought to try to remove the causes of militancy and focus on making the Palestine-Israel border as banal and unusual as the US-Canadian one.

Meanwhile, today Netanyahu gave a speech to his adoring fans in the US House of Representatives, where they cheered him declaring that East Jerusalem would never be given up, that the settlements would never be given up, and Israel would never acknowledge a Palestinian Right of Return. He also announced that Israel was willing to make "painful compromises" for peace. I wonder where the pain or the compromise would come it.

[Block]

Ah, but there already is a militant group, I can hear you object. But this methodology, at best, treats militants as being essentially forces of nature that are eternal. At worst, it suggests that Palestinians are so incapable of living in peace with other people that they will never stop trying to fight Israel. In other words, rather than using Hamas as an excuse to hold onto its illegal settlements for eternity and keep Palestine from ever gaining any spark of independence or sovereignty, Israel, were it serious about peace (and it isn't, or at least isn't serious enough), ought to try to remove the causes of militancy and focus on making the Palestine-Israel border as banal and unusual as the US-Canadian one.

There's a huge issue with that. All Hamas has to do to prove that it's serious is recognize Israel's right to exist, even within pre-67 borders. It has yet to do that, has yet to show it has any control over its members and several other simple steps that would be solid evidence that it was taking steps to show some sort of committment to peace. Expecting Israel to negotiate with someone who won't recognize its existence is unrealistic, unreasonable and meaningless.

[Simon_Jester]

From the current borders of the US, it is possible for dangerous Canadian militants to bombard Niagara Falls or Detroit, and for Mexican terrorists to attack El Paso. From the current borders of France, it is possible for menacing, scowling Germans to shoot rockets at Strasbourg. There are a hell of a lot of borders as "insecure" as the Israel border would be in parts, but if the US seized Windsor or Juarez or Niagara Falls or Tijuana or Sault Ste. Marie as buffer zones and refused to give them back, would you really defend that?

Don't be willfully stupid.

The portions of the US which are potentially threatened from its borders are small, and its military has been quite successful throughout history at deterring such attacks. The last cross-border raid onto US territory was Pancho Villa, and that was about a hundred years ago. The US's capital city, its main economic centers, its military bases, all these things are not threatened by anything that can happen on the borders in the short term. Even if vast armies suddenly teleported out of nowhere on the US borders and started marching forward, shooting at everything within range and sending squadrons of planes to bomb all targets they could find, there would still be enough time for the US to get fighters into the air, scramble troops, and resist the invaders.

Israel is much, much smaller, to the point where you can literally fire a cannon half way across the country. This creates a very different military problem- practically any point in Israel could be hit by airstrikes almost immediately after a declaration of war, potentially with only a few minutes' warning.

This also makes their nuclear deterrent less valuable- because while Israel has nuclear weapons, most of them are bombs dropped from planes. The planes can be destroyed on the ground. The only unattackable deterrent they have, one that they know will survive a surprise attack, is their submarines which are (it is believed) armed with nuclear cruiser missiles... but they only have enough submarines to keep two of them on patrol at a time.

This is not an especially wide margin of security. People have been attacked before in ways that neutralized their standing forces and left them open to attack, when they had larger standing forces than that.


Now. Does this excuse Israelis from moral responsibility for a long list of nasty and outright vicious things done by various Israelis over the years? It does not. But it does present them with an awkward problem, if they wish to have the rather common advantage of security from the fear of being killed.

Acknowledging this awkward problem, or at least showing a sign that one understands what the hell it is, is a good thing. It shows realism and an understanding of the facts on the ground, from which we can proceed to talk intelligently about what strategies the Palestinians and Israelis would be wise to pursue if they want to settle their differences.

For example, the Israelis are not wise to pronounce that the settlements must stay, or that no Palestinians can ever return to land their ancestors were removed from, or to refuse to restrain their own militant idiots. The Palestinians are not wise to demand the right of return in a way that would leave most of the population of Israel homeless, or to sporadically launch ineffective missile and bomb attacks that serve only to make the Israelis paranoid, belligerent, and dumb.

[Bakustra]

Ah, but there already is a militant group, I can hear you object. But this methodology, at best, treats militants as being essentially forces of nature that are eternal. At worst, it suggests that Palestinians are so incapable of living in peace with other people that they will never stop trying to fight Israel. In other words, rather than using Hamas as an excuse to hold onto its illegal settlements for eternity and keep Palestine from ever gaining any spark of independence or sovereignty, Israel, were it serious about peace (and it isn't, or at least isn't serious enough), ought to try to remove the causes of militancy and focus on making the Palestine-Israel border as banal and unusual as the US-Canadian one.

