Can you win terrorism with force?

[NICE MOBIUS]

Indeed. Israel and the Palestinians should be proof of that.

Whereas the IRA and ETA are proof of the alternative of talking and diplomacy.

[C0ckney]

IMHO the Palestinians would be best served if Israel would go full steam ahead and annex the whole territory (of Westbank and Gaza) including its inhabitants ... making them full citizens of Israel (including the protection of citizen rights).
But it is no surprise that Israel has no interest in such a solution, for understandable reasons (after all this would also result in the palestinians gaining a lot of influence in the israeli state (for demographic reasons ... perhaps even resulting in a palestinian government after the next elections or a shared israeli-palestinian government)

i would certainly support a one state solution, as long as the palestinians were given equal rights. but, as you say, it's very unlikely to happen.

[rah]

they're going to have to eliminate quite a few more Palestinians before the demographics will support them accepting a one state solution.

[Dinner]

Cockney has a million and one double standards he uses against Israel. Standards he demands Israel alone meet yet he doesn't hold any other country to.

Cockney, I would suggest you look up the EU Working Definition for Antisemetism or the US State Department's definition of antisemetism because both specifically list have double standards against Israel as a specific example of antisemetism.

[Dinner]

Cockney has a million and one double standards he uses against Israel. Standards he demands Israel alone meet yet he doesn't hold any other country to.

Cockney, I would suggest you look up the EU Working Definition for Antisemetism or the US State Department's definition of antisemetism because both specifically list have double standards against Israel as a specific example of antisemetism.

[loinburger]

What other democratic nation's actions are comparable to Israel's? Russia is the only one that comes to mind, but I don't think they're even pretending to be a democratic nation at this point - condemning Russia only makes marginally more sense than condemning North Korea. In order for Cockney to have a double standard then he has to be in support of a democratic nation that is acting similarly to how Israel is acting.

[Jon Miller]

It would be more relevant to compare the US/Iraq situation to Israel/Palestine (because Oil~Settlements) if Iraq was responsible for 9/11. However, it wasn't... so US/Iraq is, I think, purely worse than Israel/Palestine. Just a shorter timescale, so far.

South Africa is not very relevant.. do you know anything about South Africa? Arab and Palestinian Israelis are full citizens in regards to voting/etc (the limitations, which should be removed, our relatively minor... mostly military service I believe).

US/Native experiences are not very relevant, the US was never in danger from the Natives, the Natives did not want the end of the US (and the Natives were not a cohesive group), and the Natives never attacked the major parts of the US such as Boston, Philadelphia or New York. It would be more comparative if the Palestinians only attacked settlements...

The Irish experience is not very relevant because the Palestinians do not accept that Israel has a right to resist and have never made peace with Israel.

JM

[Jon Miller]

What other democratic nation's actions are comparable to Israel's? Russia is the only one that comes to mind, but I don't think they're even pretending to be a democratic nation at this point - condemning Russia only makes marginally more sense than condemning North Korea. In order for Cockney to have a double standard then he has to be in support of a democratic nation that is acting similarly to how Israel is acting.

I think in the last 20 years that the US has acted worse than Israel.

JM

[C0ckney]

Cockney has a million and one double standards he uses against Israel. Standards he demands Israel alone meet yet he doesn't hold any other country to.

Cockney, I would suggest you look up the EU Working Definition for Antisemetism or the US State Department's definition of antisemetism because both specifically list have double standards against Israel as a specific example of antisemetism.

what double standards? please quote one thing i have said that is anti-semitic.

[C0ckney]

jon, to deal with your points. oil/settlements: not the same thing at all; there are many examples of wars over resources. the israeli/palestinian conflict, while obviously (as with almost every war) having some link to resources, is fundamentally about land.

indigenous americans vs colonists: relevant because it involves one power taking land by force and removing the inhabitants. 'threat' doesn't come into it; but in any case the palestinians are no threat to israel itself.

irish experience: not as relevant as the new world colonisation, though the plantation policies invite comparisons, because the unionist vs nationalist conflict became an irish vs irish conflict in the main. as for the right to 'resist', it's the palestinians who are resisting the israelis. unless you mean exist, in which case the palestinians have recognised israel's right to exist (see for example the oslo accords), and really anyone who wants to comment on this subject ought to know that.

south africa: yes, i do. rather more than you by the look of it, at least vis-à-vis israel/palestine. the comparison is normally made between the isrealis and palestinian arabs in the west bank and gaza, not in israel proper. for example, in the occupied territories jews and palestinians are dealt with under different (isreali) criminal law systems:

In 2007, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the occupied territories are subject to different criminal laws, leading to longer detention and harsher punishments for Palestinians than for Israelis for the same offenses. Amnesty International has reported that in the West Bank, Israeli settlers and soldiers who engage in abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, enjoy "impunity" from punishment and are rarely prosecuted. However Palestinians detained by Israeli security forces may be imprisoned for prolonged periods of time, and reports of their torture and other ill-treatment are not credibly investigated.

