Israeli Settlements

This is all getting a bit silly. I posted some links earlier showing that 70% of Israelis were born in Israel, while less than 4% of 'Palestinians' were born in Israel.
You don't get to claim what your grandparents gave up. If you were of Karelian descent, would you feel entitled to Karelia?

 

Ok lets simplify this.

Yes some Palestinians left voluntarily however there reasons are not fully known nor will they ever be fully known, none of us where there. Some of those reasons could have been...

- The Deir Yassin Massacre which scared many Arab citizens, Was even condemned by local Rabbis.
- Advancing Israeli forces, Just because one side flees does not automatically mean they lose the right to the land otherwise the west could once again over run and colonize Africa.
- Propaganda broad casted from across Jordan though for this to have reached enough people means said people would already have been pushed towards the borders implying they where losing.
- Fear and Hysteria, Which could be counted as some of the above reasons but still a reason non the less.

To put it simply in hindsight, Both the Palestinians and the Israeli's at one point believed the other was going to massacre them once they won, Both where wrong. Yes there where fundamentalists in both camps but they where and still are today a minority. From what I can gather most Palestinians went to war in 1948 to getter a better deal, Not destroy the Jew's for which I can understand when you look at the numbers the Palestinians got a raw deal.

Jew's - Arabs
population: 1/3rd - 2/3rd's
Land owned; 6.59% - 47%
Land Division: 55% - 43%

As you can see some numbers dont add up (from wiki) however they give a rough understanding and even allowing for some give or take the Palestinians got the bad deal while the Jew's got pampered which i believe was more for the horror they faced in Europe then anything else. Though why another people should have to pay for the crimes of another is beyond me.

One possible reason for the Arab defeat could be the issue of fighters and supplies. The Jew's had a network of sympathizers providing them with funds and even WWII era equipment from across Europe and the US. They also conscripted both men and woman while I have no knowledge of any conscription within the Arab's nor there woman being fighters giving the Jew's an advantage to counter the numerical advantage that the Arabs had.

Kodiak, you state that 70% where born in Israel. Of those how many of there parent's where born over seas? How many are 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation locals? I think you would find your percentage plummet.

 

KB's line of reasoning fully supports the former apartheid regime of South Africa.

The whites took the land: might makes right.
The whites oppressed the blacks: the blacks should've all gone to get citizenship in neighbouring countries if they objected; what's the problem?
The whites got to vote; it must've been a democratic country...

Israel has now laws governing marriage and immigration, that are a form of apartheid. It is not a modern democratic country. It may have some more democratic features than many other in the region, but it is moving in the wrong direction, fast.

 

If you look at WW2 the civilian population usually fled in front of an advancing army, that's a very understandable behaviour, does that make then loose their rights to their land ? But this is what Israel's propaganda wants us to believe, they have consistently denied the right of refuges to go back after the fighting ended.

AFAIK Episodes of civilian massacres by Israel's forces are very rare, IMO well within the close to inevitable excesses that happen is all armed conflics, deliberate harrassment of the Palestinian Arabs is a different story and frequent enough to qualify as policy, couple that with the "once you leave you will not be allowed to get back" policy and you get a clear instance of "ethnic cleansing".

With hindsight the basic flaw in the 1948 resolution was that it didn't create a Palestinian state, the land that was not taken by the Jews ended up under Jordanian rule (or Egypt in the case of the Gaza strip) and the Jordanian Monarchy has it's power base in the Arab Legion that is made up of Beduins not Palestinians, so the Palestinians ended up as another Middle Easter landless population somewhat similar to Kurds and the Armenians and we all know how hard that sort of problem is to fix.

IMHO the most necessary thing to move towrads a lasting peace is for both sides to be able to reign in the extremist, but that would require a strong Palestinian leadership that Israel, for fear that it will opt for war rather than peace, is making big efforts to avoid ... impasse.

 

From my reading the resolution did indeed create a Palestinian state along with a Jewish one. However the Palestinains and Arabs rejected the resolution and tried to destroy Israel. The result was that most if not all the territiory planned for the Palestinian state was absorbed into Israel.

Lacking a peace agreement why would the Israelis want to let a hostile population back into Israel? Especially one that is calling for the destruction of Israel?

 

I admire lwd's attempt to condense the history of the Area into a few sentences. However inevitably it can't encompass such a huge and complex subject as the History of the Holy Land over the last two millenia.

I am relying on an excellent book "Jerusalem", the history of the city by Simon Sebag-Montefiore which I read about 2 years ago - so I am happy for any to correct my memory.