There's a huge issue with that. All Hamas has to do to prove that it's serious is recognize Israel's right to exist, even within pre-67 borders. It has yet to do that, has yet to show it has any control over its members and several other simple steps that would be solid evidence that it was taking steps to show some sort of committment to peace. Expecting Israel to negotiate with someone who won't recognize its existence is unrealistic, unreasonable and meaningless.

I didn't actually suggest negotiations. I suggested that Israel remove the causes of militancy and knock the supports out from under Hamas and other violent groups. They could negotiate, or they could recognize that militancy has its roots in the way that they treat Palestine and come up with exotic means like "stopping running over activists with bulldozers" or "stopping the theft of Palestinian land, water, and natural resources" or even "quitting efforts to keep Gaza dependent on humanitarian aid"! In other words, rather than effectively throwing up their hands in the air and going "Oh, those crazy, universally anti-Semitic Palestinians! When will they learn to stop hitting themselves!", they could try to solve the fucking problems.

From the current borders of the US, it is possible for dangerous Canadian militants to bombard Niagara Falls or Detroit, and for Mexican terrorists to attack El Paso. From the current borders of France, it is possible for menacing, scowling Germans to shoot rockets at Strasbourg. There are a hell of a lot of borders as "insecure" as the Israel border would be in parts, but if the US seized Windsor or Juarez or Niagara Falls or Tijuana or Sault Ste. Marie as buffer zones and refused to give them back, would you really defend that?

Don't be willfully stupid.

The portions of the US which are potentially threatened from its borders are small, and its military has been quite successful throughout history at deterring such attacks. The last cross-border raid onto US territory was Pancho Villa, and that was about a hundred years ago. The US's capital city, its main economic centers, its military bases, all these things are not threatened by anything that can happen on the borders in the short term. Even if vast armies suddenly teleported out of nowhere on the US borders and started marching forward, shooting at everything within range and sending squadrons of planes to bomb all targets they could find, there would still be enough time for the US to get fighters into the air, scramble troops, and resist the invaders.

Israel is much, much smaller, to the point where you can literally fire a cannon half way across the country. This creates a very different military problem- practically any point in Israel could be hit by airstrikes almost immediately after a declaration of war, potentially with only a few minutes' warning.

This also makes their nuclear deterrent less valuable- because while Israel has nuclear weapons, most of them are bombs dropped from planes. The planes can be destroyed on the ground. The only unattackable deterrent they have, one that they know will survive a surprise attack, is their submarines which are (it is believed) armed with nuclear cruiser missiles... but they only have enough submarines to keep two of them on patrol at a time.

This is not an especially wide margin of security. People have been attacked before in ways that neutralized their standing forces and left them open to attack, when they had larger standing forces than that.

So the right to military security is to be considered fundamental now? In that case, Israel is violating that right for Palestine and will continue to do so indefinitely, so pardon me if I don't shed a tear for them being bullied by that mean, nasty Barack Obama with his crazy ideas of "compromises that people might actually accept".

What you're suggesting is that wars of aggression and the annexion of territory be legitimized as long as one nations feels it's militarily indefensible without it. So who determines this? What if the territory is equally valuable to both nations? Shall we simply replace international law altogether with "might makes right?" Then pardon me while I stock up on firearms to ensure my moral clarity.

Not to mention that if Israel really did want maximum security it would have already started invading Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt in order to annex their land and commit genocide on their native populations to produce nice, empty areas for security. But as repulsively as Israel behaves, it is not actively genocidal as of now. There are reasonable limits to "security", and I don't think that giving Israel carte blanche to commit all manner of atrocities and crimes to ensure this "security" is really productive.

Now. Does this excuse Israelis from moral responsibility for a long list of nasty and outright vicious things done by various Israelis over the years? It does not. But it does present them with an awkward problem, if they wish to have the rather common advantage of security from the fear of being killed.

Acknowledging this awkward problem, or at least showing a sign that one understands what the hell it is, is a good thing. It shows realism and an understanding of the facts on the ground, from which we can proceed to talk intelligently about what strategies the Palestinians and Israelis would be wise to pursue if they want to settle their differences.

For example, the Israelis are not wise to pronounce that the settlements must stay, or that no Palestinians can ever return to land their ancestors were removed from, or to refuse to restrain their own militant idiots. The Palestinians are not wise to demand the right of return in a way that would leave most of the population of Israel homeless, or to sporadically launch ineffective missile and bomb attacks that serve only to make the Israelis paranoid, belligerent, and dumb.

