Intifada 3? Kidnapped Israeli citizens might be a flashpoint

[Borgholio]

The International Business Times reported today that even though he was offered 1,600 square kilometers of the Sinai Peninsula by al-Sisi, Abbas refused

I am of mixed feelings about this. I know they don't want to leave where they have been living for most of their lives, but getting a demilitarized zone where there is no competition from Israel and getting much more land than Israel can give them in the process? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. They're getting their own state, isn't that what they wanted?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The International Business Times reported today that even though he was offered 1,600 square kilometers of the Sinai Peninsula by al-Sisi, Abbas refused

I am of mixed feelings about this. I know they don't want to leave where they have been living for most of their lives, but getting a demilitarized zone where there is no competition from Israel and getting much more land than Israel can give them in the process? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. They're getting their own state, isn't that what they wanted?

Have you seen the Sinai? It's all uninhabitable desert. And, as everybody well knows, the Palestinians don't just want a state of their own, the state they want overlaps neatly with Israel.

And besides, there's pretty good evidence to suggest that the whole thing is a hoax. (Both al-Sisi and Abbas deny that such an offer was ever made.) Which makes sense, since the alleged offer would expand Gaza. And who controls Gaza? Hamas. Who was Hamas associated with? The Islamic Brotherhood. Who recently evicted the Islamic Brotherhood from power and declared the whole thing to be a terrorist organization? The present Egyptian government.

[Elheru Aran]

The Sinai Peninsula is mostly rock and desert with tourist destinations along the coastlines. It's not very attractive if you're in the interior, and I suspect that's mostly what would be offered.

It's also something of a moral loss. They're basically conceding that brutal strongarm apartheid-ish tactics are valid if they take the offer and leave. And you can pretty much guarantee that if Israel didn't expand in their direction, they'd become essentially an Egyptian or Arab protectorate, but nobody wants a bunch of rag-tag Palestinians moving in, so they'd be stuck in perpetual refugee status. It's the inverse of the Aliyah, or the Return to Zion-- essentially it's a whole new diaspora that would be forced upon the Palestinian people.

[Edi]

There's nothing the Palestinians will gain by giving up any land rights in Gaza or the West Bank in exchange for some sandy hellhole which Israel will not let them control in any case. Doesn't matter what they do, Israel will still take their land anyway, because it never had any intention of negotiating in good faith to begin with.

The Bloody History of Israeli "Cease-fires"

Those expecting Israel to honor its side of the new cease-fire agreement would do well to review recent history

On August 26th, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) both accepted a ceasefire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind. The agreement calls for an end to military action by both Israel and Hamas, as well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years.

This is, however, just the most recent of a series of ceasefire agreements reached after each of Israel’s periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza. Throughout this period, the terms of these agreements remain essentially the same. The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it — as Israel has officially recognized — until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality. These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called “mowing the lawn” in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as “removing the topsoil” by a senior U.S. military officer, appalled by the practices of the self-described “most moral army in the world.”

The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access Between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005. It called for “a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import/export of goods, and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of the airport in Gaza” that Israeli bombing had demolished.

That agreement was reached shortly after Israel withdrew its settlers and military forces from Gaza. The motive for the disengagement was explained by Dov Weissglass, a confidant of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was in charge of negotiating and implementing it. “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” Weissglass informed the Israeli press. “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.” True enough.

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,” Weissglass added. “It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Israeli hawks also recognized that instead of investing substantial resources in maintaining a few thousand settlers in illegal communities in devastated Gaza, it made more sense to transfer them to illegal subsidized communities in areas of the West Bank that Israel intended to keep.

The disengagement was depicted as a noble effort to pursue peace, but the reality was quite different. Israel never relinquished control of Gaza and is, accordingly, recognized as the occupying power by the United Nations, the U.S., and other states (Israel apart, of course). In their comprehensive history of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar describe what actually happened when that country disengaged: the ruined territory was not released “for even a single day from Israel’s military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day.” After the disengagement, “Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might.”

Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense

Israel soon had a pretext for violating the November Agreement more severely. In January 2006, the Palestinians committed a serious crime. They voted “the wrong way” in carefully monitored free elections, placing the parliament in the hands of Hamas. Israel and the United States immediately imposed harsh sanctions, telling the world very clearly what they mean by “democracy promotion.” Europe, to its shame, went along as well.

The U.S. and Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure. When Hamas pre-empted the coup in 2007, the siege of Gaza became far more severe, along with regular Israeli military attacks. Voting the wrong way in a free election was bad enough, but preempting a U.S.-planned military coup proved to be an unpardonable offense.

A new ceasefire agreement was reached in June 2008. It again called for opening the border crossings to “allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza.” Israel formally agreed to this, but immediately announced that it would not abide by the agreement and open the borders until Hamas released Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas.

Israel itself has a long history of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and holding them for lengthy periods without credible charge, sometimes as hostages. Of course, imprisoning civilians on dubious charges, or none, is a regular practice in the territories Israel controls. But the standard western distinction between people and “unpeople” (in Orwell’s useful phrase) renders all this insignificant.

Israel not only maintained the siege in violation of the June 2008 ceasefire agreement but did so with extreme rigor, even preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which cares for the huge number of official refugees in Gaza, from replenishing its stocks.

On November 4th, while the media were focused on the U.S. presidential election, Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That elicited a Hamas missile response and an exchange of fire. (All the deaths were Palestinian.) In late December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. Israel considered the offer, but rejected it, preferring instead to launch Operation Cast Lead, a three-week incursion of the full power of the Israeli military into the Gaza strip, resulting in shocking atrocities well documented by international and Israeli human rights organizations.

On January 8, 2009, while Cast Lead was in full fury, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution (with the U.S. abstaining) calling for “an immediate ceasefire leading to a full Israeli withdrawal, unimpeded provision through Gaza of food, fuel, and medical treatment, and intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling.”

A new ceasefire agreement was indeed reached, but the terms, similar to the previous ones, were again never observed and broke down completely with the next major mowing-the-lawn episode in November 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense. What happened in the interim can be illustrated by the casualty figures from January 2012 to the launching of that operation: one Israeli was killed by fire from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was the murder of Ahmed Jabari, a high official of the military wing of Hamas. Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz, described Jabari as Israel’s “subcontractor” in Gaza, who enforced relative quiet there for more than five years. As always, there was a pretext for the assassination, but the likely reason was provided by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. He had been involved in direct negotiations with Jabari for years and reported that, hours before he was assassinated, Jabari “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the ceasefire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”

There is a long record of Israeli actions designed to deter the threat of a diplomatic settlement. After this exercise of mowing the lawn, a ceasefire agreement was reached yet again. Repeating the now-standard terms, it called for a cessation of military action by both sides and the effective ending of the siege of Gaza with Israel “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.”

What happened next was reviewed by Nathan Thrall, senior Middle East analyst of the International Crisis Group. Israeli intelligence recognized that Hamas was observing the terms of the ceasefire. “Israel,” Thrall wrote, “therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters.” In other words, the siege never ended. “Crossings were repeatedly shut. So-called buffer zones inside Gaza [from which Palestinians are barred, and which include a third or more of the strip’s limited arable land] were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank.”

Operation Protective Edge

So matters continued until April 2014, when an important event took place. The two major Palestinian groupings, Gaza-based Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank signed a unity agreement. Hamas made major concessions. The unity government contained none of its members or allies. In substantial measure, as Nathan Thrall observes, Hamas turned over governance of Gaza to the PA. Several thousand PA security forces were sent there and the PA placed its guards at borders and crossings, with no reciprocal positions for Hamas in the West Bank security apparatus. Finally, the unity government accepted the three conditions that Washington and the European Union had long demanded: non-violence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel.

Israel was infuriated. Its government declared at once that it would refuse to deal with the unity government and cancelled negotiations. Its fury mounted when the U.S., along with most of the world, signaled support for the unity government.

