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Can Mitchell turn Jerusalem into Belfast?
US President Barack Obama's appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his new Middle East envoy is a good choice. Mitchell showed even-handedness uncharacteristic of US officials when he led a fact-finding mission to the region in 2000.
Had its recommendations been followed -- cessation of all violence and a full freeze of Israeli settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land -- the peace process might have made progress. Mitchell, who is already in the Middle East, helped broker the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the key to ending decades of strife in Northern Ireland. Because of historical similarities, that peace agreement is an important precedent for Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
Before 1948, European Jewish settlers, newly-arrived in Palestine, wanted their own state once British colonial rulers withdrew. But because Jews were a minority, the only way to achieve this was a partition that the majority Arab Palestinian population, fearing dispossession, bitterly opposed. When Israel was established in 1948, most Palestinians were forced from their homeland, and those remaining became second-class citizens in a "Jewish state."
The modern conflict in Ireland began when Great Britain, facing resistance from Irish nationalists, decided to withdraw after centuries of rule. But the Protestant ruling class -- a quarter of the population -- descended from English and Scottish settlers, insisted that Ireland remain tied to Britain. These unionists refused to live in a state with a nationalist Catholic majority.
To appease the unionist minority, which threatened violent rebellion if it did not get its way, Britain partitioned Ireland in 1921, creating Northern Ireland, an entity whose legitimacy nationalists refused to recognize.
As Israeli Jews did to Palestinians, Protestants institutionalized their own culture and religion as the official creed and violently suppressed expressions of nationalist identity. In the words of its first prime minister, Northern Ireland's seat of government at Belfast's Stormont Castle was a "Protestant parliament for a Protestant people." Catholics faced systematic discrimination in jobs and housing.
Nationalists launched a civil rights movement in the 1960s inspired by the one in the US. Protestant unionists violently resisted demands to share power and reform, but the numerical growth and assertiveness of the nationalist Catholic population within Northern Ireland made such intransigence untenable.
In 1972, Britain sent in troops and imposed direct rule. During 30 years of "The Troubles," 3,700 people died at the hands of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Protestant militias, British forces and others.
The Mitchell-led Belfast Agreement ended formal Protestant hegemony in favor of equality, mitigating partition's injustices. It promised that government power "shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people" and guaranteed "just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities."
Decades of bloody conflict left deep social divisions. But a framework for nondiscriminatory democratic governance has allowed nationalists and unionists within Northern Ireland to begin to shed their siege mentalities. While formal partition of Ireland remains, it is disappearing on the ground as anyone can live, work and move freely, and official cross-border bodies are integrating the infrastructure and economies of the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland.
The power-sharing executive in Belfast, led by staunchly nationalist Sinn Fein (closely affiliated with the IRA) and the hardline Democratic Unionist Party, was once as inconceivable as a government made up of members of Hamas and Israeli politicians would be today. US diplomacy played a key role by putting pressure on the stronger parties --the British government and Protestant unionists -- in favor of the weaker nationalist side. Instead of shunning Sinn Fein the US, prodded by the Irish American lobby, insisted it be brought into the process.
By 2010, Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined. The two groups can no more be totally separated than Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists in Ireland.
Like Irish nationalists, Palestinians will never recognize the "right" of another group to discriminate against them. Like Protestant unionists did, Israeli Jews insist on their own state. Israel's "solution" is to cage Palestinians into ghettos -- like Gaza -- and periodically bomb them into submission just so Israeli Jews, their relative numbers dwindling, can artificially maintain a Jewish state.
If Mitchell is allowed to apply Northern Ireland's lessons, then there may be a way out. But he goes to Jerusalem with few of the advantages he brought to Belfast. The Obama administration remains committed for now to the failed partition formula of "a Jewish state" and a "Palestinian state" and maintains the Bush administration's misguided boycott of Hamas, which overwhelmingly won Palestinian elections in 2006. And the Israel lobby -- much more powerful than its Irish American counterpart -- warps US policy to favor the stronger side, an intransigent Israel committing war crimes. If these policies don't change, Mitchell's efforts will be wasted and escalating violence will fill the political vacuum.
