Palestinians accuse Israel of annexing the West Bank

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worl...nians-accuse-israel-of-annexing-the-west-bank

I ask an honest question. What would it take for you to say "enough"? For everyone, there must be a certain point. What heinous behaviour would it take?

 

ATW, as you are fully aware, the mods will tell me if I'm overdoing it. Please stop policing the board. You don't have the admin rights and you certainly don't have the moral authority to tell anyone to not focus on a single topic.

If I speak of Israel, I'm speaking of foreign policy. Israelis are the same to me as Germans as Arabs as Turks as Persians as Americans as Chinese as anyone. I believe their opinions are held hostage by the power brokers.

This is a serious issue. If you have an opinion on this specific issue of the committee appointed by Bibi deciding that Israel is NOT occuppying militarily and its outposts are NOT illegal, then we'd love to hear it.

After all, you are a constitutional lawyer so it would be interesting to hear what you believe about their interpretation of international and Israeli law and especially procedural justice.

But I suspect your expertise leads you to the same conclusion that the world has come to: these policies are unfair and unbalanced under any law except maybe for extremist Jewish law. It is a problem which you complain about routinely with regards to conservative Islam. I assume you'll apply the same vigilence to this disregard for what you called the free/western laws, norms and expectations especially given that this is war we are talking about.

 

Many is broad. What's "many"?

I have no doubt that the high ranking officials are ultra pro-israel, there are commercial and authoritative reasons for that.

What shocks me is that 60% of the American population support it. If this was a pretty balanced thing, I would understand. But you're talking about a juggernaut occupier vs two large refugee camps, one of them hostile. It's not a balanced thing, it wasn't balanced during the Israeli-Arab War, and it's exponentially less balanced now. The surrounding states are all allies of the US, and the US dictates everything in the conflict.

These people are attacking each other not because they hate each other, they are doing it because they both want the land. So give them both the land, establish one country with two federations, secular, free, democratic, everyone has fair and equal access to every piece of land.

You block them off, they have war over access to their land. They have war, then they start hating each other. It's the perfect recipe for how NOT to have two populations ever feel secure around each other.

It's enough to convince me that the most of the 50% of eligible voters who do vote just follow the party line. Everyone else is ineligible, in jail or stays home and there is no mechanism for avoiding intentional "disinterest campaigns" against those who won't vote red or blue. I see people like big texx, basso, mc mark, etc. If that's what most voters are like, there is little hope in ever deviating from these interests because the parties will always pursue and present their interests with leftish or rightish gift wrap. Each side perceives the gift as a victory, but they don't understand how small that victory is, and how large the war on their perception is.

But anyways, this is an issue in which I have faith. If even in Germany people are now tired of self-censorship on this issue, then the world will follow. At some point, this is one of a plethora of issues that IMO will cause a seismic shift in America. I have immense faith in the larger concept of social media - this is where Palestinians, Israelis and Americans will see what they haven't seen and hear what they haven't heard. My only fear is how the business faction aka the two parties will respond to the decline of their reign, if they will take it out on Americans by holding the weak economy hostage.

 

Did not realize that. If true, his response is surprising.

Anyways, I tried to present some genuine grounds for discussion.

 

I disagree on how this conflict needs to be resolved though. I think that if Israel steps down, Hamas will step it up. If Hamas step down, Israel will step it up. Even if that's not true, that's what everyone believes on both sides of the walls. None of them can take the first step. Israel has toned it down to no avail. Even Hamas had a long ceasefire to no avail. Israel continues to expand and demolish, Hamas continues its attacks, West Bank continues to take it up the backside from everyone.

In my eyes there are two ways:

1) US forcefully resolves this by setting unbreachable conditions. In the time when it's negotiating it must cease supporting either side.

2) Obviously the terrrible choice of the two, compeltely withdraw and let them fight it out, shift your focus to only making sure the Iranian leadership don't do anything stupid. None of the allies (basically all states but Syria) will move even if tiny portions of the population in the region will drift there to support. Frankly it wouldn't matter, Israel would crush the entire ME quite easily without having to (or being able to) use its nukes. The allied states would close their borders to not allow large groups of people out. Would be over pretty quick.

There is really no scenario where an Israeli-Arab war happens again. It's Israel vs Palestinian refugees.

If we are waiting for either Israel or Hamas to retreat, I fear we are just allowing more time for cells here and there to fester and ally themselves with Hamas - worsening Israeli security, and jeopardizing any possibility of ending up with a less aggressive Israel.

 

Nah dude. People trust whoever helped them yesterday.