There are good reasons why Israel opposes the unification of Palestinians. One is that the Hamas-Fatah conflict has provided a useful pretext for refusing to engage in serious negotiations. How can one negotiate with a divided entity? More significantly, for more than 20 years, Israel has been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords it signed in 1993, which declare Gaza and the West Bank to be an inseparable territorial unity.

A look at a map explains the rationale. Separated from Gaza, any West Bank enclaves left to Palestinians have no access to the outside world. They are contained by two hostile powers, Israel and Jordan, both close U.S. allies — and contrary to illusions, the U.S. is very far from a neutral “honest broker.”

Furthermore, Israel has been systematically taking over the Jordan Valley, driving out Palestinians, establishing settlements, sinking wells, and otherwise ensuring that the region — about one-third of the West Bank, with much of its arable land — will ultimately be integrated into Israel along with the other regions that country is taking over. Hence remaining Palestinian cantons will be completely imprisoned. Unification with Gaza would interfere with these plans, which trace back to the early days of the occupation and have had steady support from the major political blocs, including figures usually portrayed as doves like former president Shimon Peres, who was one of the architects of settlement deep in the West Bank.

As usual, a pretext was needed to move on to the next escalation. Such an occasion arose when three Israeli boys from the settler community in the West Bank were brutally murdered. The Israeli government evidently quickly realized that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a “rescue operation” — actually a rampage primarily targeting Hamas. The Netanyahu government has claimed from the start that it knew Hamas was responsible, but has made no effort to present evidence.

One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of the Hamas leadership. He added, “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”

The Israeli police have since been searching for and arresting members of the clan, still claiming, without evidence, that they are “Hamas terrorists.” On September 2nd, Haaretz reported that, after very intensive interrogations, the Israeli security services concluded the abduction of the teenagers “was carried out by an independent cell” with no known direct links to Hamas.

The 18-day rampage by the Israeli Defense Forces succeeded in undermining the feared unity government. According to Israeli military sources, its soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six, while searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7th.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 18 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext to launch Operation Protective Edge on July 8th. The 50-day assault proved the most extreme exercise in mowing the lawn — so far.

Operation [Still to Be Named]

Israel is in a fine position today to reverse its decades-old policy of separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of its solemn agreements and to observe a major ceasefire agreement for the first time. At least temporarily, the threat of democracy in neighboring Egypt has been diminished, and the brutal Egyptian military dictatorship of General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is a welcome ally for Israel in maintaining control over Gaza.

The Palestinian unity government, as noted earlier, is placing the U.S.-trained forces of the Palestinian Authority in control of Gaza’s borders, and governance may be shifting into the hands of the PA, which depends on Israel for its survival, as well as for its finances. Israel might feel that its takeover of Palestinian territory in the West Bank has proceeded so far that there is little to fear from some limited form of autonomy for the enclaves that remain to Palestinians.

There is also some truth to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s observation: “Many elements in the region understand today that, in the struggle in which they are threatened, Israel is not an enemy but a partner.” Akiva Eldar, Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent, adds, however, that “all those ‘many elements in the region’ also understand that there is no brave and comprehensive diplomatic move on the horizon without an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and a just, agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem.” That is not on Israel’s agenda, he points out, and is in fact in direct conflict with the 1999 electoral program of the governing Likud coalition, never rescinded, which “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

Some knowledgeable Israeli commentators, notably columnist Danny Rubinstein, believe that Israel is poised to reverse course and relax its stranglehold on Gaza.

We’ll see.

The record of these past years suggests otherwise and the first signs are not auspicious. As Operation Protective Edge ended, Israel announced its largest appropriation of West Bank land in 30 years, almost 1,000 acres. Israel Radio reported that the takeover was in response to the killing of the three Jewish teenagers by “Hamas militants.” A Palestinian boy was burned to death in retaliation for the murder, but no Israeli land was handed to Palestinians, nor was there any reaction when an Israeli soldier murdered 10-year-old Khalil Anati on a quiet street in a refugee camp near Hebron on August 10th, while the most moral army in the world was smashing Gaza to bits, and then drove away in his jeep as the child bled to death.

