Jump to content

Israel


SmokeyBear1861

Recommended Posts

13 hours ago, DixonHur said:

Honestly, can anyone think of a solution to this that doesn't involve either the dissolution of Israel or the end of Muslim extremists?  

Sadly, I can't and neither of those things are happening without a nuclear war.

This was the correct question 75 years ago and they chose a horrible solution. There were other proposals to offer protection to European and other diaspora Jews, but they chose a solution that had zero chance of working long term without permanently removing all Arab Palestinians. They failed to do that and this is the obvious result. Nobody looks good in my opinion, my problem continues to be that one side of the conflict has worldwide support while the other does not (and to be clear I'm talking about Arab Palestinians and not Hamas; I also know that not all Palestinians are Arab but they are the majority and a main source of the tension).

Edited by 'stache
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Satchel said:

A two state solution which all sides agree to would be a tremendous development.

It's not going to happen. I'm just being realistic and not arguing one side or the other. Ultimately this will end in some cease-fire and the whole situation will play out again in X years. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A boy can dream.

Does a 2-State Solution, Long Discounted, Still Have a Future?
As President Biden and other Western leaders promote the idea, some diplomats and analysts say the Hamas-Israel war may breathe new life into it.

“There has to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said last week of the war between Israel and Hamas. “In our view, it has to be a two-state solution.” The surest path to peace, said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, is a two-state solution, a sentiment echoed by President Emmanuel Macron of France.

At first glance, their words seemed like a sepia-tinted throwback: invoking, as a remedy for the worst eruption of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians in many years, the faded relic of a peace process that many on both sides viewed as dead and buried some time late in the Obama administration.

And yet, the two-state solution — Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in their own sovereign countries — is getting a new hearing, not just in foreign-policy circles in Washington, London and Paris but also, more quietly, among the combatants themselves. In part, it reflects the lack of any other viable alternative.

“We cannot return to a pattern where every other year, there is a violent confrontation between Israel and Hamas,” said Gilead Sher, who helped lead Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the two sides arguably came closest to striking a two-state settlement.

“If America engages in what President Biden has stated he would commit to, there is a chance,” he said. “There is a chance for negotiations that could provide a step-by-step process to two distinct states.”

Such an effort would have to overcome a thicket of obstacles, not least the proliferation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians say have eroded the dream of creating a viable state on that land. The rise of ultranationalists in Israel further complicates the task: They oppose Palestinian statehood, seek to annex the West Bank, and know that uprooting the settlers is political dynamite.

Spoiler

Mr. Sher listed a string of caveats for Israeli-Palestinian talks: The two sides would have to start modestly, with a political process focused on disengagement rather than a high-stakes negotiation over the details of two states. Both would need new leaders, he said, since the existing ones have proven to be unwilling or incapable of striking a deal. Above all, Hamas would have to be vanquished and the Gaza Strip demilitarized.

Israeli officials say they are focused on the battle against Hamas, which could last for months, and that any discussion of a peace process must wait until after the guns are silent. But in think tanks and corners of the Israeli foreign ministry, discussion of what a day-after political process would look like has already begun.

Among Palestinians, suffering Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza, and rising tensions on the West Bank, the prospects for statehood appear even more far-fetched. But some Palestinians argue that the shock of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 has stripped Israelis of the illusion that they can manage conflict with Palestinians without confronting their deeper aspirations for nationhood.

“What happened on Oct. 7 should push us to be more creative and more innovative about the two-state solution,” said Nidal Foqaha, director general of the Palestinian Peace Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Without a political horizon, this is an impossible mission.”

The mechanics of such a process are far from clear. The European Union last week called for an international peace conference, an idea championed by Spain, which held a landmark Middle East peace summit in Madrid in 1991. Arab nations could also convene peace negotiations, though an early effort by Egypt last week, as the Israeli military operation in Gaza was gearing up, produced little.

By all accounts, the United States would have to take a central role in any talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. That has not happened since the Obama administration, when the secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, shuttled between the two sides in 2013 and 2014 before giving up in frustration. It was a quest that even then, some aides to President Barack Obama viewed as quixotic.

Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States shifted its energy from resolving the Palestinian issue to normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That strategy dovetailed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in a coalition with right-wing partners who openly disdained the idea of a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu, himself, has swung between saying he would be willing to consider a Palestinian nation with limited security powers, and opposing it outright.

“One of the biggest issues with the phrase ‘two-state solution’ is that it fails to address the very real threats against Israel that exist now, and will likely continue to exist, within certain segments of Palestinian society and elsewhere,” said Jason D. Greenblatt, who was Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the region.

Mr. Greenblatt said the Trump administration’s approach to peacemaking emphasized Israel’s security needs. The Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered deal under which Israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020, forestalled an Israeli plan to annex 30 percent of the West Bank. But it effectively set aside the goal of a Palestinian state.

Despite its fealty to the dream of two states, the Biden administration largely adopted the Trump blueprint. It had been trying to broker a deal that would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an even greater prize for Israel than the Gulf emirates, given Saudi Arabia’s status as the vanguard of the Arab world.

Those talks have been put on hold by the Israel-Hamas war. But if Israel were able to revive them, that could put the two-state solution back on the table. The Saudis have told Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken that they want steps toward a Palestinian state to be part of any normalization accord with Israel.

Arab countries are also likely to push for the Palestinian issue to be addressed as a condition of playing a role in stabilizing and rebuilding postwar Gaza. Dangling the prospect of a Palestinian state could reassure Egypt and Jordan, which are alarmed by the prospect of millions of refugees from Gaza.

“Part of this is to give them the framing, the packaging, they need to take part in a solution for Gaza,” said Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization. “That’s one reason I think the president talked about it, even if it seemed irrelevant.”

The odds of progress with the current Israeli and Palestinian leaders are nonexistent, Mr. Omari said. Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition includes ultranationalist partners who want to annex the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and which they refer to by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria.

At a minimum, his government was committed to rapidly expanding the number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Since the Hamas attacks, attacks on Palestinians by settlers and Israeli troops have surged.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, 87, has lost legitimacy with his public, analysts said, particularly after he canceled elections in 2021. Critics say Mr. Netanyahu contributed to the weakening of the Palestinian Authority by pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy that bolstered Hamas.

Diplomatic historians like to point out that the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, came tantalizingly close to a deal with Israel brokered by President Bill Clinton in 2000, only to walk away. And that was before hundreds of thousands of new settlers put down roots across the West Bank.

Violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have cut both ways in terms of influencing subsequent peace efforts. The barbaric nature of the Hamas attacks and the ferocity of the Israeli military response in Gaza, experts said, makes the coming debate in Israel particularly unpredictable.

“There will be two sides to that debate,” said Dennis B. Ross, a peace negotiator under Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama. “What Hamas showed is that it is too dangerous to have a Palestinian state next to us because it could become dominated by groups like Hamas. The countervailing argument will be, once we defeat Hamas, we cannot freeze the situation with the Palestinians on our terms indefinitely.”

Mr. Omari, who once advised Palestinian negotiators, suggested a less calculated reason for the re-emergence of the two-state solution.

“This is similar to 9/11 in that everyone knows something huge has happened and there are going to be changes, but no one knows what the changes are going to be,” he said. “You default to your muscle memory; you default to your talking points. It’s a place-holder while you figure out what will happen.”

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, freyguy said:

These clowns aren't pro-Jew.  I continually cringe when I see shit on Fox about them touting being pro-Israel, etc.

They're xenophobic, war-mongering assholes.

They're not pro-Jew or pro-Israeli anymore than they're pro-life or pro-fetus.  They just want control of the masses and a lot of money.  Being anti-abortion gives them control, and war makes money.  It's exactly that simple.