Anyway a couple of points - Byzantium followed Rome and the Jews were to say the least persecuted by this most Christian nation. They (the Jews that is) warmly welcomed the Arab capture of the City and there was toleration for the people of the Book. Until of course the real savages arrived, the Crusaders whose slaughter of Jews left them knee deep in Blood.

The Turkish period was the lowest point for Jerusalem. The population crashed with few Jews or indeed anyone else living in this neglected, dusty, infected, flea bitten, provincial town.

The Zionist movement began at the end of the late 1800s led by British Jews and Dr Weizman. They were instrumental in getting Lloyd-George's (a strong pro-zionist) War Cabinet to back the Zionist movement - hence the Balfour Declaration. Jews immigrated into Palestine, buying land from Arabs and producing miracles from the desert. Winston Churchill was strongly pro-zionist and Jewish immigration was encouraged because as Wilson said the Jews grow twice as many oranges as the Arabs so led them show how this part of the Empire can be made productive (or words to that effect).

So far so good - but them along comes dear Adolph and the trickle of Jews became a torrent. Realising now that they have a serious communal problem on their hands, the British start to enact laws to limit the purchase of Arab land by incoming Jews - then of course the reaction, the Arab revolt of 1937 (or was it 38?).

Even Winston's ardour for the Zionist cause was shattered by the assassination of Lord Moynes in Cairo by the Stern Gang or was it the Irgun, a friend of Begin (PM of Israel) was caught, tried and hung. for this act.

Lord Moyne (pro-zionist himself) tasked with the problem of Palestine, had the temerity to advocate limiting Jewish immigration to 100,000 per year. This became British policy. Enforcing it led to harrowing scenes as huge numbers of destitute Jews from Hitler's concentration camps attempted to circumvent it, culminating in the explosion of the Jewish Terrorism against both British and Arab.

I rather like Ibn Saud's comment at the time when it was explained to him by the American Ambassador that the Jews of Europe needed a home after all that they had suffered. Ibn Saud agreed that the Jews needed a home land but as the Germans had caused all the trouble they should give up Bavaria to the Jews.

Anyway all this is totally irrelevant IMO and as irrelevant as Moses and Abraham and the promised land.

The State of Israel is a fact. There will be no return of Palestinian refugees BUT there is no excuse for heaping more misery onto a people who were unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - the Palestinian Arabs. There is no ethical justification for more settlements.

 

I wasn't attempting to condense the whole history so much as point out that a previous poster had extracted a very small piece of it. IMO your filling in of some of the details helps put it in perspective even better (some of the material I was not familar with).

I would however disagree with your conclusion that "There is no ethical justification for more settlements". I tend to think they aren't the greatest idea but I can see some points in their favor although IMO these are outweighed by the points against them. It's also not clear to me how the settlements are "heaping more misery" on to the Palestinians. The biggest objection I can see to them having against the settlements is that they make a settlement where Israel gives up the area less likely. On the other hand since the vast majority of them are committed to the destruction of Israel this seems rather moot.

 

Of course Israel would be much less bellicose and more inclined to find a negotiated solution if they didn't have the United States as a protector.

 

Good line of reasoning - RACISM, RACISM, RACISM! I could just as well scream ANTISEMITISM, ANTISEMITISM, ANTISEMITISM!

But, it's a little more complicated than that. Your nation is taken from its native people, as mine is, with far less claim than Jews have to the nation of Israel.

Arab Israelis vote and have representatives in the Knesset. That's what a democracy is. Your propaganda myth of Israel oppressing Arab citizens is based on nothing. Palestinians (not Israeli citizens) do not have the right vote, just as I do not have the right to vote in Australian elections.

The problem is that there wasn't any country. The map below shows 'Palestine' under the British Mandate.



All of the nations of today were carved from this map, to become trans-Jordan and eventually Jordan, Syria, Lebanon (from the French mandate), etc. All of those people were 'Palestinians' only because they lived within a zone identified by a foreign power as "Palestine." They were of disparate tribes, languages and religions - Bedouin, Druze, Christian, Jews, Samaritan and various small Arab groups and clans.

Note that there are no Palestinian people - no group identified themselves as Palestinian. All of these groups (including the Jews) found themselves cut off from fellow peoples in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon under the final division in 1947. War broke out - the Arabs attacked Israel.

At that time, and for years afterwards, Jews streamed into Israel from Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon (as well as from other places around the world). Many of those people were forced to leave. Many were massacred. They lost everything they had in property and material goods. Israel welcomed them all.