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66 Comments so far
Show AllAs long as hamas is isolated from any peace talks, this mission is a failure. The palestinians do not trust Abbas as he would give away the farm to fatten his corrupt belly.
The fact that Mitchell will not talk to Hamas or Iran says it all.
From the news, it appears we twisted the arms of our ME puppetry to only help the corrupt Abbas.
Israel's miscalculation is really now becoming more and more evident:
"But in the ruins of Atatra, perhaps the biggest damage has been to any memory of a shared past and any thoughts of a shared future.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/03/mideast/gaza.4-422320.php?page=2
At end of article:
"........We used to tell fighters not to fire from here," said Nabila Abu Halima, looking over a field through her open window. "Now I'll invite them to do it from my house.""
But I could be wrong !
"Can Mitchell turn Jerusalem into Belfast?"
Not unless he turns to the UN, supports it economically, withdraws the Zionist rubber stamps from the Security Council and replaces them with fair, uninvolved people.
Sioux Rose
I read about these various religion-fueled conflicts and have to pinch myself to remember this really IS the 21st century. Consciousness was never meant to be a caged bird; but that's exactly what religions do... they cage in free thought and the collective response to so much crippling of wings is hatred. Instead of it being directed at the target that caused its genuine angst, it's directed at the person consigned as "other." This game of playing a people against a people while the same lords of power rule the world is so old and tiresome. Honestly, it's time for human beings to collective CHANGE the CHANNEL. Reality can be "tuned in" from other stations (i.e. levels of awareness and understanding) and it's high time we did so.
While the parties in both cases may have religious affiliations that identify them, it is not a religious conflict. It is a political one. It is about one side having power and the other having none. We make a terrible mistake when we attempt to justify or even understand these two conflicts through a prism of religion.
That, opaluboy, is probably the most intelligent comment I've seen on this site in quite a while.
Rainborowe
Mahalo!
Absolutely right. This is not a religious war. It is about power and occupation.
Religious folks tend to get slandered by liberals for being the source of "primeval hatreds" that lead to conflicts such as the one in Palestine/Israel. But the root cause of deaths of more than 100 million in the last century can be traced back to another religion that is used to mobilize passions, "secular nationalism". That's what Noam Chomsky calls it in this (MP3) interview in which he describes it as a much more dangerous phenomenon than old-time religious traditions that are ridiculed by "militant atheists" such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc. Mark Mazower also disputes the impression that "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans is a result of religious enmity. He quoted the historian Arnold Toynbee's take in 1922 on the source of ethnic strife (which often falls along the boundaries of religious/sectarian divide) in the Balkans:
The introduction of the Western formula [of the principle of nationalism] among these people has resulted in massacre....Such massacres are only the extreme form of a national struggle between mutually indispensable neighbors, instigated by this fatal Western idea.
The founders of Israel were almost to a person secular nationalists. For the first 30 years of its existence it was led by people who believed in "Nationalist Socialism". These non-practicing Jewish leaders manipulated religious myths for purely instrumental reasons (PDF) without believing a word of religious texts. Recently in an online debate, an Israeli wrote the following about the type of persons who are the most gung-ho fighters of his society:
I know that for Americans it's very hard to understand, but being a liberal and serving in an elite combat unit goes hand in hand here.
If you don't believe me, just read the news stories, and the bios of the kidnapped soldiers. The front lines are CEOs, lawyers, scientists, mathematicians, accountants and what not. The middle+ class are the people that go to war. The most leftist and liberal leaders were always the best generals--Rabin (Oslo) , Barak (pulled out of Lebanon), and in his last years, Ariel Sharon who pulled out of Gaza. And most importantly, there is not a single religious general, and Israel never had a religious leader.
