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The Peace Procession
Empire looks at the Israeli-Palestinian talks and asks what it will take to reach the Promised Land.
After a two year deadlock and 17 years of failure, Washington has
relaunched direct peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
And both parties have agreed to keep talking, in the hope of reaching a
final agreement.
For some, US renewed sponsorship of direct
talks this week is a major step towards peace. They argue that as the
leader of the free world, the US has the moral and geopolitical
responsibility, as well as the political and strategic proximity to
broker peace in the Middle East.
Their detractors reckon that the
US-sponsored peace process is the continuation of war through other
means, not only in Palestine, but throughout the region, where the US
and its closest ally Israel use the peace process to cover up their
strategic follies and expand their regional interests. They claim that
the influence of the Israel lobby in Washington, coupled with US wars in
the greater Middle East, renders the US a dishonest broker that
succumbs to the Israeli agenda at the expense of Palestinian rights.
And
here lies the paradox facing many of America's partners and allies who
are eager for its activism but sceptical of its judgment.
Whilst
Washington's management, of the diplomatic process over the last 17
years has had its share of critics, Arab and Muslim attachment to
Palestine, coupled with its international symbolism as the last colonial
occupation, have ensured that this cause remains crucial to regional
stability and on top of the American and the global agenda. And an
increasing number of US generals and politicians believe that resolving
the Palestinian issue is important to the US' own national security in
light of its wars and occupation in the greater Middle East.
As
Israelis and Palestinians take the first step of a one-year journey to
reach a final agreement, we ask: What will it take to reach the Promised
Land? And is the US willing, or able, to do what it takes to make peace
possible?
© 2010 Al-Jazeera
16 Comments so far
Show AllThe US is working hard to get as big a piece of Palestine as they can for Israel from any such "piece treaty" between Israel and Palestine. Who would guess that 100% of the land Israel seized in 1967 in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza remains 100% illegally occupied by Israel, with more than chump change provided by US taxpayers.
So you don't want peace?
What would you think of a judge who could rule on how much of the victim's loot, the mugger gets to keep? Isn't the US looking for just such a judge to decide how much of the land Israel stole in 1967, Israel gets to keep? Peace Treaty or Piece Treaty?
The Palestinian people should demand a return to the pre-1967 borders.
And they should demand that all Israeli's must leave their country including all military.
Anything short of that and there should be no deal.
No justice. No peace.
So war is preferable to peace? So Jews should be ethnically cleansed? Yes, progressivism at its best!
Stop it already. That tactic is so old and familiar, nobody here falls for it anymore. You're being tiresome.
The Palestinian people should demand a return to the pre-1967 borders.
And they should demand that all Israeli's must leave their country including all military.
Anything short of that and there should be no deal.
No justice. No peace.
Wouldn't it be great if Allah, God and Jesus were at the peace talks helping all concerned find a happy compromise and forgiveness for all our trespasses against one another.
And for the matter when they were done there, we could send them to Iraq,Iran and Afghanistan to help find a working peace while locating all the evil terrorists.
Then we can bring the trio here, so they can help Americans understand that terrorism is not going to be solved by illegal religious holy wars and regime changes. We need compromise from all nations in intelligence gathering and then police action.
All of this can be done without the patriot acts , which are anything but patriotic since it crushes the our 4th amendment constitutional rights and other civil liberties.
Wow, bring back respect to all religions and nations, the American constitution, and rule of international law.
In a perfect world , with our Gods watching, we can do all of the above, if we put our hearts and minds in the right direction.
In a perfect world, our supreme beings could do all of this in a day, we humans just have to stop playing Gods, and try emulating what they would do , if they were here.
Talk and faith is cheap , the correct actions with rational leadership, well, thats another story.
Allah and God are one and the same. The sad truth is, posters like abbywood don't want peace. They want to win. Most Palestinian leadership have never wanted peace. It would take away their UN gravy train. No, only some of the Palestinians and most of the Jews, including most of their leaders, want peace.