At the same time, Arabs who fled Israel found the doors to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt slammed shut in their faces. This was the creation of the Palestinian "refugee." There are no Jewish refugees, because Israel welcomed in its brethren. There are only Arab refugees, because Arab nations walled them out.

Today, through intense propaganda, the blame is shifted from the Arabs who walled out their fellow Arabs to Israel.

 

Or in some cases more. From all I've read all the statements in the native press make it clear that the Palestinians and at least some of the Arab states only view peace talks and deals as a step on the road to the elimination of Israel. I.e. no good faith barganning is possible. Without the US pressure I suspect that Israel may well have annexed both the West Bank and Gaza as well as the Golan Heights and possibly the Saini.

 

They could have expanded as you suggest or they might have gone down to total defeat like they nearly did during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They were considering the final (nuclear) solution until the U.S. staged a strategic airlift to make up Israel's material losses. Without our aid there is little chance of Israel remaining on the cutting edge in military technology because we share with them, even though they back-engineer many of the systems we provide and sell the technology to nations that are a threat to the U.S., through the IMI and other Israeli defense industries. For a supposed friend its funny that there have been more cases of espionage against the U.S. by Israeli Agents than there were by the former Soviet Union or by our new potential adversary China. How would they do without our military and economic foreign aid? They are and have been for the last 50 years or so, always number one or number two on the list for receipients of U.S. aid, and for a relatively small country. Why?

 

Politics?
They had all the areas I mentioned and still have some. It was US brokered peace deals that reulted in them retruning the Siani and sllowing the Palestinian areas on the West Bank and Gaza.
As for 1973 Wiki mentions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War

Without the US influence the Isaelis almost assuredly go for a premptive strike and likely don't end up in as much trouble as they did. As you say they were also considering a nuclear option before the US started resupplying them whether the nuclear option was likely to be used or if it was a ploy to gain US aid is an open question. Of course if the US wasn't there and they were pushed into a position where defeat was likely then there is a very good chance they would have used the nuclear option. So again the US influence is moderating their actions.

 

S

The resolution theoretically called for a Palestinian Arab state, but there was zero chance of the Palestinians holding onto anything without outside support, the extremists were already shooting and the withdrawall of the British army, that had up to then kept the violence from escalating and gotten shot at (and occasionally bombed) by both sides for it's efforts, made it practically sure the fightimg would get worse. Enforcing the resolution would have required a strong external force but after the British had failed to do anything better than put a temporaty lid on the worst nobody was volunteering fotb the job.

The "not allowing hostiles to go back" argument can be used to justify practically any conquest, people that ran from their homes in fear and occupied populations are going to be hostile, in recent times most nations managed to deal with that better than Israel.

One big problem is that Israel's behaviour has been ambiguos since the beginning, and not just by a minoriy, electing a former terrorist as head of state does not show a widespread desire for coexistence, the Palestinians have as many reasons not to trust Israel as the Jews to trust the Arabs, and the new settlements in breach of the treaties are a good example of why, not a good starting point for peace.
Given the current levels of mistrust, and the very real existence of strong and influential minorities on both sides that have no wish for coexistence and quite simply "hate the others guts", the only currently theoretical possibility is a strong external force to enforce a negotiated agreement, and suppress violations, but nobody sane would trust the UN to do that effectively, we are in the same position as 1948, both sides are likely to shoot at the "peacekeepers" but now both sides have a lot more weapons and trained fighters and one even has nukes.

There are no easy choices here ....

 

This is a blatant lie. You have not spoken to "the vast majority", there is no poll showing this, and in fact, your statement shows you have no idea what the "vast majority" of Palestinians want.

I could just as easily say "The vast majority of US and UK citizens want war: they've been fighting wars since God knows when. Citizens of those countries relish in the deaths of citizens of all other nations."

Making sweeping generalizations are not going to aid any form of progress, and help perpetrate the lies of the extremists in both camps. So discard those, and get a more nuanced picture of reality. One that actually more closely matches reality. The vast majority of Palestinians want peace. They want progress, they want education for their children, they want hope for the future, they want to have prosperous lives. But everytime an individual, suffers from "the final straw", because an Israeli conscript at a checkpoint abuses his brother, or an Israeli settler built a house on his hilltop pasture for his few goats, robbing him of yet another source of revenue...that poor schmuck falls into the hands of radicals, who in turn commit acts that Israel uses to justify further abuses. MOST Palestinian people who actually live there, want peace.

 

Great book mate...sits nicely on my bookshelf too.

 

Once again, no one is questioning the right of Israel to exist; but the Palestinians do have a right to exist, as they were the actual inhabitants of all that land, prior to the Jewish Zionist immigration, which started in the 1880's, and continues today.