What is the reasonable limit to seeking such security? There must be a limit, else the annihilation of nuclear-armed nations would be the highest priority for any nation to ensure freedom from fear. So does that limit extend only to Israel refusing to grant Palestinians control over East Jerusalem or the less marginal areas of the West Bank, or does it go further? Who is allowed to benefit from it? Can North Korea demand a buffer to ensure that South Korea does not destroy it, or could it have before it developed nuclear weaponry? Platitudes are great, but they cut further and deeper than you realize. Palestine, ideally, has its own right to self-defense and to freedom from the fear of IDF soldiers and tanks slaughtering them. But that is intolerable to Israel, for a variety of reasons. How should that be settled, under your platitude?

Of course, the problem is that there are no strategies for them to resolve their differences peacefully. The Palestinian Right of Return is supported by a majority of Palestinians and opposed by a majority of Israelis. For anything to move forward, that would have to be agreed upon. Either one side must change, or one side must destroy the other. Now, I, personally, find that the prejudice inherent in Israeli opposition to the Right of Return is so repugnant that I feel that Israel should bend for Palestine. But that's just me. Sovereignty has similar levels of support and opposition, although it also has the hilarious idea that Palestinian airspace should be restricted to Jordan.

[Simon_Jester]

So the right to military security is to be considered fundamental now?

Nope. It is simply something that any sane group of people will seek out for themselves whenever it's practical to do so. No matter what your political agenda, your race, your religion, one of the things you'll have in common with other groups throughout the world is that you don't want to die.

Security against being killed is very important to everyone. This does not mean everyone has an absolute right to as much security as they please; that would be stupid. But it does mean that if you start making pompous, self-righteous speeches about how other people need to cast away their security against being killed, you're not going to get very far. You may be 'right' in some point-scoring sense, but you are wasting your time, and any person with a minimum of common sense could tell you so.

Unless you can provide counterbalancing incentives, people who do not want to be killed will ignore you when you tell them how they should make it easier to kill them. It's very simple.

They will expect, as a basic condition for even bothering to talk to you, that you understand why they are concerned about being killed, how it affects their situation, and in what ways they may risk being killed, how they might go about avoiding being killed, and what they need in order to avoid it. If you do not understand these things, and continue to prate about how unrighteous they are, they will simply ignore you, because they care more about not dying than they do about your opinion.

This does not make them any more righteous; it does, however, at least show that they've got their priorities more or less straight.

What you're suggesting is that wars of aggression and the annexion of territory be legitimized as long as one nations feels it's militarily indefensible without it.

I am suggesting no such thing. You are making up wild nonsense. My point is simply that the Israelis are less afraid of you, and people like you, than they are of death. Compared to their sincere belief that what they do, they do to avoid being killed, your words are nothing but hot air in their minds.

This is why so many words about their atrocities have fallen on deaf ears, and why their settlers continue to make an already horrible situation worse every single day. Because, ultimately, the strongest defenders of the Palestinians in the developed world are so often those least in touch with the practical concerns of things like "how may the Israelis avoid being killed?"

Naturally, the Israelis are more inclined to value the opinion of those who are worried about this; would you take advice from someone who didn't give a damn if you lived or died?

What is the reasonable limit to seeking such security? There must be a limit, else the annihilation of nuclear-armed nations would be the highest priority for any nation to ensure freedom from fear. So does that limit extend only to Israel refusing to grant Palestinians control over East Jerusalem or the less marginal areas of the West Bank, or does it go further? Who is allowed to benefit from it? Can North Korea demand a buffer to ensure that South Korea does not destroy it, or could it have before it developed nuclear weaponry? Platitudes are great, but they cut further and deeper than you realize. Palestine, ideally, has its own right to self-defense and to freedom from the fear of IDF soldiers and tanks slaughtering them. But that is intolerable to Israel, for a variety of reasons. How should that be settled, under your platitude?

How is it a platitude to recognize that real people, as opposed to imaginary idealized people, seek to avoid being killed? And that if you try to tell them to do things that they expect will get them killed, they will at best ignore you?

That is not a platitude. That is reality. If you wish to communicate with people, rather than berate them for how inferior and immoral they are, you must understand realities such as this, and think in terms of balancing perceived needs.

