Bush supports Israel's claim to some West Bank settlements.

Whether that does actually produce a change in policy in this area I do not know of course

(LAUGHTER)

Excuse me while I choke on my own vomit.

"Oh great. My two favorite people in the world."

This kind of logic means Kilburn will have to become Irish territory.

I wonder is this another example of one settler state sticking up for another? Maybe Sharon should advocate reservations for the Palestinians.

Well, putting on my "historian's cap." Basically, the day after the UN announced that Israel was formed, Egypt and several other neighboring countries attacked. After a year-long war where 5% of the Israeli population was killed, there was an armistice and the current borders were drawn.

before
http://www.unitedjerusalem.com/HISTORICAL_PERSPECTIVES/mapHistWar1947.jpg

after
http://www.unitedjerusalem.com/HISTORICAL_PERSPECTIVES/Israel_Wars_Maps___History/MapWarHistARM1949.jpg

The issue now are all the settlements within the last couple decades throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Although, Sharon is giving up the Gaza settlements but wants to keep many of the ones in the West Bank.

The thing is, they never even asked the Palestinians if they'd accept that - just another maneouver to get the borders drawn a few miles this way rather than that.

Anyhoo, that quote from Bush is saying that something resembling the first map would never happen (that's been pretty much understood). It's actually one of the few things I feel neutral about.

Which it should not have done.

It's not something I've been assuming, and I don't think it's something most Palestinians have been assuming. Palestinians (well, some of them including the PLO) have already agreed to accept the loss of a huge chunk of what had been theirs.

With the approval, support, and active assistance of the local Arab population.
This is the crux, for me; this act of agression destroyed their claim to land in
Palestine.

Rockist, I agree that it was a huge stupid ****ing mistake to create the state of
Israel. It was a stupid move by all involved. I mean, they had to know that they
wouldn't get along with their neighbors. But they DID move in legally and fairly,
and coexisted in peace until the Arabs decided to try to kill them for arbitrary
reasons.

And now those Arabs have tried to fabricate a case for their criminal,
terrorist behavior, but I will not buy it.

Why does anyone give a shit what GWB endorses? I know the U.S. has played arbiter to the world for decades, but haven't we lost all of that credibility? I should think the Palestinians would be saying, "Yes, yes, that's nice. Thanks for stopping by. Please make sure to close the door on your way out." (Instead of "Palestinian leaders were sharply critical of President Bush on Wednesday, saying his support for Israeli positions dealt a crippling and perhaps fatal blow to what remains of current Middle East peace efforts.")

it's funny how the terms of this plan has never actually been publicised (eg, would the Palestinian state be fully sovereign and have a border under its control with a country other than Israel, would the West Bank territory be contiguous, etc.). It's funny too how the percentage of the West Bank it was going to give to the Palestinians keeps hovering up and down. It's funny how by the "West Bank" you probably don't include illegally annexed East Jerusalem.

I'm so sure that Hezbollah's behavior is directed by its apprehension of Israel's alleged moral high ground! Strategic, perhaps. Friedman has been coming out with the most inane shit for the past several years. Constantly spouting on about what all these people are thinking and what they really want. Newsflash: they're thinking you're a twat and want you to shut up. Oh wait, that was just me.

settlements stop being new when the majority of palestinians accept their presence as an inevitable part of any palestinian state in what are now the occupied territories, i.e., not in my lifetime (i don't expect). therefore, weighing the two sides--a few thousand settlers who either settled out of a devotion to an ideology which claims all of palestine as jewish land, or were placed there with supreme cynicism by the israeli government itself; and on the other side, israeli/palestinian coexistence and by extension the politics of the entire region--the settlers should get out.

Many did, many didn't. Much of the immigration to mandate Palestine was illegal. The British authorities did not want to inflame an already difficult situation with the resident Arabs, a situation not improved by jewish terrorist attacks on the government of the time and its forces. Immigration is one thing, Declaring the formation of a new country in the country you are living in is entirely another. I'm not saying that the war of 1949 was justified but you can't just swallow the zionist line of complete innocence.

Putting aside my continued insistence that a one secular state solution is the only viable option; this plan will not bring anything in terms of peace and security to the Israelis, it wll only serve to inflame anger even more , Of course Sharon is hoping to contain this anger in his Bantustans, but it won't work, this 'final settlement' will cause more deaths of jews and Arabs because Israel is run by a shortsighted corrupt Nazi war criminal fuck. ( and the palestinians by someone who is little better)

No, you left out the next sentence where he explains (his theory) that Hezbollah's behavior is directed by its accountability for cleaning up the attack that Israel would carry out on Beirut because it holds the moral high ground. Friedman is way off a lot these days, but he is sometimes worth paying attention to.

