Israel to World: "Suck It."

http://i50.tinypic.com/2nc4hef.jpg

imo

Is that flag sticking out of his butt?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U84fPuQrKzI/Ri5enWi_sEI/AAAAAAAAA2o/P0m1aV7krjc/s320/jones_00screwball-a.jpg

...which uses the example of the PA to argue that Hamas gained specifically because they were violent.

― Z S, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 18:44 (1 hour ago) Permalink

The reason this argument is somewhat silly is that there would be no blockade in the first place without the violence. Hamas will try to spin anything they get as a victory (as, of course, will Israel). In this case, I would argue that Hamas is wrong.

xp yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=oniFAoHgSmw

xposts, the Olmert story is pretty interesting. I would still like to hear the other side's version of it. I got to have a conversation a few years ago with someone who was pretty intimately involved (on the US side) in Israel-Palestine negotiations and he said that he often saw a lack of good faith in negotiations on both sides. This was pre Olmert's offer.

olmert's offer looks all right, but you can still see why it was rejected, at least politically, by abbas. the settlements remain, and some kind of buy-off in lieu of the right of return. i don't follow this conflict very closely but nobody seems very interested in half-loaves.

this did kind of rub me the wrong way i must say:

So there would be an area of no sovereignty, which would be jointly administered by five nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian state, Israel and the United States.

yeah thanks for drafting us into this shit officially, forever.

thats what happened in the west wing

the united states would be there in a totally impartial oversight role since we don't have any biases in either direction

well same story for jordan and saudi arabia

in my v naive way i've wondered over the past couple days what would happen if the new egyptian gov't and hamas just announced that gaza was egypt now.

maybe that would be for the best, give west bank back to jordan too

what would be the israeli objection to that?

israel would love that

This is the true story... of five nations... picked to jointly administer a volatile area that is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when nations stop being polite... and start getting real...The Jerusalem No-Sovereignty Zone.

maybe they should sign control over to a body that could be truly independent on account of its lack of baises, like fiji, or greenland, or the NBA, or a marching band of retired australian janitors. add whatever business needs taking care of to the agenda for their annual general meeting & let them figure it out, what the australian janitors says goes.

the Dome of the Rock will be closed this evening on account of the 4th annual retired australian janitor Marching Ninety-Nine!

olmert's offer looks all right, but you can still see why it was rejected, at least politically, by abbas. the settlements remain, and some kind of buy-off in lieu of the right of return.

Ok, but propose a workable full right of return and a workable way of dismantling the largest settlements, which have become somewhat city-like (which I assume are what he refers to by that 6.4%, as opposed to the random outpost settlements which could be easily dismantled). I mean, maybe you could research how many Palestinians would actually want to "return" to Israel proper as opposed to the new Palestinian state, and then propose a number based on that or a reasonable proportion of that, assuming it's not close to the million that are eligible. And maybe you could propose not completely dismantling all settlements but ceding some of them to the Palestinian state with Jews able to stay their if they want or leave if they want (there are arab villages in Israel, there could be Jewish villages in Palestine too). But did Abbas come back with a counteroffer at all? I'm not saying he didn't but I'd like to know.

Israel has been one big pass the baby quagmire as long as it has existed. The British, the Russians, the US ...

xp I mean I understand that you put in the qualifier "at least politically" goole, but what solution is ever going to be "politically" feasible by that standard?

"Third was the issue of Palestinian refugees." This issue has often been a seeming deal-breaker. The Palestinians insist that all Palestinians who left Israel - at or near the time of its founding - and all their spouses and descendants, should be able to return to live in Israel proper. This could be more than a million people. Olmert, like other Israeli prime ministers, could never agree to this: "I think Abu Mazen understood there was no chance Israel would become the homeland of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian state was to be the homeland of the Palestinian people. So the question was how the claimed attachment of the Palestinian refugees to their original places could be recognised without bringing them in. I told him I would never agree to a right of return. Instead, we would agree on a humanitarian basis to accept a certain number every year for five years, on the basis that this would be the end of conflict and the end of claims. I said to him 1000 per year. I think the Americans were entirely with me.

this part seemed especially bogus to me. Olmert, in a wave of generosity that he probably regretted the next day, agrees to accept 5000 Palestinians (1000 per year for five years) back into their original homes, no more. The unbiased Americans were entirely with him, he thinks.

there are almost 10,000 people/sq. mile Gaza and over 1,000 people/sq. mile in the West Bank. Israel's at 809/sq. mile. as i understand, there are over 300,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank alone, right? but they're only going to accept 5000 Palestinians back? am i missing something?

well total right to return will always be both politically and pragmatically out of the question so it'd be mostly symbolism

I don't think the 5,000/300,000 is really a relevant comparison. It's not an exchange where Palestine takes in 300,000 israelis and Israel takes in 5000 Palestinians -- the settlements would be part of Israel. If anything I'd focus on the land that Israel would be getting, and whether Palestinians were being adequately compensated in lieu of return. There really wouldn't be any feasible way to "return Palestinians to their original homes" -- you're talking about people who lived there 65 years ago and their descendents.