That, for example, it is hard to avoid being killed if enemy planes carrying huge bombs are free to fly over your head at any time, and you are not allowed to stop them before they drop the bombs on your head. Or that it is hard to avoid being killed if men with artillery can hit any and all points in your country with shells. Or that it is hard to avoid being killed when the armies tasked with defending you cannot move because the roads that lead to where they need to be pass through hostile territory and are blocked.

These things may not be important to you, but they are very important to the Israelis. The fact that they are so unimportant to almost everyone else in the world does not encourage them to take other people's opinions more seriously- see above.

And then people turn around and wonder why Israel keeps ignoring the international community...

[eyl]

This talk of Isreal''s borders being "indefensible" is a load of bullshit. Israel has the most advanced army in the middle east and 200 fucking nuclear weapons.

Just how the fuck are nuclear weapons even relevent here? Israel can't drop a nuke on any version of projected Palestinian state without getting a face full of fallout.

that the settlements would never be given up

The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders. The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated. We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible lines of 1967.

[bobalot]

This talk of Isreal''s borders being "indefensible" is a load of bullshit. Israel has the most advanced army in the middle east and 200 fucking nuclear weapons.

Just how the fuck are nuclear weapons even relevent here? Israel can't drop a nuke on any version of projected Palestinian state without getting a face full of fallout.

If you were able to read, I was referring to Arab armies. I was already corrected above. So fuck off.

that the settlements would never be given up

The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders. The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated. We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible lines of 1967.

I love the circular bullshit Israel employs.

1. Take somebodies land and ethically cleanse inhabitants. Go to 2.
2. Original inhabitants get angry and launch terrorist attacks. Go to 3.
3. Because original inhabitants are angry and buffer land is required to keep angry inhabitants away. Go to 1.

[Bakustra]

First, to eyl:

Oh, so he's willing to maybe give back some of the stolen land. Very well then, that is a painful compromise I guess. I mean, I've seen people who were told to recompensate stores for the stuff they shoplifted and they had pretty hangdog looks on their faces. Thank you for correcting me, but I still don't see, sarcasm aside, where the compromise becomes painful.

Secondly, to Simon_Jester,

Okay. You're claiming that Israel solely takes its actions to ensure secure borders. I don't think that really works to explain why they drain water from aquifers on Palestinian territory, or why they try to starve Gaza into submission, or why they'd ethnically cleanse in order to build villages and other settlements. But let's ignore that for now. You suggest that people have to acknowledge this in order to convince Israelis to let Palestine become a state. But should we have told the Hutus in Rwanda "yes, you do make some good points about the Tutsis being cockroaches" or legitimized ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the nineties? Telling Israel that its ethnic cleansings are justified is pointless for two reasons. In the first case, it's just evidence of a double standard applied to Israel- it's not OK for other nations to commit atrocities, and the US may well bomb them, but if Israel does it, everybody has to be on their tippy-toes. Secondly, the average Israeli, I suspect, is not really aware of the full consequences or meaning of what their country does, like the average American. So telling them that their crimes are reasonable will have them going "what crimes?". And the leadership doesn't care. The leadership is in a position to understand what they are doing, and it is my belief that they are highly conscious of the effects of their actions, seeing as they have direct consequences that are immediately predictable.

Finally, feel free to explain how you're supposed to negotiate when Israel a) refuses to consider Palestinian independence seriously and b) refuses to admit any complicity in the mass flight of Palestinians in 1948, instead pretending that every Palestinian who left was a genocidal maniac doing so to further the annihilation of the Jews in Israel.

[Guardsman Bass]

Telling Israel that its ethnic cleansings are justified is pointless for two reasons.

No one here is saying that Israel's settlements are justified, just that their concerns about security are very justified. This isn't just some abstract debate over whether or not Israel would be threatened from an independent Palestine, since there are and have been Palestinian groups that use violence against Israelis (civilian and military). Look at the suicide bombings before Israel put up the Security Wall, or rockets from Gaza 2005-onward.

That security is the first and foremost issue. If you can't guarantee the Israelis security in the advent of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, then even Israelis who otherwise oppose the settlements and ethnic cleansing will not support your peace process.

b) refuses to admit any complicity in the mass flight of Palestinians in 1948

That would be like a US President getting up in public and saying, "My fellow Americans, our nation is founded upon the destruction and annihilation of hundreds of indigenous societies in North America." Everybody knows it's true, but you won't get a President who will actually say it so baldly.

And that's in the US, where the ethnic cleansing in question happened mostly in the 19th century. It's much more sensitive when it happened a mere 63 years ago.

[Bakustra]

Telling Israel that its ethnic cleansings are justified is pointless for two reasons.

