Massive Israeili strike on Gaza

From 60 minutes last night. Interesting stuff. It's about 15 minutes, and I recommend watching in its entirety.

No hope for peace?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWN_CaRUkJE[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLqkgPZNqLY[/youtube]

Or from the CBS site
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n
 
It's clear that a Palestinian state needs a certain amount of land to be viable, land which is being occupied by settlers. It would be a very difficult task to eliminate the settlements. Perhaps it would be easier to negotiate a deal with Jordan to appropriate a certain amount of their territory to be used as a Palestinian state. And then for Israel to purchase the land being occupied by settlers for some massive amount, the funds of course can be used to build infrastructure etc.

Just a thought.
 
But there will never be a sollution without getting rid of the settlements.

The settlements are per say illegal and war crimes.
 
And there is no solution without compromise. Trading/purchasing land may be a viable option.
 
Firecat, the compromise would be to let the Palestinian state lay on Palestinian land. The settlements are a war crime, and we should never condone them.
 
There is no such thing as "Palestinian land."

The region the British referred to as Palestine became the state of Israel. The West Bank and Gaza represent land lost by Egypt and Jordan during the course of the 1967 war. Some of that land has been given over to governance by the Palestinian Authority.

Steve
 
That is true more for the West Bank than it is the Gaza Strip. I'm not going to go too deep into history, but both territories have been set aside (so to speak) to form a Palestinian State (since at least 1947). Egypt and Jordan occupied the land prior to the Israelis taking control in 1967, they were not part of either Egypt or Jordan.

So whether or not "there is no such thing as Palestinian land" is inconsequential. There was no such thing as "Israeli land" prior to 1948. Capisce?
 
nomix said:
Firecat, the compromise would be to let the Palestinian state lay on Palestinian land. The settlements are a war crime, and we should never condone them.
Click to expand...

Trust me, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The amount of trouble the IDF had with dismantling settlements before, doing the same in the West Bank will be extremely difficult. Livni said she will do it, we'll see what she does if she wins election. If Netanyahu wins, peace loses. For sure.

Did you watch the clips I posted?
 
Guess I'll jump into this argument a little late. I'm not sure what all has been said already so I'm sorry for any repeats. Dismantling the West Bank settlements will certainly be difficult, but it would be helpful to the process. However, it is nearly impossible for Israel to leave the West Bank completely. There is a good chance Hamas could win the next round of elections there (whenever that is), especially since Abbas' reputation has taken a hit from the current crisis. If Hamas gained power in the West Bank and began importing rockets there, they could easily hit Tel Aviv and the international airport, basically strangling Israel. I think things need to be resolved in Gaza before any progress can be made on the West Bank. Like Firecat said, if Netanyahu wins, which is looking more and more likely, any progress will just go up in flames.
 
Steve Levin said:
There is no such thing as "Palestinian land."

The region the British referred to as Palestine became the state of Israel. The West Bank and Gaza represent land lost by Egypt and Jordan during the course of the 1967 war. Some of that land has been given over to governance by the Palestinian Authority.

Steve
Click to expand...
That is not the point, there still lived thousand upon thousands of palestinian arabs in both areas, not to say in what's now Israel.

Whatever the legal status of the land was, we are talking about people who were forcefully moved from their homes, and just sweeping that away over a legal technicality would be silly.

Firecat said:
Trust me, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The amount of trouble the IDF had with dismantling settlements before, doing the same in the West Bank will be extremely difficult. Livni said she will do it, we'll see what she does if she wins election. If Netanyahu wins, peace loses. For sure.

Did you watch the clips I posted?
Click to expand...

Which clips, can't say I saw them? :)

The problem is by no small margin the extremists on both sides. But there always is an issue with Labour, a very fine quote about Labour I came across is "Labour prefers to have half an invation or half a withdrawl".

It will be interesting to see what will happen. Livni his tough, no doubt about that.

I know it's not part of the question, but I must add that I really don't believe we'll see the settlers moved by bulldozers, tanks and so on. If palestinians used paint on israeli soldiers, well.. they'd get a rubber bullet in their stomach before they got close enough to use their bucket of paint.

