Attacks on Gaza creates rift with overseas jews...

[datsun2401972]

Until I see a rapid increase in pizza oven sales, I think you're exaggerating.

It took me a second, but I finally got that

Now I won't be able to go eat pizza without thinking about a crematorium.

[OriginalWheelman]

look who's back! here i was thinking you had left us since you rarely are on this side of the forum. no doubt, hamas instigated, and no doubt, hamas will be stronger now. what did israel gain? it has to be asked, and i dont know if they gained anything.

Israel gained people not shooting rockets at them.

[datsun2401972]

What people like Z and I have forgotten is more than what the US population has ever known, in regards to this topic.

Fortunately in the US we are free to research from ANY source in the world willing to give us information. You probably can't say the same about any country in the region this topic covers.

you wanna know why Hamas was elected? Look at the conditions onthe ground prior to their election. Gaza around the time of the elections was alot like Post WWI germany, with no economic growth, alot of anger, and alot of instability. Out of that comes Hamas, who like hitler, promises alot of things, and actually does good inthe community. They seek to defend the honor of the palestinians and hell, it worked. You wonder why they are so popular? Hitler was popular. How do you prevent stuff like that from happening? You fix the conditions on the ground so that the moderates arent forced to turn to the extreme fringe elements to get anything done.

And the German people realize that Hitler was wrong, and are ashamed of what has happened. The way they went about regaining their "honor" was actually dishonorable.

And I would use the word "decided" instead of "forced". Don't get me wrong, I think Gaza is used by the Israelis as an example to the rest of the region. And the message is clear, don't mess with us. Which means they are probably being unfair to Gazans so the rest will understand.

But why did they need an extremist group? They couldn't stand up for themselves? Did they just want someone else to fix their problems for them? Did they not consider: hey we're surrounded by jews that don't like us, maybe we should leave...then we get into "historically that was our land" blah blah blah. Historically land has been conquered by force since we can remember.

No doubt there's alot about this situation I don't know, considering I don't live with it daily. Hopefully some responses will fill in the blanks.

How do you fix gaza? 2 options, 1.) open the borders with gaza and rebuild and revitilize the economy, or 2.) Strengthen the Fatah Government in the West Bank and show the Gaza faction that hey, if you can play nice you can have these nice things too, like a state. When the people on the ground see that Fatah is getting results, you will see support for Hamas dry up.

I'd vote option 2, but Israel would have nothing to do with it. Fatah would strengthen itself, to prove that the strength comes from within, not from someone else.

how do you do it? You start actually forcing Israel to do something. As it stands now, they have nothing to gain from a palestinian state, as aid flows into israel and weaponry to defend against these terrorists. lose the threat, you lose the protection. And Miami and New York wont have that anytime soon.

I really don't understand what you're trying to say in the last part of this quote. But I do know Israel doesn't need to be at war with anyone to support itself.

[HashiriyaS14]

I certainly don't agree with Hamas shooting rockets, but (what's left of) Palestine is not Hamas.

That said, Israel has become a terrorlst state. They are murdering civilians by the truckload in retaliation to what someone loosely associated with Palestinians did.

America needs to stop sucking Israel's d!ck and start divesting in them.

Hamas is not "loosely associated with Palestinians", it is the legitimately elected government of the Gaza Strip. I don't feel that this somehow precludes it from being a terrorlst organization, as I certainly believe that it is, but to separate the actions of Hamas rocket squads from the people that elected them is an erratum.

Israel has a right to protect it's population, up to and including invasion of the nation that is shooting at them. That said, just because they have a sovereign right to defense, that doesn't necessarily mean that they should always use it. In this case, fighting a protracted ground campaign in Gaza against Hamas with huge civilian casualties is NOT the best option to secure Israel's security.

The best option is to broker a peace accord, a REAL one, with Fatah. This will create a stark contrast and a real choice between peaceful coexistence (in the West Bank) and continued antagonization (in Gaza). In time, Palestinians will come to prefer the former, so long as Israel resists the urge to antagonize. It is the job of the United States to keep Israel from doing this.

It is also, IMO, the job of the United States to force Israel to broker this peace with Fatah. We can make life really difficult for them if they refuse, and the time has come to hold their feet to the flame, for their own good.

Additionally, the United States should immediately demand the de-nuclearization of Israel, as their nuclear capabilities are the primary motivator for Iran to seek atomic arms. Their nuclear capabilities are starting a regional arms race that poses a direct threat to US national security.