Anati was one the 23 Palestinians (including three children) killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank during the Gaza onslaught, according to U.N. statistics, along with more than 2,000 wounded, 38% by live fire. “None of those killed were endangering soldiers’ lives,” Israeli journalist Gideon Levy reported. To none of this is there any reaction, just as there was no reaction while Israel killed, on average, more than two Palestinian children a week for the past 14 years. Unpeople, after all.

It is commonly claimed on all sides that, if the two-state settlement is dead as a result of Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands, then the outcome will be one state West of the Jordan. Some Palestinians welcome this outcome, anticipating that they can then conduct a civil rights struggle for equal rights on the model of South Africa under apartheid. Many Israeli commentators warn that the resulting “demographic problem” of more Arab than Jewish births and diminishing Jewish immigration will undermine their hope for a “democratic Jewish state.”

But these widespread beliefs are dubious.

The realistic alternative to a two-state settlement is that Israel will continue to carry forward the plans it has been implementing for years, taking over whatever is of value to it in the West Bank, while avoiding Palestinian population concentrations and removing Palestinians from the areas it is integrating into Israel. That should avoid the dreaded “demographic problem.”

The areas being integrated into Israel include a vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem, the area within the illegal “Separation Wall,” corridors cutting through the regions to the East, and will probably also encompass the Jordan Valley. Gaza will likely remain under its usual harsh siege, separated from the West Bank. And the Syrian Golan Heights — like Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders — will quietly become part of Greater Israel. In the meantime, West Bank Palestinians will be contained in unviable cantons, with special accommodation for elites in standard neocolonial style.

These basic policies have been underway since the 1967 conquest, following a principle enunciated by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, one of the Israeli leaders most sympathetic to the Palestinians. He informed his cabinet colleagues that they should tell Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.”

The suggestion was natural within the overriding conception articulated in 1972 by future president Haim Herzog: “I do not deny the Palestinians a place or stand or opinion on every matter… But certainly I am not prepared to consider them as partners in any respect in a land that has been consecrated in the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner.” Dayan also called for Israel’s “permanent rule” (“memshelet keva“) over the occupied territories. When Netanyahu expresses the same stand today, he is not breaking new ground.

Like other states, Israel pleads “security” as justification for its aggressive and violent actions. But knowledgeable Israelis know better. Their recognition of reality was articulated clearly in 1972 by Air Force Commander (and later president) Ezer Weizmann. He explained that there would be no security problem if Israel were to accept the international call to withdraw from the territories it conquered in 1967, but the country would not then be able to “exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.”

For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept. It has been a highly successful policy. There is every reason to expect it to persist as long as the United States provides the necessary military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support. For those concerned with the rights of the brutalized Palestinians, there can be no higher priority than working to change U.S. policies, not an idle dream by any means.

[eyl]

snip

That has to be one of the more blatantly biased articles I've read on the subject in quite a while.

I'll try to do a more detailed breakdown tomorrow, but a couple of points which caught my eye:

1) note that the article mysteriously fails to mention the intensification of rocket fire from Gaza prior to Protective Edge, which were the cause of the attacks on Gaza mentioned in the article (and eventually OPE itself); and while it says Hamas launched a first time in July, members of Hamas were killed and injured in an Israel attack on a team setting up a rocket launch in late June.
2) The article claims that Jabari had been killed to forestall a diplomatic agreement. In that case, why would Israel give him a draft agreement for a truce in the first place?
3) The article claims the Gaza settlements were destroyed by Israel as an act of spite, but in fact was done in agreement with the PA (actually, IIRC Israel offered to leave them intact and the PA refused, saying the buildings were unsuitable for their needs, but I can't find a cite at the moment).
4) The article alleges Israel and the US planned a coup against the Hamas government in 2006. IT doesn't provide any evidence of that, and is quite clincal in describing Hamas' "counter-coup" (which basically consisted of their driving out or killing Fatah's personnel in Gaza).

[Edi]

It's Chomsky's opinion piece, so I don't expect it to be entirely or even mostly neutral, but the quotes from the Israeli administration side are pretty damning even without any of the rest of it. I'll be happy to look at clarification of the points you mentioned though.

