crispy
Member
But if no one wants to define Israels borders to would-be Palestine, then Israel has exactly the same problem as Palestine. But there doesnt seem to be a problem with recognizing Israel as a state, so I call your argument bogus.
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European nations recognizing Palestine?
- Thread starter lpetrich
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But if no one wants to define Israels borders to would-be Palestine, then Israel has exactly the same problem as Palestine. But there doesnt seem to be a problem with recognizing Israel as a state, so I call your argument bogus.
Davka
Senior Member
Israel has internationally-recognized borders. That does not magically make everything else "Palestine." There is no State of Palestine. At this point in time, even if/when it is recognized, what will be recognized is an aspiration, not an actuality.
Recognizing that aspiration will give the nascent state legal leverage to fight the encroachment of Israeli settlers, but until the borders of Palestine are agreed on, who can say whether or not a specific settlement is in "Palestine"? It's easy to say what is and is not in Israel, and to argue about the annexed land in the Golan. It's not so easy to argue about what is or is not in Palestine.
ETA: In spite of this ambiguity, I think it is important for the international community (ideally the U.N., but the USA ain't gonna let that happen) to recognize Palestine sooner rather than later. There is a growing movement among the Israeli Right to simply annex the West Bank (nobody wants Gaza), which would make this whole mess even murkier.
Agreed. I see nothing gained by not admitting a state is a state.
funinspace
Don't Panic
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Yep! The maps show the decades long march towards turning the West Bank into a variant of the South African Bantustans. The Palestinians in the West Bank are slowly being carved up into disparate chunks that will be ever harder to evolve into a functional government. Israel lords over them, but they have no vote, and barely any rights. Israel has helped 400,000 (excluding East Jerusalem) Jewish settlers occupy West Bank land, evolving a new apartheid. A mess all round….
That article includes some of the standard deceptions of the issue.
For example, that set of maps assumes all public lands belong to the religion of the government in power.
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The land "around" Jerusalem is land that was part of the city in 1948.
Davka
Senior Member
Some is. Some isn't. Israel has effectively annexed about twice as much as was originally part of the city.
pegasus8
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If Palestine becomes a state then how will the Israelis " mow the grass " every couple of years?
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as Israel has the military, political and economic support of her sister nation, America.
Gee funny how that works.
Oh and as America has the "veto power," on the Security Council, the point is moot; France and the U.K. must do what they are told to do and follow the leader of the purse strings of the West, as in the Washington's neo-liberal policies. And if this means letting Israel commit war crimes on 1000's of civilians every year with 10's of 100's of deaths then oh well. Heh they are not even like us anyway right? You know like us being the Judeo/Christian capitalistic good guys.
So next time when the IDF runs out of bombs blowing up the West Bank or those poor slobs in Gaza just call 1-800-MORE- BomBs please. The U.S. taxpayer will be more than happy to load them on a C-5 and ship them over ASAP like a FedEx driver.
Why would America and its blood soaked BFB's want those Arabs to have a legitimize country? I mean it would be so much less fun to blow the place up if it actually had rights as a sovereign nation and stuff.
And anyway killing innocent people is big business. Israel does not have the best weapons on the planet and the 10th baddest arm forces in the world for nothing now, right?
And as an extra added family bonus pack stealing land, bull dozing homes and filling up Palestinian wells is all in God's plan. So who cares if most of the world sees this horrific travesty of justice and wants to do the right thing in recognizing those poor Palestinian people. We do not and we matter! We as in Israel and America; see gullible American public as in the Manufactured of the Consent, Reg TM.
Peace out
Pegasus
Proportional response on those darkie Arab people? I do not think so.
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as Israel has the military, political and economic support of her sister nation, America.
Gee funny how that works.
Oh and as America has the "veto power," on the Security Council, the point is moot; France and the U.K. must do what they are told to do and follow the leader of the purse strings of the West, as in the Washington's neo-liberal policies. And if this means letting Israel commit war crimes on 1000's of civilians every year with 10's of 100's of deaths then oh well. Heh they are not even like us anyway right? You know like us being the Judeo/Christian capitalistic good guys.
So next time when the IDF runs out of bombs blowing up the West Bank or those poor slobs in Gaza just call 1-800-MORE- BomBs please. The U.S. taxpayer will be more than happy to load them on a C-5 and ship them over ASAP like a FedEx driver.
Why would America and its blood soaked BFB's want those Arabs to have a legitimize country? I mean it would be so much less fun to blow the place up if it actually had rights as a sovereign nation and stuff.
And anyway killing innocent people is big business. Israel does not have the best weapons on the planet and the 10th baddest arm forces in the world for nothing now, right?
And as an extra added family bonus pack stealing land, bull dozing homes and filling up Palestinian wells is all in God's plan. So who cares if most of the world sees this horrific travesty of justice and wants to do the right thing in recognizing those poor Palestinian people. We do not and we matter! We as in Israel and America; see gullible American public as in the Manufactured of the Consent, Reg TM.