We cannot "divest" of Israel. The solution is not to leave them to their own devices, cut off aid, and let them do what they may. The solution is to gradually bring Fatah up to the same status Israel now has, give them aid, make them an ally, et cetera. Why would any but the most blindly ideological Palestinians then continue to fight with Hamas when they could live peacefully and prosperously under Fatah?

[Eikon]

The Israeli people need to be told in no uncertain terms that they can either make painful compromises and negotiate peace with Fatah and a Palestinian state

How many times???How frequently do they have to do this?

Because they've done this many times in the past and each time they've made painful compromises the results have been short lived and they've had to come back to the table and have to give up more and more.

I'm not an expert, I'm not a Jew, I'm not an Israeli... I'm simply regurgitating information that I've read in order to help people see things from another perspective. So far we've discussed this topic thoroughly from the Palestinian side, and the Israeli's have been made out to be the bad guys..

How do they see things?

In the 40's the British gave the region back to the locals. Since the population of the area was 25% Jewish and 75% Arab, the Brit's negotiated a deal with the people living there to give the eastern 3/4 of the territory to the Arabs and the western 1/4 to the Jews. So the Jews in the region made a painful compromise and gave up and claim on 3/4 of the land to the Arabs in the area.

That worked well for about a week... until they found out that the Arabs who were living in the western 1/4 weren't willing to honor the deal. So they fought.

The UN stepped in and brought the people to the table and asked the Jews to again make a painful compromise. They split the existing 1/4 in half again and the Jews agreed to give up the territory in order to live in peace.

In 1948 the Jews in the 1/2 of the 1/4 of the land that was given to them declared statehood. Then next day 6 larger surrounding arab nations attacked them.

The Jews won the war and took back the 1/2 of the 1/4. They were plagued with hatred and terrorism for years for controlling the territory that they acquired in a war in which they were on the defensive.

In 2004, they made a very painful compromise and gave back these lands.

What do they get for making this painful compromise??? They have to duck and cover from rockets that are shot at them...

What further painful compromises do you suggest Israel should make???Should they give up more of the land? Because so far they've done that 3 times and no peace has come from it. Should they just uproot and leave the land of their ancestry? That's seems to be the only solution that Hamas would accept. Pretty unreasonable....

Again.. I'm not making judgment on what's right or wrong here. I just want to bring a little different perspective into the conversation.

It's amazing how different a situation can look from another perspective.

[HashiriyaS14]

How many times???How frequently do they have to do this?

Again.. I'm not making judgment on what's right or wrong here. I just want to bring a little different perspective into the conversation.

It's amazing how different a situation can look from another perspective.

I'm not disagreeing that the Israelis have gotten the short end of the stick a few times in all of this.

That said, I'm not sure what the other option would be. Remain in a constant state of war with the surrounding Arab world? How is that sustainable?

The majority of the Palestinian population does NOT value the eradication of Israel more than they value their own safety and prosperity. Those with neither safety nor prosperity have little to lose however, and thus they are easily swayed by extremists who want to destroy Israel at all costs.

Safety and prosperity must be re-introduced to these people, and Abu Mazen is the man to do it in the West Bank. Israel needs to see this, they need to work with him, and they need to build a peace. They need to give Palestinians the choice between a normal life and a life of terrorism and war. Once that choice exists, the extremists will lose their momentum and their support.

There is no other alternative.

[szh]

Until I see a rapid increase in pizza oven sales, I think you're exaggerating.

Nope. I don't think I am totally exaggerating (by the way, the gas chambers in Nazi Germany did not come till later, and I doubt that this would occur in this day and age). I am referring to the events of November 9 and 10, 1938. The deportation of the Palestinians would occur to the surrounding countries.

Of course, this was in the unlikely event of Israel thinking they had a total free hand to do whatever they wished, supported by their military might, that is funded by the US.

Z

[Cold_Zero]

Nope. I don't think I am totally exaggerating (by the way, the gas chambers in Nazi Germany did not come till later, and I doubt that this would occur in this day and age). I am referring to the events of November 9 and 10, 1938. The deportation of the Palestinians would occur to the surrounding countries.

Z, not that I disagree with you intrinsically, but we don’t have to look that far back in the last century to see whole populations being hunted down and exterminated in Rwanda, annihilation of villages and people being sold into slavery in Darfur and forced movement of people in Bosnia/Kosovo. All of which occured while the US sat on its hands and refused to do anything about the situation before it was basically over. I need to point out that the UN also did virtually nothing in these cases to stop the atrocities that were committed in these regions.Bud

[szh]

How many times???How frequently do they have to do this?

