Sharon has never wanted "peace"

[shadowsource]

The Israeli Prime Minister is pissing Bush off just now because he's comparing pressure to make peace with the Palestinians to the way the British and French sold out the Czechs at Munich. Not that Bush cared much for details until he needed Arab support for our war against terrorism, but the Palestianians are demanding that illegal settlements built since 1967 on populated, captured land be removed. This would be in accordance with international law and numerous UN resolutions supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Sharon himself has pushed these settlements for decades as a means of preventing any true peace with the Palestinians. They must ALL be removed, or there shall never be any chance for peace via the creation of a successful, economically viable Palestinian state. This is clear to anyone who looks closely at the situation.
People don't realize that the number of (illegal) settlers DOUBLED during to so-called peace process bagun in Oslo. They forget that the Israeli settler community murdered Israel's Nobel Peace Prize winning Prime Minister, Rabin. If we want peace, and it seems we suddenly do, this will require the elimination of all settlements, save perhaps for a few that are now middle-class suburbs of Israeli cities.
That's the bottom line. And Bush is just now discovering - and will see for a long time to come - that Sharon has no interest in any just peace. He wants to effectively annex the West Bank, as always. And he doesn't give a damn about anyone else's views.

 

[SexyChele]

Actually, the Israelis could pull out of the entire West Bank - and there would still not be peace. It is a concept foreign to the Palestinians. Why? Because it has been stated over and over that the only time by the Palestinians that the only time true peace can be had in the Middle East is if Israel is wiped out completely and the last Jew is thrown into the Med Sea.

Check back into your history - this has been the stance of the Palestinians ever since the Intifada - and things have not changed since.

Exchanging land for a "supposed" peace will not bring about any resolution. Chamberlain made that HUGE mistake (and lost his job) back in 1938.

Funny how history has a way of repeating itself.

 

[shadowsource]

Well, I obviously disagree -

Just as with the reace process in Northern Ireland, there would be forces conspiring against any peace that split historic Palestine into areas controlled respectively by Israelis and by Palestinians. There are many living Palestinians with keys and deeds to their former homes in Haifa - homes they have never been allowed to visit or reclaim since the late 1940s. It will take many years before flat-out peace could fully take root.
So we shouldn't bother at all? We should keep paying BILLIONS of dollars to the Israelis in blank checks to fulfill their Biblical aspirations on the backs of people whose only crime is to have been born in the same place as their great-grandfathers? Remember, the Arabs didn't invent or execute the Holocaust.

We give enormous foreign aid to Israel. When they fire into Palestinian communities, they are illegally using weapons that we "sold" them, with huge subsidies that amount to freebies; these weapoins by law are barred from being used except in self-defense.
On 9/11, while we were all in shock, Sharon's army invaded Jericho with tanks, blew up a bunch of buildings, and retreated. No shots had just been fired at them. There was no "defensive" pretext. Sharon started the whole intifada last year with his political campaign visit to the Dome of the Rock.
Watch this man declare his own "jihad" against the US. I'm sick of my tax money being used to support reckless and unjust activities by Israeli fundamentalists!
And yes, I support Israel's right to exist. But not its right to endanger the world. If Sharon wants to go it alone, let him pay for it himself!

 

[Calamity Jane]

Dammit, I can't find the article

But there was an article in the paper a couple of months ago about Israel and Palestine. It was focused on the ecological/economical differences between these two nations that are supposed to co-exist.

The gist of the article was that while Palistinians are destitute and forced to walk miles to carry home dirty water for drinking and cooking, the Jews have plumbing and swimming pools because they have rerouted rivers to supply their areas. Because of this movement of the natural water supplies, their 'Holy Land' is being destroyed.

I can't really blame the Palestinians for their hatred. We stripped them of their lands and gave them to an enemy nation out of guilt. And then, that enemy nation completely destroyed the lands and throw their wealth in your face everyday.