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Fastbreak said:

And then Jesus spoke and said…

c08b98c105ba3651795cc5cfa8d4e9f5.jpg

I am no fan of that clown, but that is a misrepresentation.  Read what was actually stated.  

https://news.yahoo.com/lindsey-graham-says-no-limit-132922981.html

Why should a US Senator be giving orders to a sovereign nation on what they can and can't do?   He is a amoral, shitty senator with no spine, not a field marshall for a foreign country.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Yeah, he’s not going to put U.S. service members at risk. The Israelis are never going to allow fair living conditions to the Palestinian people. There’s not going to be a Palestinian state because Israel doesn’t want one. They’ll just offer shitty deals that no one in their right mind would ever accept then blame the Palestinians for why there’s no Palestinian state. Just like they’ve always done. Whatever comes after Hamas is eliminated, if Hamas is eliminated, will still involve the Palestinian people being treated like shit. Our support of Israel already makes us complicit in that arrangement. Putting U.S. troops on the ground would just make them targets. Sooner or later someone would get killed and then we risk getting sucked into a larger conflict. It would just be asking for trouble to get our own troops involved. 

What was so shitty about the Oslo Accord?  Hell, that one included giving weapons to Fatah in order to police themselves and to fight against extremists.  That was a heck of a lot of faith by Israel.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, bolverk said:

Why? Nearly anyone else other than the IDF seems like a good idea to me.

 

‘A new Nakba’: settler violence forces Palestinians out of West Bank villages
Communities who have clung on for decades are leaving their homes in the face of rising attrition by Israelis

Life in Zanuta, a Palestinian village atop a windy ridge in the desolate south Hebron hills, deep in the occupied West Bank, has never been easy. The community are mostly herders who raise goats and sheep through the barren landscape’s scorching summers and freezing winters, and who have steadfastly refused to leave their homes despite the mounting difficulties posed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers on one hand and radical Israeli settlers on the other.

But after weeks of intense settler violence in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, Zanuta’s 150 residents have made a collective decision to leave. Armed settlers – some in reservist army uniforms, some covering their faces – have begun breaking into their homes at night, beating up adults, destroying and stealing belongings, and terrifying the children.

After decades of a desperate fight to cling on to their land, the community has decided they have lost.

On Monday, men and women cried as they dismantled their homes and haphazardly packed solar panels, animal feed and personal belongings on to pickup trucks. The noise of the demolition drowned out the bleating from the animal pens and threw up dust and debris that tore at the eyes and throat.

“It is a new Nakba,” said Issa Ahmad Baghdad, 71, referring to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 after the creation of Israel. “My family are going to Rafat. But we don’t know anyone there. We don’t know what to tell the children.”

In the Gaza Strip, where Israel has launched a campaign to destroy Hamas, the militant group that killed 1,400 people on its rampage through southern Israel, trapped civilians cannot leave; in the West Bank, they are being forced from their homes.

image.png.dc8129cc81522b204d183297a8f7c9a2.png

Masafer Yatta, a collection of shepherding hamlets including Zanuta, is in area C, the sparsely populated 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control and under threat of annexation. Palestinian water cisterns, solar panels, roads and buildings here are frequently demolished on the grounds that they do not have building permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain, while surrounding illegal Israeli settlements flourish.

Israeli settlers herding sheep had in effect taken control of 10% of area C in about five years, according to research by Kerem Navot, an NGO monitoring settler activity, but in the last year alone, about 110,000 dunams, or 110 sq km (42 sq miles), of the West Bank has been annexed by settlers on herding outposts. By way of comparison, the entirety of the built-up Israeli settlement areas constructed since the occupation began in 1967 cover only 80 sq km.

“We have had hard times in the village since the settlers started the Mitarim farm across the valley three years ago. It has been harder to take the sheep out, and the settler young men destroy things like crops, or steal sheep, or call the army to come and harass us. But now they are coming into our homes. My daughters are terrified,” said Amin Hamed al-Hudarat, 41, as he began to cry.

“I had thought we might need to leave before, but we did not expect it to happen like this. I can’t believe that by tomorrow I am going to leave my home. We are going to camp on the outskirts of Deira, but I don’t know what will happen next, what I will do for work, what we will do with the sheep. My whole life is in Zanuta.