when it comes to land and registration:

Israel's Population Registry Law of 1965, which requires all residents of Israel to register their nationality, [has been compared] to South Africa's Apartheid-era Population Registration Act, which categorized South Africans according to racial definitions in order to determine who could live in what land. According to McGreal, the Israeli identification cards determine where people are permitted to live, affects access to some government welfare programs, and has impact on how people are likely to be treated by civil servants and policemen.

to land itself:

Yossi Paritzky, a former Israeli minister, has used the apartheid analogy to describe a proposed bill that banned non-Jewish citizens of Israel from purchasing land privately owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF).[9] The JNF has long insisted that its lands be sold only to Jews, due to the fact that the land was purchased with money from Jewish donors for the purpose of settling Jews in Israel. Noam Chomsky, American professor of linguistics and political activist, has stated, "if you look at the land laws, and decode it all, what it amounts to is that about ninety percent of the land inside Israel is reserved to what's called 'people of Jewish race, religion and origin' ... That's in the contract between the state of Israel and the Jewish National Fund, which is a non-Israeli organization, which, however, by various bureaucratic arrangements, administers the land.... All of this is covered up enough so that nobody can say, "Look, here's an apartheid law."

after 1977, "the military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) expropriated and enclosed Palestinian land and allowed the transfer of Israeli settlers to the occupied territories: they continued to be governed by Israeli laws. The government also enacted different military laws and decrees to regulate the civilian, economic and legal affairs of Palestinian inhabitants. These strangled the Palestinian economy and increased its dependence and integration into Israel." Farsakh says, "[m]any view these Israeli policies of territorial integration and societal separation as apartheid, even if they were never given such a name.

Henry Siegman, a former national director of the American Jewish Congress, has stated that the network of settlements in the West Bank has created an "irreversible colonial project" aimed to foreclose the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. According to Siegman, in accomplishing this Israel has "crossed the threshold from 'the only democracy in the Middle East' to the only apartheid regime in the Western world". Siegman argues that denial of both self-determination and Israeli citizenship to Palestinians amounts to a "double disenfranchisement", which when based on ethnicity amounts to racism. Siegman continues to state that reserving democracy for privileged citizens and keeping others "behind checkpoints and barbed wire fences" is the opposite of democracy.

with travel and movement:

Palestinians living in the non-annexed portions of the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights in Israel, but are subject to movement restrictions of the Israeli government. Israel has created roads and checkpoints in the West Bank with the stated purpose of preventing the uninhibited movement of suicide bombers and militants in the region. The human rights NGO B'Tselem has indicated that such policies have isolated some Palestinian communities and state that Israel's road regime "based on the principle of separation through discrimination, bears striking similarities to the racist apartheid regime that existed in South Africa until 1994"

The International Court of Justice stated that the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population of the occupied territories are guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and that Israel could not deny them on the grounds of security.

the comparison has also been made by members of the apartheid governments (in praise of israel's policies) and by members of the ANC governments since 1994 (criticising israel), as well non-governmental figures such as desmond tutu.

now of course, many people don't agree and raise counter arguments, but to claim it's not relevant is either disingenuous or ignorant.

[Jon Miller]

Palestinians are not Israelis so how is that relevant? It is an occupied country (possibly) not actions against a part of the citizenry of the nation. Calling it similar to South Africa assumes that it is one nation, that is like assuming that the US is like South Africa because Afghanistan people do not have all the rights that Americans do.

It is ridiculous.

Land is the most fundamental of resources. It is what the settlements/etc are about.

Hamas, which is an equal partner in the leadership of Palestine, does not accept Israel's right to exist. Honestly that has to be a starting point for a one state solution to be considered.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Honestly I favor an Irish style solution.

Or, if Israel could trust other countries (which I understand why it doesn't, the UN has generally been used as a tool by it's enemies to end it's existence), an agreement to have security/etc handled by the UN/etc while civil affairs are handled by Israel/Palestine.

It is obvious that the current solution is not acceptable. Israel is a bit comfortable and so is more to blame than Palestine (although both are to blame) for it continuing.

JM

[C0ckney]

if you're not going to address my points in a serious way and chop and change arugments, then there's not much point continuing. there are some posters i expect this sort of thing from; you are not one of them.

you asked me if i knew about south africa and then you say this:

Palestinians are not Israelis so how is that relevant?

south africa in 1970 effectively cancelled the citizenship of its black residents and made them citizens of the bantustans. i mean come on, this is like apartheid 101.

[Jon Miller]

Cancelling citizen does not equal not extending citizenship to a conquered territory. Extending citizenship to a conquered territory is not the usual behavior, but then neither is continuing to occupy it.

JM

[Serb]

The moderates, genius, not ISIS. Learn the difference or keep looking stupid.

There are no "moderates" in Syria, idiot. The people whom you call "the moderates" are exactly the kind of moderates you have supported in Libya.