Middle East thread continued

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'd ask you the same.

[notyoueither]

Good. We can keep passing the dutchie. We'll get more accomplished.

[MRT144]

can i get in on the rotation?

[notyoueither]

Sure.

[Ramo]

lotm et al.,

Olmert is trying to forment a civil war in Lebanon between the Maronite/Sunni/Druze 'Reformist' coalition against the Shia (just as he has been trying to forment a civil war in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas). The previous civil war was a brutal decades long affair, not easily resolved. He's indiscriminately killing Lebanese civilians and vital infrastructure to accomplish this objective (a shorter description for this would be terrorism). How is this policy not horrific?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by notyoueither
And?

The Israelis should cave to a myth?

What exactly are you advocating?

What myth is that ?

Syria agrees with Lebanon that the Shebaa farms area is part of Lebanon.

However, Israel points out that it seized the territory from Syria, during the 1967 Middle East War.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/763504.stm

So let's see- even if the territory isn't Lebanese (which even the Syrians now say it is) it still doesn't 'belong' to Israel.

The Israelis will never get tired of it.

Or they will:

2000: In May, Israeli troops withdraw from buffer zone, ending 18 years of occupation. In October, Hezbollah captures three Israeli soldiers, later found dead, in a border attack. Later the group kidnaps an Israeli businessman.

2004: Hezbollah swaps the Israeli businessman and the remains of the three Israeli soldiers for 436 Arab prisoners, including Dirani, and the bodies of 59 Lebanese fighters. Israel still holds at least three Lebanese prisoners and Hezbollah vows to win their release.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201240.html

It's all a little bit like history repeating....

During Operation Hiram (10), of October 29th-31st, 1948, the IDF pushed the Lebanese Army back across the border, taking 15 south Lebanese villages in the process. Armistice negotiations in March 1949 bogged down only when Israel attempted to link its withdrawal from the Lebanese villages to a Syrian withdrawal from Israeli territory. Once Israel dropped linkage, the armistice was easily concluded (11) and the 1923 border reestablished, although neither side committed to it as the final border.

http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2000/issue3/jv4n3a2.html

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by notyoueither
And your support of Lebanon has led you the other way.

Bull****.

Find any quote of me where I show support for the murder of innocent Israelis.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Bull****.

Find any quote of me where I show support for the murder of innocent Israelis.

Ah, but Spiffor, you should

cave to a [newly-created] myth

for

who really knows

What exactly you are advocating?

with

your [unqualified] support of Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and Syria

Spiffor, mon vieux, you and your words have been spin-doctored. Go directly to Guantanamo, do not pass 'Go', do not collect 200 petro-dollars in a Turkish Cypriot bank account.

[Spiffor]

Err, these quotes make me a bit

Could you please write who their authors are? Your post is quite confusing right now.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Err, these quotes make me a bit

Could you please write who their authors are? Your post is quite confusing right now.

They're all the collected (and slightly amended) thoughts of The Great Canadian Conducator, n.y.e. , boldly leading the Anti-Axis of Evil forces into battle.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Cause countries don't have national myths that most of their citizens believe . Hell, even Aoun's party (the Christian one that advocates a secular, liberal state) speaks of the Shebaa Farms as Lebanese.

I know it is Wikipedia but they do have a well cited article on Shebaa Farms. The fact is the UN examined dozens of maps including maps issued by the governments of Lebanon and Syria. All the maps, except for one which suddenly appeared in 2000 which UN experts determined was a forgery, showed the area of Shebaa Farms in Syria. The UN then issued a certification that Israel had withdrawn from all of Lebanon and drew the blue line where the UN now patrols.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_Farms

[Dinner]

The key part.

However, on May 19, 2005, the Brookings Institution reported that "in drawing the "Blue Line" in 2000, the United Nations looked at more than ninety different maps of the region. Only one of them—which was deemed a forgery—showed the Sheba'a Farms as Lebanese." [4]. Nancy Soderberg, a high-ranking official with the U.S. delagation to the UN made a similar claim, saying that "When it was clear the Israelis were going to withdraw fully from Lebanon, Syrian and Lebanese officials fabricated the fiction that this small, sparsely populated area was part of Lebanon. They even produced a crudely fabricated a map to back up the dubious claim. I and United Nations officials went into the map room in the the United Nations and looked at all the maps of the region in the files for decades. All showed the Shebaa Farms clearly in Syria." [5] Moreover, on Feb. 13, 2006, a 'Beirut Times' article reported on Walid Jumblatt, Druze leader and Lebanese parliament member displaying the map and revealing that it was a "fake map" with the boundary shifted. [6]

Other than this purported "1966" forged map submitted to the UN in 2000, Lebanese army maps published in 1961 and 1966 specifically show the Shebaa Farms area (including Zebdine, Fashkoul, Mougr Shebaa and Ramta) as being on the Syrian side of the border. All known Syrian maps and all known Lebanese Ministry of Tourism maps also show the Lebanese-Syrian border running west of the Shebaa Farms, which would place Shebaa Farms to the east of the border and therefore within Syria. (See map in body of article)

[Dinner]

Originally posted by molly bloom

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/763504.stm

So let's see- even if the territory isn't Lebanese (which even the Syrians now say it is) it still doesn't 'belong' to Israel.

The myth that Shebaa Farms was ever part of Lebanon was created by Syria and Hezbollah in 2000 in order to justify the continuing existence of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The real facts are the historical maps published by both the Syrian and Lebanonese governments prior to the current conflict. All of those maps agree that Shebaa Farms is not in Lebanon.

[Proteus_MST]

Is the region of such a vital importance that it was more advantageous for Israel to keep the Sheeba farms occupied than to hand it over to the lebanese government?
As someone mentioned, perhaps handing over the Sheeba farms would loose Hizbollah one of the justifications it has in the eyes of many lebanese citizens.
(and therefore perhaps lead to less support within the shiite lebanese population)

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Is the region of such a vital importance that it was more advantageous for Israel to keep the Sheeba farms occupied than to hand it over to the lebanese government?

IIUC, it is rich in water.