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

[gsmoove23]

[CyberGnu]

Ned, I'm reposting this from earlier in the thread, since it seems to have been buried. (And from your responses, you must have missed it).

In a 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan,
who was the defense minister in 1967, explained what led, then, to
the decision to attack Syria. In the collective Israeli consciousness
of the period, Syria was conceived as a serious threat to the security
of Israel, and a constant initiator of aggression towards the residents
of northern Israel. But according to Dayan, this is "bull-****" -
Syria was not a threat to Israel before 67: "Just drop it. . .I know
how at least 80% of all the incidents with Syria started. We were
sending a tractor to the demilitarized zone and we knew that the
Syrians would shoot." According to Dayan (who at a time of the
interview confessed some regrets), what led Israel to provoke Syria
this way was the greediness for the land - the idea that it is possible
"to grab a piece of land and keep it, until the enemy will get tired
and give it to us" (Yediot Aharonot, April 27 1997)


Now, if you are going to continue arguing that Arafat is the source of all evils, you have to come up with a better source than the Israeli Defense minister...

[CyberGnu]

I should also add that I haven't written the part in italics. It is all from the Yediot Aharonot article.

[CyberGnu]

BTW, you really should know better regarding Sharons visit to the Temple Mount. Sure, it was the spark that set the second intifada off, but even without Sharon it would have started sooner or later. The oppression of the Palestinian people was the reason for both Intifadas, no single acts.

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by Azazel
definetly true. But, I'd say that Nasser lost, wouldn't you? Israel was not bluffing, and it was Nasser's fault for trying to call it.

Nasser certainly did lose, quite decisively, the question is can you in retrospect say that no one on the Arab side could have forsaw the outcome? that Nasser wanted a war? that the blame for war lies on the arabs alone? I don't think so.

[Az]

CyberGnu: you have any credible sources for that interview?

gsmoove: well, of course the Israeli government could simply wait and see, and take a chance and be 100% sure. But they have no reason to take that chance. At worst, they knew they could further their positions ( as all governments want to), and have a damn good reason to act the way they did.

oh, and

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by Azazel
At worst, they knew they could further their positions ( as all governments want to), and have a damn good reason to act the way they did.

oh, and

Well, I would agree with this, but for some fine points. They knew they would be furthering their position by a sneak attack of course, and the closure could be argued as a technical casus belli, though reason for a sneak attack? Plus, they had happily participated in the escalation leading up to those actions.

CyberGnu's quote is also cited in Avi Shlaim's "the Iron Wall." Roll your eyes at me will you!

[Az]

oh, but AFAIK he doesn't agree with his own work anymore. . I guess he has seen that lying to further feelings of guilt in the Israeli society didn't help to bring peace to the region, because the ones that really don't want peace are the palestinians. . Actually, you could see lots of left-wingers having the same breakdown after camp-david. seriously.

another thing. Israel didn't sneak attack. how could you sneak attack when you mobilize 2 weeks prior to that?

[Ozz]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
BTW, you really should know better regarding Sharons visit to the Temple Mount. Sure, it was the spark that set the second intifada off, but even without Sharon it would have started sooner or later. The oppression of the Palestinian people was the reason for both Intifadas, no single acts.

It's a holy war for a sizable minority on both sides, it's not just about land, it's also about controlling "holy" ground. That was'nt a spark, it was lighting the fuse.

[Edan]

Originally posted by gsmoove23


The straits had been closed in the 50s as well, a lead to the Sinai campaign.

Until the mid-50s, when the right of access had been guarenteed. By the 60s, it was being used. I checked and there were 500 ships that had used the port of Eilat during the 2 years before the closure, not 0 as has been mentoned here.

Israel knew better then to rely heavily on Eilat, so I highly doubt that oft heard, rarely referenced claim.
There were certainly alternatives to whatever oil Israel may or may not have been receiving from Iran and they could have been received in any number of Mediterranean(damn I never know how to spell that) ports that were not 'blockaded'.

Again, why should Israel accept having to pay presumably higher prices when it was within their rights to purchase it from Iran and have it delivered through the straits? Would the US accept Russia blockading all of Alaska, even though we have other alternative (and more costly) methods of transporting things to/from Alaka?

As I said before, a nation unwilling to protect it's rights will lose them.

[Ned]

CyberGnu, I recall there was also an issue about Syria disrupting water supplies from the Golan Heights. (I believe there is a similar issue even now with Lebanon.) So, I will grant you this. Israel may have provoked Syria into a war solely to take the Golan from it in order to get rid of the artillery and to secure the water supplies. However, this does not make Syria completely pure in this matter. They were the ones with artillery shelling Israel. They were the ones monkeying with the water supplies. Both can be considered acts of war.

Here is an except from this link.

http://www.golan.org.il/water.html#3

· “The Banias and the Dan- presently flow through sovereign Israeli territory. Syria formerly controlled the sources of the Banias, while the sources of the Dan were right on the border. These waters were the cause of continuous Syrian aggression.
This danger became a real threat in the early Sixties, when the Syrians made an effort to divert the three river beds to a new water carrier, to divert the Banias to the Golan Heights and from there to the Yarmuk basin.
Syria, with plenty of water, would have gained no civilian advantage from this plan, except for the political objective of destroying Israel without having to go to war or employing military means.
Israel frustrated this plan from the outset by a combination of diplomatic efforts and military pressure, at the cost of many casualties and severe damage to front line settlements.
The struggle for the water continued for years and constituted one of the principal causes of the Six Day War. It should be stressed that most of the tributary streams flowing into the Jordan and the Kinneret originate on the Golan slopes.”

[CyberGnu]

Ned, the water situation was more complicated than that. Israel started building the National Water Carrier Project (essentially using every single drop it could get its hands on) at the same time as the populations in Jordan and Lebanon were trying to modernize their agriculture.

There were attempts of forming a compromise, but Israel refused. Your source is absolutely right about water being one of the principal causes of the war. The questions is again what parts are left out of the recollection... Such as Syrias motives for dropping the waterflow.

[CyberGnu]

Azazel, you don't trust your own newspapers?

I think Tanya Reinhart has brought it up as well. Can't remember where, however.

[Sirotnikov]

Cyber - I assume you didn't get this from reading Yediot.


While I will try to find this in Yediot, I want to know where you got this quote from.


Anyway, since when are you so trusting in anything Jewish papers say?

[CyberGnu]

Your assumption is correct (since I don't read Hebrew). Don't actually remember where I copied it from, because it is mentioned in several published works... I think I copied it from a 1997 article in the Washington Post (May 12 1997; Page A16), but I'm not sure.

Do a google search for "Moshe Dayan Yediot" and you;ll find hundreds of hits.

About trusting Israeli papers: It is always a question of what kind of information is presented. Why would a pro-Israeli newspaper invent information that is detrimental for palestine?

Is this subjective? Of course it is. Doesn;t matter, though.