The doors were not "slammed shut" as there are large groups of Palestinians living in these countries today.

Fact: Israel does oppress non-Jewish citizens: http://wallwritings.me/2009/03/25/israels-revolting-marriage-law-faces-a-court-challenge/

Imagine living in a state, where you are not permitted to marry whomever you love. A modern democracy respects the rights of all minorities, Israel does not, and so is not truly democratic.

By not annexing the West Bank (merely occupying), but continuing to settle land there, they are proving themselves to be an oppressive, racist, non-democratic country bent on ethnic cleansing. This cause is warping their laws, and undermines their conscript army, as more come into contact with the conditions the Palestinians are forced to live under, and find it difficult to motivate.

 

Lwd..I take it you have seen the numerous documentaries dealing with Settlements...Not even the historical ones over the last decades, but the present ones...Notwithstanding rockets, Hamaz, Israeli harassing of Gaza Strip sea lanes...But the olive farmer who wakes up one morning to find his olive trees wired off..settler supportors, not even settlers, and many from USA...cutting his crop and burning it..No notice..Army standing by just to stop violence not to stop the settlements many of which are even illegal under Israeli law...That farmer couldn'g give a fig or even an olive as to who is violent to whom...all he knows is his lifes work has been destroyed and fenced off in front of him...And then the bulldozer is driving to his house...and the youngsters are in front of own Israeli troops, many of them now not the 6 day warriors of old, but thick inhuman Ukrainian youths who anywhere else would be described as thugs...stand by and in some cases throw stones themselves at the farmers family and supporters who just want to be left alone to farm their land and the land of their farmers..He in most cases had no violent attitude to Israel...The majority of folk being pushed off their land today are not violent terrorists with the hope of an end to Israel..they are in the main folk of the land, peasants not soldiers against Israel. This has to stop..any one who supports this has no right to go on and talk of democracy and decency in any other part of the world.

 

But they had outside support so that argument falls rather flat doesn't it?

You are probably correct that the fighting would have gotten worse but would it have gotten as bad as it did if both sides had accepted the resolution? At least a framework for peace would have existed. The failure of the Arabs to accept the resolution put the Jewish population into a position where they felt they had to win and there was little incentive to control the extremist.

Really? Care to give some examples?

Could the same not be said for electing Washington as the first US president or even Teddy or Ike? Certainly the Palestinians have chosen terrorist to be their heads of state as well.

Do they? Certainly not from what I can see.

And just what treaties do these settlements breach?

 

It is most certainly not. The fact that you must result to insults of that level brings your whole point to question.

Indeed I have not spoken to the "vast majority" however that's hardly necessary. I've read the results of the polls and descriptions of what's in the Arab press as well as the opinion in the camps. It's possible I'm wrong but I don't think it likely.

Indeed you could say it just as easily but the evidence from the polls and the press clearly refutes it.

Facing the reality of the situation is what I'm doing. You don't seem to want to. Sure there are people on both sides that want peace. Probably more of them on the Israeli side but they have more to loose and many would view a peace treaty that insures the existance of the state of Israel as a victory where many on the other side won't consider it a victory as long as Israel does exist. The problem to a great extent is the camps and refugees. Israel can't afford to take them all in and the Arab countries refuse to as well leaving them in Limbo. An economically viable Palestinian state might solve many of the problems but that doesn't seem to be the focus of the Palestinians. Even if it was the corruption of the authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank would make that objective extremely difficult to obtain.

Indeed but that doesn't mean they also don't want to see Israel wiped off the map and many seem to give priority to that aim.

 

"harassing" the sea lanes is that another way of saying preventing the importation of munitions?

Is the army suppose to be enforcing the laws? In any case I know there have been illegal accts by some of the Israeli settlers but I've also read of the Palestinians prevailing in court. I'm sure it's not easy for them to do so as the settlers know the system better and have better resources to fight it but the option is there. Similar things have happened here by the way. There used to be a comunity in the Detroit area called "Pole Town". The state took it via immanent domain and gave it to GM. A great miscarrage of justice IMO but legal. Another problem in that area is that in some cases establish legal ownership of the land is non trivial (I've read that Mexico has the same problems although to a lesser extent). Again the settlers are in a better position to abuse the system to gain what they want but how often do the Palestinians resort to the courts?

Indeed this should be stopped and as you have pointed out much of it is illegal under Israeli law. But how often are houses bulldozed that belong to peacful farmers and how often are they the homes of terrorist and how often are they both?