Perhaps the occupation is in fact an alternative reality unfettered by the rules of physics. Many have marveled at our ability to bend the rule of law on that other side of the Green Line, as epitomized by the tortured heuristics of the government's increasingly absurd arguments before the Supreme Court. Now, however, it seems even the most fundamental of laws -- the laws of the universe -- are suffering the same fate, fluttering in the wind over the hills of Samaria. Miraculously, right here in the Occupied Territories, we have succeeded in building what so many thought to be impossible: a perpetual motion machine. All that stands between us and the Nobel (for Physics, of course) are those pesky Palestinians who don't know progress when they see it.
Stubbornly clinging to their belief in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Palestinians seem unwilling to recognize the most basic of principles in perpetual motion: that the wheels of the occupation require no external energy to keep them spinning. Take Mr. Bassem Tamimi, who managed (perhaps magically) to convince the military courts to release him on bail for a period of two days in order to visit his ailing mother. The military prosecutor appealed the bail order, arguing that "[Tamimi] will continue to take advantage of the heightened media status he obtained following his arrest." In other words, the reason we have to continue to keep Mr. Tamimi under arrest is because we arrested him. An argument so perfectly circular is all but unassailable: how can we release someone from arrest when the reason for his continued incarceration is the heightened status he received as result of being arrested?
Never a body to sit idly by as the wheels of progress turn, the State Attorney's Office was kind enough to provide us with another gem of metaphysics, a formula for the entropy of the occupation: "Any decisions regarding construction raised by this petition are liable to have consequences for already existing construction" (Ha'aretz, April 27, 2012). The backdrop to this assertion, recently argued before the Supreme Court, is the brouhaha surrounding our attempts to take away from the Palestinians what little they have left. Despite having been reduced to subjects of the occupying power, Palestinians seem determined in their attempts to retain the right to private property. These subjects refuse to accept the principles of Statistical Mechanics, relying instead on aphorisms from the Bible, like the parable from the Book of Samuel about the rich man who stole the poor man's lamb. As if that was going to convince anyone.
While it is true that legalizing theft is an inconvenient task for all parties involved (and especially for their lawyers), there are those who make the petty argument that the Principle of Inconvenience is more strongly felt by those being robbed. In any case, the verbiage offered in the State Attorney's submission to the Supreme Court, extending from the hills of "the larger picture regarding evacuating settlements" to the horizons of "new thinking regarding priorities in implementing the Law in the Territories" is liable to create such a cognitive fog that visibility may be highly reduced. But woe upon us if our consciousness becomes so clouded that we overlook the greatest philosophical-scientific achievement of our times: the principle that it is forbidden to return that which we have stolen, because then we might be forced to stop stealing. Or that it is forbidden to tear down what was forbidden to build, because if we do so we might be forced to tear down so much more. We must therefore keep doing what we should never have done in the first place, in order that we may continue doing it into perpetuity.
Once set in motion, such a machine can continue forever without end. The only energy it requires is that which is expended in starting it up, the cost of which is clearly far behind us. The only thing that can stop it? A drastic paradigm shift that challenges not only the ostensible laws of nature, but also the dubious alchemy brewing in these parts.
This is the English version of a Hebrew op-ed originally published earlier in Israel on nrg.
Follow Hagai El-Ad on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HagaiElAd
Easier to successfully violate then 'reverse time-travel', which would violate ALL the laws of the physical universe, simultaneously.
The core elemental problem here (from which all other problem flow forth) is that the disparate sides are each living in their own (factually incompatible) universes. As if two, completely different histories had occurred and each side only remembers (or acknowledges) its own. From that starting point, there can be no compromise possible. Its like two mothers both insisting that one child was born to them both. There is no 'middle ground'.
However, I can't think of any other example in recorded human history when two opposed sides have such completely opposite stories--covering (supposedly) the same identical events.
The Arabs have even made the absurd argument that Hebrews were not living in the area millennia ago.
"One Christmas Eve, Arafat declared that “Jesus was a Palestinian"
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm
Jesus was in fact a Judean and his Hebrew lineage is outlined in the Gospel books of Matthew and Luke.
http://www.theology.edu/ap10.htm
Anyway, the details are debated and secondary anyway. If and when the Arabs acknowledge that the Jews have a legal and moral right to a MAJORITY nation, all these other discrepancies will lose their importance (true or false, it won't matter). Until that time, better keep your seatbelt fastened.
Its a metaphor.
Israel withdrew from Area C of the West Bank and Gaza and expected peace would quickly follow. But peace didn't follow, in both cases violence escalated and the extremists among the Palestinians gained more power. Ending the occupation of more of the West Bank without a peace treaty will, as history tell us, cause more violence, not end it.
A one state solution is the only outcome. Its the route israel has chosen by ignoring every single country who has opposed and advised israel against the occupation over 40 years.
The world wont suit idly by and watch another apartheid come into fruition. We dealt with that one in the 80s.
takes a guppie-headed git to fail to remember that the wars were a self-inflicted disaster and that Palestine doesn't exist because the Palestinians wanted all the land.
the occupation ends when the Palestinians stand up, look in the mirror and then say "oops" and ask for their land back while promising never to be foolishly proud without reason or bigoted without cause and learn how to play nicely with others.
“According to international law, Israelis have a legal right to settle all of Judea and Samaria, at the very least the lands that Israel controls under agreements with the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, the establishment of Jewish settlements [in Judea and Samaria] is, in itself, not illegal.”
The inescapable next step is that the human rights of everyone living in this newly-defined "Israel" have to be equal. Israel will not be able to hide Palestinians behind the wall and pretend that they don't really exist. Otherwise, the rest of the world won't bother with a state that has no natural resources, has an economy that is only slightly bigger than Nigeria's, and is so clearly a repressive theocracy.
israel not only has NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER they are actively breaking international law and the Geneva conventions
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm
>>absurdity I've seen all year
That quote pretty much sums up Israel's attitude to the Two-State Solution. Israel is building its way to the One-State solution.Give equal rights for all those that reside in Israel/Palestine.
Hamas refuse to do it forever. The Palestinian Authority claims they're open to it, but don't seem to be in any rush to make it happen.
Israel won't hold its breath. It'll keep developing, growing and living.
Utopia.
The West Bank isnt israeli land. Nor is Gaza. Golan or Lebanon.
Make peace.