Each one of these agreements would ultimately fail because they have no support amongst the bulk of the Palestinian people, regardless of what is negotiated by the leaders of Palestine.
Says who?
There was overwhelming Palestinian support for the Oslo process in it's early years when it actually looked to be going somewhere.
Even now, opinion polls amongst the Palestinians show support for a two state solution at 50%, a bi-national state (power sharing) at nearly 30%, with less than 20% of Palestinians supporting a single Palestinian or Islamic state in the area.
And all of the various armed Palestinian groups carrying out the actual attacks within Israel are dedicated not merely to errecting a Palestinian state alongside of Israel, but ultimately to eliminating Israel entirely.
No, they're not. The largest single group, Fatah, is dedicated to a to state solution. It's mainly the Islamic groups that are committed to overthrowing Israel, and even then there is some flexibility in their opposition.
And incidentally, anyone who doesn't believe this is ultimately a religious, rather than political, struggle needs to read the charters of groups like Hamas, especially regarding their ties to the Worldwide Muslim brotherhood and the "universality" of their objectives.
And Hamas has about 20% support amongst the Palestinians in national issues. They do better in local elections, due to the corruption in the PA and HAmas's charity work, but in national elections and opinion polls, Hamas are a minority party. Support for Islamic parties amongst the Palestinians, even now after years of war, is still at less than 30%
Lest we forget, the declaration of Israeli statehood in 1948 led to the almost immediate invasion of all her Arab neighbors,
And the declaration of Israeli statehood was preceeded by a military campaign to sieze as much of Palestine as possible.
If the Muslims came and started to conquer Canada, would you call for the US to intervene?
Hardly, they lived in a state of Dhimmitude (third class citizens, required to pay an additional tax, banned from most government jobs, highly restricted in their ability to own property, etc.) they were forbidden to build new synagogues, and were under the constant threat of expulsion from those countries or worse.
At least one fact should be easy to check, the synagogue building:
A positive development was the announcement that a Cairo synagogue built in 1934, which had been closed because so few Jews remain in Egypt, would be reopened in July 2005.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/egjews.html Nearby the community center is Roben Ben Sadoun Synagogue. Built in the 1920's, it is decorated with exquisite plaster carving reminiscent of the decoration of traditional mosques and medersas. It is large by the standards of Morocco, where every rich Jewish family desired its own synagogue.
http://rickgold.home.mindspring.com/page17.htmlJudging from the current state of the building it was probably erected sometime in the second half of the 19th century replacing earlier structures. The synagogue is mentioned in the early 16th century when it was destroyed during a Spanish military expedition to Djerba and reconstructed later in the same century. Like some other synagogues in Djerba, the El Ghriba is located in the proximity of an ancient Jewish cemetery. The El Ghriba has an inner courtyard surrounded by covered loggias build on arches and columns. The adjacent buildings served as accommodation for the pilgrims, the earlier one was erected at the end of the 19th century and it was followed by a second structure built in the early 1950's.
http://www.bh.org.il/Communities/Synagogue/Djerba.asp For instance in Egypt the overall population dropped from 60,000 in the 40s to just 8,000 in 1957 following the election of Nasser, and the massive arrests and confiscations he brought about.
Do you think that might have anything to do with the fact that Israel tried to sieze Sinai a couple of times, and organised terrorist attacks against British and US targets in Egypt, and tried to blame them on the Egyptians?
Or on the fact that Israel was a growing economy that was happy to welcome Jews, and that by emigrating they'd have a much higher standard of living?
Israel will never hand over Jerusalem, this is their capitol regardless of the fact that we all pretend its Tel Aviv, and has too much historical significance for Jews to give up.
Well, we shall see. I note that even Alan Derschowitz, who's support for Israel is so strong he advocated torture just because Israel does it, has now come out in favour of the division of Jerusalem.
When it comes down to it, and Israel is faced with peace and half of Jerusalem, or isolation, intifada III and all of Jerusalem, I think they will choose the right option.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, will never be happy with just East Jerusalem and they insist on gaining control over the temple mount because of the Dome of Rock. This issue is simply irreconcilable.
Hardly. Barak in his final days came close to accepting a compromise on this. Malka's advice above was that the issue was reconcilable.
The Palestinians gained sovereign control over part of Israel: this has historically been shown to be bunk. Every handover has been preceeded and followed by a wave of new attacks.
Like the withdrawal from southern Lebanon?
For groups like Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and Hamas these handovers are merely steps towards final victory and make it progressively easier for them to import weapons, build bombs and so on.
Of course. Just like Hezbollah.
But the truth is, once Israel withdraws, the local people have more to lose from restarting the war. The occupied have nothing to lose.
Hezbollah still hates Israel. But it knows any attacks on Israel will be met with massive response, and so it behaves. Just as North Korea hates the south and the US, but doesn't attack them.
It's called deterrence.
The increase in the use of IDF helicopter and jet attacks in the areas under Palestinian control and the inevitable collateral damage that occurs shows another downside of these handovers. It used to be if you wanted to grab the head of Hamas or a bomb making cell in the occupied territories, the IDF could send in a few squads of soldiers.
Or drop a bomb on an apartment block, or leave a booby trap outside a refugee camp. If you think Isreli air strikes and shelling are new, you haven't been paying attention these last few years.
Now since they are under the control of the Palestinians, missles and bombs become the only option. Please note also that when an Israeli bomb kills children, this is collateral damage from another objective, however when Hamas explodes a bomb on a bus filled with civillians (using ball-bearings coated in rat poison to prevent clotting and cause the wounded to bleed out I might add) their objective was to kill those kids - so lets stop comparing police actions to terrorist attacks can we?
I never have. But I reconise that war kills civilians. And anybody who embarks on it wilfully, for example someone who decides to build a settlement on occupied territory, and station his army there to protect it, is
choosing a path he knows will result in civilian deaths.
Seagoon;
is your church officially supporting apartheid or is your blind support to the state of Israel your personal opinion?
There is a growing movement amongst US protestant church groups to divesment from Israel. The main Presbyterian church in the US, for example, has begun an active campaign of divestment, and is targetting certain companies in the US.
There will never be a solution to the problem.... best we might hope for is an uneasy truce. And "apartheid" allows the Israeli's to stop at least some of the bombing.
The problem is, the apartheid is being practiced not in Israel, but in the occupied territories. It's not designed to protect people in Israel, it's designed to protect and ease the lives of Israeli settlers, who are in the occupied territories illegally.
So the roads are closed to Palestinians in the West Bank to protect the settlers, their fields are off limits to them because the settlers have built an outpost nearby, their market is closed in Hebron to allow the Jewish settlement to expand, their water is cut off because the settlers need it for their fruit trees.
It's nothing to do with security, it's to do with enforcing supremacy.
As the Haaretz settlement correspondent put it:
"We are not talking of colonialism. The morality of "settlement" after 1967, is equivalent to the morality of settling the land after 1948.
Morally, historically and religiously, the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, takes precedence over the right of other peoples here. The internal dispute within Israel is over what is possible within the framework of the security and international reality that the country faces."
That sort of mindset is the underlying reason for the apartheid in the West Bank.
Israel acts as a check on terrorism, if only because they catch a lot of the hatred that would be directed at the West, and in particular Europe and the United States.
Israel
generates a lot of the hatred that is directed against the west. Every time they kill a Palestinian, demolish their homes etc, it generates more hatred against Israel, and against the west that supports Israel.