I don't particularly expect there to be any resolution to the situation. Israel will not stop building settlements or annexing more land. So there is no real basis for any negotiation. Including any supposed Sinai land swap deals.

[His Divine Shadow]

In other news I've started noting which products come from israel and no longer buy them. I liked jaffa oranges but fuck it. Edi, are there any organizations in finland that petition the major market chains to stop carrying israeli goods/produce?

[eyl]

It's Chomsky's opinion piece, so I don't expect it to be entirely or even mostly neutral, but the quotes from the Israeli administration side are pretty damning even without any of the rest of it. I'll be happy to look at clarification of the points you mentioned though.

Unless I miss something, the only quotes I see from an Israeli administration official (using the term loosely) is from Weisglass.

While I don't have much agreement with the man, the "formaldahyde" comment is, IMO, often taken out of context. The Haaretz interview in which he said it unfortunately appears to no longer be available online, but FWIW, I did comment on a few excerpts here at the time. From how I read the interview, it seemd to me that his point was that the Gaza withdrawal was intended to shift the pressure to advance in the diplomatic process from Israel to the Palestinians; by giving them a contiguous territory in which the Palestinian Authority was in full control, without an IDF or settler presence, it could serve as a proving ground of sorts as to how a Palestinian state would be. Note that the blockade didn't come into place until Hamas cam into power later (and was in signficant part a series of closures of the crossings due to them coming under attacks) and the blocakde in its present form came about only in 2007 after Hamas's coup.

I'd ned to do some research on his later comments to consider if they should be taken at face value or not.

[Edi]

Yeah, Haaretz going behind a paywall is a pain in the arse, it was a good news source.

HDS, I have no idea on that.

[cosmicalstorm]

I'm with Edi on this. Israel's long term plan is pretty obvious. Unless every person in Israel falls down dead from an act of Q at the same moment, no real homeland for the Palestinians.

[Simon_Jester]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

[eyl]

I'm with Edi on this. Israel's long term plan is pretty obvious. Unless every person in Israel falls down dead from an act of Q at the same moment, no real homeland for the Palestinians.

You're problem is assuming that Israel* has a long-term plan. I'm very much in doubt on that.

*Or rather, most of the Israeli right - the left and center parties have a plan (and maybe the Likud'smoderate wing, what little's left of it) and Lieberman has a plan (though it has no chance of being implemented in whole)

[Metahive]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Because Gaza is not under full Palestinian control. All Israel did was removing its civilians from the area, the military however is still there and controlling vital parts of the area. The "pullout" was nothing but smokes and mirrors, in truth it's still occupied territory.

Also have you seen the uproar about Palestine trying to get its status raised in the UN?

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

[eyl]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Because Gaza is not under full Palestinian control. All Israel did was removing its civilians from the area, the military however is still there and controlling vital parts of the area. The "pullout" was nothing but smokes and mirrors, in truth it's still occupied territory.

Also have you seen the uproar about Palestine trying to get its status raised in the UN?

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

The military was pulled out at the same time as the civilians. I think it later reoccupied a few fringe areas (EDIT - or rather designated them as no-go zones) following OCL.

[Irbis]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Maybe, just maybe, sea/air/land blockade meaning Gaza is just world's largest open air prison, with people inside left to rot with bare minimum of resources above famine level if that, has something to do with it.

Let's say, bombing of the houses would normally be bad enough, but bombing when iron, concrete, ceramics and paints are regulated and embargoed as 'terrorist supplies' and the area is already too overcrowded due to building shortage is sort of a bit worse, don't you think?

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

Yeah, my friend commented "Civilians of different ethnicity and language that want a bit of self-government are being shot at, bombed using overwhelming force, and explicitly being denied all they demand. Wait, did I just describe Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, or West Sahara? Because it seems to me 'what is right' and who is 'terrorist' changes depending only on who likes us and who doesn't, and we cheer in two above cases what we loudly condemn in two other".