This is nearly hair-splitting, but I bring it up because TF is always telling the USA what Arabs REALLY think. And in this case, I don't think it is plausible.

Because Hezbollah knows that Israel, having pulled back to the U.N. border, has the moral and strategic high ground, and would blow up the power plants of Beirut if Hezbollah invaded.

Whether or not Friedman is suggesting that Hezbollah believes that Israel is on the "moral and strategic high ground" (and maybe he is, and shouldn't have done so, or maybe he should have added "from the perspective of a significant majority of people in the U.S.," despite the fact that that's where his readership comes from) he is definitely saying that Hezbollah knows that Israel's belief that it is on that ground would lead it to "blow up" Beirut, producing the accountability problem. I'm not agreeing with this, necessarily, but it's an interesting idea.

x-posto

Most people want peace, a home, the quiet life. The dogma matters much less.

Unless there is massive ethnic cleansing in the meantime, Palesrael will have a Palestinian majority. Which will be interesting.

Who would be allowed to come and live in Palesrael? Any Jew that wanted to? Any Palestinian that wanted to? Or none of either group?

Once you have astate made up of those who are there, they can argue about these issue on an equal footing in their own parliament.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians want a state that is Judenrein. Since some of you like to throw around words like "Nazi" in regard to Israeli leaders (clearly without understanding what the term means) let me translate from the German -- it means a country that contains no Jews.

There is no equality there. Therefore, there's a lot more blood and shit on the Palestinian side with regard to this particular issue.

A Palestinian public security spokesman said that the Israeli decision to prevent the Palestinians from traveling abroad "would harden the daily life of the residents and would affect students who study abroad."

Israel has been imposing a strict closure on the Gaza Strip and prevents Palestinians from leaving the densely populated Gaza Stripfor Israel or the West Bank.

The Palestinians aged between 16 and 35, who represent about 80 percent of the overpopulated Gaza Strip community, would be also prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip through the Rafah terminal, the only exit on the borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which is controlled by Israel. Enditem

Barry you are naive in the extreme to think that the Israelis are not as bad as the Palestinians. Israel blows up innocent people with helicopters just as palestinians blow up innocent people with suicide bomb. Sharon himself is complicit in a massacre of refugees. Israel was founded after a terrorist bombing campaign against the the British colonial administration. Nobody has the moral high ground you fucking imbecile.

The only solution is one where all the people of Palesrael live together and try to get along. In a secular state where everyone has a voice.

Only prevented from orchestrating a tank attack on the Muslim quarter of Beiruit when the the Commander of the Tank battalion Colonel Eli Geva asked to be relived of his command. Then days later 100,000 Israelis came out to protest against his actions.

Then Sharon ordered the refugee camps at Sabra an Chatila to be 'Hermetically Sealed', Israeli troops then illuminated the caps with searchlights so that lebanese Phalagist could kill and mutilate over 2300 Palestinians.

This was followed by a demonstration where 400,000 israelis protested, that more than 10% of the population at the time.

Sure 20-30% of Palestinians support Hamas, plenty support Arafat, but plenty don't plenty just want a quiet peaceful life just like the people in Israel who didn't vote for Sharon or one of the religious wackjob parties. Make a safe peaceful country for these people.

Never forget that Rabin was killed by a jewish religious fanatic, not a muslim one.

Lebanon was Sharon's big fuckup, what else is new. Still, war on PLO != Judenrein policies.

But who cares if it's 900 or 2300 (incidentally still higher tha Sharon's initial figure of 474 dead); one is two many.

War on the PLO may not equal Judenrein policies but war on the PLO has caused the deaths of many innocent civilians.Just as palestinian terrorism. One murder, many murders its all the same.

You also go in for stark oppositions, which is why you need to paint the Palestinian struggle as led by Judenrein policies.

If this makes it difficult to talk with you about these issues, I hope you don't think that you are winning the argument.

What hasn't been adequately explained is your insistence that Arabs are allergic to a Jewish presence in the middle east. It is telling that you continually want to link 'extremists' to the majority of the Arab population, rather than draw a line between them. It is as if you want most Arabs to be opposed to Jewish occupation of the middle east in order to condemn them more.

