Israel to World: "Suck It."

the mohicans

They weren't exactly scattered though, right? Good example otherwise though.

African-Americans are probably a good example, actually.

sup

oh come off it

the cheek of you

i want everyone to be loud and proud about their historical oppression except the irish

Please don't ask that of a Cuban.

we used to have massive oppression issues but we had to sell them to the germans in 2008

not sure why 10-year-old posts were suddenly revived, but nabisco surprisingly not OTM in some of them

idk alfred, i hear miami traffic is pretty bad

Clinton says cease-fire has been signed- no details yet.

8:49 P.M. Netanyahu: I agreed with Obama that U.S. and Israel will work together against terror in Gaza.

8:48 P.M. Netanyahu: We decided to give a cease-fire a chance

8:48 P.M. Netanyahu: Israel destroyed thousands of rockets intended for Israel.

9:05 P.M. Four Grad rockets fired toward Be'er Sheva, one intercepted.

9:00 P.M. Gaza-Israel cease-fire goes into effect.

smdh

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.479649.1353523542!/image/2230117218.jpg

10:03 P.M. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal praises Iran for arming, financing Gaza (Reuters)

It goes without saying that the border siege and naval blockade of Gaza would be Acts of War were Palestine a state, and there's no indication those will cease.

I still feel like there should be a thread with a different title as the rolling Israel/Palestine conflict thread.

How bout:

Hard Gay Interfaith 69 starring Israel "Izzy" Towers and Palestine Rockmore: Huge Rockets Sucked

Nice guys lose: the Israel/Fatah/Hamas triangle.

Reddit Q&A w/ Al Jazeera English correspondent:

Do you concede a moral/ethical difference between firing rockets indiscriminately in the vague direction of enemy civillians and taking efforts to minimize civillian causalities by only attacking military/political targets?

Full-disclosure, like many Americans I probably grew up with a pretty healthy bias to blindly support Israel. However, upon realizing this as I got older, in recent years I have really tried to understand the other side of this conflict. I've tried to read more (from more sources) and tried to put myself in the plight of the average Gaza citizen and, so yeah, I quickly discovered that, yes, Israel has been pretty fucking douchey. I mean, the insistance on settlements (complete bullshit, +1 for Gaza), economically starving Gaza by trade embargos and blockades (+1 for Gaza) and just the general oppression/harassment of Gaza citizens is bullshit too (+1 for Gaza)...the list goes on. And so, after all that I can honestly say I am NO Israel super-fan and have (I would like to think? to the best of my ability, at least) educated myself out of my American bias...

HOWEVER, that being said, I just cannot get find moral ground to call Israel the bad guy in this situation? For Hamas doing their best to inflict as many civillian casualties as they can by launching rockest towards random Israeli cities (hoping for civillians? schools? hospitals? ...basically hit anything but an empty field is a "win") and then crying foul when Israel attempts to stop these attacks on civillians and [n] number of Gaza citizens die as collateral in airstrikes on these military targets? Help me understand this?

Piers Morgan (somewhat) posed this question the other night and his guest responded with the typical "tit-for-tat" argument; basically justifying these attacks on civillians as "legitimate forms of resistance" to said bullshit Israel has done/is doing. Later, another guest's response (that I have also heard elsewhere) explained that "well, yeah, Hamas killed some Israeli citizens with their rockets but Israel's response killed many more" ...is that really the total of the Hamas/Gaza argument against Israel?!

For what its worth, Gaza's plight is probably closer than most Arabs realize to swaying the American public to stop supporting Israel when we see shit like Israeli bulldozers destroying their homes just because they're dicks... However, I think we are suddenly struggling to sympathize again when we see Gaza's elected government's military strategy basically amounts to war on Israeli civillians as a proxy war against the IDF.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13enix/i_am_nadim_baba_al_jazeera_correspondent_in_gaza/

Seems pretty reasonable? Al-J and Haaretz are pretty much only two media outlets I read re Middle East. Not because I think either are 'fair' towards Israel (neither are) but bc they seem to be the only two actually producing worthwhile first hand journalism.

I don't think that quote is from the Al-J correspondent tho? I think it's just some redditor talking?

Interesting bit on Chris Hayes this weekend suggesting that because Israel only responds to the kidnappings and the rockets, they've essentially forced Hamas to resort to firing random rockets to get anything.

yaeh, you're right M, sorry. (My first time reading a reddit page)

Bibi has invited Abbas to negotiate at any time w/out preconditions.

The real problem I think is that Abbas is never going to get a better deal than the one Olmert offered him (and he walked away from). So what is there to negotiate about?