 

[sexy-girl]

forget about Israel and Palestine for a second sharon is just a BAD man ... he was very close to being up for war crimes for the time that he was defense minister for Israel


also he was the one that caused the current troubles and broke the peace process that clinton help forge ... he visited temple mount when it was a Palestine religious holiday this was a terrible insult to Palestine people for the man responsible for a "war crime" to be visiting temple mount at that time he had NO reason to be there he wasnt even in goverment at the time


he knew exactly what this would do it would cause a riot and destroy the whole peace process which in turn cost barak his job as prime minister the Israeli people wanted a more hard line approach hence the reason they went for sharon which is probably exactly what he was hoping to happen when he destroyed the peace process


america seem's to have a complete unwaving support for Israel which i find very strange ... you should at least know more about the leader of the country that you are supporting i recommend people look into him for themselves if they dont believe what im saying


and shadowsource your exactly right about what sharon did on 9/11 while Palestine people were calling for a cease fire in light of what happened sharon was moving in tanks because he knew the world was distracted


im not crazy about the Palestine people but its easy to see who wants peace more at the moment ... its not sharon because he knows as soon as there is peace he could be out of his job

 

[miles]

If and when the Palestinians are given their own home, they will become another one of Israel's enemies who will never rest until Israel is destroyed. Never. Arafat will once again resume his reign of terrorism against the Israelis, and everyone will be wondering what the hell we were thinking when we gave it to them.

Tell me, how is this different from the U.S. supporting the Taliban against the USSR with money and weapons, then having to face them as terrorists years later?

Chele is right. The Palestinians will never be satisfied, so let them be dissatisfied where they are now.

 

[shadowsource]

Arafat's "reign of terror"

There was no reign of terror during that peace process period. There were some bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which were minimal compared the what's been going on since Sharon made that campaign visit to piss off the Palestinians. Arafat had arrested lots of Hamas and IJ members. It was Israel's duplicitous doubling of the settler numbers under the guise of peace, Barak's unnecessary and inconsistent repressive measures like the ban on Palestinian travel, and the extremely violent Israeli response to the riots that followed Sharon's provocative visit that led the the present state.
If you think peace in Israel/Palestine is impossible, and that we should just support whatever Israeli leader that the settlers allow to remain alive, I suggest we are all hopelessley screwed, forever.

 

[sexy-girl]

Chele is right. The Palestinians will never be satisfied, so let them be dissatisfied where they are now.

so they wont be satisfied if we give them what they were promised ... so lets not give them anything ... i think thats quite narrow minded view


how do you know they wont be satisfied and how can you support Isreal so blindy when they have a leader such as sharon ... he doesnt care about america otherwise he wouldnt of showed total disrespect and exploit what happened on 9/11 for his own gains

 

[YogiBare]

I have to strongly disagree with the way that this thread is going. First, Israel's Arab neighbors were dedicated, in the immediade wake of the Holocaust, to the destruction of Israel from the moment that the United Nations created the Jewish state. Second, the Arab nations conspired to attack and destroy Israel on the day it was established as a nation and repeatedly attacked it again and again. Each time the Arabs attacked they were defeated. And they lost land, including the West Bank and Gaza.

Under these circumstances do you really believe that Israel is morally obligated to return these lands to a people whose charter STILL calls for the destruction of Israel, despite commitments made by the PLO as a basis for the Oslo accords to recognize the right of Israel to exist. If the Arab nations had defeated Israel and occupied the land would they have agreed to returning it and establishing a Jewish state there? I think not. Is it not a risk that the Arab states took when they attempted to invade Israel that they would lose land - and that they were putting their citizens' lives and homes in jeopardy? Whose responsibility is it REALLY that those homes were lost? The Palestinians have no right to be calling "foul" to Israel, the US, the UN, or anybody else.

