Topic: Israel: Operation Protective Edge - page 25. (Read 14685 times)

Then both sides really need to change their thinking.

Not really. Israel is pretty militarily dominant. The fear of being wiped out isn't one with a lot of muscle behind it.

they wouldn't have to negotiate with Hamas if they had negotiated with the Palestinian Authority and before that the PLO.

the situation and the people only get more extreme the more this drags out... the occupation has been going on for more than 50 years how much longer do you want the Palestinians to sit quietly and wait?...

that's just reality of it.. Hamas gained power because negotiations with the PLO failed.

I agree no nation would sit idly buy and let themselves be attacked by rockets.
but at the same time no nation would sit idly by and watch their land get stolen and live under oppressive military occupation for 50 years.

1967 border is not fair for Israel.

Neither side would agree to this. Palestinians are unlikely to give up their claim to Eastern Jerusalem, especially when international law supports said claim, and Israel wouldn't recognize 1967 borders even if they received eastern Jerusalem city proper. in exchange.

Israel is a small country that is vulnerable on all of its borders. That is why it is doing what it is doing.


I feel that we should never negotiate with Hamas. Negotiating with Hamas is like negotiating with Ayman Al Zawahari. We do not negotiate with Al Qaeda just like we should not negotiate with Hamas. Hamas's control of Gaza makes it harder for Israel to do anything else other than what it is doing.

every colonial power has had to deal with this issue at one time or another.
when the americans stole land from the native americans they weren't too happy about it either..

the native americans fought bitterly but they were hopelessly out gunned.

many died from battle yet many more died from the horrible diseases that the Europeans brought.

in the end treaties were signed and naive peoples were moved onto reservations.

now all that happened hundreds of years ago in a different era.
none of that would be acceptable nowdays and nor should we accept that kind of colonialism and brutal oppression of the native inhabitants of palestine/isreal.

as for what americans would do if they were attacked with rockets.... well we have seen what they did when attacked with bombs and aeroplanes.

the point is though that the more heavy handed and unjust the response the less effective the outcome is likely to be...

just look at Iraq today.. its far more dangerous with far more fundamentalists than before the US invaded.
and at what cost? countless human lives and a massive financial burden for the people of the USA.

regardless of how justified it was to go into Afghanistan and Iraq... ask Americans today if they think it was actually worth it.
after all they went to get bin laden (among other things)... and when they finally found him.. he was in Pakistan

I think looking at the region now, opinion would be very divided on whether the benefits outweigh the cost...

my own opinion is that the cost was enormous and the benefit may have been too little... and as for safety.. im not sure that the world is a safer place now.

this lesson can be applied to the conflict in gaza..
the longer this war goes on.. the more innocent civilians die,  the greater the human and financial cost and the lesser the benefit.

Israel would never agree to this, and even if Netanyahu had a stroke and said ok his government would collapse the minute he did so. His current governing coalition depends on continued occupation of the West Bank and continued settlement expansion. To give that up would be to resign as PM.

Here's my peace process plan:

Point 1: Israel withdraws from the West Bank. In exchange, Israel gets 2 Los Angeles Class submarines, 10 F-22s, and 20 F-35s. Afterwards, it annexes all of East Jersualem and gives Arabs living their equal rights as Israeli citiizens. It then annexes the Golan Heights and gives everyone there equal rights as Israeli citizens.

Point 2: Mahmoud Abbas cuts ties with Hamas in exchange for an Israeli guarantee to never expand territory, even after winning any future defensive wars.

Point 3: Israel agrees to never expand territory as long as the Golan Heights, pre-1967 Israel, and a united Jerusalem (East and West) are recognized as Israeli and Ramallah becomes the Palestinian capitol.

Point 4: Israel makes peace with the Palestinians and with all of its neighbors and they work together financially and politically.

That is my 4 point plan.

That's exactly what IS going to happen though with the peace process. Still a horrible and completely irrelevant comparison. This suggests that the situation in Gaza is a rather two dimensional one surrounding rocket fire. It isn't and never has been.

You seem to be singling out Israel for criticism. Israel had the Lavon Affair and the U.S.S. Liberty incident. Well, the U.S. had the syphilis experiments and the LSD experiments. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had much worse. Japan and China both have skeletons in the closet. Etc. Etc.

But what would you do if MS-13 starting firing rockets at your hometown from Mexico? What would you want the U.S. Government to do? Would it last ten years+ like it does in Israel with calls for restraint? Or would it be different?

USA take Texas from Mexico and Mexico don't do a 100 years war...

Because a peace process threatened their much more highly valued territorial holdings in the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. Has always been a poor comparison because we aren't doing to Mexico what Israel has been doing to Gaza.

While I am sorry for what happened during the Lavon Affair and the U.S.S. Liberty Incident (my heart goes out to all the sailors killed and wounded), just as my heart goes out to victims of LSD experiments and syphilis experiments, I feel that Israel is doing things in good faith. They do not want to be stuck in an intractable conflict. That is why I am proposing solutions rather than sitting on the sidelines and saying nothing is going to happen and saying that they should just keep fighting. I want both sides to reconcile their differences rather than continue to be in a perpetual state of war.

Perhaps you need to ask yourself why it is that Palestinians are firing rockets, Israel conveniently dodges the problems and compounds them.  

Israel engaged in declarations of war against Egypt (Lavon Affair), Syria (bombing of the headwater damn) and Jordan (Operation Shredder) all prior to the official first strikes of the 6 Day War. Calling the 6 Day War a defensive war for Israel would be like calling the US invasion of Iraq a defensive war for the US.

Israel attacked during the 6 Day War because enemy forces were massed on their borders. Why would Israel engage in territorial concessions in order to stall the peace process?

What would your reaction be if rockets were landing in your hometown and they were being fired from Mexico? Would you be urging the U.S. Government to show restraint? It's a lot easier to judge the Israelis as we are not in their situation.

1.) No it isn't.

2.) Israel launched the first strike in the 6 Day War

3.) It hasn't given up Gaza. It merely removed its settlements there in order to stall the peace process.

you're ignoring the Jewish settlers that move into large areas of supposedly Palestinian lands. you're ignoring the IDF literally bombing the shit out of the areas they don't reclaim via "settlers." and i'd bet the only reason they haven't attempted to retake the Sinai is because Egypt would have a lot more to say about it now than they did then.