Palestinian State: What to do?

There are many secular or less-religious Israelis who don't care what the bible says; they'd rather live in peace. (Of course non of them live in the settlements)

I take it that you feel that there are few Palestinians who are willing to live in peace in a Palestinian state comprised only of Gaza and the West Bank?

 

I'm not a victim, I'm just on the side of good. The Israelis don't deliberately target women and children. The "Palestinians" don't have the guts to fight the Israelis in a real war. Instead they kill innocents like the cowards they are. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing how this bunch of butchers is so deserving of a state carved out of the heart of Israel.

 

Racism; The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior or inferior to others.

 

I'm curious why you seem puzzeled when people claim racism on your part. You stated previously in this thread that Palestinians deserve the to be generalized as violent, you call them cowards, and butchers in this thread, but seem offended when people call you racist because of this.

There was a thread recently when the latest polls showed that only about a third of Palestinians even supported suicide bombings. The number was once up arpund 60%. Yet despite the fact that it's a definite minority you label the whole people as butchers. Whether or not you are a racist, could you at least see why some might consider this racism?

I know that you think you are right, and ignore Israeli aggression prior to 1948, Israeli denying basic water rights and other measures which don't deal with self defense, but that doesn't make a view not a racist one.

Most racists believe they are justified for their views on race, and believe that facts support those views, just as you believe facts support your views that Palestinians are inherently violent, cowards, and butchers. That doesn't mean that the view isn't racist. Racism can stem from ignorance as much if not more so from malice.

I ask seriously not as a means to cast insult or accuse.

 

Why the hades would we give people who target civilians the same courtesies we give civilized countries.

Put down the crack pipe Lil and slowly walk away.

DD

 

I'm trying to figue out why we give courtesies to brutal oppressive countries that illegally occupy and build settlements on land that isn't theirs. I guess there are bizarre policies all around.

 

Most rational people blow themselves up in the midst of innocents because they feel they deserve a country that never has existed before and for which the world has no need, right. Well, plenty of the "Palestinians" think it is noble to martyr oneself. In fact, far too many. Do we really need another backward, Arab dictatorship? Arafat is no different than Assad, Muburak or any other Arab dictator and you think a false nation named "Palestine" would be any different? If despising an intriniscally evil people who are incapable of living in peace with their neighbors is racism in your eyes, so be it. But I think all of you who are persistant apologists for the "Palestinians" need to ask yourselves, "Why do I support a group of people whose leaders have sworn to destroy Israel and kill all of its people to take it for themselves?" Maybe you don't like the Jews, eh? Just those evangelical idiots believe that Israel belongs to the Jews, right? I know in your eyes there is no good and evil. There are just motives. Well, maybe you need to examine the true motives of the "Palestinian" leaders. Read their own quotes and tell me do they want peace? If you still think yes, you are beyond hope.

 

Damnit, let's see here. What in the hell, FB do you do with a bunch of folks living in your borders who all too frequently butcher women and children? Make nice with them? Sing kumbaya and bang on the peace drum in some great cosmic circle jerk and hope they pick up on your positive vibes? Try to feel their pain and understand the reasons why they see fit to slaughter innocents? No, FB, you kill them. You lock down the areas where they come from and make it doubly hard for them to emerge. You build a huge fence to keep them out of your country. That's not oppression, that's called dealing with the problem. Obviously they don't want to negotiate. Obviously they have no desire for peace. So what can you do, surrender? In this situation, it is either fight or die and the Israelis choose to fight.

 

I never once said blowing up innocents was ok.

Whether the state would be a deterent or not can no be said. But not being occupied, being allowed to build successful businesses, being allowed to have access to the water on your land, and dig new wells for water at one's leisure, would no doubt soften some ill will.

Calling them an intrinsically evil people incapable of living in peace would fit the definition of racism, yes.

I don't support Yasser Arafat, not do I support any other dictator. At the same time I don't support oppression, descrimination, brutality, or things like that Israel is guilty of.

I most definitely do support Israel's right to statehood.

 

You didn't answer my question. In the face of lunatics killing your women and children by the score with cowardly bombs, what do you do? Ask 'em to play nice?

 

You dismantle all the settlements pull back to within the 1967 borders give them statehood, ask for international peacekeepers to come in and help crack down on terrorists.

You don't do all that because of the bombings, you do it because it's the just thing to do. It's following the Geneva conventions, UN resolutions and decency.