Because they've done this many times in the past and each time they've made painful compromises the results have been short lived and they've had to come back to the table and have to give up more and more.

You have to look deeper below the surface. Many of the times that "Israel has been forced to compromise", it was with proposed terms that made life difficult, miserable or impossible for the Palestinians. Those terms rarely made public news or the media, because they were not news-worthy, etc.

A simple example: some time back, Israel said that they had made a proposal for giving land to the Palestinians ... that had been rejected. What they failed to also point out was that the land they wanted to "give back" was in many tiny pockets that needed people to pass multiple checkpoints and border crossings to get from one place to another - even for jobs.

Have you ever seen what Palestinians have to endure at a border crossing in or through Israel (admittedly made worse by human bombers trying to cross over to do despicable acts)? Makes our Mexican-US border crossing stuff look like a walk in the park by example.

No surprise that it was unacceptable.

So far we've discussed this topic thoroughly from the Palestinian side, and the Israeli's have been made out to be the bad guys..

Ummm ... I am not Palestinian or Israeli either. And, I would say that the Hamas is not a good guy in this situation either - my opinion.

I do NOT condone terrorism or indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel. These are, however, the actions of people who believe that they have no other recourse or are extremist. That does NOT make it acceptable ... I am NOT justifying it or saying that it is right, merely pointing out that I understand why they think they need to do it.

In the 40's the British gave the region back to the locals. Since the population of the area was 25% Jewish and 75% Arab, the Brit's negotiated a deal with the people living there to give the eastern 3/4 of the territory to the Arabs and the western 1/4 to the Jews. So the Jews in the region made a painful compromise and gave up and claim on 3/4 of the land to the Arabs in the area.

That worked well for about a week... until they found out that the Arabs who were living in the western 1/4 weren't willing to honor the deal. So they fought.

The UN stepped in and brought the people to the table and asked the Jews to again make a painful compromise. They split the existing 1/4 in half again and the Jews agreed to give up the territory in order to live in peace.

In 1948 the Jews in the 1/2 of the 1/4 of the land that was given to them declared statehood. Then next day 6 larger surrounding arab nations attacked them.

The Jews won the war and took back the 1/2 of the 1/4. They were plagued with hatred and terrorism for years for controlling the territory that they acquired in a war in which they were on the defensive.

In 2004, they made a very painful compromise and gave back these lands.

What do they get for making this painful compromise??? They have to duck and cover from rockets that are shot at them...

Whoa! A way over-simplification of history there, Eikon, with inaccuracies!

BTW, many Palestinians were displaced from their homes, without any compensation whatsoever, when the UN created Israel, and in later years too. There are plenty of living Palestinians (who are now dying off, of course), who can point to land they (and many generations of theirs) had owned at one time ... for centuries, till it was taken from them by force.

Don't also forget that many of Israel's later leaders were, at one time, terrorists declared by the British too. Menachim Begin (sixth Prime Minister of Israel), for example, when he joined the Irgun, and used the guerilla tactics of their time (bombings, assassinations, etc.) to create havoc in Palestine, just like the PLO and others did in later years. With arms and explosives bought from money extorted from businessmen and bogus diamond insurance scams.

As has been said elsewhere, the victor gets to write the history. Many people now claim that the Irgun were freedom fighters, not terrorists, of course!

The British government and the UN bowed to this terrorism pressure and proposed the creation of a region to serve as the homeland for Jews and Palestinian Arabs - two states! However, David Ben-Gurion illegally (according to the UN - not me) declared Israel a new nation that included the land allocated by the UN for the Palestinian ... figuring that the Palestinians Arabs were not likely to protest the situation very much - given the arms that the Irgun and Lehi and Haganah groups possessed.

This led to the events of 1948 - the events you describe above - because the UN proporals had not been formally accepted by every country. An interesting fact: many of the soldiers who tried to fight Israel in 1948 were British soldiers, who resigned from the British Army, from what was then called TransJordan. Fewer "Arabs" than you realize, even though it is called the "1948 Arab-Israeli War".

BTW, it is also an interesting footnote to point out that some people in the US administration volunteered Alaska to be the location of Israel, or a homeland for the European Jews. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report for more information. This had the strong support of the Labor Zionists of America, but never became reality because Roosevelt did not support it adequately.