I believe that Israel's biggest mistake was in buying into this whole fraudulant notion of land for peace as a basis for a settlement. They should have permanently annexed those lands immediately as being won from the aggressor nations. This would have forced these people to settle somewhere in the vast Arab lands and to have been absorbed into the populations of those nations. You know, historically, there is really no such thing as Palestinians as a defined national or ethnic group.

And so, I see Sharon as a realist. And a patriot. The foolishness of trying to negotiate with the PLO was exposed by Arafat's turning down the incredibly generous offer for Peace made a year ago by Barak. And their returning to the violence that they had unequivocably renounced at Oslo.

The only way to peace in that area as to build a very high and very long wall.

YB

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Just FYI Miles - the Taliban didn't even exist until the mid-90's (several years after there weren't any more Soviets).

One of the great ironies of the whole creation of Israel was that the idea of giving the Jews their own sovereign state was to free them from being a persecuted minority within the nations of Europe and thus preventing horrendous oppression as happened under Hitler, yet Israel's history has been almost as tumultuous for the Jews as the pre-Israel period had been. The main difference now seems to be that the Jews have a state and a powerful military with which to fight back.

I tend to agree with Chele. I'm not convinced that any particular Israeli concessions will calm the situation. I admittedly don't know nearly as much as I should about the history of the conflict, but I'm certainly not convinced that any one side is chiefly at fault. This seems to be a situation long in developing and I have no idea what could end it.

So I don't stand in either camp, but I do find it interesting that support of Israel used to be more popular for liberals than conservatives and now there seems to have been a flip-flop. This seems to have been intensified after the 9/11 attacks. I've noticed a lot of guilty hand-wringing by those who believe that if the US wouldn't have stood by Israel so steadfastly for so many years, we could've avoided this wave of Islamic hate. I can't help but see this subtext in many of the critiques of US policy on this board - as if the US is responsible for the acts of terror committed against it.

I believe in the right of the Israeli state to exist - although perhaps not in its current incarnation. I certainly don't endorse all its actions, but I think that to abandon it now would be to abandon some of the ideals upon which it was created, namely freedom from religious persecution.

 

[Calamity Jane]

I think that to abandon it now would be to abandon some of the ideals upon which it was created, namely freedom from religious persecution.

I think that is actually the thing that bothers me most about the nation of Israel is exactly what you stated above. How is it that religious persecution rates you your very own sponsored country? Jews aren't the only people that have been persecuted for no other reason than the god they choose to pray to.

I'm not saying that the Holocaust wasn't horrible. I know several people who survived the camps, and they're some of the most amazing people in my life. But I still don't believe that we should have snatched a piece of land out of the desert and said "Here, this is your Holy Land, we're sorry you were persecuted."

Is the next step snatching up a piece of land and telling the Witches, the Protestants, the Catholics, etc. that this is now THEIR Holy Land, and by the way, here are the guns and armies to protect it with?

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Well, as I understand it...

if there was an international situation in which persecution of a minority happened on such a large scale and caused so much worldwide upheaval (remember WWII killed over 20 million people and turned most of the world upside down. The US emerged relatively unscathed), I think the establishment of a state for that minority would definitely be considered.

The Catholics and Protestants obviously already have states in which they are the majorities. Witches? Well, maybe if there's ever enough of them that are severely persectuted we'll see a "witch-rael".

You have a good point, though. We gave the Jews a state in the heart of a land also beloved by Moslems. We haven't set up fiefdoms for other persecuted minorities.

As uneven as that may be, though, after I think about the Holocaust, I can't find it in my heart to begrudge them a few thousand square miles of desert.

 

[sexy-girl]

the trouble is they took more then what they were given ... why do you think parts of Israel are called the occupied territories ... its because these are the areas given to Palestian people too at the same time ... but Israel over the years have taken them for themselves ... lets face it with all the money they've received Palestine doesnt have any kind of army that could stop Israel doing whatever it wants


i dont begrudge Isreal exsisting but i dont think it gives them a right to do the things they've done to the Palestian people ... if any other country had done the things they've done the world would of sent in an army to stop them

 

[koalabear]

Just pull all aid and let the arabs and the rest finish Hitlers job. Then you won't have threads to bitch about them.....