And again, I also ask if Abbas made a counteroffer.

maybe they should sign control over to a body that could be truly independent on account of its lack of baises

worked for cyprus, right?

whether Palestinians were being adequately compensated in lieu of return

this also seems pretty sticky. what if the israelis built a luxury hotel where your grandfather's horse stable was? do you deserve to be compensated for the value of the hotel or the value of the horse stable? "right of return" seems to me to be only a few steps removed from reparations for slavery or compensating the native americans for manhattan.

I don't think the 5,000/300,000 is really a relevant comparison. It's not an exchange where Palestine takes in 300,000 israelis and Israel takes in 5000 Palestinians -- the settlements would be part of Israel.

of course it's not apples to apples, but i still think it illustrates how Abbas could have reasoned that Olmert's offer, albeit the best ever offer from Israel, wasn't reasonable. 300,000 settlers in the West Bank alone. in comparison, 1000 Palestinians per year, for five years, "accepted" back into Israel. as a means of comparison, 16,000 people immigrated to Israel in 2009. obviously not all Palestinians could move to Israel, nor would they want to. still, i don't know about you, but if i was apologizing to someone for screwing them over in the past, i wouldn't blatantly screw them again in my new offer. in typical ilxor fashion i will now use tipping as a terrible metaphor: "jeez, i'm really sorry for not tipping the last 20 times you served me...here, take 35 cents."

what if your meal cost 1.75 though

if you screw someone over with a 0% tip 20 times in a row, the payback tip better exceed 20% imo

well yeah, but presumably that's where the financial part of the reparations would come in (although no specifics are given above)

in typical ilxor fashion i will now use tipping as a terrible metaphor: "jeez, i'm really sorry for not tipping the last 20 times you served me...here, take 35 cents."

it's more 'tipping the full amount would be logistically impossible but I am accepting a certain amount of responsibility for what happened'

Perhaps correctly, the Israelis see the right of return as a Trojan horse and I don't see it ever as a viable political possibility. Similarly, I imagine conceding it is probably not a viable political move on the part of Palestinian politicians. My question, however, is how many in the Palestinian diaspora would want to return, especially if any compensation or permanent status were contingent on them staying for, say, at least five years or whatever? I can't imagine any of the Palestinans I know in SF returning. They wish it were easier to visit their relatives, but they've all made their lives here now.

i'm sure all the palestinian refuges living in jordan, lebanese, and syrian refuge camps would love to return

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/give-the-palestinians-a-state.premium-1.481023

Mordy, do you have any idea how many there are in those camps?

And what do we make of the UK's possible shift alongside France to accepting Palestinian staehood in the UN?

Mordy, do you have any idea how many there are in those camps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_refugee_camps

Is this a good place to talk about this genius?
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/israeli-militarys-twitter-warrior-posed-obama-style-in-blackface/

speaking of palestinian refuge camps...

wait is this true??

Israel is one of the few countries in the world where a large segment of the population believes Obama is a secret Muslim.

yeah he's kenyan iirc, it's a family thing

Abbas' big day at the UN today.

As the Lebanese news site Al Akhbar reported, Lieutenant Dratwa did find some support from fellow Israelis online. Miriam Young, a 20-year-old video blogger who recently moved to Israel from Los Angeles, wrote that, as an American, she was not insulted by the image.

this is great. "for some perspective, we talked to an idiot on the internet..."

actually it's even better, since (1) they asked a white American whether she was offended by an image that is racist toward black people, and (2) if you read a little further, it sounds like she's the guy's friend or at least acquaintance

haha yep

Good day for Palestinians.

Not for actual Palestinians. But a good day for "Palestinians."

Probably a little bad for everyone, especially if US goes through on threats to cut financial support to Abbas.

Well, we'll see about that. This could actually be a very good thing for the Palestinians, not just "Palestinians", in the not too distant future.

The General Assembly was the midwife to baby Israel herself, after all.

It took a lot more than a UN resolution to bring Israel into being. It's hard to see how this solves any of the current Palestinian impediments to statehood.