How many America loving Israelis today are immediate descendants of America hating Russians of yesterday?

Palestinians are fudged.

Israelis are living it up in most of Israel. Night clubs, resorts, schools, business, universities, social life, you name it they got it. Go there for a vacation, see what an awesome time they're having. Ofcourse there are the areas which are at risk of rocket fire and the possibility of terror attacks - but that is 100 times less than how often Palestinians are in the same danger. How often they are treated like animals. There is no such life in the occupied territories. Economy collapsed, lands taken, no water resources, nothing. They are refugees and the ones left over are having, in the West Bank, a non-violent protest and in Gaza the same but with a violent group.

Hamas is in Gaza. If you were a Gazan you would work for Hamas. You would have no choice. These guys have virtually ALL the money, all the food, all the land, police all the smuggling tunnels, everything. You say anything against them? You and your family are finished. You can't leave the territory because all the borders are closed by the countries which everyone thinks are their allies (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi). There are no real jobs, there's no real economy. The area is blockaded.

West Bank is peaceful. What's the difference? It's not blockaded. They can trade. They have more peaceful leaders. It's the simple stuff. But largely, they have the same problems as Gazans except they are a whisker better in terms of welfare, but they also deal with the entire settlement problem. It's their land that's being stolen. Gazan land is not being taken anymore. Only West Bank. Is this the reward they deserve for being peaceful, while the violent Hamas is not losing anymore land by firing rockets and making the blockaded population eat out of its hand?

As for the celebrations, that was a fabrication, I'll let you google it. As for 9/11 celebrations, were there some Palestinians who celebrated it? I'm sure there were. But think of everything I described to you and the role of the US in making it that way - the US blocks Palestinian causes in the UN security council, the US sells weapons and gives aid to Israel, the US scrutinizes every Palestinian move but turns a blind eye to settlement activity. Just recently the US told Europe not to support Palestinian statehood and cut the funding of UNESCO for recognizing Palestine.

I'm sure there were people who celebrated at that moment and I'm sure they're horrible people. But to them, they celebrated under the impression that someone, something, they didn't even know who, attacked the country which has put them in their miserable situation which they were born into. Are you telling me that some Americans didn't celebrate dropping nukes on Hiroshima? That some Japanese didn't celebrate Pearl Harbour? this is what it is to the people who are in misery and embrace war, their perception of dead human beings is gone. All they want is anarchy, in hopes of any improvement.

But do all Palestinians deserve to suffer because of those Palestinians? Here I'm illustrating that there is the peaceful West bank and the violent Gaza. The different inputs and outputs. One set chose the crew that promised to attack and not lose land. The other set of Palestinians chose the crew which promised more peace and improved economy. Both of them hate their leaders. But this is what they got. If you were a Gazan, and you couldn't leave, would you just wait for you and your family to suffer with starvation and poverty or work for Hamas? I tell you dude, people see their mom or sister mourning a dead dad and can't afford the next meal, most will do what they got to do. Same goes in Israel - everyone trains with the IDF because you got to do what you got to do right. They don't LOVE war. They just feel that if they don't, they're screwed.

Israel is no tiny country my friend. Israel is a big country. It's the most powerful country in the entire middle east. All the weapons of all the surrounding countries combined would be dwarfed by Israel's military might. Back in the day, Israel was in a precarious position. But today, it's in a position to do what every other country does - come to an understanding and live peacefully with its neighbours, especially given it has the power to dictate. Europe had several countries which couldn't get along, and now there's the EU. Arabs have their significant complaints about Palestinians, I swear to you that there is room to win over Arab opinion just by making significant concessions to Palestinians, and by acting like a regional ally rather than a foreign base.

The surrounding countries are all allies of the US. Look at this:



Those are all yours, and so none of them would be hostile to Israel.

You need to worry about Hamas for now. Al Qaeda too but they are dispersed. Finally, the Iranian leadership if they are serious, but as you can see from the map it's under control, and as you know if Iran drops 1 nuke Israel will drop 200 and all the surrounding Arab state leaders are in support of a non-nuclear non-aggressive Iran.

Anyways, you don't have to trust Palestinians. I'm just saying, why trust Israel 1,000 more times than Palestinians? You got the power. Set some conditions, tell them it's peace in 1 fair country or two separate countries. Problem solved. You're the boss. You're in control. You can direct this thing whichever direction.

 

Rather than start a new thread, here is more Bibi in action:

Thankfully Noam Chomsky is in Gaza as we speak and so we will get a detailed account of what's going on in the territory where the persons blockading it say that everything is fine.