 

[shadowsource]

To put this in the Holocaust context:

Why weren't the surviving Jews given territory much closer to their traditional homes, land taken from a people far more deserving of having their land occupied by Holocaust survivors: Germany....
Why wasn't the Rhineland made into the new Jewish homeland?
Why must the Palestinians pay the price for the crimes of Europeans?
How did this make sense?
But it's done. Why then shouldn't the entire world take an interest in making a viable state for the Palestinians, even one that is stripped of its coastline, its great cities of Jerusalem and Haifa? It's too much to try to be patient in returning the dog-end part of a nation that was taken at gunpoint?
Or shall we continue to fund Israeli policies that ultimately aim at ethnically cleansing vast areas of the West Bank? And then we shall surely deserve what happens to us. And it will happen.

OC, I've always supported the Palestinian right to self-determination, and you can fimd posts preceding 9/11 to illustrate it. And yeah, I love Jewish character, culture and history. My life would have been pathetic without it, in so many ways. But I don't know any Jews who really need to control the West Bank.

 

[shadowsource]

Exactly Sharon's point:

Just pull all aid and let the arabs and the rest finish Hitlers job. Then you won't have threads to bitch about them.....

Sharon doesn't want any middle ground, and he helped create those settlements to prevent peace from ever taking root. He wants us to either have to support ethnic cleansing by the all-time victims of it or to support their extermination. I am saying only that if Israel wishes to act with no restraints, it had better learn how to live without our support. Sharon can't have it both ways. A nation whose last six prime ministers include two famous, admitted terrorists (Begin and Shamir), one corrupt right-winger (Netanyahu), one incompetent whatever (Barak), one known war hero/criminal (Sharon), and one assassinated war hero (Rabin) has some serious internal problems that it should be attempting to settle. Lectures from a calculating, genocidal butcher like Sharon are not going to work anymore.

 

[shadowsource]

Put another way:

Sharon compares Israel's occupation of the CONQUERED, Occupied West Bank to the Sudetenland, a large border area of Czechoslovakia that Hitler coveted. But the West bank was never an accepted part of Israel. The Sudetenland remains today an integral part fo the Czech Republic. To compare a nation giving up an integral part of its territory to a nation being asked to give up an area it occupies illegally (according to international law) reveals SHARON'S TRUE INTENT: Never to give up the West Bank. Ever. There is no continuing peace plan in Sharon's view - only that the Palestinians must give up their homeland forever, to become the permanentm stateless Jews of gthe Arab World.
Americans and other non-Israelis should be free to ask themselves if they really wish to support such a national plan. Especially if they're paying for it.

 

[SexyChele]

Just one last note, and hopefully this will go away....

The Palestinians never WERE a nation - they never had a homeland to "reclaim". They claim they are being persecuted by the Israelis. Fine. And why don't they mention the Ottoman Empire, which held the area for hundreds of years, reigning in terror?

Or why don't they mention the British? The British mandate held the land from 1917 until the UN told them to leave in 1948.

Or why don't they criticize Jordon, their own Arab "brothers", who held captured eastern Israel (including Jerusalem) and treated the Palestinians as second class citizens - or less?

It has only been under the Israelis that the Palestinians have received ANY national recognition. And if, by some weird circumstance, Israel were completely defeated and the country disappeared within a week, is there anyone naive enough to suppose that the Palestinians would get that land? HELLOOO!!! The land would be divided between Lebannon, Syria, and Jordon - and each would say to hell with any Palestinians.

The truth can sometimes hurt, folks.