“The community is breaking up. I don’t know when I will see my neighbours to chat and tell stories and drink coffee again.”

After years of legal battles, Israel’s supreme court ruled last May in favour of the IDF that a 3,000-hectare (7,410-acre) area of Masafer Yatta would remain a military training zone, known as Firing Zone 918, a ruling illegal under international law and one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the occupation began. Since then, the army and Israeli settlers have steadily increased the pressure to try to force the Palestinian community in the Firing Zone, as well as those living in dozens of nearby villages, to leave.

Demolitions of Palestinian houses, roads and infrastructure have increased since the court’s ruling, while shepherds say they are regularly told by the army to leave grazing land, which is then taken over by settlers, or settlers chase them away. Water and animal-feed deliveries, as well as visitors from charities and leftwing Israeli activists who used to help deter settler violence, have been turned back by the army. Since 7 October, settlers have begun beating and using live fire against the activists, as well as Palestinians.

New checkpoints have completely isolated villages such as Jimba, making it difficult for residents to leave. Palestinians are held up and questioned by soldiers sometimes for hours at a time, and dozens of unlicensed cars have been confiscated, forcing residents to use donkeys instead.

Under this campaign of attrition, some families had already made the difficult decision to leave, most of them for the nearby town of Yatta. During the Guardian’s visit to the area a month ago, two families in Khirbet ar-Ratheem, near the Asael settlement, insisted they would not leave, despite the pressure; today, they have gone.

image.png.ff486e95dc700e47145866f92e83bc2e.png

Now that entire villages such as Zanuta have decided to leave, it is feared there will be a domino effect in the area, said Nasser Nawadja, a field researcher from the village of Susiya for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He has been beaten and arrested many times during his work.

“Settler violence is now worse than ever. Sometimes, they are wearing reservist uniforms, and we don’t know who is the army and who is a settler any more,” he said.

“The people in Tuba were given a 24-hour ultimatum to leave, or the settlers said they would come back and kill them. That was on Saturday. We don’t know what will happen next.”

According to B’Tselem, in the last three weeks 858 Palestinians from 32 different communities, and 13 entire communities in total, have been forcibly displaced. The numbers increase every day.

The international community, including the US, has issued strong statements to the Israeli government that it must “take measures to protect Palestinians from attacks by Israeli extremist settlers”. “These attacks are unacceptable, those responsible need to be stopped and held accountable,” a communique from the state department in Washington said on Monday.

However, Palestinians and Israeli activists say they have little faith in the Israeli authorities. According to UN data from September, in four out of five communities where residents had filed police complaints about settler violence, only 6% knew of any follow-up.

For some, it is too little, too late. In Zanuta on Monday, pickup trucks trundled down the dirt track to the main road, full to the brim; they came back empty a few hours later to collect more belongings from the destroyed community. Three Israeli soldiers stood next to an armoured patrol vehicle at the turnoff to the main road, silently watching.

“I don’t know when I will be able to come back again,” said Hudarat. “I think I am saying goodbye to my home for ever.”

I have a question what is the source of those deaths?  How did they die?  Who did it?   The Palestinian Ministry of Health is run by Hamas.   The B'Tselem group is generally credible from what I can tell (very little), but if they are getting their data from Hamas' mouthpiece, it might be worth some healthy skepticism.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Nivek said:

I have a question what is the source of those deaths?  How did they die?  Who did it?   The Palestinian Ministry of Health is run by Hamas.   The B'Tselem group is generally credible from what I can tell (very little), but if they are getting their data from Hamas' mouthpiece, it might be worth some healthy skepticism.  

Hamas ain't in charge of the West Bank. The UN maintains this infographic. Be sure to click on West Bank in the upper left and then you can check the numbers. You can also check the context for each in the same box: https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, kevwun said:

It's not possible for Israel to fight Hamas without civilian casualties because Hamas makes sure they are always surrounded by said civilians.  There is no good way for this to end.