You should pull back within the borders of your country and protect your country. You do not need to protect the settlers outside of the country and occupy and oppress folks. Most importantly you continue to crack down on the terrorist organizations and with international aid in doing so, as well as more humane conditions there should be a drastic reduction in terrorism, an suicide bombings. Palestinian statehood and being tough on the terrorist groups are not mutually exclusive. They should go hand in hand. It's even more important to be tough on the terrorists once Palestinian statehood has been established. And for once nearly all Palestinians will have an interest and reason to crack down on them. There will be some Palestinians who wont' be satisfied living next door to a Jewish state, just like there are some Israelis who never want to see a Palestinian state, and would like to drive all the Arab peoples out of the area.

Being attacked by terrorists gives nobody the right to cut off water supply to innocent farmers because they are a different nationality. Oppressing and occupying doesn't work. We've seen that. Stupidity has been defined by somebody as continuously doing the same thing that doesn't work. That's what Israel and the Palestinians have been doing for decades.

 

They won the war, the land is theirs. That has happened throughout history.

Heck before 100 years ago, the entire Middle east had different borders...England and France divided it up.

No one has rights to land.........

DD

 

Like disengagement?

 

Arafat doesn't want a state.
Arafat wants to keep the revolution alive.

Statehood means peace and accepting Israel's right to exist, or it could mean a legitimate war and the consequences that go with that.

And if you think current Palestinian leadership (and most leaders of the Arab world) want that, then you haven't read enough of who these people are and want they want in their own words, and not the fawning eurocentric press.

 

Speaking of which:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satell...le/ShowFull&cid=1085721253715&p=1006953079897

Column One: What Europe wants
By CAROLINE GLICK



Standing before the EU parliament in Brussels on May 16 2001, French EU parliamentarian Paul Marie Couteax made a stunning statement. After condemning Israel's actions to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism as the "theocratic excesses of this religious state," Couteax declared that Europe should supply the Arab world with nuclear weapons. In his words, "I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country [France] pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force."

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Couteax's statement, though over the top, follows a flow of seemingly obtuse and illogical statements and actions by the EU and its member states since the start of the Palestinian terror war almost four years ago.

For instance, in the midst of the IDF's counter-terror operations in Rafah last week, Ireland's Foreign Minister Brian Cowan, speaking for the EU whose presidency his country currently holds, condemned Israel's actions in the most hysterical and factually inaccurate terms.

After meeting a delegation from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (the same people who gave a standing ovation to Malaysia's then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad last fall when he claimed that Jews were the source of all the troubles in the world), Cowan all but accused Israel of carrying out war crimes when he stated that "Israeli forces showed a reckless disregard for human life."

Placing the IDF's military operations directed against Palestinian terrorists on par with the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four young daughters in a deliberate attack by Palestinian terrorists, Cowan said, "I would once again remind Israel, the occupying power, that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is fully applicable to the Gaza Strip."

Like almost all of the EU's statements, Cowan's remarks ignore basic facts.

As a database comprised by the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism shows quite clearly, Israel targets terrorists in its operations while Palestinians attack Israelis indiscriminately. The institute's figures show conclusively that since the start of the Palestinian terror war, non-combatants have made up 80 percent of Israeli casualties, whereas on the Palestinian side, 56% of casualties have been verified combatants. Since Palestinian terrorists generally do not wear uniforms, Dan Radlauer – who oversees the database – explains that it is quite possible that the percentage of Palestinian casualties who are combatants may actually be significantly higher than that figure. This information is readily available to Cowan and his EU colleagues. They could easily have put together a similar study.

But that would not advance their interests.

In a revealing incident, earlier this month, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) released a report outlining the systemic abuse of power by Palestinian security forces against Palestinian civilians.

According to an account in The Scotsman, the report has not won PHRMG accolades for its brave and honest reporting in an atmosphere of terror and repression cultivated by Arafat and his henchmen.

Rather, in response to the organization's decision to document human rights abuses by the PA and by Israel, the group has seen its financial support from the EU slashed.

If one believes the EU's rhetoric of support for the peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the EU's actions make no sense. After all, if the EU is interested in an end to the terror war, it should be empowering anti-terror groups in the PA to uncover abuses and fight them. Yet rather than do so, the EU has shelved every report that has proven that EU funds to the PA are actually diverted to finance terrorism and incitement. If the EU wishes to play an active role in the search for peace and security in the region, it should not be condemning lawful Israeli actions against terrorists and ignoring the fact that, by its indiscriminate nature, Palestinian terrorism is an affront to the very notion of international law.

Yet, this is precisely the point. There is a yawning gap between the EU's rhetoric and its actual policies. Its rhetoric purports to work toward a workable peace between Israel and its neighbors. Its actual policy is to support the Arabs against Israel. Indeed, Europe has a three-tiered approach to the Arab world, each policy layer of which is inherently inimical to the notion of fairness and balance in relation to Israel.