Interestingly, Yasser Arafat had only one rival Palestinian leader of comparable stature, George Habash who was of Christian background and by far the more militant of the two. Also, to give the lie to the deterministic, parochial nature of Middle Eastern conflicts, the best known advocates of the Palestinian cause in the West have always been highly secular scholars and activists. Among Christians, Edward Said, Yvonne Haddad, Philip K. Hitti, Joseph Massad, etc., among Jews, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, etc., and among Muslims Tariq Ali, Eqbal Ahmad, and others. The idea that this is a religious conflict is about as meaningful as the notion that it was anti-Christian or anti-European feelings that animated Native Americans as they resisted white encroachment and ethnic cleansing.
Well said, the last line being a particularly splendid zinger.
Correct, and you could qualify it even further as an economic conflict if you include real estate with Palestine/Israel. In a polarised society without a significant middle class power generally flows to and from the "haves" rather than the "have nots" and this holds true as long as the "haves" can keep the "have nots" pinned down.
This was true in N. Ireland; religion was just the expedient label to differentiate the two sides and a force magnifier for blowhards like Paisley.
Exactly right.
Indeed, rather than reading about such conflicts my first exposure to obvious religious bigotry was listening to Ian Paisley, a protestant minister and a powerful orator, damming the N. Ireland Catholics in the early 1960's.
I have never since been a supporter of organized religion, although from what I have read the Quakers seem to have a reasonable organized form of spirituality.
BTW these conflicts are deeply rooted in religion, the Irish one certainly was and the middle East conflict surely is.
To amplify my comment about the middle Eastern conflict being deeply rooted in religion. To the Jews this has always been the promised land, after their escape from slavery in Egypt. The Zionists want to complete their re-occupation of the land of Canaan.
Unfortunately it was occupied by squatters while they were absent. The squatters, by right of having occupied the land for centuries, consider themselves the owners.
In the early 70's, when I first visited Israel, I was told by an Israeli Jew that the problem with Israel was that the Arabs living inside Israel were reproducing at a faster rate and would in time outnumber the Jews (this has some similarity to N. Ireland). In many ways the Israeli Arabs have been treated in much the same way as American Blacks were prior to the civil rights movement.
Jerusalem is at least the third most holy city in Islam with the Al-Aqsa Mosque built atop the Western (wailing) wall to the (Jewish) temple mount. This was captured by Israel in 1967. Anyone who has travelled in the old world will know that successive conquerors build their places of worship atop those of the conquered, in much the same way as one dog marks territory by obliterating the mark of a rival.
There is much bitterness underlying this conflict that is rooted in religion. To say that this is a political conflict between a powerful and a weak community is merely to see things as they now are and to miss the enormous influence of religion in shaping attitudes.
Prof 9:31 I have read that the Palestinians are the descendents of the Philestines who were around when and before the Jews had a two hundred year long lasting Kingdom in the Palestine area.
That's true. The Philistines were actually more civilized than the account of the Bible suggests; they brought iron tools to the neighborhood.
Rainborowe
Surprising as it may seem to you, there are Christian Palestinians. And Christian Arabs.
But not for long; they're a rapidly declining population, almost gone. And there used to be many Arab Jews but the establishment of the State of Israel destroyed their 2,000-year-flourishing communities, too. And bitterly do many of them mourn it.
Rainborowe
I'm afraid you begin with a misapprehension. The Land of Canaan/Israel was never as extensive as the modern Zionists claim. At its most extensive during the reign of King David it was little more than a line of hilltop villages extending from just south of Jerusalem (to encompass Bethlehem and Hebron) and north up to the Nazareth area. The coastal plain was the land of the Philistines (Palestinians to the Romans--which is why one never reads of Jesus or any other Jews going to the sea) and the land from the Judean hills west to the River Jordan was sparsely settled but settled but mostly by Jews of various kinds along with others. The Negev was not part of the land of the Jews: it was part of the land of the Nabataean Arabs (capital: Petra), as was the Ghaza strip and the land east of the Jordan.
