response 50 of 269:

Apr 24 11:54 UTC 2002

Marcus, in reading what you say, one could almost forget that less than
2 years ago, at Camp David, Israeli PM Barak accepted the Clinton
Compromise but that Arafat rejected the paradigm of compromise.

One could almost forget that 3 weeks ago, Israeli PM Sharon accepted
Zinni's bridging proposals. Arafat then rejected them and imposed new
demands/conditions -- and the next day one of his Fatah terrorists
perpetrated the Passover massacre.

A senior Hamas official told Lee Hockstader (The Washington Post) that
Jews love life more than any other nation, that "they prefer not to die",
-- and that this is a weakness. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish writes
that "the masters of words have no need for rhetoric before the
eloquence of blood."

Perhaps your analogy to Klingons is appropriate. But make no mistake
about it: this is a war that the vast majority of Israelis did NOT want
to fight. Consider that for a year and a half Israel sustained terrorist
attacks before launching a major counter-offensive, and only after some
12 suicide bombings in 15 days. But if it must be fought, Israel must
fight to win -- it can't afford to lose.

response 52 of 269:

Apr 24 16:04 UTC 2002

It seems to me that the Israelis don't really have a choice but to 
keep on fighting.  Every time they stop fighting, the Palestinian 
extremists, whose motto is "destroy Israel at all cost", kill off a 
few more innocents.  The Palestinian normals, who would just as soon 
live together with the Israeli in peace, have no voice in the matter.  
It is hard to convince a religious zealot, who believes that martyrdom 
while killing off "the enemy" is the greatest thing since hummus, that 
war is bad.  They will laugh, say that your weakness is pitiful, and 
then go on killing "the enemy."

response 54 of 269:

Apr 24 20:01 UTC 2002

"Indiscriminate" killing is not what has been occurring, as is obvious to
any fair observer. If the IDF desires to engage in indiscriminate killing,
it is doing a piss-poor job of it. Overall, the tactics used in the present
offensive are not the tactics of a force whose objective is indiscriminate
killing. Now of course there has been some misconduct among soldiers and
some unforunate collateral civilan deaths, but to argue from that that the
actions of the IDF are indiscriminate with regard to civilians is
fallacious. One would be better served to examine whether a government
which deliberately puts its civilian population at risk to protect
terrorists is fit to rule.

response 56 of 269:

Apr 24 21:39 UTC 2002

Re: 52 - they won't just laugh, and say that your weakness is pitiful.  As
has been recently demonstrated on multiple occasions, they will shoot you in
the head, drag your corpse through the streets until your nose is ground off,
and then string you up in a plaza:

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20020312/i/1015941079.328858016
7.jpg

response 58 of 269:

Apr 25 00:56 UTC 2002

It's just a rabid generalization, KLG.  Ignore it and move on.

response 60 of 269:

Apr 25 01:30 UTC 2002

Re #49:  You know, if Israel was anywhere near as bad as the Nazis to
which they are regularly compared, they would solve the Palestinian
problem the same way Saddam Hussein addressed his Kurd problem:  with
poison gas.  Apparently there is something about the mix of gases used
in Iraq which interferes with the reproductive system; that would both
cut the population and reverse the difference in population growth rate
among the survivors.

Why do the lefties on Grex spend so much more time condemning Israel
than its enemies, Arafat and Hussein?  Who's really the bad guy here?

response 62 of 269:

Apr 25 02:42 UTC 2002

The problem with the "Israelis only want peace" theory is that it does
nothing to explain the west bank settlements, or the many rather bizarre
laws the Israelis have regarding Palestinians in the occupied
territories today.  I don't know in detail exactly what proposals have
been going back & forth between the Israelis and Palestinians -- and I'm
not convinced anybody but the negotiators really knows all the details,
or why any particular proposal was made or rejected.  My impression is
that these discussions are generally made behind closed doors, and
details are later on leaked to the press by whichever side hopes to
embarrass the other the most.  Those details almost certainly don't
comprise the full story, so are at best half-truths.

It's easy to hate the Palestinians.  Their skin is a different color,
and they clearly have radically different beliefs than ours.  This does
not however automatically put the Israelis in the right, and it
certainly does not prove that they are without blame in the current
matter.  The fact is, they are just as convinced as the Palestinians
that they will win, and I think they have just as little interest in
being fair to the Palestinians.  The Israeli policy towards the
Palestinians reminds me *very much* of the 19th century US policy
towards the indians, and I think an almost exact parallel can be made
between everything the Israelis have said & done, and what the US did in
the 19th century.  There are some differences.  There were a lot more
american settlers, breeding a lot more rapidly, than the indians.
People on both sides weren't concentrated into a small area, but were
spread over an entire continent.  Killing technology wasn't quite as
efficient.  Foreign intervention wasn't as practical or influential.
Oh, and the indians lost.

response 64 of 269:

Apr 25 06:58 UTC 2002

mdw, re #62:

> The problem with the "Israelis only want peace" theory is that it does
> nothing to explain the west bank settlements, or the many rather bizarre
> laws the Israelis have regarding Palestinians in the occupied
> territories today.

What "laws" are you talking about? 98% of the Arab population in the
territories lives under PA rule -- not under Israeli law. (To an extent,
the only people being "occupied" are Jewish "settlers".)

Yet the setlements themselves are red herrings for multiple reasons.

1. If Arab villages in Israel are not to be dismantled in an implementation
of a "two states for two peoples" solution, why shouldn't there be Jewish
villages in a nascent Palestinian Arab state? [Other than concern for the
safety of these people under Arab rule.]

2. The majority of settlers live in the Jerusalem area, territories that were
not designated for the Palestinian Arab state in Palestine by the 1947 UN
compromise (which was rejected by the Arabs who instead chose war) and which
most people agree will not be part of a future Palestinian Arab state (this
is the 5% of the WB that Israel would retain).

