IF tommorow the Palestinian people peacably protested in the street+did so for month

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Arafat was leader of ONE group. Without him, Hamas and Islamic Jihad still would have existed!

Well, not necessarily to the extent they do today. Both groups were funded by the Israeli state to try and build an alternative to the secular Arafat and undermine his power base in Palestine. One of those typical fund the fundies to defeat the left idiocies that has come back to bite the West.

[Robert]

CyberShy, Why would anyone make unilateral concessions? The Israeli's won't make any absent a peace treaty. The PALs won't make any without a treaty.

I think that's true. I think the problem will never be solved. But *if* you want to solve it, that would be the way to do it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well Che, without the PLO, support would definetly flow to other groups willing to blow things up.

[Lemmy]

Well, if they would remove the settlements, they wouldn't have to worry about killing their own citizens when retaliating for yet another suicide bomber. Not to mention that it's easier to protect a compact territory, then spread out settlements throughout enemy territory.
Not removing those settlements seems lik a typical knee-jerk reaction, they want it, so were not doing it!

[Ned]

Originally posted by Lemmy
Well, if they would remove the settlements, they wouldn't have to worry about killing their own citizens when retaliating for yet another suicide bomber. Not to mention that it's easier to protect a compact territory, then spread out settlements throughout enemy territory.
Not removing those settlements seems lik a typical knee-jerk reaction, they want it, so were not doing it!

If we are going to talk about "removing" peoples to solve the problem, why not begin discussions of removing Israel or removing the Palestinians. Both would be effective at solving the problem as well, not so?

[GePap]

I don't think the scenerio could even happen. Were are the Palestinians going to protest? Indoors during the Curfews? The First Intifadah begun relatively non-violent, but over time became more violent, in concurrence with harsh Israeli crackdowns on all political activity.

So this scenerio has happened before, to a small scale, and we already know the answer: violence.

I agree most Israelis want peace, but the question is, which do they really want more, land or peace? Moshe Dayan had an answer in 1968, and I think the current govenrment of Israel shares that answer. It wasn't peace.

[gsmoove23]

Removing the settlements or even simply really and truly freezing settlements and removing the most inflammatory ones would be a major feather in Israel's cap. They could have an even stronger claim to the moral high ground, a major contention between the international community and Israel would be addressed and exorbitant expenses on security and settlement subsidies could be dropped. Plus, if the moves were seen as a result of meaningful negotiations with moderate elements in WB and G they could bolster moderate power among the palestinians. Is this way off?

I don't think being against the settlements is necessarily an anti-Israel view, just read Haaretzdaily.

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by GePap
I agree most Israelis want peace, but the question is, which do they really want more, land or peace? Moshe Dayan had an answer in 1968, and I think the current govenrment of Israel shares that answer. It wasn't peace.

I disagree here, though I agree most Israelis want peace its legitimate concerns for security that make them vote hardline. The question is do the people they vote in, who push the security line, see land as the only way to security.

[Urban Ranger]

It's hard to have security without peace.

[Lorizael]

I've got a question here. Where do those living in the settlements go once the settlements have been removed? Do the settlements exist because the rest of Israel is overcrowded or because the Israelis just want to be jerks?

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Lorizael
I've got a question here. Where do those living in the settlements go once the settlements have been removed? Do the settlements exist because the rest of Israel is overcrowded or because the Israelis just want to be jerks?

Because they want to be jerks.

Seriously, though, they are driven to an extent in the belief that they are God's chosen people and that that narrow stretch of land was promised to them by God. Secularly, after the various wars Israel had with her Arab neighbors, their government wanted some sort of buffer zones surrounding them. Mostly, they live there out of spite for the palestinians AND stupidity (willfully putting themselves into the worst position posible: living on enemy soil, in enemy territory).

If only the Arab world had just accepted the UN plan like the Israelis did. Most if not all of this bloodshed could have been avoided...

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Because they want to be jerks.

Seriously, though, they are driven to an extent in the belief that they are God's chosen people and that that narrow stretch of land was promised to them by God. Secularly, after the various wars Israel had with her Arab neighbors, their government wanted some sort of buffer zones surrounding them. Mostly, they live there out of spite for the palestinians AND stupidity (willfully putting themselves into the worst position posible: living on enemy soil, in enemy territory).