The issue then becomes whether ongoing civilian deaths increase or decrease the long-term threat to Israeli security.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bomb dropped on the refugee camp is a perfect example of the clusterfuck this is.  Israel did bomb the camp and there was in fact a Hamas higher up in the middle of it that they killed.  You can't cleanly fight an enemy that will do things like that.  Either you give up or you do things that are real bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The bomb dropped on the refugee camp is a perfect example of the clusterfuck this is.  Israel did bomb the camp and there was in fact a Hamas higher up in the middle of it that they killed.  You can't cleanly fight an enemy that will do things like that.  Either you give up or you do things that are real bad.

Who are you talking about here?

The side that will plant a Hamas higher-up among civilians? As a result, Hamas has to give up or continue to do bad things.

or 

The side that will bomb civilians to get at a Hamas higher-up? As a result, Israel has to give up or continue to do bad things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The bomb dropped on the refugee camp is a perfect example of the clusterfuck this is.  Israel did bomb the camp and there was in fact a Hamas higher up in the middle of it that they killed.  You can't cleanly fight an enemy that will do things like that.  Either you give up or you do things that are real bad.

Or you change tactics.

What role do special forces play in Israel's conflict with terrorist groups?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Who are you talking about here?

The side that will plant a Hamas higher-up among civilians? As a result, Hamas has to give up or continue to do bad things.

or 

The side that will bomb civilians to get at a Hamas higher-up? As a result, Israel has to give up or continue to do bad things.

Israel because I think Hamas is incapable of change.  It's hard to walk back their rhetoric and hold on to the power they have.  The government of Israel can be turned over at least and make concessions.

Edited by kevwun
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, bolverk said:

I don't think I've ever seen this phrasing used before by a spokesperson representing a group of Western democracies.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/israelpalestine-statement-spokesperson-latest-developments-west-bank_en

image.thumb.png.5de45e6043c9e99d3ac3e307a8384bfb.png

That is odd. If a university professor said this they'd be fired as an anti-Semite.

  • Fuck You 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It sounds like Biden had given up on making any progress before the terrorist attack.

Biden Found Even Modest Israel-Palestinian Peace Steps Impossible
A president focused on China and Ukraine had little time or inclination for a distant goal that stymied several of his predecessors.

Even as President Biden presses Israel to define clearly the goals of its war against Hamas in Gaza, he is turning his eyes to a much larger endgame: the ever-elusive hope for a lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Speaking to reporters last week, Mr. Biden said that “when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view it has to be a two-state solution,” creating a sovereign Palestinian nation alongside the state of Israel.

The question is how hard Mr. Biden intends to work for that outcome.

Until last month, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not among his top priorities. A president focused on countering China and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had little time or inclination for a distant goal that stymied — and politically bruised — several of his predecessors.

Biden administration officials also doubted whether Israel’s increasingly hawkish leadership was interested in any plausible deal. They also wondered whether the Palestinians would trust the United States as a peace broker after four years of the Trump administration’s dramatically pro-Israel tilt and a Trump peace plan that the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, excluded from its devising, declared dead on arrival.

No paywall for the rest: https://archive.ph/Dqu4A

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Hamas ain't in charge of the West Bank. The UN maintains this infographic. Be sure to click on West Bank in the upper left and then you can check the numbers. You can also check the context for each in the same box: https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties

In the post I replied, the chart was created by a non-profit group sourcing data from the UN and the Palestinian Ministry of Health (controlled by Hamas).  In this link there is a comment that only conflicts between Israeli and OPT members are included.  So this does not include non-residents, or incidental injuries (collapsing tunnels is cited as an example).    So help me understand this, if it stems only from confrontations, why is this meaningful?  I mean if only one group of people can be counted as the casualties than how am I supposed to interpret this?  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Nivek said:

In the post I replied, the chart was created by a non-profit group sourcing data from the UN and the Palestinian Ministry of Health (controlled by Hamas).  In this link there is a comment that only conflicts between Israeli and OPT members are included.  So this does not include non-residents, or incidental injuries (collapsing tunnels is cited as an example).    So help me understand this, if it stems only from confrontations, why is this meaningful?  I mean if only one group of people can be counted as the casualties than how am I supposed to interpret this?  