No one here is saying that Israel's settlements are justified, just that their concerns about security are very justified. This isn't just some abstract debate over whether or not Israel would be threatened from an independent Palestine, since there are and have been Palestinian groups that use violence against Israelis (civilian and military). Look at the suicide bombings before Israel put up the Security Wall, or rockets from Gaza 2005-onward.

That security is the first and foremost issue. If you can't guarantee the Israelis security in the advent of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, then even Israelis who otherwise oppose the settlements and ethnic cleansing will not support your peace process.

You can't "guarantee" security for Israel or for any other nation except via genocide of everybody else in the world. But the problem is that Israel shows no interest in taking actions that would increase its level of security, either moral or immoral. It has never attempted to improve its relations with the Palestinian people. So trying to assuage Israeli concerns is pointless, because all you can tell them is "hey, stop being a dick to Palestine". In other words, there is no way to address those concerns without putting the onus on Israel- unless we somehow convince the Palestinian people to adopt pacifism en masse and cross our fingers that the Israelis don't see this as an opportunity to grab all of Gaza and the West Bank. But perhaps you have some way that this can be resolved without Israel changing its ways. Feel free to outline some ideas for that, then.

b) refuses to admit any complicity in the mass flight of Palestinians in 1948

That would be like a US President getting up in public and saying, "My fellow Americans, our nation is founded upon the destruction and annihilation of hundreds of indigenous societies in North America." Everybody knows it's true, but you won't get a President who will actually say it so baldly.

And that's in the US, where the ethnic cleansing in question happened mostly in the 19th century. It's much more sensitive when it happened a mere 63 years ago.

The first Americans- the Indians- are the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation. On virtually every scale of measurement- employment, income, education, health- the condition of the Indian people ranks at the bottom. This condition is the heritage of centuries of injustice. From the time of their first contact with European settlers, the American Indians have been oppressed and brutalized, deprived of their ancestral lands and denied the opportunity to control their own destiny.

As for being closer to the issue:

We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.

Meanwhile, you snip out the part where the Israeli government's official position is that the Palestinian refugees all left because they wanted to help the Arab armies murder all the Jews! There is a middle ground between accepting full responsibility for your crimes and inventing motivations for your victims to justify your cruel treatment!

[Big Phil]

Because those borders look like this:



And as a direct cause of that, Israel was immensely vulnerable to external attack - a fact which the surrounding Arab nations recognized and immediately attempted to take advantage of, losing the land through every fault of their own - and seizing portions of the nascent Palestinian state for their own rather than allowing their independence, to boot, showing that had the 1948 war gone the other way, there would likely still have been no Palestinian state.

Besides, what of Jerusalem? Would the UN resume administration of it, even though none of the parties involved would consent to such a thing?

Also, good luck "forcing" Israel into anything. Like it or not, they are a militarily powerful state, that only the United States has the capability to reliably defeat in its current form, and that only with unacceptable losses.

Not the partition borders, I mean the borders agreed to by Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Syria in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. That's modern day Israel right now, with the exception of Gaza, the West Bank (and control of Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights.

Is the conquered land more legitimate because Israel's opponents sign a piece of paper saying "WE GIVE UP! IT'S YOURS!"? Because if it is, Egypt has signed over control to Gaza as a result of the Camp David Accords. Likewise, the West Bank is legitimately Israeli because Jordan signed over control after the 1967 War.

[Simon_Jester]

Secondly, to Simon_Jester,

Okay. You're claiming that Israel solely takes its actions to ensure secure borders...

Nope.

I said no such thing.

I said the Israelis want to avoid being killed.

To expand on this, the Israelis want meaningful, realistic confidence in their ability to defend against military attack by armed foreigners. This is not the only thing they want, because real people (as opposed to cartoons) can want more than one thing. And not every thing they do is devoted to this end, because real people (as opposed to cartoons) can do things for more than one reason.

Israel does many things which do not contribute to its defensibility, which indeed make its defense problems worse by antagonizing the neighbors in exchange for no real benefit to Israel.

But as long as Israelis who raise concerns about their ability to defend themselves are poo-poohed as genocidal imperialists, they will continue to rely only on their own strength and ability to defend themselves- because there is nothing else they can turn to. No one else will protect them; no foreign army intervenes on their behalf when they are attacked. You can reasonably argue that they don't deserve to be protected by such an army... but anyone with common sense will see that if others will not defend them, they are going to try to defend themselves.


