Sharon and the Israeli Leadership is bringing it all on themselves.

[wsnpr]

The State sponsored terrorism by Israel under the guise or 'self defence' is no excuse. Sharon and the Israeli leadership are not interested in peace short of a Greater Israel and buffer zone. Period. All Sharon is insuring is the future continued attacks against Israelis by desperate Palestinian people (mainly those who have lost innocent family and friends from Israeli Military attacks, so called collateral casualties) who no longer have hope of self determination. Hatred and killing breeds more hatred and killing. So, who is retaliating against who?
Oh BTW, we all can name the many things we have done to support Israel. Name anything that we have done to help the Palestinians since 1948. Maybe then you'll understand why we aren't regarded too highly by the Palestinians.

[Eagler]

another terrorist lover

smile now when they blow up a mall, building, school in your town

[Staga]

Eagler you're funny guy: If someone is against violence and doesn't share your point of view he/she is a Terrorist lover?

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by Staga
Eagler you're funny guy: If someone is against violence and doesn't share your point of view he/she is a Terrorist lover?

If someone is against violence, I don't see how he could be terribly sympathetic to the Palestinians.

- oldman

[straffo]

Originally posted by Oldman731


If someone is against violence, I don't see how he could be terribly sympathetic to the Palestinians.

- oldman

Because (I know it's hard to believe) there is innocent on both side of this conflict.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by wsnpr
The State sponsored terrorism by Israel under the guise or 'self defence' is no excuse. Sharon and the Israeli leadership are not interested in peace short of a Greater Israel and buffer zone. Period. All Sharon is insuring is the future continued attacks against Israelis by desperate Palestinian people (mainly those who have lost innocent family and friends from Israeli Military attacks, so called collateral casualties) who no longer have hope of self determination. Hatred and killing breeds more hatred and killing. So, who is retaliating against who?
Oh BTW, we all can name the many things we have done to support Israel. Name anything that we have done to help the Palestinians since 1948. Maybe then you'll understand why we aren't regarded too highly by the Palestinians.

So what college are you attending?  Berkely seems quite active these days in anti-semetism.

[Dowding (Work)]

Don't be so obtuse Ripsnort. Criticising Israel doesn't neccessarily make you an anti-semite.

[Eagler]

illustrates another issue in the world:

too much gray area .. most things ARE black or white - we just merge them into gray to make it easier on ourselves

[Charon]

So what college are you attending? Berkely seems quite active these days in anti-semetism.

Ripsnort

What a load of crap. And what an easy way to negate someone's position without actually having to counter the points it raises. It's cheap, weak and insulting. I don't like Israel's policies, and make my position known, but I'm not an anti-Semite. I don't like the PRC's treatment of its people and it's ambition towards Taiwan -- but I'm not a bigot who hates Asians.

My wife is Jewish, I was married by a Rabbi (very reformed, obviously), I had Jewish friends before I met my wife and probably socialize with more Jews on a regular basis than you have met. There are American Jews and Israeli Jews who see a path to peace that is quite different than the path that Sharon is following -- I guess they are anti-Semites as well.

And yes Eagler, the world needs to be more black and white. Gun ownership, for example. I own guns and like shooting, but in the black and white world of a great many Americans they are clearly the source of the nation's crime and violence and need to be eliminated. It all kind of depends on whose black and white we are talking about.

Terrorism is wrong, but the root cause isn't going to change any time soon without some serious concession on BOTH sides. Zionism is a reality, openly acknowledged by its supporters as being god's will. I also don't see much difference between a suicide bomber and a 105mm tank round fired casually in the general area a terrorist operated. Frankly, I don't believe Sharon is interested in Peace, for reasons I, and others, have posted in the past. Hell, a right-wing Israeli assassinated the last Israeli leader who was.

It is a bloody frekin mess, highlighted by shades of red, that requires a real solution to finally end. IMO a real solution involves treating each side equally, because that is the only way long-term peace can occur. Israel is here to stay, which is accepted grudgingly by moderate Arabs. But so are the Palestinians.