 

I shared the link because it's what the UN itself counts. You were calling into question the sourcing of the others, so I gave you data from another source, which also shows a rise in Palestinian civilian deaths at the hands of settlers. The upside to it is that it describes a clear methodology.

 

In your previous posts, you seem to maintain that the violence is a one-way street. I've been trying to demonstrate over the past couple of days (with multiple articles and links) that it's clearly not the case.

Here's another good read about shit going on in the West Bank if you're interested:   

Cigarette Burns, Beatings, Attempted Sexual Assault: Settlers and Soldiers Abused Palestinians
A week after being assaulted in Wadi as-Seeq, Palestinians and Israeli activists struggle to recover – and accuse an army unit of ‘hilltop youth’ and settlers. The army has removed the commanding officer of the unit and opened an investigation

The abuse lasted almost a whole day. Soldiers and settlers detained and handcuffed three Palestinians from the West Bank village Wadi as-Seeq, and for hours, according to the Palestinians, they were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed, in their underwear. Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.

At the same time, soldiers and settlers arrested leftist Israeli activists who were present, including a minor, cuffed them, threatened to kill them, and detained them for hours. Some of the activists were beaten. The activists say that in addition to the presence of people in uniform, at some point a young settler in civilian clothes was put in charge of guarding them.
The Israelis were released after three hours. The Palestinians were only released in the evening by Civil Administration officers, and were taken to a hospital in Ramallah. Both groups were extensively robbed, including cash and a car.

The events occurred on Thursday over a week ago, October 12. The soldiers were from the Desert Frontier unit (“Sfar Hamidbar”), which was established a few years ago and recruits “hilltop youth,” radical, often violent settler youth from illegal outposts in military service, particularly choosing youth from the farming outposts that have become prevalent in the West Bank.

No paywall link for the rest: https://archive.ph/AN5xM#selection-703.0-710.0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Who are you talking about here?

The side that will plant a Hamas higher-up among civilians? As a result, Hamas has to give up or continue to do bad things.

or 

The side that will bomb civilians to get at a Hamas higher-up? As a result, Israel has to give up or continue to do bad things.

i don't know i has a confuse because my answer would normally be "whichever side wants to be perceived as good" but that's neither side so...

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Who are you talking about here?

The side that will plant a Hamas higher-up among civilians? As a result, Hamas has to give up or continue to do bad things.

I'm just spit-balling here, but instead of giving up maybe the Hamas higher-up could not plant himself among civilians.

 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Mr. Biden said that “when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view it has to be a two-state solution,

Israel will never allow there to be a functional and sovereign palestinian state. Vaporize Hamas, shit vaporize all the islamists or swap them out with secular or christian palestinians, doesn't matter. There will never be a palestinian state that is allowed to operate within the area now occupied by Israel. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, 'stache said:

That is odd. If a university professor said this they'd be fired as an anti-Semite.

 

38 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

This is not antisemitism, just to be extremely clear.

Yeah, I'm not getting how this is anti-semitic.  From what I've read, some West Bank settlers have engaged in terroristic conduct.  They should be prosecuted and punished, and the Israeli government needs to stop tacitly encouraging it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Israel will never allow there to be a functional and sovereign palestinian state. Vaporize Hamas, shit vaporize all the islamists or swap them out with secular or christian palestinians, doesn't matter. There will never be a palestinian state that is allowed to operate within the area now occupied by Israel. 

You may be correct, but if true, there will never be peace in ME.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, kevwun said:

I think the only realistic way for this to end is for Israel to wipe out Hamas and then agree to the creation of a Palestinian state otherwise it's just kicking the can down the road.

Wouldn't work.  A new terrorist group would just supplant them.  

The fact is that as long as Abrahamic religions exist, the Jews are fucked.  Killing Jews who refuse to convert is the cornerstone of both Islamic and Christian eschatology.