This is a myth, and one I'm getting rather sick of hearing bandied about. Palestinian Israelis are systematically discriminated against in Israel, especially in the areas of housing, land distribution, education and employment. And if you're an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin and are married to a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories, your spouse is not allowed live with you in Israel.

Below is a rather instructive example, from Ha'aretz last year, of how "equally" Palestinian Israelis are treated:

Universities return to aptitude exams to keep Arabs out

By Relly Sa'ar, Ha'aretz

There's no politically correct spin to put on it, and the facts speak for themselves: As soon as Israel's top university administrators noticed that the big winners from admissions policy changes were not Jewish youngsters from low-income towns, but rather Arabs, they reverted back to the old admissions system.

This year, the universities instituted a policy change - the abandonment of psychometric aptitude tests as a requirement for admissions. However, once university officials realized that the main beneficiaries were Arabs, they decided to reinstate the exams.

During the upcoming academic year, university admission candidates will be judged according to the old system, which is based on a combination of high school matriculation exam results and the psychometric tests. By reinstating the old system, the universities
apparently intend to guard against high enrollments of Arab students in selected departments.

One of the country's universities studied the results of this year's new admissions policies - candidates had to submit their results from various high school matriculation exams rather than take the aptitude tests. However, the university discovered that the new admissions system benefits Arab candidates. For example, the percentage of Arab students who were supposed to be accepted to the university's faculty of dental medicine under the new system was 52 percent; in the previous academic year, when psychometric results were part of the admissions policy, Arab students comprised just 29 percent of the first-year class. The same held true for the university's occupational therapy department: under the new admissions system, 56 percent of first-year students were to be Arabs; under last year's old admissions system, the figure was 19 percent.

To prevent a heavy influx of Arab students in fields such as dental medicine and occupational therapy, the university instituted what one department head described as "revisions" in its admissions policy. "We set the [minimum] entry age for studies at 20, instead of 18, and we also gave added weight to personal interviews with candidates," the department head said in describing the "revisions." The Arab candidates do not serve in the Israel Defense Forces, so the previous minimum entry age, 18, worked to their advantage, while increasing the importance of personal interviews worked to the disadvantage of Arab candidates, partly because the interviews are not conducted in their native language. As a result, the "revisions" helped the university departments maintain the same Jewish-Arab demographics that had been obtained in previous years.

The universities did little yesterday to conceal the fact that admissions policies are being altered to benefit Jewish candidates. "Admissions policies based on [high school] grades do not make studies more accessible to [Jewish] students from the periphery. The opposite is true," declared the committee of university heads. In its statement, the committee was careful not to use the words "Jews" and "Arabs," but its intention was clear. In a euphemistic idiom, it wrote: "since the number of places available in university enrollment has not risen, the acceptance of one population [that is, the Arab students, R.S.]nudges out another population [Jews, R.S.]"

Based on cold statistics, it remains unclear how this year's new admissions policy, which took into account matriculation exam results, unwittingly instituted an affirmative action program for Arab youth. For years, the Arab secondary school system has notched poor matriculation exam results due to chronic discrimination in budget fund allocations.

Two weeks ago, the heads of the universities worked out an arrangement with Education Minister Limor Livnat and Knesset Education and Culture Committee Chairman MK Ilan Shalgi (Shinui) whereby the system of considering matriculation exam results in lieu of psychometric exams is to be "suspended for one year" rather than be scrapped permanently. At the end of the current academic year, the universities are to submit to the Knesset committee empirical research studies that address the correlation between academic performance in higher education and psychometric exam or matriculation test success. Since the universities vehemently opposed adoption of the system used this year and claimed that psychometric exam results are the most reliable indicator of success in higher education settings, it can be expected that the research will point to the need for reinstating the psychometric tests as an important factor in admissions decisions.

http://www.slblogs.net/watcherofweasels/archives/000508.html

here's another

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/05/01/3e4d7e833d956?in_archive=1

(x-post)

This is so unfair, in my opinion, to equate the activities of the
two sides. On one hand, the Israelis, although they may be heavy-
handed, are genuinely trying to minimize civilian casualties
(although some radicals argue this).

What is UNarguable, is that most of the Palestinian insurgents are
terrorists, and they specifically target civilians. Moms, dads,
kids, grandparents - these "ordinary folks" you speak of are the
primary targets. This "equivalency" argument is very unfair and
untrue to me.

But hell, even China can pull the strings. The have us telling Taiwan to cool it. Conclusion: George Bush is a little bitch.