As the debate is framed at times like this, the Israelis are forced to choose between safety for Israel and justice for Palestine. To give justice to Palestine they must sacrifice safety for Israel. You, Bakustra, would press that choice on them by making demands which compromise Israel's safety severely, on the grounds that they are in the wrong.

However, it should not come as a surprise to any person with common sense that the Israelis, forced to choose between safety for Israel and justice for Palestine, will choose safety for themselves rather than justice for someone else. Saying "you must give up this safety you have no right to!" isn't going to go over well and won't accomplish a damn thing, except to convince the Israelis not to listen to you because you appear not to care if they get killed.

I repeat, would you take advice from someone who doesn't seem to care whether you live or die?

I don't have any interest in telling Israel that ethnic cleansing is legitimate. My interest is in making something very clear:

Refusing to understand or care about the safety of Israel does not make justice for Palestine more likely.

[Akhlut]

Refusing to understand or care about the justice of Palestine does not make safety for Israel more likely.

And, thus, both sides are at an impasse. Israel has dug itself in too deep to not make concessions about its safety in order to redress some Palestinian grievances, and Palestine is stuck with a not insignificant number of people who have come to the conclusion that the only path to justice includes wiping Israel off the map.

And, frankly, this is why I think each side should be deported en masse from the area and resettled in enclaves in Alaska separated by about 200 miles.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Quite frankly, Bibi is just doing what he is good at: Stonewalling, obfuscating, and being ineffectual. After his last performance as PM, I should expect nothing less. Getting even butt hurt over his speech is a pointless waste of time.

This talk of Isreal''s borders being "indefensible" is a load of bullshit. Israel has the most advanced army in the middle east and 200 fucking nuclear weapons.

The chances of any Arab army attacking Israel today is zero. However, it is a nice excuse for more ethnic cleansing.

BTW, wasn't this the same excuse for the Soviet Union when it attacked Finland? It wanted to make its border around Leningrad more "defensible"?

Comparing indefensible vis a vis Arab armies instead of militants with Iranian support is rather disingenuous.

[Bakustra]

I don't think you get what I'm saying, Simon. Israel has shown no interest in trying effective methods of increasing their security, whether moral or immoral. They commit ethnic cleansing for prime real estate, not to create buffer zones. They don't bother trying to improve relations with the Palestinian people. Saying that they'd be forced to trade security ignores that they have no real interest in security, or if they do it's overridden by their desires to suck Palestine of everything it has. I think that there are more reasons than just Israel considering every Palestinian to be a genocidal maniac, or what you call "security concerns". Now, I admit that Israel's decision-makers, when presented with a choice between a costly good or a cheap evil, will take that evil every time. But that does not mean pursuing hare-brained at best, and ethnic-cleansing-enabling at worst, schemes to ensure that Palestine remains pacifist enough that Israel might consider giving them motes of independence.

In other words, let's turn this around. How can Palestine be guaranteed its security against Israeli incursions? Why are you ignoring Palestinian concerns to paint Israel as the reasonable one here?

[fgalkin]

I don't think you get what I'm saying, Simon. Israel has shown no interest in trying effective methods of increasing their security, whether moral or immoral. They commit ethnic cleansing for prime real estate, not to create buffer zones. They don't bother trying to improve relations with the Palestinian people. Saying that they'd be forced to trade security ignores that they have no real interest in security, or if they do it's overridden by their desires to suck Palestine of everything it has. I think that there are more reasons than just Israel considering every Palestinian to be a genocidal maniac, or what you call "security concerns". Now, I admit that Israel's decision-makers, when presented with a choice between a costly good or a cheap evil, will take that evil every time. But that does not mean pursuing hare-brained at best, and ethnic-cleansing-enabling at worst, schemes to ensure that Palestine remains pacifist enough that Israel might consider giving them motes of independence.

In other words, let's turn this around. How can Palestine be guaranteed its security against Israeli incursions? Why are you ignoring Palestinian concerns to paint Israel as the reasonable one here?

I would beg to differ. in 1967, the population of the Gaza Strip was 360,000. When Israel withdrew in 2005, the population was 1.4 million. That's probably the most inept "ethnic cleansing" I have ever heard of.

The fact is that during 20 years of Arab rule Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 42 to 44. During the next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 44 to 63 and female 46 to 67. Likewise, before 1967 the percentage of illiterates on average had been 27.8% among men and among women even higher at 65.1%. By 1983 Israel had helped reduce illiteracy to only 13.5% among men and 38.9% among women. During the 70s, the economy of the Palestinian territories grew faster than that of Israel. Clearly, the Palestinians did benefit from the widespread infrastructure improvements made by Israel.