Peace out
Pegasus
Proportional response on those darkie Arab people? I do not think so.
1) You can't tell anything about whether the attack was justified or not from the picture.
2) Proportional response isn't even relevant here, destroying enemy weapons systems is always appropriate.
untermensche
Contributor
Holy shit!
Can you wave your arms around any faster?
Israel has slowly taken more and more land and claimed more and more for itself. It is as clear as any thing can be.
And every bit of it was illegal.
And it explains Israeli intransigence and unwillingness to seriously engage in any kind of negotiations.
Davka
Senior Member
Loren's operating system is hardwired with "Jew Good, Arab Bad." Contradicting that hardwiring simply will not compute.
Most bombs were dropped on Hamas weapons.
Davka
Senior Member
Yeah, that's how 2,200+ civilians were killed. Truth be told, those "Hamas weapons" are pathetically useless little rockets that occasionally do minor property damage. But they do have the advantage of goading right-wing Israeli fucks like Bibi into overreacting and bombing the crap out of Gazan civilians.
Civilian-bombing apologists like to pretend that Israel "has no choice," because Hamas regularly launches rockets from civilian areas. But anyone who has ever seen Gaza knows that there are no non-civilian areas. The Gaza Strip is the most densely-populated real-estate on the planet. I suppose Hamas could launch all their rockets from the beach, so as to make it easier for Israel to wipe them out, because that's how guerilla warfare works: the smaller, weaker force stands still, out in the open, and invites the larger, stronger force to annihilate them.
Israel has many options besides killing thousands of civilians for every Israeli civilian killed. They could treat the attacks as what they are: a mild annoyance, akin to a child kicking a professional wrestler, something to be grudgingly tolerated and ignored. This would be humiliating, and humiliation is a powerful thing in Middle Eastern culture. They could annex Gaza, cede an equal-sized chunk of land bordering the West Bank, and move all the Gazans out of their outdoor prison and into a nascent would-be state. They could quit dicking around with empty promises and deliberate insults, and actually enter into good-faith talks towards a two-state solution. They could annex both the West Bank and Gaza, and give the residents citizenship. But as long as Bibi and his cohorts are in power, they will do none of these thing, because Bibi actively hates Arabs, as do most of his cabinet and supporters.
There are always solutions short of carpet-bombing, unless you are simply a callous asshole with no regard for the lives of "those people."
1) The areas near Gaza are basically evacuated during the spats. It's pretty hard to kill people that have already fled.
2) Most people manage to get to bomb shelters before the rockets hit.
3) Most of the rockets that pose a high risk get intercepted.
4) You're falling for the propaganda. Of those 2,200 "civilians" half were combatants--and that's counting as civilians people sitting on weapons and people harboring terrorist commanders in their homes. And it's counting those killed by short-falling Hamas weapons as killed by Israel.
Note that the Hamas missiles are a lot more deadly when they fall short--it's not that they don't pose a threat, it's that Israel has done a huge amount to reduce the threat.
1) I suggest you look at Google Maps, the satellite view. You'll find lots of places without people in Gaza.
2) Gaza is by no means the most densely-packed real estate. Among nations and quasi-nations it's #6. It's well below the density of many major cities.
Death isn't a mild annoyance. Or aren't Jews people that matter?
"There are always solutions short of <x>" only proves the person saying doesn't know what they are talking about.
Davka
Senior Member
This is total bullshit. The reason the Israelis use 'knock-knock' bombs is because the buildings they are about to level are NOT vacated. Besides, it's literally impossible to vacate Gaza - there is nowhere to go.
More bullshit. Where the fuck are you even getting this? Most buildings in Gaza don't even have bomb shelters.
Gazan rockets, you mean? Because Israeli bombs raining down on Gaza have a zero-percent chance of being intercepted. Which illustrates my point about how the rocket attacks from Gaza are a mere mosquito bite to Israel.
OK, loren, source this bullshit - every single point - or admit that you're making shit up. Again.
Bullets fired at the torso of a man wearing a kevlar vest pose little threat. The same goes for low-tech rockets thrown at Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system.
I suggest you visit Gaza. Google maps are misleading.
That used to be the case, before the population of gaza approached 2 million.
Israeli civilians are rarely harmed by rockets from Gaza.
Utter crap-ola. "I can't refute your point so I'll claim you don't know what you're talking about." Again, the guy with zero actual experience of the region is telling the citizen what life is like there.