Sadly, he has a lot of point there. When exactly we will embargo Morocco, Turkey and Israel instead of hailing them as best NATO buddies? Or is land grab, followed by mass settling and ethnic cleansing totally cool when west-aligned countries do that? Must have missed that bit in UN laws

[Omeganian]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Because Gaza is not under full Palestinian control. All Israel did was removing its civilians from the area, the military however is still there and controlling vital parts of the area. The "pullout" was nothing but smokes and mirrors, in truth it's still occupied territory.

Also have you seen the uproar about Palestine trying to get its status raised in the UN?

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

Maybe, just maybe, sea/air/land blockade meaning Gaza is just world's largest open air prison, with people inside left to rot with bare minimum of resources above famine level if that, has something to do with it.

Let's say, bombing of the houses would normally be bad enough, but bombing when iron, concrete, ceramics and paints are regulated and embargoed as 'terrorist supplies' and the area is already too overcrowded due to building shortage is sort of a bit worse, don't you think?

Since when does any of these things ever matter when it comes to announcing independence?

[Irbis]

Since when does any of these things ever matter when it comes to announcing independence?

You're late only, oh, 28 years?

They did announce independence, it just means fuck all (like Abkhazians and Osetians could tell you) when certain two countries that voted against the recognition in UN do everything in their power to block that. Take a look on this map, I wonder what country and its vassals you can see here (frankly, I am surprised Poland still keeps its evil commie recognition of Palestine done under previous regime)?

Then, there is the fact you can declare independence all you want, but when your territory looks like this it's kind of hard to build any semblance of functioning state even without economic and military blockade.

[Simon_Jester]

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Because Gaza is not under full Palestinian control. All Israel did was removing its civilians from the area, the military however is still there and controlling vital parts of the area. The "pullout" was nothing but smokes and mirrors, in truth it's still occupied territory.

So in what precise way does the IDF prevent the Palestinians of Gaza from governing themselves? Do they dictate policies to the local Gaza government, the way the Nazis dictated to Vichy during the occupation of France?

The blockade certainly is a major crippling of the Israeli economy, but in no way does that mean that the Palestinians are unable to:

1) Select leaders they support
2) Honor the rule of law among themselves
3) Select policies aimed at furthering their own long-term interests and desires.

Gaza isn't being given the chance to have the full freedom of action a nation would, and never has... but the degree of autonomy it does possess is quite substantial. What are they doing with that autonomy, and what does it tell us about the prospects of a Palestinian state?

Also have you seen the uproar about Palestine trying to get its status raised in the UN?

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

I think the Palestinians have every right to want a state. They should have one. They deserve one and have been unjustly cheated out of that by the Israelis.

At the same time, realistically, if they intend to create a state that is at war with Israel from Day One of its existence, the Israelis would be completely insane to sit back and watch that happen with complacency.

The headscratcher for me is, what prevents Gaza (and the similar Israeli pullout in the West Bank that really ought to happen, but hasn't) from being a Palestinian state?

I mean, in theory if you say to people 'govern this land' and walk away, they should be able to create a state there unless something interferes.

Maybe, just maybe, sea/air/land blockade meaning Gaza is just world's largest open air prison, with people inside left to rot with bare minimum of resources above famine level if that, has something to do with it.

The blockade was not in place when the pullout first occurred. Moreover, while the blockade imposes horrible conditions on Gaza, it does not prevent the Gazans from governing themselves. Or does it?

I'm not saying Gaza can flourish while Israel continues to surround it and besiege it. But the Gaza Strip can reasonably be viewed as a self-governing territory, ruled by Palestinian groups, who apparently represent the current wishes of the Palestinian people.

Let's say, bombing of the houses would normally be bad enough, but bombing when iron, concrete, ceramics and paints are regulated and embargoed as 'terrorist supplies' and the area is already too overcrowded due to building shortage is sort of a bit worse, don't you think?

A methodical 'dehousing campaign' under such circumstances would be a reprehensible act.

On the other hand, bombing strongpoints from which enemy guerillas have actively fired on your soldiers, who are doing something you have reason to think is necessary for the safety of your own country... not so reprehensible. YES, the fallen buildings will be impossible for the enemy to repair. This is one of the reasons why going to war when you're badly outgunned is a bad idea. They might want to have considered that in advance.