And yes, Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally. The result? Constant rocket and mortar bombardment of Israeli cities. So you can see why they're leery of giving up the high ground, especially in light of Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist. I mean, how can you negotiate with people whose stated goal is to kill you?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

Refusing to understand or care about the justice of Palestine does not make safety for Israel more likely.

And, thus, both sides are at an impasse.

Agreed.

If I were watching this thread unfold on HPCA, I would probably have said that instead- would have wound up driven to speak up for that side because of the foolishness shown by the pro-Israel side. There are extremely basic issues here which many people in the US who have strong partisan opinions in favor of Israel or Palestine refuse to take seriously. On both sides.

And, frankly, this is why I think each side should be deported en masse from the area and resettled in enclaves in Alaska separated by about 200 miles.

Tempting...

In other words, let's turn this around. How can Palestine be guaranteed its security against Israeli incursions? Why are you ignoring Palestinian concerns to paint Israel as the reasonable one here?

What the Palestinians need is justice, not security; they have less to fear in terms of unprovoked invasion and more to fear from systematic injustice, oppression, and marginalization. And yes, this can have consequences just as bad as the security threats the Israelis face; so far, the Palestinians have suffered more from their lack of justice than the Israelis have from their lack of security.

If the Palestinians want the justice they so very much need and so very much deserve, there must be a commitment to peace on the Palestinian side. If the Israelis want the security they so very much need and so very much deserve, there must be a commitment to peace on the Israeli side.

At the moment, there is no such commitment on either side.

The Palestinians refuse to commit to the simple, minimal "not actively trying to kill Israelis" level of cooperation that any normal negotiations would require- the most popular party line among the Palestinians seems to be that they're just waiting for the moment when they can blow Israel to hell and gone and have the whole place for themselves. This, obviously, is not conducive to any kind of compromise with Israel, even one that leaves both sides with less than they'd like.

The Israelis refuse to commit to the simple, minimal "not actively trying to dispossess Palestinians" level of cooperation that any normal negotiations would require- the most influential party line among the Israelis seems to be that if they just keep building settlements long enough the whole problem will go away (somehow, and they are suggestively nonspecific as to how) and the Israelis will have the whole place for themselves. This, obviously, is not conducive to any kind of compromise with Palestine, even one that leaves both sides with less than they'd like.

The situation here is not perfectly symmetrical, but it is very close- a conflict which has raged for so long that neither side is willing to end it, or able to end it unilaterally except by utterly surrendering things that no human being can reasonably be expected to surrender. One side has much more physical power than the other, and has so far been able to force the conflict to proceed in their favor, but it's unsure how long that can last.

However, any attempt to broker bilateral peace cannot begin without a clear understanding of the motives, incentives, and needs of both sides.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I feel the need to make a point regarding Israel's nuclear weapons, specifically that they don't have to be used in order to be relevant.

I regularly hear or read complaints from various individuals and groups bemoaning the apparent inability or unwillingness of the nations of the world to do something about the Israel/Palestine issue. Calls for armed intervention are comparatively rare these days, but calls for disinvestment or economic sanctions of one sort or another are commonplace. Comparisons are regularly drawn with South Africa, with advocates claiming that such measures as economic sanctions and protests brought Apartheid to an end, and that such can bring Israel to heel. If I had to give a single reason why no sane government will engage in economic warfare against Israel, it is that unlike South Africa, Israel does in fact possess nuclear weapons.

Countries that possess nuclear weapons require careful handling. It becomes a very bad idea to allow a nuclear-armed country to become politically or economically unstable, lest the weapons be mislaid, or else fall into the hands of the sorts of dangerous and unstable characters who might very well rise to power on the back of such instability. Any economic measures sufficient to impose pressure would be sufficient to cause serious damage to Israel's economy (or else they would be ignored) and seriously weaken if not destroy Israel's current leadership. The best that can be hoped for under such circumstances is that the government is merely paralysed, and that the IDF stays sane. As far as the other governments are concerned (IMO), it's just not worth the risk.

[evilsoup]

*cough* Apartheid-era South Africa, uh, did have nuclear weapons. Okay, they only had six. But still. More to the point, the protests didn't drive South Africa to outright ruin (which is what would be required to bring nuke-happy nutters, as opposed to regular racist fuckbags, to power), though it did hurt them severely (it would have gotten worse if things had gone differently). That's the point of sanctions - not to destroy outright, but rather to hurt them until they change.