Lots of those stories of Jews in the Bible were not of Jews living in that area of "Israel" but of nomadic Jewish tribes wandering around the Arabian/Mesopotamian/Syrian desert. Note that the only mention of Jews going near the coast was the story of Jonah and the whale. The only sea Jesus goes to is the so-called Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias). There were no whales in the Mediterranean, then as now, and in any case the Philistines were in the way; the Jonah story probably referred to the Red Sea or Persian Gulf or even the Indian Ocean.
Of course, the late Menachim Begin asserted the Jews' right to consider Eretz Israel any land where any Jews had ever lived. For obvious reasons, including the fact that many of those "Jews" probably became non-Jews (conversions to and from religion were common in ancient days and when a tribal sheikh converted the whole tribe converted with him--and lapsed when he or his successor did)the idea is preposterous in a field of many preposterous claims.
Rainborowe
This is not really about religion Souixrosie. It is a western european style-land grab from the indigenous people. Religion just complicates it further. Muslims, Jews and Christian villages co-existed in the region for centuries with very little strife. After WWI Jews began immigrating in larger numbers and the Arabs began to get nervous. It wasn't until after WWII when it was overwhelmed with refugess from Europe that things got really hairy.
The reason Mitchell found success in Ireland is in that situation the USA was an IMPARTIAL and HONEST broker, which cannot be said at all regarding anything in West Asia. So, there is no real attempt to craft peace or any sort of a just settlement. Such a policy will have very real repercussions, especially for the autocratic Arab governments that are US allies. A new pan-Arabic, some would say pan-Islamic, nationalism is arising unlikely to be contained like its predecessor was, which of course has caused the rise of its successor.
I have little concrete evidence to believe this, but I see US policy becoming more open to Hamas-type organizations and including them in the dialogue.
The little evidence I have:
Growing public outcry against Israel's treatment of Palestinians. For example, Jimmy Carter's book.
Amy Goodman conveyed on inauguration day that Obama told a group during his campaign that he did not disagree with Palestinian rights, but that he needs to be forced to do anything about it in the face of our political reality. I think we are in the position to change the debate. It will take work...
The USA is openly allied with the Zionist State. On the other side are the Palestinians, who would probably elect Hamas to be their representative government during negotiations. In the middle is an as yet unknown entity: a genuinely neutral facilitator for the negotiations that to date has never existed. This geometry--USA and the Zionist State on one side together against the Palestinian people--is almost never acknowledged. To say it even straighter: The USA is waging war against the Palestinian people; it is a co-belligerant. A co-belligerent does NOT mediate negotiations; it sits on one side of the table, in this case alongside the Zionists. This fact of the matter is why Mitchell will accomplish zero. It also illustrates why anti-US animus exists, is deep and enduring. There will be no peace and justice for the Palestinian people until the US Empire is forced to cease its war upon them. Tha Saudis seem to finally have realized this essential fact, which is already accepted by the greater Gulf Cooperation Council. The Saudis recently said you can either maintain the US/Saudi relationship or continue waging war on the Palestinians; but you cannot have both anymore. Genuine US interest dictates an end to the war on the Palestinian peoples, a fact the Zionists's hope to keep the US from realizing for as long as possible.
"he needs to be forced to do anything about it in the face of our political reality"
So he surrounds himself with Zionists, frames the arguments in Zionist terms, sticks his head back in the sand, and then there will be Netanyahu, and the problem will expand to further myths and delusions about Iran.
The big difference with Northern Ireland is that Britain was a decisive "outside" military force, certainly seen by the Catholics as aligned to the Loyalist Protestants, but still "relatively" impartial.
The US is totally partial to the only significant force being used is Israel, and force is the only thing being used, no brains, no justice, no history, just high tech weapons killing mostly civilians some with pea-shooters trying to protect their homes and families, of course they are terrorists and Israel who has ignored human rights and international law 60 years, even resolutions from the very authority which founded their state, but they have a right to “self defence”. Who the hell is anyone kidding?
There are two alternatives. Wipe out the Palestinians, remove the remainder into reserves and keep them sedated or force the Zionists back behind their legal borders, re-educate them to realise that if they want to have a ethnological myth as the cause of their wars they are genetically closer to a Turks, a Kurds, or a Mongols than a Palestinian who has every reason to be in Palestine, and finally take away Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. These people are far more dangerous than Saddam ever was!