Charon

[Nifty]

Bringing indiscriminate killing on themselves?  so that makes it acceptable?  No, sorry, Eagler's right.  It's black and white.  Suicide bombings are wrong.

Killing Palestinians indiscriminately is wrong (as is gunning down kids who throw rocks).

I don't support the actions of either side in this, and don't have a shred of respect for either nations' leadership.

[Charon]

Nifty, I agree. My point was, and I think it's in line with yours, that seeing this as a black and white issue with the Israelis being entirely removed from criticism (for creating an envrionment where such bombing could occur) is both short-sighted and a complete dead end to achieving any real peace in the region. If you kill off evey suicide bomber today, there will be a hundered more tomorrow willing to take their place as long as the root cause of the anger, and the feeling of hoplesness remains.

A real solution, at the expense of some land that is acknowledged as an occupied territority by the Israelis themselves, would be a start. If problems continued after that then Israel would be fully justified in making a forceful response. I just don't believe that the current leadership is any more interested in peace than Hamas is, and that the ultimate goal is to turn occuiped territory into settled territory for these people.

Charon

[Nifty]

Charon, yup we're thinking along the same lines.   I had started to post, got 2 words in before I was sidetracked by work, and then got back to finishing the thought.  I never saw your post until after I hit submit.  

[Steven]

<<>>  -Charon

You have me confused.  I thought the Palestinians were offered land a little while ago and refused the offer.  Maybe Jordan can throw the Palestinians some land to make them happy; afterall, doesn't this problem affect the entire region.

In my views, it's a very sad state of affairs but I don't see the root of this as being about land.  My $.02.

[Charon]

Well Puke, the "offer" was was rather nebulous, with some serious sticking points and both sides seem to have made miscalculations. Then Sharon made his famous little visit and negoiations ground to a halt pretty quickly.

Here is an article from the Guardian Unlimited I pulled off a site linked to the American arm of Shalom Achshav, an organization that is self described as: Shalom Achshav [Peace Now], the largest grassroots movement in Israel's history, was founded in March 1978 by 348 reserve commanders, officers, and combat soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. Experience had taught these citizen soldiers that only a politically negotiated solution could end their nation's hundred-year war with its Arab and Palestinian neighbors. As they wrote to then Prime Minister Menachem Begin: "Real security can be achieved only when we achieve peace."

Camp David: a tragedy of errors
Blaming Arafat for the failure of the peace process is a dangerous mistake
By Robert Malley and Hussein Agha
From The Guardian July 20, 2001
In accounts of the July 2000 Camp David summit and the following months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we often hear about Ehud Barak's unprecedented offer and Yasser Arafat's uncompromising "no". Israel is said to have made a historic proposal, which the Palestinians, once again seizing the opportunity to miss an opportunity, turned down. The failure to reach a final agreement is attributed, without notable dissent, to Yasser Arafat.

As orthodoxies go, this is a dangerous one. Broader conclusions take hold. That there is no peace partner is one. That there is no possible end to the conflict with Arafat is another. For a process of such complexity, the diagnosis is remarkably shallow. It ignores history, the dynamics of the negotiations, and the relationships among the three parties. It fails to capture why what so many viewed as a generous Israeli offer, the Palestinians viewed as neither generous, nor Israeli, nor, indeed, as an offer. Worse, it acts as a harmful constraint on American policy by offering up a single, convenient culprit (Arafat) rather than a more nuanced and realistic analysis.
 
Each side came to Camp David with very different perspectives. Ehud Barak was guided by a deep antipathy toward the concept of gradual steps that lay at the heart of the 1993 Oslo agreement. He discarded a number of interim steps, even those to which Israel was formally committed - including a third partial redeployment of troops from the West Bank, the transfer to Palestinian control of three villages abutting Jerusalem and the release of Palestinian prisoners. Concessions to the Palestinians would cost Barak precious political capital that he was determined to husband until the final, climactic moment.
 
Seen from Gaza and the West Bank, Oslo's legacy read like a litany of promises deferred or unfulfilled. Six years after the agreement, there were more Israeli settlements, less freedom of movement, and worse economic conditions. Behind almost all of Barak's moves, Arafat believed he could discern the objective of either forcing him to swallow an unconscionable deal, or mobilising the world to isolate and weaken the Palestinians. Those who claim that Arafat lacked interest in a permanent deal miss the point. Like Barak, the Palestinian leader felt that permanent status negotiations were long overdue; unlike Barak, he did not think that this justified doing away with the interim obligations. In many ways, Barak's actions led to a classic case of misaddressed messages.
 
When Barak reneged on his commitment to transfer the three Jerusalem villages - a commitment he had specifically authorised Clinton to convey to Arafat - Clinton was furious. In the end, though, and on almost all these questionable tactical judgments, the US either gave up or gave in, reluctantly acquiescing out of respect for the things Barak was trying to do. If there is one issue that Israelis agree on, it is that Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go. Even so, it is hard to state with confidence how far Barak was actually prepared to go. Strictly speaking, there never was an Israeli offer. Determined to preserve Israel's position in the event of failure, the Israelis always stopped one, if not several, steps short of a proposal.
 
The ideas put forward at Camp David were never stated in writing, but orally conveyed. In the Palestinians' eyes, they were the ones who made the principal concessions. Arafat was persuaded that the Israelis were setting a trap. His primary objective thus became to cut his losses rather than maximise his gains. That did not mean that he ruled out reaching a final deal; but Palestinian negotiators, with one eye on the summit and another back home, could not accept the ambiguous formulations that had served to bridge differences between the parties in the past and that later, in their view, had been interpreted to Israel's advantage; this time around, only clear and unequivocal understandings would do.

The Camp David proposals were viewed as inadequate: they were silent on the question of refugees, the land exchange was unbalanced, and much of Arab East Jerusalem was to remain under Israeli sovereignty. To accept these proposals in the hope that Barak would then move further risked diluting the Palestinian position in a fundamental way. Meanwhile, America's political and cultural affinity with Israel translated into an acute sensitivity to Israeli domestic concerns and an exaggerated appreciation of Israel's substantive moves. The US team often pondered whether Barak could sell a given proposal to his people, including some he himself had made. The question rarely, if ever, was asked about Arafat.
 
Designed to preserve his assets for the "moment of truth", Barak's tactics helped to ensure that the parties never got there. Many inclined to blame Arafat alone for the collapse of the negotiations, point to his inability to accept the ideas for a settlement put forward by Clinton on December 23, five months after the Camp David talks ended. The president's proposals showed that the distance travelled since Camp David was indeed considerable, and almost all in the Palestinians' direction. Arafat thought hard before providing his response. But Clinton was not presenting the terms of a final deal - rather "parameters" within which accelerated, final negotiations were to take place. With only thirty days left in Clinton's presidency, the likelihood of reaching a deal was remote at best.
 
Offer or no offer, the negotiations that took place between July 2000 and February 2001 make up an indelible chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Taboos were shattered, the unspoken got spoken, and, during that period, Israelis and Palestinians reached an unprecedented level of understanding of what it will take to end their struggle. When the two sides resume their path toward a permanent agreement - and eventually, they will - they will come to it with the memory of those remarkable eight months, the experience of how far they had come and how far they had yet to go, and with the sobering wisdom of an opportunity that was missed by all, less by design than by mistake, more through miscalculation than through mischief.

The full version of this article appears in the August issue of the New York Review of Books.
Robert Malley was adviser to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs; Hussein Agha is senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford

On Sharon’s zionism (not really a secret or open to much debate, he's not ashamed of the description) Sharon 1

On the current settlement pattern within the territorities and Burak’s offer, by another Israeli peace group Gush Shalom:
Territories

Another Sharon article by the Guardian Unlimited:
Sharon 2

I don’t see a reason why Jordan should have to create a homeland for the Palestinians, any more than you or I should give up our property to establish a "convenient" solution.

Charon

[OZkansas]

There will be no peace in the Middle-east untill one side defeats the other and peace can be enforced.