Finally, don't ever forget the Emir Faisal and Chaim Weizman agreement at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, to create an Arab state and Jewish settlement in the region. Both these men disregarded the Palestinian Arabs completely, and laid the groundwork for the problems in the region today! Read up on the events leading to the British Mandate of Palestine in between the two World Wars. A lot of pain could have been avoided, if people had simply sat down and followed many of the agreements that were reached then - rather than forcing the sitution as David Ben-Gurion did in 1948 when he declared Israel a nation, without a true mandate from the UN.

Should they just uproot and leave the land of their ancestry? That's seems to be the only solution that Hamas would accept. Pretty unreasonable....

Certainly unreasonable! But, for the same reasons, Israel should easily recognize and understand that the land of their ancestry is also the land of ancestry of the Palestinians.

I remember being told by somebody that "the Jews had ancestral memory of the land when they were forced out centuries ago and should own it now". (Not an exact quote, but gets the gist across).

When I pointed out that this should allow them to understand the feelings of the Palestinians now - given that they were also forced out from their lands in 1948 - and that these people were still alive and had current memories, rather than having to rely on "ancestral memory" from generations past, she understood the position of the Palestinians.

No easy solution regardless.

Z

[szh]

The majority of the Palestinian population does NOT value the eradication of Israel more than they value their own safety and prosperity. Those with neither safety nor prosperity have little to lose however, and thus they are easily swayed by extremists who want to destroy Israel at all costs.

Exactly right.

Z

[szh]

Z, not that I disagree with you intrinsically, but we don’t have to look that far back in the last century to see whole populations being hunted down and exterminated in Rwanda, annihilation of villages and people being sold into slavery in Darfur and forced movement of people in Bosnia/Kosovo. All of which occured while the US sat on its hands and refused to do anything about the situation before it was basically over. I need to point out that the UN also did virtually nothing in these cases to stop the atrocities that were committed in these regions.

There is no doubt that atrocities in the world have occurred recently. But, I simply cannot believe that Israel would ever go that far - too many rational people there, I hope!

If they felt that they could do whatever they wanted, I suspect that the effort would be to deport the Palestinians to neighboring countries. And, the problem is, that the Palestinians do not have welcomes there either.

It would be a modern-day diaspora of the worst kind.

Z

[szh]

I don't understand why Palestinians would consider other Palestinians as second class

I meant the other Arabs in the area - Palestinians are, unfortunately, not treated well in many of those countries. The Palestinians living in Gaza are not free to move to other nations in that area and survive.

Z

[Cold_Zero]

There is no doubt that atrocities in the world have occurred recently. But, I simply cannot believe that Israel would ever go that far - too many rational people there, I hope!

Sorry Z, I wasn't implying that Israel would go that far. But I think any country in this day and age is capable. Who would have ever thought that some 30 years after winning its independence that Rwanda was slide into violence where men, women and children were hacked apart on a large scale by Militants wielding machetes? But I would have to hold on to the hope that Israel would have enough people either in the Knesset or the populous that would stand up and prevent atrocities from occurring.

Quote »If they felt that they could do whatever they wanted, I suspect that the effort would be to deport the Palestinians to neighboring countries. And, the problem is, that the Palestinians do not have welcomes there either.

It would be a modern-day diaspora of the worst kind.

Z[/quote]Well according to the UN, forced movement of people is a genocide. But hasnt this happened before with the Palestinians? Arent their Palestinians still living in Lebanon, Jorda and the surrounding countries that border Israel? Also, if I remember correctly didnt the Palestinians attempt to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan, in the 1970s?

[datsun2401972]

I meant the other Arabs in the area - Palestinians are, unfortunately, not treated well in many of those countries. The Palestinians living in Gaza are not free to move to other nations in that area and survive.

Z

After just talking with an Arab from Lebanon, I got the impression that even if the Palestinians left Israel they would be looked down upon by not staying in their "homeland". Basically this offers them a horrible life in other lands or an honorable life in their own(where they are oppressed by Israelis).

In other words, surrounding countries are saying "don't come here, die in your homeland instead." Is this correct?

[heliochrome85]

that is correct. with the exception of syria, and jordan, palestinians are not considered citizens of the countries they inhabit. this is for a very serious reason. the entire reason behind the lebanese civil war of the 1970s which destroyed beiruit and layed the foundation for Hezbollah was Palestinian forces in southern lebanon. as a result, they are seen as a destabilizing force. Lebanon doesnt want them, and neither does egypt. syria tolerates them, and gives them citizen ship. as does jordan due to the sizable palestinian population there.

I have been to the refugee camps. You would be speechless if you saw what I saw. Suffice it to say, conditions on the ground cant get much worse than they have already.