3. Already at Camp David, Israel agreed to dismantle those settlements that
would end up in areas ceded to the PA. 

Settlments are not an impedement to the peace process. Nor were they a
sticking point at Camp David. They are only a problem for those who don't
want peace but hope to win a war of attrition.


As for peace process details, see item 125 for an interview with US special
Ambassador Dennis Ross (Clinton's man in the mideast peace process).


Perhaps your analogy of indians to Arabs would work if Mexico and Canada
were indian countries -- and if the US was offering to cede the southwest
to another Native American state.

But the analogy also fails in that the the native population in Palestine
is the Jews: recall that "Palestine" is a 19th century European concept
formulated on the ancient Jewish homeland and that Jews have lived there
continuously for 3300-4000 years. There was never an Arab or even Turkish
unit named "Palestine", and the region bore no ethnic, social, cultural or
linguistic distinctions from the rest of Syria (recall that the Roman emperor
renamed Judea as Syria-Palestina).

In a remarkable PR twist, the Arabs of Palestine didn't adopt that name until
the 2nd half of the 20th century, only after the Jews had stopped using that
name following the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Yet many of
the Palestinian Arabs were themselves recent arrivals (e.g. Arafat was born
in Egypt, Feisal Husseini in Iraq, Sheik Izz al-Din al-Kassam -- after whom
the Hamas terrorists are named -- was born in Syria).

response 66 of 269:

Apr 25 07:57 UTC 2002

  It's not like Leeron was suffering from an overabundance of credibility
  on this issue but the statement "Settlments are not an impedement to the
  peace process," is really a step beyond his usual standards [assuming
  that "Settlments" and "impedement" aren't some kind of secret code words.]

response 68 of 269:

Apr 25 13:10 UTC 2002

Come on, Mike, try to address the arguments I put forth in #64 in which I
explained why they are not an impedement and the fact that they were not
the sticking point at Camp David. (The "Right of Return" was, which is a
subversion of the "two state solution" unless that is meant as two Arab
states -- in addition to Jordan.)

Marcus, you offer a false choice. Areas need not be either annexed or
alternatively independent and sovereign. With the exception of the
eastern Jerusalem area -- which Israel did annex and where Arabs can
become equal citizens if they choose to, the rest of the territories were
a stateless area.

Since 1993, as part of the peace process, Israel has ceded land to the
Palestinian Authority. In fact, the territories are divided into Areas
A, B and C. In areas A & B -- in which 98% of the Arabs reside -- the
Israeli military government was dismantled and the areas are ruled by
the Palestinian Authority. (Ergo the areas are no longer "occupied",
which is why alarmists claimed two weeks ago that the Israeli incursion
was a "RE-occupation".)

Perhaps this is why you have to resort to the hysterics of "apartheid"
instead of being able to provide an example of such a system. Since
Israeli rule does not apply in the areas where virtually all of the
Arabs live, perhaps you were talking about apartheid in PA law?
Like the death penalty for selling land to Jews...? (And then there's
the dhimmi phenomenon of Islamic countries.)

response 70 of 269:

Apr 25 14:08 UTC 2002

U.S. aid groups recently announced they're shipping a bunch of tents to
the West Bank.  I guess Leeron could have saved them a lot of effort by
explaining that they aren't needed.

response 72 of 269:

Apr 25 14:58 UTC 2002

Isn't it amazing what contortions David will put himself through to miss the
point? Sure, a couple weeks after illegal Arab combatants blew up civilian
neighborhoods in an effort to kill Israeli soldiers, tents are needed. But
Scott's comment a year ago -- prior to any such Israeli military incursion
in pursuit of suicide bombers attacking innocent Israeli civilians -- had
nothing to do with this recent (and temporary) development.

Let's not forget that David is the person who just the other day claimed
that it is easier to bring down a well-built 10-story structure than a 2-
story flat because gravity helps.

response 74 of 269:

Apr 25 17:19 UTC 2002

I suppose a picture is worth a thousand words.  So...

http://www.hdip.org/GIS/West-Bank.htm
        This shows Leeron's A+B+C.  *Very* spotty.  A+B do not comprise
        "a nation".  Looks more like ghettos.
        The closest analogy I can think of would be to take
        all the areas in the US which is inhabited by a majority
        of blacks, and declare them to be a separate country.
http://www.passia.org/pdf/page4.pdf
        Describes the west bank settlement history, from someone who is
        more sympathetic towards the palestinians than Leeron.
http://www.arij.org/paleye/qiddis/
        another even more blatantly palestinian description, focusing on
        certain israeli settlements.
http://www2.haaretz.co.il/special/nego-e/a/347057.asp
        no maps, but describes settlements at least some in israeli would
        rather not give up.
http://www.la.utexas.edu/course-materials/government/mena/USME/su98/peace/0
006.html
        no maps, but describes palestinian position of what Leeron describes
        as "stateless".  There is clearly law in the land, and it seems
        to be weighted towards Israel.

Leeron seems to be claiming that Israel has somehow, in the middle of an
area which has had civilization for thousands of years, has somehow
found virgin land never before exploited or claimed by any country.
Everyone else I've every heard talking about this area claims it was in
fact once Egyptian and Jordanian land, which Israel occupied as part of
a military war, and which it has since refused to relinquish.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/49lines.html
        this is from a site generally sympathetic to the Israelis.
        It shows the gaza strip as being "under egyptian rule",
        and judea/samaria as being "under jordanian rule".
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/iswarmaptoc.html
        pointers to more maps from the same source; good sense
        of history.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/israel.html
        more maps paid for by our tax dollars at work.  A bit dated now.