The way Obama, OUR DEAR LEADER is handling it we are sailing into WWIII with all the options on the table and he knows it! Is that the plan?
Ya know, Ireland and the Middle east do/did have some similarities. And a few differences. For example, during the troubles in Northern Ireland - in spite of the terrorists bombing nearly every target they could think of - the British never invaded Ireland in the same way that Israel invaded Gaza. Could it be that the Brits are more humane than the Israelis are?
"Could it be that the Brits are more humane than the Israelis are?" Hi Saturnalia, my answer is that you would probably have a hard time telling that to the Irish victims of British state supported terrorism in Northern Ireland. Regards.
" in spite of the terrorists bombing nearly every target they could think of - the British never invaded Ireland in the same way that Israel invaded Gaza. Could it be that the Brits are more humane than the Israelis are?"
"The British" were already there--they were the population! The IRA violence (and later the violence of the UDF against them) took place entirely within the province of Northern Ireland which was a province of the UK. The Brits didn't have to invade!
Also the two situations were very different in that the Catholics in N.I. wanted more access to (the limited number) of jobs available and political power. Nobody was claiming land: the Irish Republic certainly had no desire, still less intention, to take over Northern Ireland with its expensive welfare state (something Eire did not have in those days) and it's determinedly British-feeling majority population.
In Palestine the issue is possession of land; land which the European incomers seized from the original Palestinians and then more land the Israelis have continued to seize for settlements ever since 1967. The situations have very little in common.
Rainborowe
You raise valid points, but I want add a couple of things. While the situation in Ulster may not have been over land per se, it was a derivative of it. The counties in Ulster were gerrymandered so that area would remain a part of Britain in the early 20's. The people that wanted to remain with the Crown were the descendants of transplants (mainly Scotland hence the word Scotts-Irish) from the 17th Century. Ireland actually didn't recognize Britain's sovereignty of Ulster until the 1990's. The people that ran Ireland following Irish independence were perceived by their Irish cousins in Ulster as "Vichy" Irish or "Green Tories". The "Vichy" Irish took over Ireland in a brutal civil war against the Nationalists in the early twenties.
Also many Irish in the north identified with the Palestinians. It was not uncommon to see graffitti on the walls of Ulster that read, "IRA and PLO Brothers in Struggle" back in the seventies and eighties.
The IRA violence in the seventies was a reaction to the ultraviolent pro-British paramilitary groups that ran roughshod in the Irish communities in Ulster in the late sixties. The British did send troops into Ulster. They were originally welcomed by the Irish at first, but then the British troops turned their guns on the Irish (ex: Bloody Sunday 1972). The British also used indefinate detention and the infamous Diplock courts to terrorize the Irish in Ulster.
Just my two pence.
As I remember, though (and admittedly it's a long time since I studied this) there was, during the first decade of the 20th Century, a general acknowledgement in the English parliament of the need for Home Rule for Ireland. This was despite Lord Randolph Churchill's hysterical waving of the Orange flag as he descended further and further into syphilis and political impotence. Unfortunately, his slogan ("Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right!") was afterwards (c. 1912 I think) taken up by a younger and much more active Sir Edward Carson. Then the coming of the Great War put Ireland on hold--as far as England was concerned, at least.
I don't remember about the gerrymandering but I'd believe it (it was an Irish commonplace, after all!) but remember also that what you refer to as "Ulster" is only 2/3 of historic Ulster; 3 counties being left out (Donegal, Leitrim and Cavan, was it?). Is this the gerrymandering you refer to--or something else?
Rainborowe
For clarification I was talking about the gerrymandered six counties of Ulster. You are right in saying that the original Ulster region had nine counties.
ps:
"graffitti on the walls of Ulster that read, 'IRA and PLO Brothers in Struggle' back in the seventies and eighties."