Since the 1970s, Europe has embraced appeasement of the Arabs as a central plank of its foreign policy. This became entrenched in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. As well, following the trail blazed by Charles de Gaulle, sympathy to the Arabs and hostility towards Israel has served Europe's interest in differentiating itself from the US. Because the US is committed to European security through the NATO alliance, Europe can curry favor with the Arabs from whom the US will protect it. At the same time, it can deflect Arab wrath onto the US, which is unwilling – for strategic and moral reasons – to sever its alliance with Israel.

Finally, Europe has a domestic interest in currying the favor of the Arabs over Israel. Europe has a growing Muslim population that has been inculcated with a fanatical form of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is also rife on both the left and right sides of the European political spectrum. Given this, it is good politics domestically to condemn Israel, while turning a blind eye to Arab terrorism and human rights abuses.

So what we have in Europe, then, is not an otherwise friendly continent that condemns Israel out of sheer ignorance. Rather, we have a hostile continent that condemns Israel to advance its perceived political and strategic interests.

While hostility towards Israel is comprehensible when it comes from a militarily weak and self-interested Europe, such refusal to acknowledge the reality of the nature of the Palestinian war against Israel makes less sense in the American context. The US cannot depend on a security guarantee from any foreign power. It must defend itself and its global interests. From this distinction, it necessarily transpires that US national security interests cannot be long advanced by appeasement of terror-supporting regimes in the Arab and Muslim world which declare the US to be the primary source of evil in the world.

Yet since last spring, we have seen concerted American moves toward embracing Europe's hostile positions towards Israel. The latest example was the American refusal to cast a veto on last week's UN Security Council's condemnation of the IDF operations in Rafah. This move must be seen in the context of an overall US policy of giving the EU and the UN a larger role in the formulation of America's policy towards Israel. This trend was instigated by Washington's decision last year to work with the UN, the EU and Russia in formulating and launching the road-map plan for peace.

The US has moved in this direction because it believes that its national interest is served by placating the EU and UN on Israel in the hopes that doing so will make them more supportive of US initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere. Yet, what we have seen in Iraq is that regardless of the role that Washington charitably gives to the EU and the UN regarding Israel, these bureaucracies do not respond by supporting the US in Iraq and elsewhere. Again, since the EU has an institutional interest in not working in concert with the US, an American turn towards Europe simply causes Europeans to take even more extreme positions regarding both Israel and Iraq.

It isn't that all Europeans are inherently hostile towards Israel. In an amazing display of pride and wisdom two weeks ago, French Jews boycotted a rally against anti-Semitism. The boycott came not because the Jews of France do not view anti-Semitism as a salient threat. On the contrary, they boycotted the rally because its organizers refused to link anti-Semitic attacks in the country to anti-Zionism.

Given the direct link between anti-Semitism and hostility towards the Jewish state in Europe, it is important to question what Israel has been doing to diminish Europe's perceived interest in appeasing the Arab world. Looking at the government's policy towards Europe over the past few years, the answer is that it has done nothing effective to change European perceptions. Last summer, for instance, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom expressed an interest in applying for membership in the EU.

When the EU condemns Israel, as it did last week, Israel may express revulsion. Yet, it continues to call for Europe to play an active role in the search for peace. In so doing, Israel maintains a fiction of European friendship and fair-mindedness in the pursuit of its Middle East agenda that simply do not exist.

Were Israel to treat Europe as the hostile force it is, it could craft a workable policy. This should be aimed at strengthening the voices in Europe calling for an abandonment of anti-Semitism and a reckoning with the actual threat that the increasingly radicalized Islamic world manifests to its own security.

As it stands, the current policy of sweeping European hostility under the rug of diplo-speak cocktail parties and press conferences is detracting from Israel's national security interests. The government's policy of denial is legitimizing hateful voices and blocking voices of reason to be heard above the din of anti-Zionist propaganda. At the same time, Israeli tolerance for European hostility strengthens the forces of appeasement in the US and weakens those allies who understand the strategic necessity of supporting Israel.

 

However, Israel isn't even claiming the land to be theirs. Thus they are occupiers. The land hasn't been turned into part of Israel, and as long as the Palestinians are there, it never will be. Israel won't do it because that would make them outnumbered in their own country.

So what we have is Israel occupying the land, subsidizing settlements on the land, oppressing the people who live there, and refusing to claim the land as Israel.

The argument that it's theirs and they won it in war holds no water.

 

You may well be correct about what Arafat doesn't want. All the more reason to offer Palestinians statehood.

Sharon doesn't want to give up the settlements, Arafat may well not want a real settlement either.

But you described perfectly what statehood would mean, and why it's a good idea to grant it.