My problem with the Hamas strategy is that it's utterly feckless and aimed primarily at boosting their popularity in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere amongst Arabs and Muslims (i.e., Iran). Random missile attacks will likely make the Israeli electorate and government more not less 'douchey' but Hamas doesn't mind 'cause they live in a delusional world where Israel will cease to be a Jewish State, where the right to return will be offered and where their long-term irredentist strategy of pushing them into the sea will bear fruit. That may sell amongst the hopeless (around 45 - 50% unemployment) in Gaza but it's utter rubbish and I feel bad for Gazans who voted for Hamas to punish Fatah's venality only to now find they're not only worse but Hamas is unlikely to cede power voluntarily anytime soon. Meanwhile, settlements continue apace in the West Bank and the Israeli electorate looks less and less sanguinely at peace prospects. I think they're all fucked in the long run but not necessarily in ways they've forseen.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/25/u-s-policy-in-the-middle-east-validates-terrorism-as-a-tactic/

or, an opposing view to Michael White

“Opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas, and procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire.”

Which is widely seen as a commitment to loosen the onerous restrictions Israel has placed on all movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. In other words: if the cease-fire holds, and that’s definitely an IF, it represents a net benefit to the estimated 1.7 million people living in the Gaza strip.

See, this is really silly. Hamas presumably could've negotiated this without launching rockets / getting bombed / sustaining major infrastructural damage. The reason Israel hasn't negotiated with Hamas to date is because they keep firing rockets + are committed to destroying Israel. They haven't gained anything from their campaign that they couldn't have gotten without it. Unless you believe that Israel was refusing to negotiate with Hamas, but there's no indication that is true?

did you read the rest of the article?

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

It's not true though. Israel has negotiated with Fatah and made huge concessions that they rejected.

Hamas never got or will get a deal like Fatah got from Olmert.

or, an opposing view to Michael White

I think the US policy (especially as inaction) has encouraged terrorsim and despair but it now seems that a large part of the American electorate are crazy, too. Jerusalem is no longer really on the table even as a negotiating point of any kind and while we complain about settlements, we effectively hold the Israeli government less acountable than we did under Reagan or Bush. The post 9/11 rage against the 'Muslins' doesn't help much either nor does historical Palestinian rage against the US and gestures of friendship towards our enemies. Really, I continue to despair 'cause I don't see the impetus on any side to get us out of the impasse. If only Arafat had taken Barak's deal...

can't believe morbs is violentarez

Or Abbas took Olmert deal! Which included Jerusalem!

"On the 16th of September, 2008, I presented him (Abbas) with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles.

One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor modifications on both sides. Israel will claim part of the West Bank where there have been demographic changes over the last 40 years."

This approach by Olmert would have allowed Israel to keep the biggest Jewish settlement blocks which are mainly now suburbs of Jerusalem, but would certainly have entailed other settlers having to leave Palestinian territory and relocate to Israel.

In total, Olmert says, this would have involved Israel claiming about 6.4 per cent of Palestinian territory in the West Bank: "It might be a fraction more, it might be a fraction less, but in total it would be about 6.4 per cent. Israel would claim all the Jewish areas of Jerusalem. All the lands that before 1967 were buffer zones between the two populations would have been split in half. In return there would be a swap of land (to the Palestinians) from Israel as it existed before 1967.

"I showed Abu Mazen how this would work to maintain the contiguity of the Palestinian state. I also proposed a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. It would have been a tunnel fully controlled by the Palestinians but not under Palestinian sovereignty, otherwise it would have cut the state of Israel in two.

"No 2 was the issue of Jerusalem. This was a very sensitive, very painful, soul-searching process. While I firmly believed that historically, and emotionally, Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared. Jewish neighbourhoods would be under Jewish sovereignty, Arab neighbourhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty, so it could be the capital of a Palestinian state.

"Then there was the question of the holy basin within Jerusalem, the sites that are holy to Jews and Muslims, but not only to them, to Christians as well. I would never agree to an exclusive Muslim sovereignty over areas that are religiously important to Jews and Christians. 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.

"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.

"In addition, we talked about creating an international fund that would compensate Palestinians for their suffering. I was the first Israeli prime minister to speak of Palestinian suffering and to say that we are not indifferent to that suffering.

"And four, there were security issues." Olmert says he showed Abbas a map, which embodied all these plans. Abbas wanted to take the map away. Olmert agreed, so long as they both signed the map. It was, from Olmert's point of view, a final offer, not a basis for future negotiation. But Abbas could not commit. Instead, he said he would come with experts the next day.

"He (Abbas) promised me the next day his adviser would come. But the next day Saeb Erekat rang my adviser and said we forgot we are going to Amman today, let's make it next week. I never saw him again."

Olmert believes that, like Camp David a decade earlier, this was an enormous opportunity lost: "I said `this is the offer. Sign it and we can immediately get support from America, from Europe, from all over the world'. I told him (Abbas) he'd never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years. I said to him, `do you want to keep floating forever - like an astronaut in space - or do you want a state?'

"To this day we should ask Abu Mazen to respond to this plan. If they (the Palestinians) say no, there's no point negotiating."

It also pisses me off in a Schopehauerian kind of way that Olmert had all those corruption charges against him. Yeah, he botched Lebanon and attacking Hamas wasn't the brightest thing he did but he did get along with Fatah pretty well (what was it Annapolis?)

wow, nbc doing work

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