Whether that strategy would work against Israel with their deeply-rooted (and somewhat justified) paranoia is another question.

Personally, I think we should be encouraging Iran to develop their nuke program, to serve as a deterrent to Israel.

[Simon_Jester]

...Does encouraging proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of even more potentially unstable and dangerous countries really strike you as a good idea, 'soup?

Israel's nuclear arsenal does not pose a major threat to the region in itself- they've had it for nearly forty years without hurting anyone. And it at least stops any of the neighboring regimes from wanting a war with them, much as the Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals have effectively ended the routine practice of fighting a border war over Kashmir every few years.

Adding another nuclear power to the region will thus not counter any actual threat posed by Israel to anyone. Meanwhile, it will increase the scale of the strategic threat faced by other nations Iran has a history of antagonism with- Iraq and Saudi Arabia would both have an incentive to start nuclear programs in the next few decades if Iran gets the bomb soon.

The end result is all too likely to be a Middle East with many nuclear powers- and the risk of some of those weapons falling into the hands of dangerous radicals becomes all the higher with each new country added to the nuclear club.

If it weren't for the effect on Iran's neighbors, an Iranian bomb wouldn't worry me tremendously. Combined with that problem, though, it becomes very troubling.

[bobalot]

I don't think you get what I'm saying, Simon. Israel has shown no interest in trying effective methods of increasing their security, whether moral or immoral. They commit ethnic cleansing for prime real estate, not to create buffer zones. They don't bother trying to improve relations with the Palestinian people. Saying that they'd be forced to trade security ignores that they have no real interest in security, or if they do it's overridden by their desires to suck Palestine of everything it has. I think that there are more reasons than just Israel considering every Palestinian to be a genocidal maniac, or what you call "security concerns". Now, I admit that Israel's decision-makers, when presented with a choice between a costly good or a cheap evil, will take that evil every time. But that does not mean pursuing hare-brained at best, and ethnic-cleansing-enabling at worst, schemes to ensure that Palestine remains pacifist enough that Israel might consider giving them motes of independence.

In other words, let's turn this around. How can Palestine be guaranteed its security against Israeli incursions? Why are you ignoring Palestinian concerns to paint Israel as the reasonable one here?

I would beg to differ. in 1967, the population of the Gaza Strip was 360,000. When Israel withdrew in 2005, the population was 1.4 million. That's probably the most inept "ethnic cleansing" I have ever heard of.

The fact is that during 20 years of Arab rule Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 42 to 44. During the next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 44 to 63 and female 46 to 67. Likewise, before 1967 the percentage of illiterates on average had been 27.8% among men and among women even higher at 65.1%. By 1983 Israel had helped reduce illiteracy to only 13.5% among men and 38.9% among women. During the 70s, the economy of the Palestinian territories grew faster than that of Israel. Clearly, the Palestinians did benefit from the widespread infrastructure improvements made by Israel.

And yes, Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally. The result? Constant rocket and mortar bombardment of Israeli cities. So you can see why they're leery of giving up the high ground, especially in light of Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist. I mean, how can you negotiate with people whose stated goal is to kill you?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

You obviously never bothered to look up the definition of ethnic cleansing.

: the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity

Source
Ethnic cleansing doesn't require wiping out a population. That description does however desribe the situation with Isreal's settlements in the West Bank and its 400,000 settlers. The fact they have taken the prime land and much of the West Bank's water (so we have the situation where settlers have swimming pools and Palestinian farmers can barely get enough water for their crops) makes it all the more obvious.

The West Bank has relatively quiet for some time and did this bring the rewards that Israeli apologists said it would? Nope. Settlement construction is increasing.

[fgalkin]

Merriam-Webster wrote:
: the expulsion,
Are the Palestinian Arabs expelled out of the West Bank (or, before, the Gaza strip? Last I've checked, they're still there.

imprisonment
Are they being imprisoned enmasse just for being Palestinian Arabs? If so, do provide sources.

or killing
Is there a systematic campaign of extermination against them? If so, provide evidence.

of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity
Israeli Jews are not a dominant majority in the West Bank. They are less than 10% of the total population.

It looks like you did look up the definition, but failed to understand it, as Israel's actions don't qualify.

EDIT: It's not that I support the construction of settlements, I don't. They are a dickish move by the government of Israel and the people who live there are generally religious nutjobs of the worst kind, that make US fundies look good by comparison. They should be dismantled, by force if necessary (and if the Gaza withdrawal is anything to go by, force will be necessary). But they're not examples of ethnic cleansing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin