Citing the foreclosure of his diplomatic options, Palestinian President Abbas announced last month that he will not seek reelection, while senior Palestinian officials spoke of dissolving the Palestinian Authority and shifting the national strategy to seeking a single democratic state for all Israelis and Palestinians. The PA is sounding the alarm bell on the perishing viability of the two-state solution.
While serious analysts disagree on whether the precise "point of no return" has already passed for a viable two-state solution, most agree that Israel's incessant (and illegal) settlement expansion is systematically undermining it. With the US as the only actor capable of rolling back Israel's settlement expansion, saving the prospect for a viable two-state peace agreement is mainly a question of whether the US will act in time.
The so-called "peace process" failed for a simple reason: while Israel was supposed to be withdrawing from the Palestinian territories it illegally occupied since 1967 (a mere 22% of historic Palestine), it actually did the opposite, accelerating their takeover through settlement expansion. Indeed, Israel more than doubled the number of settlers since engaging in the "peace process." Israel's policy has been: "you keep negotiating, and we'll keep taking more land." Palestinians often say "we are negotiating the division of a pizza, while Israel is proceeding to eat all the pepperoni." Israel has also destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes, so the accuracy of that analogy is missing the act of knocking the pizza out of the mouths of Palestinians as Israel goes on eating.
The two-state solution that Israel seems to want, one of crowding Palestinians behind barriers in isolated West Bank cantons and imprisoned in Gaza while Israel keeps control of all arable lands and Jerusalem, is neither acceptable nor sustainable. The only workable solution is a real end to Israel's occupation and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
US policy, in line with international law and the international consensus, is fully opposed to Israel's settlement expansion. Nonetheless, the US continues to provided Israel with massive military aid and diplomatic support even as Israel undermines the peace process with unrelenting settlement building. The US is, in effect, supporting the very Israeli policies that it publicly states its opposition to.
Initially inspired by the promises of the new American administration to seriously pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace, and eager to regain credibility by achieving statehood for its people, the PA implemented a harsh crackdown on any violent resistance to Israel's occupation, attempting to leave Israel no excuse to circumvent its obligations. Now that the Obama Administration, overwhelmed with domestic matters, is capitulating in the face of Israeli defiance of its obligations with continued settlement expansion, the PA has effectively become nothing more than a security subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. The PA is on the verge of political collapse because its entire national strategy based on a negotiated peace is failing.
The United States' permissive policy on settlements is at odds with its stated position primarily because of the influence of the Israel lobby, a lobby deemed too politically costly to confront on matters (wrongly) considered not crucial for American strategic interests. But the grip of the Israel lobby on both US policy and Jewish-American public opinion is beginning to loosen, thanks to years of grassroots activism and public education.
Yet, the gradual positive trend in US public discourse is not moving fast enough to save the prospect for a legitimate peace agreement. With the clock on the two-state solution ticking, we cannot afford to wait years for the Obama administration to gather leverage, or the many more years it would take for the pressures of the international grassroots movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions to grow large enough to effectively pressure Israel. What is needed is immediate and decisive action by the US to hold Israel accountable by beginning to condition aspects of US support for Israel on its compliance with its obligations.
Some have questioned whether the two-state solution should be saved. The answer to that depends on whether the realistic alternative is a rapid transition towards a single democratic state that guarantees the rights of all its citizens, or many more decades of abhorrent suffering, occupation, violence, and terrorism. Were it possible to prove either speculation, that question would certainly be less divisive. But the serious possibility of condemning Palestinians to living several more decades under Israel's brutal military occupation should dissuade any moral agent from abandoning the quest for an immediate end to the occupation so long as it remains possible.
Avoiding that gamble requires all peace advocates to do everything in our power to enable and pressure the Obama administration to implement the international consensus calling on Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. It may be the last hope for saving the two-state solution.
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Unless America is going to act the way it speaks . . . . there will be no peace . . the US is still playing a hypocritical game . . . and is in effect supporting israel's expansionism . . . unless America pulls the plug on all support for israel . . . it will be the same old same old . . . with no justice for the Palestinian people
What would you consider justice for the Palestinian People?
What would you consider justice for the Jewish people?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/israel-foreign-ministry-media
Come to America, every Jewish Israeli! Come to the only nation that loves you and will take you all in. Come join us, the majority of the world's Jews who settled in America and live in peace and harmony and prosperity with our neighbors. Come raise your children without the violence and the hatred that colonizing another people's land brings upon you. We, the majority, welcome you here with open arms in the land of freedom. Come here now, because our support for Israel has its limits and we are fast reaching that point. We no longer can afford to subsidize your standard of living, we longer can afford your militiary, and we no longer can afford to fight your wars. And most importantly, we no longer wish to. It is not in our national interests.
As for your kind invitation to relocate. Thanks, but no thanks. The home of the Jews is where the Jewish saga began - in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, Tzfat. We were forced to accept whimsical foreign hospitality for 2000 years, as were were welcomed, and then exiled, and then welcomed again, by country after country, society after society. We can no longer survive as a minority, dependent on the Majority for our very lives, and freedoms. We no longer have to.
The world will have to accept that the Jewish people has returned to its roots, and it will fight to stay there, proud, free, and independent. It is willing to share the land, share the bounty, and share its knowledge and expertise, with its neighbours, and with the rest of the world. Reject that offer, and the consequences to all will be dire.
Reality--
Arab Citiznes of Israel--18%
Circassians, Negev Bedouins, and Druze--2%
Arab Jews, Iranian Jews, Turkish Jews, Kurdish Jews, Berber Jews, Bukharan Jews--60%
European Jews-- 15%
Conclusion Israel is one of the most multi-cultural societies in the world.
This self-perpetuating M.O. would trap any Palestinian leader. How could any leader make peace with Israel while maintaining that a Israel is illegitimate , Jews aren’t really Jews and Jewish Temple is somewhere near Nablus, not Jerusalem?!
Results---look up the law of diminishing returns. As Einstein said:" Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
About 5,000. Not Many????!
There are, broadly speaking, two camps in this debate: the first backs its legal claims w/UNSC resolutions and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, and its human rights claims w/reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem (Israeli human rights organization)...etc. For that camp, Israel's atrocious record of international law and human rights violations is clear. The second camp declares the correctness of its view by decree, taking it as a given that Israel is entitled to whatever land it wants, and that any Israeli military action is by default, if not by definition, defensive. In short, it’s the world consensus vs. apologists for the Israeli occupation.
So, no, it's not particularly convincing that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Court of Justice, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, judge Goldstone, Israeli political figures and historians, Israeli human rights organizations, and thousands of Israeli conscientious objectors are somehow all defaming Israel for malicious reasons. Most sensible people would look at this mountain of evidence and conclude the obvious. And when the stubbornness & zealotry of some leads them to defy all logic and evidence to defend the indefensible, it simply ceases to be useful to attempt to engage such people in serious conversation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EISikrLcSw8
Now. Palestine: demilitarized state or no state. Which is your preference?
Israel accepted the 1948 ceasefire lines. The Arabs refused to declare them borders. This is undeniable. The hogwash that your camp propagates that Israel attacked the enormous armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, in 1967, are refuted by the facts of documented history. Yet your camp twists and mangles, and misinforms to avoid the truth - that the Arab lost control over land that had no legal sovereign, when they lost the war they launched. And again, the Arabs refused peace, refused recognition, refused negotiation. You cannot name the sovereign state the land of which Israel "occupied". The camp to which I belong do NOT apologize for Israel's administration of disputed territories, to which Israel has a legal claim equal to any.
Israel has compromised repeatedly, returning the Sinai to Egypt; bringing Arafat and his henchman back from Tripoli in the false hope that the Palestinians really wanted a state; evacuating Gaza; offering the Palestinians a state numerous times. At each point, the obstruction to peace has been the immutable Arab demands that would realize their goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
This the Jews will continue to refuse.
Sir, you are incorrect, on several levels.
The first camp, of which you are a part, backs its maximalist claims with resolutions and rulings dictated by an automatic, antagonistic majority; resolutions and rulings applied selectively, against only one country in the world. The myriad of other organizations and individuals, fueled by enormous funds from European and Arab governments, spout one-sided opinions, without any objectivity whatsoever. They would sell their mothers for a bagel.
Selective application of any law deems it invalid.
The second camp, in which I include myself, does not support the false statement that Israel is "entitled to whatever land it wants." Remember, your camp insists that Israel wants all the land "from the Nile to the Euphrates." Indeed, there is every reason to believe, and accept, that Israel would have been content with what it was legally recognized to administer under the U.N. Partition Agreement. That the Arabs refused that plan is undeniable. That 5 countries, plus thousands of fedayeen irregulars attacked the newborn state is undeniable. Yet your camp denies it.
1/ Demilitarized state carefully contorlled and monitored by their neighbors--Israel- Jordan Egypt. Until a certain level of maturity and co existence with the neighbors is achieved.
OR
2. No state.
No other choices are available.
The rest is just wishing upon a star.
Hours earlier in this same thread you laid out THREE distinct options for Palestine, and dramatically closed with:
"Nothing else is available, or will be available in in the foreseeable future.
Choose.."
Fair enough to counter a point, normally it would be someone else's though...?
Can't wait for the next instalment :-)
So drop the mask of civility.
Civility is of little use to the dead.
Throughout human history, wars were (and are) fought. The victor defeats the vanquished. There are then negotiations for an acceptable peace treaty. The vanquished, especially as the aggressor, does NOT get to dictate the terms. Reasonable terms have been offered the Arabs. If negotiations fail, the prosecution of the war resumes. THIS IS THE ONLY CASE IN HISTORY WHEN ANOTHER OUTCOME IS SOUGHT, and that is only because it is the Jewish nation that is victorious.
I think Israel should stand fast, surrounded by its supporters, and fight the world, if need be. The world will fight Israel, and try to bring the Zionist endeavor to an end, in any case. In that respect, the world will follow the Jewish state into oblivion very quickly. Massada shall not fall again. At least, not alone.
One could certainly argue that the Palestinians were invaded in 1948 and lost half the land they had been living on peacefully for hundreds of years. When the Arabs retaliated on the Palestinian's behalf they lost another 22% of the land. Since 1967 they have lost the rest (although the Palestinians have not started any wars or even been in them). (Gaza is blockaded which is even worse than being occupied by israel).
If you live by the sword (missiles, shells, white phosphorous, cluster bombs etc) you will surely die by the sword and under your reasoning that will be OK as long as israel takes enough people with them. And we allowed israel to stockpile 200 nuclear warheads? And we are worried about Iran with none?
Of course the Palestinians fought and lost, just like the Turks lost W.W. !, and Romania lost in W.W. 2.
Gaza is blockaded because it insists on rocketing Israeli civilians.
And no, it is not OK for anyone to die, but rest assured that if irrationality brings the world to the brink, Israel, and Israelis, will not be the only ones to die.
Disturbing.
Let's hope the religious cr@zies haven't got access to the button.
Same old arguments. Same old bloggers. Same dead end.
1) The Mandate of Palestine was divided for the first time when Trans-Jordan took 67% of the land.
2) The remaining 33% of the land was still under British sovereignty, when the U.N. G.A. suggested dividing it once again, into a Jewish and Arab state. The Jews agreed. The Arabs refused. Britain pulled out. Israel declared independence. The Arabs attacked. Israel won, and found itself within the 1948 ceasefire lines. There was NO OTHER COUNTRY ESTABLISHED beyond those ceasefire lines, before, or after 1948. The land was claimed by Jordan and Egypt. The Palestinians laid claim to it when they identified themselves in 1964. The Israelis laid claim to it as well. This makes it DISPUTED land, UNALLOCATED.
3) The Arabs attacked again in 1967. They lost again, and Israel came to control and administer the disputed territory, which HAD NOT BEEN MADE ANYBODY'S STATE. When the Arabs refused to sue for peace, Israel kept the land.
4) The Geneva Accords do not apply in this matter. The inadmissability of acquiring land by force is meant to prevent Germany taking Czech territory or Bolivia taking Ecuadorian territory. Israel did not "occupy" anybody's "sovereign territory". Israel did not "forcibly transfer" its population. Jews went to live where they wanted to of their own volition, and broke nobody's immigration laws.
Note the map, please. It includes Jordan and present day Israel. Sorry, MemoryAlpha, but this time you're wrong.
(A) Security Council Resolution 446 “[Affirms] once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,
“1. Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;.."
(B) Security Council Resolution 465 "determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity..."
(C) As per the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by Israel, and further underscoring the illegality of the settlements, Part 2, Article 8, section B, paragraph viii of the Rome Statue of the International Court (1998) defines "the transfer directly or indirectly by the Occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" as a War Crime, indictable by the International Criminal Court.
(D) On 24 February 2004, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed that: "Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 War.... The international community does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over any part of the occupied territories."
There is a multitude of more examples, but none so egregious as the actions of the U.N., shocked at Jewish victory in self-defense, spluttering in feigned indignation, when the Jews take for themselves the same rights that the built-in anti-Israel majority in that "august" organization take for themselves as a given.
the term "cooperation" implies Abbas' not sending suicide bombers. this should stop.
This statement is basically a call to third Intifada. Considering how successful the first two were....
Netanyahu recognized as much the other day, as did Sharon, Olmert and Livni before him.