The only difference is that Christians need the country of Israel to exist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Israel will never allow there to be a functional and sovereign palestinian state. Vaporize Hamas, shit vaporize all the islamists or swap them out with secular or christian palestinians, doesn't matter. There will never be a palestinian state that is allowed to operate within the area now occupied by Israel. 

I disagree.  While recent polls suggest a majority of both Palestinians and Israelis oppose a two state solution and a decline in the percentage of those supporting one, there is still a significant minority of support (anywhere from 35-40 something percent of from what I was able to google).   

A diplomatic solution can be achieved.  However, it may take the loss and destruction of many more lives before enough support for one develops.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

 

Yeah, I'm not getting how this is anti-semitic.  From what I've read, some West Bank settlers have engaged in terroristic conduct.  They should be prosecuted and punished, and the Israeli government needs to stop tacitly encouraging it.

It's not, I probably laid the sarcasm on too thick. I think Palestinians have a legitimate grievance going back 75 years or more. Having to constantly qualify that opinion by making clear you denounce terrorism and think Hamas is not a proper representative of everyday Palestinians gets lost when criticizing Israel. I for one won't say any of this in open company because I know my point will be easily skewed, sometimes intentionally sometimes unintentionally. I think my comment was because I had just seen posts about professors being anti-Semetic and the screenshots showed reduction of Palestinian territories over the years. I can certainly see a professor going too far in criticisms, but the screenshot and the accusations just didn't match up in my opinion. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, 'stache said:

It's not, I probably laid the sarcasm on too thick. I think Palestinians have a legitimate grievance going back 75 years or more. Having to constantly qualify that opinion by making clear you denounce terrorism and think Hamas is not a proper representative of everyday Palestinians gets lost when criticizing Israel. I for one won't say any of this in open company because I know my point will be easily skewed, sometimes intentionally sometimes unintentionally. I think my comment was because I had just seen posts about professors being anti-Semetic and the screenshots showed reduction of Palestinian territories over the years. I can certainly see a professor going too far in criticisms, but the screenshot and the accusations just didn't match up in my opinion. 

As someone with Jewish (and Ukranian FWIW) heritage, my antisemitism meter is pretty sensitive.  Did I miss someone accusing a professor of antisemitism for saying the same thing? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I disagree.  While recent polls suggest a majority of both Palestinians and Israelis oppose a two state solution and a decline in the percentage of those supporting one, there is still a significant minority of support (anywhere from 35-40 something percent of from what I was able to google).   

A diplomatic solution can be achieved.  However, it may take the loss and destruction of many more lives before enough support for one develops.

 

Well, the intents and support of the Palestinian and Israeli people mean about as much as the public opinion polls of Americans do when it comes to political reality. Probably even less actually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Well, the intents and support of the Palestinian and Israeli people mean about as much as the public opinion polls of Americans do when it comes to political reality. Probably even less actually.

Until they do mean something.  I guess I'm just not as fatalistic in my perspective on this.  I'm not saying I think it will necessarily happen, I'm just saying that I disagree that it cannot ever happen, which is what I took from your comment.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Until they do mean something.  I guess I'm just not as fatalistic in my perspective on this.  I'm not saying I think it will necessarily happen, I'm just saying that I disagree that it cannot ever happen, which is what I took from your comment.  

As my granny use to say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which ones fills up first. I see no reason to be anything other than fatalistic wrt the current political reality. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

I shared the link because it's what the UN itself counts. You were calling into question the sourcing of the others, so I gave you data from another source, which also shows a rise in Palestinian civilian deaths at the hands of settlers. The upside to it is that it describes a clear methodology.

 

In your previous posts, you seem to maintain that the violence is a one-way street. I've been trying to demonstrate over the past couple of days (with multiple articles and links) that it's clearly not the case.