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Loren:
Which is worse - terrorists lobbing bombs while hiding behind innocent civilians, or the people who go ahead and bomb them anyways?
dystopian
Veteran Member
I don't exactly want to give Loren any ammo; but he's right. If we were to assume the Gaza Strip were a country, then using its latest population figures (around 1.8 million) yields a population density of 5046 people per square kilometers. This places it in the 6th place of most densely populated countries/special territories in the world: although that's including Hong Kong and Macau as special territories. Loren is also correct in stating that it is well below the density of many major cities: it wouldn't even appear in the top 50. Many of these cities have territories bigger than the Gaza strip while still maintaining much higher densities. The Gaza strip is pretty far from the most densely populated real estate in the world; and it *is* true that there is plenty of empty space in Gaza from which one could theoretically launch rockets; but as has been pointed out, it would be self-defeating to do so. None of these places lend themselves very well for guerilla style attacks. It all consists of flat open farmland and the like, and that makes any attack a suicide one.
Not that most of this is particularly relevant to any of the points Loren made... but facts are facts.
Davka
Senior Member
I stand corrected. Loren gets a point for being right-while-off-topic.
It's still wall-to-wall people, and due to the poor quality of housing & streets (what's a "sidewalk"?) it seems insanely crowded.
Turambar
Member
Obviously Israel has overreacted many times, but to me it seems clear most of the aggression does start from the Palestinian side. The issue is commonly painted as "Jews vs. Arabs", although in a sense it is much more complicated than that. I respect the Western nations decision to recognise Palestine, but they also have to remember that Israel is a construct directly attributable to thousands of years of European antisemitism which culminated with the holocaust during WW2. That event pretty much decimated the jewish population to less than half their former number. No other conflict since comes close to WW2 in terms of true genocidal proportions. Israel and the large jewish diaspora in a handful of Western countries are the remains of a culture that used to be much richer and widely dispersed. We have to understand that Israel reacts (and overreacts) because it is a nation defending a culture that was almost completely annihilated. The lands that they took (or were given depending on your point of view) were unfortunately already occupied by another culture, the Arab one. Yet the Arabs are a culture that:
1. Has not been persecuted the way Jewish culture has been
2. Encompasses hundreds of millions of people across dozens of countries, some of which are very wealthy thanks to oil.
What always impacts me and what I do not understand is the unwillingness from the other Arab nations to help the Palestinians by providing asylum for them. They own pretty much the majority of the Middle East, some are immensely rich nations capable of building cities in the middle of deserts in mere decades, yet all the support they give the Palestinian people seem to be armament, military training and political gestures. I pity the Palestinian people not only for what they suffer whenever Israel attacks their territory, but also for the fact that being Arabs they seem to be regarded as "second class Arabs" that serve only as canon fodder to perpetuate war against the Jews.
1. Has not been persecuted the way Jewish culture has been
2. Encompasses hundreds of millions of people across dozens of countries, some of which are very wealthy thanks to oil.
What always impacts me and what I do not understand is the unwillingness from the other Arab nations to help the Palestinians by providing asylum for them. They own pretty much the majority of the Middle East, some are immensely rich nations capable of building cities in the middle of deserts in mere decades, yet all the support they give the Palestinian people seem to be armament, military training and political gestures. I pity the Palestinian people not only for what they suffer whenever Israel attacks their territory, but also for the fact that being Arabs they seem to be regarded as "second class Arabs" that serve only as canon fodder to perpetuate war against the Jews.
Davka
Senior Member
Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Palestinians were looked down on by all the other Arabic-speakers in the region. They were an underpaid minority transient labor force, seen as backwards and stupid. Then the state of Israel was created, the area originally set aside as "Palestine" became Jordan (with a non-Palestinian minority ruling over the Palestinian majority), and the Arabic-speakers who fled the newly-created state of Israel during the war became permanent refugees in Gaza and Lebanon. Later, when Israel took control of the West Bank during the 1967 war, Arabic-speakers in that area became stateless, no longer living in Jordan but not living in part of Israel either. They were (and are) in a no-man's-land.
Quite frankly, the other Arabic-speaking states in the region see the Palestinian people as useful pawns in the cold war against Israel. As long as they remain refugees, living in squalid conditions, their very existence is a black eye for Israel. More than once either Israel or European nations have offered to replace the refugee "camps" (concrete-block buildings are somewhere between a camp and a city, imo) with modern apartment buildings. But each time the outside states who have been helping finance survival in Gaza and the West Bank have threatened to cut off all funding if the Palestinians agreed to allow decent living spaces to be built. Their argument has always been that making decent, permanent housing in those areas would "legitimize" the status quo. Since they have nothing but contempt for Palestinians anyways, the surrounding nations are content to keep them in poverty as a way to tell the world how awful Israel is.
None of this is meant to minimize the way Israel has treated the Palestinians. Israel's slow piecemeal theft of West Bank land - by building settlements for orthodox Jews there - has made life in the West Bank incredibly difficult, as has the way they are treated by the Israeli authorities. It doesn't surprise me at all that the Islamist terror groups have thrived there. Step on any people long enough, and you'll create terrorists.