I will say this again and again. The Palestinians have no right to a country that denies the existance of the 7 million plus jews in that country just as Israel has no right to exist whilst it denies the rights of the 7 million palestinians that live under it control. The only path to peace is a free and fair election where all the people living between the jordan and the Mediterranean elect a body to thrash out a new and equitable constitution for their land. No one can deny the reality of the Jews and the Palestinians who live in this land. They have to live side by side, there is no alternative. They have to share.

(Incidentally Quandaffi policy on Israel is that a one state solution, with equal right for Palestinians and Jews, this doesn't back my case one iota but I might as well mention it before someone else does)

As to the claim that israel targets terrorists with it's tanks and apaches, this may well be true but whatever the intent high explosive is very non discriminatory when it goes off, whatever the target. There is no morally correct way to blow someone up.

Until this century the people of Palestine (the land between Lebanon and Sinai, excluding land to the east of the River Jordan), lived quiet lives mainly as peasantry, with smaller numbers of bedouin or townspeople – all citizens of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of, among others, Canaanites, Hebrews and Philistines. Palestine was never the land of a single nation or religion. Under Roman and then Byzantine rule many Jews, like other inhabitants, converted to Christianity, and then to Islam following the Arab conquest of Palestine in AD 637. Successive other conquerors came. Only two sets of conquerors rejected the culture and the mores of the indigenous society: the Crusaders and today’s Zionists.

About 160,000 Palestinians remained in Israel at the end of hostilities in 1948. Israel seized all the property of those who had fled, evicted 40,000 of them from their villages and seized over two-thirds of the agricultural lands of the remainder. Arabs were subject to military government from 1948 until 1966. Land sequestration has continued and Arab villages have now lost 80 per cent of their land. By putting all this land at the disposal of the Jewish National Fund, which by statute will only grant leases to Jews, the state pursues a clearly discriminatory policy.

Although Palestinians have the vote, Arab parties have always been excluded from participation in any coalition governments in Israel. Moreover, government funding for development, education, health, municipalities and villages, public works and other basic services systematically discriminates against Arabs, who remain marginalized in almost all aspects of life. The authorities routinely demolish unauthorized Arab dwellings. A complex system of control and marginalization is in place.

But before you do, consider what you're arguing and why you're arguing it. I haven't read everything on this thread but Ed's position basically seems to be "they're stuck with each other, so they're going to have to learn to get along and stop being racist towards each other."

Are you saying Israel and Palestine are NOT stuck with each other? That there's some way they can each continue to harbor murderously racist attitudes towards each other? If you do, that seems deeply cynical and against most things that mainstream Judaism teaches. (and Islam too, probably)

you're the one who started using a Nazi term.

Not that history doesn't matter, or shouldn't be understood, but in some ways the details distract from the core realities. Facts, figures and lines on maps aside, what most people need and want are realtively simple things: security, freedom, opportunity. And any "solution" that doesn't make those things the chief priorities will obviously fail, no matter how "justified" it might be under some set of historical analysis.

Pro-Israel arguments say that Israel has engaged only in 'defensive' wars - and the current assassination policy is sold as an extension of that - whereas Palestine, Arabs and Muslims are the aggressors against Israel and want Israel to be abolished. This pro-Israel position is not historically accurate.

Jews have always been lived on the land that is now called Israel. This is one of the main reasons why pro-Israelis argue that they have more of a 'right' to be there than Palestinians. But what this also tells us, is that Muslims had a far more tolerant attitude to Jews between 638 AD - 1917 than Israel has to the Palestinians now.

But what this also tells us, is that Muslims had a far more tolerant attitude to Jews between 638 AD - 1917 than Israel has to the Palestinians now.
you're not necessarily wrong, but the post 1917 attitude of Arab Muslims towards Jews is what Barry has been complaining about; that Arab countries aren't attacked for doing the same things Israel is.
Me, I think first-world quasi-democracies should be held to higher standards than third-world dictatorships, so I don't think the double standard is a big deal.

http://news.google.com/url?ntc=0M1A0&q=http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/81409/1/.html

Nothing ever goes right in the mideast. When fucking Ariel Sharon is the dove in the minority to the hawks, you know things are bad. How these people will ever get out of the conundrum of terrorism giving power to the Israeli right who then incite more terrorism, I have no idea.

Given that most pro-Palestinian commentators were opposed to the Gaza "withdrawal" plan, I feel we must salute the Likudniks.

Good.