I was in Libya in the late 70s. I had a number of Northern-Irish colleagues, both Protestant and R.C. Being educated middle class they had no interest in violence and were mostly concerned to keep their kids away from it. However, Qaddafy was supposedly helping the Provos with arms. I suspect it was more for show than reality and certainly he didn't spend any money on the project any more than he spent on the many Palestinians in Libya who were all levied a special tax to pay for the "help" Qadaffy was so generously doling out to the Palestinian liberation movements he favored. Oh, and he did "train" them--and then put them in the vanguard of his invasion of Chad!
Still, nice to know the Provos apppreciated his help!
Rainborowe
Remember too that the IRA had to go and blow up a couple of pubs in London and a Conservative Part conference on the English seaside and mess up Magi’s hair in Britain before they were taken “seriously”. Perhaps the Palestinians should put a couple bombs under a few Washington lunch bars, so that America stops its complicity in Israel’s crimes. Then the armchair speculators here can draw some true parallels.
So, people die for stupid reasons while politicians avoid the problems and in fact avoid facing the cause but turn the problems to a base for their power. Now that makes the conflict exactly the same!
"Perhaps the Palestinians should put a couple bombs under a few Washington lunch bars, so that America stops its complicity in Israel’s crimes."
Wonderful. I seem to remember that the last time a terrorist group did that to Americans (remember 9/11?) it really taught Americans to leave other people alone, stop bombing Arabs and stop helping Israel do the same, didn't it?
Why do Americans always assume that violence cows others when it so manifestly has the opposite effect on them, making them only more jingoistic and belligerent? American exceptionalism? Or American stupidity?
Rainborowe
Saturnalia you are really ignorant of Irish history I must say. That's because the British invaded the whole of Ireland 500 years ago. The Irish were only able to get 2/3 of thier country back thanks to Michael Collins and the Easter Uprising. The British occupied Ireland is known as Northern Ireland. The rest is known as the Republic of Irleland. The British colonization of Ireland included ethnic cleansing and it was as brutal as what they did elsewhere in the world. Irish Catholics were treated as sub-human in their own land and worked on plantations with British landowners and were impoverished to the state of tenant farmers with no rights.
http://www.haderslev-katedralskole.dk/kf/ire2.html
You are right Beltway, I should have added (the post above yours) is the British were just as cruel as Israel when they were able to get away with it. Let's not forget the tons and tons of food shipped out of Ireland when the staple of the peasants diet failed leaving them to starve. "God's way of cleaning house." I have always said Israel's problem is just one of timing. We don't have the same stomach for the subjugation of indigenous populations as we once did.
And why was it that Ireland was invaded and conquered by Henry? I suppose it had nothing to do with them inviting in a French army did it? They certainly weren't plotting to crown the Yorkist pretender to the English throne... Oh, wait. Yes they were.
One could argue that it's your ignorance of English history that's showing, but of course history does have at least two sides - as long as they're both written down somewhere that is.
So, how about before Henry? It was a collection of petty states that warred against each other and sent raiding parties to loot England and Wales (Scotland seems to have been ignored), today they`d have been called terrorists, then they were called Vikings (not totally in error, the Norsemen did settle in Ireland as well as other places where they liked to `visit`). Until the English conquered the isle, they weren`t a unified state at all.
Oh I'm sure they would have if they knew they could get away with it, the world would never have stood for that and the US would absolutely NEVER have stood for it. Imagine if the British had just bombed houses in which suspected terrorists lived killing the people next door or had the amount of Irish prisoners has Israel does Palestinian? Imagine if they had the checkpoints and were diverting resources? Most of all imagine, just imagine, if they had continued colonizing parts of Ireland with British subjects,grabbing land and not allowing the native Irish to use the same roads? If you can wrap your mind around that you can begin to understand this conflict.
Saphne 9:40 actually the Brits treated the Irish very much like the Palestinians are treated only it was a few hundred years ago when they first occupied most of Ireland. And the Brits were horrible even as late as when Jonathan Swift wrote "A Modest Proposal". Of Course the Brits did all sorts of illegal things like torture and kangaroo courts right until the present but they did not bomb the civilians or practice ethnic cleansing for at least 100 years.