I'm still marvelling about all the people tut-tutting the Palestinians for not accepting their status as conquered and abused people while at the same time having nothing but utmost sympathies for the Kurds. How about some consistency?

Yeah, my friend commented "Civilians of different ethnicity and language that want a bit of self-government are being shot at, bombed using overwhelming force, and explicitly being denied all they demand. Wait, did I just describe Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, or West Sahara? Because it seems to me 'what is right' and who is 'terrorist' changes depending only on who likes us and who doesn't, and we cheer in two above cases what we loudly condemn in two other".

I feel quite consistent in this matter.

I favor independence for the Donbass region of the Ukraine, for the Palestinian territories of the land formerly known as Canaan, for the Kurdish regions of Iraq and, hell, the Sunni regions if they want it... And I don't know enough about the situation in West Sahara to have an opinion, so I must plead ignorance of that affair.

However, in each case the oppressed population have conducted themselves differently.

In the Ukraine, the ethnic Russian rebels rebelled AFTER the ethnic Ukrainians sabotaged a democratic government and arbitrarily imposed policies that would put the ethnic Russians at a disadvantage. My only problem with the rebels is that they're in bed with Vladimir Putin, and they don't really have a choice in the matter so it's hard to blame them.

In Iraq, the Kurds have been the target of unjust oppression by the Sunnis under Hussein, and the Sunnis have been the target of unjust marginalization by the Shia under the post-2003 government. Both groups have a reasonable claim to secede. My only problem with the Sunni rebels is that they're in bed with a bunch of Wahhabists, which is actually a very serious problem but not an objection to independence for northern Iraq as such. My only problem with the Kurds is... actually, I don't know why I should have any problem with them. Nevermind.

In Palestine, the Palestinians have very good grounds for wanting to secede and form an independent state. It would be difficult to find any breed of men on the face of the Earth today who have a better claim for independence from an oppressive government. My only problem with the Palestinians is that they don't seem to know how to interact with Israel except by shooting at it until it goes away... and frankly, that's an incredibly stupid plan.

And, again, I must plead ignorance of the situation in West Sahara.

So to summarize, I think the Donbass cause is sympathetic but they're between a rock and a hard place, the Kurdish cause is sympathetic and basically viable, the Iraqi Sunni cause would be sympathetic except that I hate murderous religious fanatics.

And the Palestinian cause would be sympathetic except that for some reason the Palestinians freely elected a bunch of frothing morons to represent them in Gaza, and said archmorons are methodically doing their damnedest to make the entire Palestinian cause fall into (literal) ruins.

[mr friendly guy]

Simon, the problem is, a lot of Western governments aren't consistent in the same manner. One needs look no further than the Ukraine thread.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm with Edi on this. Israel's long term plan is pretty obvious. Unless every person in Israel falls down dead from an act of Q at the same moment, no real homeland for the Palestinians.

Not all Israeli people have the same stance and not all Israelis are incapable of changing their position. Saying every Israeli person has to die for the Palestinians to have a homeland is at best flagrantly bigoted and at worst implicitly condoning genocide.

Edit: People like you do the pro-Palestinian side no good.

[PKRudeBoy]

I'm with Edi on this. Israel's long term plan is pretty obvious. Unless every person in Israel falls down dead from an act of Q at the same moment, no real homeland for the Palestinians.

Not all Israeli people have the same stance and not all Israelis are incapable of changing their position. Saying every Israeli person has to die for the Palestinians to have a homeland is at best flagrantly bigoted and at worst implicitly condoning genocide.

Edit: People like you do the pro-Palestinian side no good.

I think it's more that since both sides claim the same area, and Israel vastly outguns Palestine, the only way for Palestinians to get all of what they would consider their homeland would be for a ROB to poof the Israelis away. A two state solution would most likely wind up with a weak and poor Palestine, if not quite as weak and poor as it is now. A unitary, integrated liberal democracy would be nice, but anyone who believes that that will happen anytime soon should PM me about my large inventory of bridges for sale.