The diplomatic process of these peace talks as referred to by the US is a heavy and indigestible lie dressed up in mediocrity, hypocrisy, and denial, and uttered in effervescent but meaningless terms to aid digestion of the indigestible, very much like Alka-Seltzer following salmonella and a very bad hangover.
The only reaction can be immediate and violent rejection from any available orifice of such putrid medication which the Obama administration is trying to pass off as an elixir of peace. Zionists and their allies are not much different from thugs and scam artists and are as adept in the practice of the art of diplomacy as a plumber might be at doing brain surgery.
So the thought of peace makes you physically ill? How progressive.
No, what this administration is trying to sell is what they term as a "peace process" which is in fact nothing to do with peace, but is a way to continue the application of torture and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. These direct talks are designed for Zionists and their supporters only. If they fail they satisfy the colonial occupier to continue its illegal acquisition of Palestinian territories and if they succeed they can only do so by compromising the rights of Palestinians with the compliance of quislings and thereby solidifying the status quo of the apartheid state.
No, peace does not make me sick. The hypocrisy of trying to sell a lie of expanding hegemony for an abortive approximation to a dangled carrot peace, talks for the sake of scoring political points, when the only real aggressor is the Zionist occupier who could bring peace in a minute they applied the law… that does make me ill, and these talks are a travesty of which the US should feel truly ashamed as they prostrate themselves before the Ziofacists.
So to sum it up, you don't win so you will keep fighting, forever, if need be? A Palestinian state is not worth it if it means Jews in the Middle East? The Palestinians are refugees forever? Second class citizens forever? Or at least they are so until the Jews are ethnically cleansed from the region? You have an ugly, ugly philosophy.
Your questions are not summing up anything of my thoughts. One day you and the rest of the Jews who have not learned this simple trick already will realise peace by learning to live with the Palestinians as equals, with equal rights.
It is the Jews who have proved they cannot live with Palestinians, not the other way round. It is Jews colonizing Palestinian land and resources and expelling Palestinians, using collective punishment and war crimes against them, not the other way round, as far as I can see.
There are plenty of Jews who can and do live happily side by side or together with Palestinians. You are obviously not one of them and that according to you makes "my philosophy ugly". I love your convoluted logic.
Thinking that the Palestinians would ever live peacefully, side by side, with Jews is dishonest or foolhardy. Over a thousand years of middle east history shows how Jews are treated in Muslim nations. Sure, there were periods of love and tolerance followed by mass slaughters. Hence the need for a Jewish nation where those mass slaughters just wouldn't happen.
In "history" Jews have done their share of slaughter and seem to be getting back to it if we take Gaza and "Cast Lead" as just one recent example. If you study the undoctored history instead of your Zionist propaganda you would realise that there has been alternating love and slaughter handed out to most people in the world, and Jews are just another minority. Jews are not much more special than Scots, Irish or Tutsis when it comes to being massacred, although they would like to think they are. A lot of the fear and reality was in fact orchestrated for power and money, just as it is today. Take the example of the Baghdad riots in the late 1940s. It was a confirmed Zionist false flag attack that started the series of attacks and reprisals that led to the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq for example. These Jews, their wealth and labour were needed by the budding Zionist state. read: The Jews of Iraq by Naeim Giladi
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.html
I think you have to grow up and get your head out of your ass and your cock-and-bull view of world history and humanity, and realise that it is quite reasonable that someone has bad intentions towards you and your Zionist friends when you try and take his home, his land and his very existence by terrorism and military force, killing his family or turning them into refugees in the process. This does not mean he is Anti-Jew it means he is a human who does not accept that your god gave you his land and told you it was Ok to kill his family with impunity because they are Goy. Nobody with any sense in the world accepts such rubbish and that includes many Jews.
The sick one in this whole story is you and your Zionist friends who see yourselves as apart from the rest of humanity making no effort to accommodate those not of your tribe while continuing a colonialist enterprise with violence in a 21st century. You are keeping the world in the Middle Ages with your group orchestrated fear, hypocrisy and ignorance.