Here's another good read about shit going on in the West Bank if you're interested:   

Cigarette Burns, Beatings, Attempted Sexual Assault: Settlers and Soldiers Abused Palestinians
A week after being assaulted in Wadi as-Seeq, Palestinians and Israeli activists struggle to recover – and accuse an army unit of ‘hilltop youth’ and settlers. The army has removed the commanding officer of the unit and opened an investigation

The abuse lasted almost a whole day. Soldiers and settlers detained and handcuffed three Palestinians from the West Bank village Wadi as-Seeq, and for hours, according to the Palestinians, they were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed, in their underwear. Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.

At the same time, soldiers and settlers arrested leftist Israeli activists who were present, including a minor, cuffed them, threatened to kill them, and detained them for hours. Some of the activists were beaten. The activists say that in addition to the presence of people in uniform, at some point a young settler in civilian clothes was put in charge of guarding them.
The Israelis were released after three hours. The Palestinians were only released in the evening by Civil Administration officers, and were taken to a hospital in Ramallah. Both groups were extensively robbed, including cash and a car.

The events occurred on Thursday over a week ago, October 12. The soldiers were from the Desert Frontier unit (“Sfar Hamidbar”), which was established a few years ago and recruits “hilltop youth,” radical, often violent settler youth from illegal outposts in military service, particularly choosing youth from the farming outposts that have become prevalent in the West Bank.

No paywall link for the rest: https://archive.ph/AN5xM#selection-703.0-710.0

The UN refused to condemn the attacks.  The UN condemned Israel's retaliation.    While we want the UN to be a pillar of global politics and humanity, sometimes they elect China, and Iran to lead the human rights cause.   So, let's exercise some caution around them.    

The issue with the settlers and the WB is not a new one.  There have been communities in those regions going back to the 1920s that were run off due to attacks.  So in some cases the settlers justify it as a return to their own lands.  This is also a complicated issue.  From what I can tell, they seem to be a harder group of people, who can be quite shitty to the Palestinians, but are also targeted and attacked by them in kind.   The ICC doesn't recognize their right to hold the land, but Israel does to some extent.  Israel seems to point to one Arab settlement as some justification as well (but it sounds like it is mostly poor college kids), but I take it this is just a prop. piece.  The report you listed above is clearly of limited value.  There is so much context missing that I can't seem to understand the point of it.  Which is why I asked for context.  

You are right that I don't point out individual attacks.  I generally have no interest in them, they are awful and caused a lot of pain to people and rage for others.   But that doesn't mean I do not acknowledge they exist.  So let's not misrepresent one another.   But I also do not pretend onside is pure as the driven snow and you won't find any post of mine attesting to that.  In short, I prefer to look at it from a political/macro scale, not singling out individual misdeeds.  What I do say is that Israel as a nation, has greater interest in peace and they have worked in that direction.  Even the hardliners like Netanyahu agreed to honor those accords.  Netanyahu was also working on agreements with other nations.   So there is evidence they can work with others.  Heck they are still partners with Egypt.   

I asked this question multiple times why did Egypt also create a buffer zone?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Nivek, B'TSELEM is a well resourced group with observers in the WB and Gaza. They are not a Hamas mouthpiece. You might consider spending some time on their website reviewing their documentation of what has been taking place for decades in the OT. https://www.btselem.org/

Edited by Anastasis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Israel will never allow there to be a functional and sovereign palestinian state. Vaporize Hamas, shit vaporize all the islamists or swap them out with secular or christian palestinians, doesn't matter. There will never be a palestinian state that is allowed to operate within the area now occupied by Israel. 

My solution is to give the Israelis Mexico. What could go wrong?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

You mean the moor invasion of Spain and then the conquest of Mexico? And Al Pastor does not go with Hummus. Kafta, sure. 

The merging of the cuisine of the levant with that of Mexico. Al Pastor is the result of the influence of maronite lebanese immigration to mexico. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The merging of the cuisine of the levant with that of Mexico. Al Pastor is the result of the influence of maronite lebanese immigration to mexico. 

Which came via Spain. So what does Al Pastor mean? And the Maronites came a lot later. They did not bring Spanish with them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...