The Economist - Israel's security barrier. A safety measure or a land grab?

If you ignore the blue line - which has not been presented to the Israeli cabinet - essentially what we are seeing is unilateral Israeli implementation of the Clinton plan presented in January, 2001 - which would involve turning over 90% of the West Bank to the Palestinians for a state. If they ever decide to stop the intifada and return to tthe negotiating table, it's quite possible we'll see Israeli flexibility on Jerusalem - but most people are msissing the big story here - and it's the story that the right-wing in Israel understands very well... Israel is essentially abandoning 90% of the West Bank with this fence.

 

So is Israel always the bad guy?

 

Of course. Everything behind the fence will be ultimately abandoned. A couple years ago, Sharon would have considered this a complete surrender. The Palestinians should be rejoicing (of course, that would be assuming they actually want a state side by side with a viable Israel, which they don't.)

 

The Palestinians already have their own independent homeland.

It's called Jordan.

 

The US vetoed a UN resolution (proposed by Syria) condemning this controversial barrier:

BBC article

And then this happened:

Breaking news

 

I'm going to throw out that last bit onto a seperate thread.

This is going beyond the current scope.

 

Exactly. Israel has 1/1000 the land.

 

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satell...le/ShowFull&cid=1066113924140&p=1008596981749

"The US, which holds one of five vetoes in the 15-member council, voted against the resolution after Syria, which introduced the draft last Friday, refused to consider an alternative US text that called for the dismantling of terrorist groups."

That's your pavlovian reation: terrorism against Israel (and the USA, it appears) is fair game.

The UK and Germany abstained.

 

Indeed, since it was around 1/300th at the time. If Israel is destroyed, then it would be closer to 1/1000th.

Meanwhile, the greedy **** gave back the Sinai and are down to

 

The fundamental problem is that it's not Israel vs. Palestinians. If that were the case, things would be much simpler. You like to paint the conflict as such to make Israel appear as the unsympathetic aggressor. However, the reality is that Israel is a tiny nation fighting against odds against a vastly more populous and powerful enemy bent on its destruction. The Palestinians are but a piece on the chessboard. I do not deny that there may be unique attributes to that piece (like Wyomingites), nor that the piece has been treated unkindly (by both kings), but from Israel's perspective and from the perspective of the war, it is but a piece. Israel must mind the entire chessboard and can't casually return to what Abba Eban once called the "Auschwitz borders."

 

The Palestinians and Arabs had their chacne in '48. The agreement gave the Arabs most of the land while boxing in the Jewish lands. The Arabs rejected this and attacked.

The Arabs, not the Isrealis, are to blame for the Palestinian problem.

 

What if China one day decided to hand over all of Alberta north of Red Deer to the Canadian aboriginies as a separate nation. You and your neighbors, of course, will have no say in the matter. The Chinese just create their state and that's that. Suddenly, you're living under aboriginal law and you can learn to like it or you can move to Calgary if you don't. I bet that you and the rest of Canada would just roll over and accept it, right? Ha. They'd probably be able to here the wailing and howling of the Albertans of European descent all the way in Tel Aviv with the naked ear, not to mention the gunfire.

If the people then living on the land that became Israel had been able to vote on the change and only afterwards repented and attacked, then you'd have a point. For better or worse, nobody gave them the chance.

Please note that I am not saying Israel has no right to exist or even that a safe haven for Jews should not have been created where it is now. I am not justifying any of the violence committed by either side before or after the creation of Israel. The Arabs surrounding Israel should have simply recognized the need for a Jewish refuge and had the magnanimity and grace to comply with the fait accompli (easy for me to say as it wasn't my land, of course!). I'm just pointing out that your argument is horribly oversimplified and therefore inaccurate. If only the world was so "black and white" as you present it so that we didn't have to use the brains Allah gave us to make difficult judgements. It would be so much easier then.

I do have an idea for your perusal. If you insist on pointing fingers as to ultimate blame, try blaming the Europeans who persecuted and slaughtered the European Jews so much that a Jewish State finally became a necessity. It's a shame the Europeans didn't have the moral courage to give their own land to the Jews seeing as how they're the ones who spent centuries oppressing and killing Jews. Ah, but it's always easier to blame everyone but oneself and avoid the consequences of one's own actions, isn't it?

 

Perhaps Europe should give Monaco to the Palestinians, including docked Arabian yachts.

 

Yeah, but it wasn't done in one day, your Eminence (or whatever the proper form of address is for a sheikh). And for your example to work, the Albertans would have had to have been a Chinese colony for fifty years beforehand, and never had a Canadian state. In fact, politically speaking, Arab independence isn't even as historically traditional as Canadian independence in real life.

It wasn't an invasion, or colonization. It was legal immigration. In 1948, the Arabs fancied their chances - wrongly, as it turned out.

So the fence is a land grab. It's tough, but c'est literally la guerre. Moral: negotiate, don't fight, and if you fight, win.

 

Yea, verily. Analogies are almost never perfect. However, the Europeans only grabbed eastern Med after World War I. Before then, any struggled were intramural affairs within Islam.

Alberta is completely independent of the rest of Canada? By Allah's left nostril, my old information on Canada was very far off base. Thank you for correcting my analogy.

But seriously, my far from perfect analogy still works if "Canada = Ottoman Empire" and "Alberta = Palestine". I'll even throw in "Aboriginies = Jews".

Depends on your definition of "Arab", I suppose. It was certanily more current than any Jewish claim to the place, historically speaking (Yes, yes, I recognize the moral need for a Jewish State that was caused by the Europeans).

They could have immigrated to a state run by Muslims. The creation of the specifically Jewish state was still artificial. Again, I do not argue with the necessity of Israel. This particular argument, however, is very weak.

Sad, yet true. Of course, if you wish to take that amoral realpolitik stance, the other moral is: If you are going to artificially carve an ethnic state out of nothing, don't be surprised if the natives there who do not share that ethnicity don't like it. If you then proceed to treat the natives like fecal matter above and beyond the dictates of any real "security" and antagonize them with blatant land grabs, you can't whine when they blow up themselves and your family on the bus.

I wish to avoid the expected outraged responses to this last paragraph by emphatically stating that I do not for a second hold to either of the realpolitk "morals" expressed here by myself of Mr. Loney. I made mine strictly as a hypothetical counter-point.

 

The ONLY Europeans to blame are the Romans.

 

Taking "Holocaust denial" to new heights. Or should that be "to new depths"?

So you're saying that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was a 1,600 year delayed reaction to events that happened during the Roman Empire? You're denying that any Jews were ever killed or oppressed since then in Europe?

Judging from what I've seen whilst lurking in other forums here, I think this is where I get to say "Wow. Just wow."