Treath palestinians the same way as you treat settlers, Israel..
 
nomix said:
Which clips, can't say I saw them? :)

The problem is by no small margin the extremists on both sides. But there always is an issue with Labour, a very fine quote about Labour I came across is "Labour prefers to have half an invation or half a withdrawl".

It will be interesting to see what will happen. Livni his tough, no doubt about that.

I know it's not part of the question, but I must add that I really don't believe we'll see the settlers moved by bulldozers, tanks and so on. If palestinians used paint on israeli soldiers, well.. they'd get a rubber bullet in their stomach before they got close enough to use their bucket of paint.

Treath palestinians the same way as you treat settlers, Israel..
Click to expand...

Some youtube clips earlier up on the page. It shows part of the dismantling of settlements and the violence that ensued, but not on the scale of demolishing Palestinian homes etc (as you already stated).
 
Steve Levin said:
There is no such thing as "Palestinian land."
Click to expand...
Tell that to the Palestinians.

Here's a map from 1923. Just for some background.
MFAG007r0.gif


Here's a map of the Jewish population/land holdings in 1947:
Map_of_1947_Jewish_settlements_in_Palestine.png


This is a map of what UN Resolution 181 dictated:
UN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.png

In 1947 Israelis made up a third of the population of Palestine and owned something like 7-8% of the land. However, the resolution granted them more than half the land. What you might notice on this map is that there are in fact Palestinian lands. Palestine was not totally wiped off the map and replaced with Israel, it was partitioned, chopped up.

Now whether you think that Palestinians have a right to a state or not is irrelevant. The very same international law that created the state of Israel left the Palestinians with a little less than half their old territory. The West Bank, Gaza and much more were originally left explicitly to the Palestinians. Every time a war has broken out Israel has seized the opportunity to take more Palestinian lands and tighten their control over the remaining areas.
 
^A lot of people talk about return to the '67 borders. But in the interest of fairness, following '47 partition plan would be ideal. I'm sure I mentioned that earlier in the thread as well.
 
I would be very happy if there was a return to the 47 plan. But I do concede there is one part that can't happen, and that's Jerusalem as an international city. Likud and the far right would never, never, never ever accept it. The palestinians can be mussled off the idea of Jerusalem, it won't be easy, but it can be done. The israelis sadly can't.
 
So what happens if you return to the old borders? That'll never be enough for the Palestinians, they'll eventually want all of it.
 
Some might, but I don't see that as an issue. There are a lot of people in Israel who literally wants to just throw them out as well (Likud was founded with that in mind, in fact), but you won't see that either.
 
FireCat: I've just taken a look at the videos. Nothing new, to put it that way. But I guess this type of reportage might be more unusual in the US. In Norway, the press and populous has been largely pro-Palestine since the grave actions Israel took during the war in Lebanon from 82 and onwards.

Even if they weren't fireing artillery shells at Norwegian UN peace keepers, and they (or their falangist ally Haddad) did, Israel really made a bad image for themselves in that war. So it would be polite to say that Norwegian media is slightly pro-Palestinian.

As for the reportage, it's quite standard 60 minutes in my opinion. In other words, completely truthfull in all ways, but only taking one side's story into account. It's more to the conflict than Israeli discrimmination of arabs, as there is more to the conflict than arab terror attacks.

(I also react a bit on the reporters remarks regarding arab vote in Israel. Arabs can vote in Israel, as long as they are Israeli citizens. I know he was talking about the population of the West Bank, but he should have clarified it.)

The real story of that reportage is of course to show what the condition is for the population of the West Bank, and I guess it does show that quite well.

I must admit being a bit dumb-struck by the remark of that settler-lady.

"... if they do this illegal thing [...]"

Well, that is quite simply extraordinarly silly. They live illegaly on the land, and claim it to be illegal to remove them from it. That is complete and utter rubbish.

Settlements must go, it must happen.
 
Ya'll know the 1947 UN plan was rejected by the Arabs, right?

The only Arab nations to accept UN 181 are Jordan and Egypt. Because doing so acknowledges Israel's right to exist.

Steve
 
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