There could be peace if the United States wanted it.
If only one could so easily compare conflicts, but doing so ignores the multitude of geographical discrepancies. Were Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank an island like Ireland, this article would have much more validity. However, there are countries surrounding the region, something that many people seem to forget. Were Israel/Palestine an island, Israel's actions would be every bit as reprehensible as many declare. However, they are a geographically miniscule Jewish state in a region that is otherwise Islamic, and to assume that eliminating the Jewish identity of Israel would mean the Jews there are protected is hopelessly naive. Peace must be established before we can even think of merging the states, and while I believe a Jerusalem that could embrace both religions could culturally flourish, that's a sad pipe dream for now.
Whether or not you agree with his politics, I believe that Thomas Friedman's "Five State Solution" is the most realistic plan for how peace can be established in the region.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28friedman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I believe Thomas Friedman should be air-dropped into Fallujah wearing a "Kill the Arabs" t-shirt.
"Give me liberty or at least two shoes to hurl"
The zionists wage a Madison Avenue style propaganda war that most USA citizens breath in like osmosis. Gaza disappeared from msm in time for Obama's inauguration, just like the plan called for.
The refusal of the BBC to run a humanitarian appeal for the war-torn Palestinians says it all. I never thought I'd see the day that a humaitarian ad would be refused for fear of disturbing the aggressors.
I agree with the poster who said the US should sit at the table on the Israeli side, because that is reality, we've been anything but an honest, impartial, peace broker.
It isn't a Madison ave "style" propaganda war, it actually IS a Madison Ave. propaganda war, years agi they actually hired a Madison Ave. firm to promote Israel's image.
The 'peace' of northern ireland is nothing more than letting northern ireland die under pressure rather than me surrendered. However, the British still have a state and self-determination.
The jews would lose their state AND self-determination under a similar plan.
If the Israelis lose their own state it will be by their own hand.
That is always the price of superhuman hubris and narcissism. Israel's recent slaughter in Gaza is seen around the world as an unequivocal war crime, atop numerous other ones. She has further isolated herself at a time when she could least afford it. Who wants to invest there? Who wants to move there? The rabid, mouth-breathing Zionists who infiltrate these pages sure don't want to. They'd actually have to serve and fight.
Israel was finished as an idea years ago. Only the myth remains, and it is on life-support.
The Arabs, sadly, are not responsible.
Oh, that's good, call anyone on the other side a rabid, mouth-breathing Zionist. It's attitudes like that which will create a constructive discussion, let alone a solution. If you truly hate Israel so much that you instantly turn to craven insults, then why don't you go and shove a bomb up your ass and fight too?
When I talked to a friend from Tel Aviv and told them about how much hatred Israel has created in the United States after the 2006 invasion in Lebanon, he said, "It doesn't matter what others think. Israel can take care of itself." Israel can absolutely afford to defends itself with such exaggerated bloodshed. It could have leveled every square inch of Gaza if it had wanted to (Hamas, whose declared primary objective of Israel, would have every prerogative to do the same.) This country is like a cornered animal, defending it's miniscule geographical terrain vicariously, a beast that will not only snarl but tear anyone who would attack it into ribbons, collateral damage be damned. It is a country that was born out a battle, when it defended itself from the surrounding nations which attempted to drive the Jews out the moment the British occupation left. And clearly, the country has yet to shed this militaristic view, which saddens me to no end.
I do believe that the region can one day find peace. I do not believe that it will occur until there is a two-state solution. And I certainly do believe that a Jewish state is necessary, although its horrific bombing of Gaza in the name of security is truly a tragedy.
Blind faith is never a positive attribute, no matter whose side your on.
Thank you for proving my point.
right on, opelboy!
"It doesn't matter what others think. Israel can take care of itself."
To say that Israel is taking care of itself is either the height of ignorance or the height of hypocrisy...or both.
Israel gets more money and weaponry from the US than any other country. I think that should stop today - cold turkey, then we should let Israel take care of itself.