Are you the Sarah Palin of American Jews?
1.a demilitarized state alongside its neighbors who are already at peace--Israel, Egypt and Jordan. This options has been available since 1947. To date Palestinian leadership refused it,.
2. Autonomous region attached to Jordan, a majority Palestinain Arab state. With Gaza as a separate entity until Hamas is deposed. If Jordanians will have them.
3. No state, But continued revanchist fantasies about demographic take over; one state takeover etc.
Nothing else is available, or will be available in in the foreseeable future.
Choose..
Most Jews will not agree with you that "it is fair" that the Arabs get yet another state, and the Jews return to the dhimmitude of the last 2000 years, destined to be restricted to the 7th step leading up to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Israel does not claim to "speak for" you. You are free to disclaim any connection to the State of the Jews, and let the majority of those that do want to be associated with a free, proud, and just society determine their own destiny. Do not work so hard to destroy for others that which you choose to reject for yourself.
Don't worry. You will never be confused with an Israeli Jew.
To the ultra left Jews it's a way of giving another chance to Chamberlain's creed, - Peace at any price?
Give it a rest.
The Arab Peace Initiative (2002) offered complete normalistation of relations with the 22 arab nations that make up the Arab League.
Fact-- Israel does NOT build settlement.
Fact-- Israel does NOT take new land from disputed territory.
Fact--Israel does build infrastructure and new housing WITHIN established towns only.
Fact-- Israel does demolish illegal settlements, if any are tried by Israeli settlers.
Fact-- Israel did evacuate ALL Israelis from Gaza
Conclusion-- The charge of expansion is based on rhetoric, not facts.
Your other larger point is also correct. Since 1978, Israel has left the Sinai (and removed every settlement), left Lebanon (after which the UN certified that Israel was not occupying a single square centimeter of Lebanon), left Gaza (and removed every Jew living there).
Additionally, Every Israeli leader since 1992 has endorsed the idea (in one form or another) of leaving most of the West Bank. To think of Israel as "expansionist" is farcical.
israel pays settlers to build settlements.
israel continues to steal land in the occupied territory
the existing towns have very wide borders with huge areas to expand - as is happening
there are 200 "illegal" settlements and israel has demolished maybe 2
Hamas chased the settlers out of Gaza. Sharon could not afford to protect them
1) The footprints of the settlements. We often hear that settler's population doubled during Oslo. However, most of that growth was within a footprint that barely changed. To me, there is a huge difference between building a house within an area that all the negotiators agree will end up as part of Israel and creating an outpost where there previously was none. The latter should stop, the former is irrelevant. What is almost always missing from this discussion is a sense as to what percentage of the "growth" is occurring in new areas.
My understanding is that for most of the 90's, the actual footprint of the settlements was approximately 2% of the West Bank and Gaza. The Gaza settlements are gone, I'd be surprised if it topped 3% today.
2) The borders of 1948 are not magical. It was a ceasefire line. Israel indicated a willingness to consider the green line a border if the other countries in the area would agree. but, they did not.
The Palestinians are entitled to a country in the approximate location and equal in size to what they could have had in 1948. But if Israel keeps the major settlement blocks and trades land of equal value and area, then the Palestinians should be able to build a country as well as if it was based exactly on the 1948 ceasefire line.
In February 2008, The Civil Administration admitted that more than a third of West Bank settlements were built on private Palestinian land, originally seized by the IDF for 'security purposes', this was admitted after a leak reported that it was close to 40%.
Israel 1948 borders gave it 53% of land with Jerusalem under international control but 1949 armistice line or greenline gives it 78%, the war has never ended just a cease fire was called.
The refugee that are still living or always have in camps and the settlers are now the biggest roadblock to peace, 52% of Gaza's 1.5M people are refugees with main goal to return home and settlers who want a greater Israel with no Muslims in it.
1) The 1949 ceasefire line (aka the green line) did put 78% of the land on the Israeli side. However, a huge chunk of that is the Negev desert, one of the deadest places around. The amount of farmable lands actually favored the Palestinians in the original 1947 partition plan and stayed about 50-50 after 1949.
2) Not even the Jewish Israelis who dream of an Israel that covers from the Med to the Jordan River think that it should be a State with only Jewish citizens. There are occasionally people who speak of population transfers (both Jews and Muslims would be moving around in the scenarios I'm thinking of). But it isn't about making a place that has no Muslims, it tends to be about drawing the border in such a way that the most Jews are on one side and the most Muslims on the other. No serious movement exists to have Muslims who live in, Jaffo, for example, vacate their property.
3)