This isn't completely true. Some settler communities are obviously extremist and are there to be jerks honestly, but I believe most are just normal people looking for affordable housing. The thing is, the government highly subsidizes life in the settlements, which is the main draw for most people. Government spending on settler communities, even excluding security expenditures, is much higher then spending on communities within the Green Line. This is part of the reason settlements are pretty unpopular among Israelis as well.

Plus, most but the most foolish or stupid of the settlers knew the risks when they moved in. Its a pretty widely held view that when peace comes many of the settlements will go, and when they do the settlers will expect large payoffs from the government.

Originally posted by DRoseDARs If only the Arab world had just accepted the UN plan like the Israelis did. Most if not all of this bloodshed could have been avoided...

If only the zionists hadn't been quite so successful in influencing British policy in 1917...

[Sirotnikov]

bah, gsmoove, you're too damn knowledgable about the conflict...

I feel I'm gonna have to pull up alot of sources in the future.


Imran - if not for the PLO's existance, there would be no major movement to free Palestine, as for a long time, the PLO was an umbrella for such movements.

The main reason for the split up, was when in the 80s, Arafat decided to fool the west by declaring that he accepts Israel, while the rest of the Palestinians groups feared that that would undermine their claim that the whole of Israel is illegal.

Evidently, Arafat's way proved much more successfull.


Hamas and Jihad would have been nothing if not for PLO.
1) no reason for Israel to support it during early 80s
2) no state sponsored umbrella for their actions, like the PLO is giving them since 1993.

Even with the Israeli funding, which pretty much ended around the first Intifada, before 1993, Hamas and Jihad were almost nothing. Surely not even 5% of what they are today.

As far as the settlers go, gsmoove is correct, but I also learnt that not only do they see themselves as a line of defense, sometimes they are. Reportedly sometimes IDF does win from having an isolated settlement to protect, since it gives IDF an excuse to set up a watch base on Palestinian villages and towns, which they need to control terrorist activity. This only applies to post 2001 though.


gsmoove - Actually I see no problem in the british policy. Besides being unclear of the borders, the promised two states for two peoples... and then began giving more and more of it away to third sides (french, hashemite dynasty).

In the end, only a tiny strip of land was left to devide between palestinians and jews. not so good.

I also see the work of Haj amin al-Husseini as devestating, and the prime reason for inability to reconciliate.

He basically was the one that began religious encitement towards the jews. This being aided by local leaders suporting him out of fear for their own status in light of a future jewish state.

And a new conflict was born in 1920.

Before that, Jews and Arabs had rather interesting cooperation. Infact, up until the 1929 and 1935, most of the zionist political movements were very very very dovish.

Some believed in a united jewish palestinian state.

Some believed in a jewish and a palestinain state in a federation (like the usa).

Some believed in two states for two people.

Unlike presented now by anti-israeli historians, the revisionist movement was not at all popular or dominant in the Israeli politics.

What happenned is that due to arab initiated violence, the political views of the majority began to drift towards the reivisionist views, and they finally became the majority in the 70s.

[Odin]

Sure, Siro, we need sorces to belive that. Personaly I think that the Palestinians want to demonstrate peacefully, but B@stard Sharon keeps them locked up in thier homes. He is intentionaly trying to srew up the peace prosess because he is a Orthodox jewish SOB and doesn't want a Palestinian state, he just wants the arabs to be second class citizens, dispite what he and his freaking consevative B!tches in the Knesset(sp.?) say.

[Bosh]

The question's pretty irrelevant really, since as long as there's a 10%ish (number pulled completely out of my ass) minority of the Palestinians that won't settle for anything but complete eradification of Israel then no amount of non-violent CD will solve anything since that 10%ish can always launch a single terror attack and derail everything for the majority that wants a reasonable division of territory since one act of violence would bring the IDF down HARD on the people doing non-violent CD. This whole hypothetical only makes any sense at all if you assume that the Palestinians are mindlessly and unanimously following the commands of their Great Leader, which is ridiculous.
The IDF's is never going be able to root out terrorism, the only way to stamp it out is for the Israelis to get the moderate majority on their side and use them to root out the terrorists because they want to, (which is how, for example the Sikh terrorists were crushed) and the Israelis have failed spectacularly at this, and failed badly enough that its easy to see why the only people who support Israel in the territories get lynched regularly...