Yes, all the past prime ministers of Israel have had less than stellar pasts. Comes from living in a land in which you are literally surrounded by those who want to drive you into the sea. And Sharon is no exception. Still, he is the ISRAELIS choice - just as they would say Bush is our choice. Do we have the right to tell them who to bring into office? Don't think so.

And let us not forget our dear "promoter" of peace - the "honorable" Yasser Arafat. Yes, this is a man of reputation, who has proven over and over that he is a man of peace. Let's forget about the school buses of innocent children he has blown up. Let us forget about the ways in which he has terrorized innocent civilians. He is only a man of peace.

 

[Guest]

Yes, Arafat -

Arafat is only alive because the Mossad has been killing his more talented aides for 25 years, leaving him to rule without challenge. Israel LOVES Arafat. To the West, he's crude, unreliable, corrupt, and inefficient. He let his best solders get wiped out for next-to-nothing in Sharon's illegal and unaurhtorized invasion of Lebanon 20 years ago. Many Palestinians would make better leaders. And some are already dead at the hands of the Israelis, who don't want the Palestinians to have an effective leader.

Chele neglected to mention that the British fled Palestine after numerous soldiers and civilians were murdered by the forces of the two prime ministers I mentioned earlier (they also killed a UN diplomat). Did I mention that they were proud terrorists?

Of course, Palestine existsed then as an international Mandate, which for many nations was a transitional step from colonialism. Chele is right: Palestine has never existed as a nation - because Israel took it over. It is extremely unlikely that any country would even think of "taking over" Palestine if Israel cleared out. Israel has always wanted Jordan to claim it, but Jordan has steered clear.

To all of those who since 9/11 have said that NOTHING should interfere with America's determination to find and eliminate the people who attacked us, bear in mind that Sharon is very clearly stating this: That Israel's need and will to keep the West Bank outweighs any need on the part of the US to forge the alliances that Bush and his advisors clearly and logically deem necessary for fulfillment of the mission. He told W to go to hell yesterday, compared him to Neville Chamberlain.

Those of you who agree with Sharon are saying that the Israeili control of the West Bank is more important than the US being able to give some cover to friendly Arab or Muslim leaders by at least SEEMING to make progress on the Palestinian question.

Bear in mind that little Jordan caught a bunch of bin Laden operatives preparing to blow up hotels in Amman during the Millennium. Those underfed, underarmed Jordanian detectives outperformed the CIA and FBI. They spoke Arabic. They knew people. They probably think Israel should clear out of the West Bank.

Screw 'em. What do they know anyway?

 

[shadowsource]

that was me -

shouldn't have eaten that cookie.

 

[Svedish_Chef]

Re: Yes, Arafat -

Originally posted by shadowsource
Arafat is only alive because the Mossad has been killing his more talented aides for 25 years, leaving him to rule without challenge. Israel LOVES Arafat. To the West, he's crude, unreliable, corrupt, and inefficient. He let his best solders get wiped out for next-to-nothing in Sharon's illegal and unaurhtorized invasion of Lebanon 20 years ago. Many Palestinians would make better leaders. And some are already dead at the hands of the Israelis, who don't want the Palestinians to have an effective leader.

I have heard this before.... could you explain better?

 

[Myrrdin]

Shadowsource.

So you object to Israel establishing a buffer zone, thus ensuring that it's neighbours have to lob their missiles from that much further away?

Funny thing is, when the US discovered it might be getting Soviet missiles on it's doorstep, it applied sanctions, blockades and even helped invade Cuba, to attempt the overthrow of it's Government.

Is this a case of do as I say, not as I do?

 

[miles]

How many people in favor of a Palestinian homeland felt that way when Billary was in office?

Your blind partisanship is showing.

 

[miles]

koalabear

Zieg heil, motherfucker.

Go back under your rock.

 

[Cheyenne]

Re: koalabear

Zieg heil, motherfucker.

Go back under your rock.

I didn't read that one as being a serious post, Miles. I thought he was making fun of Shadowsource and sexy-girl.