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89 Comments
- DiggieDarko, on 11/06/2009, -2/+15Maybe they can find a more loved leader in the Hamas party.
- juliusthecat, on 11/06/2009, -10/+22There will never ever be peace in Israel so long as there are Muslims, Jews, and Christians. They all worship the same God FFS.
- rocknog, on 11/07/2009, -5/+16Israelis have done horrible things to Palestinians. Palestinians have done horrible things to Israelis. Can we ***** get over it already? The thing that really pisses me off about the whole conflict is that it seems as if I'm forced to take sides here. I have no desire to take sides here. I sympathize with both sides, and yet I recognize that both sides have committed terrible acts in support of their cause. So why do people insist that I take a stance that one side is right and the other wrong?
- bpwned, on 11/07/2009, -8/+17If that's genocide, they're not really good at it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7891434.stm "Gaza population 'rising rapidly'"
- alboi, on 11/08/2009, -0/+8Two state solution. Israel removes illegal settlements in Palestinian territory and goes back to pre-1967 borders. Palestine categorically stops terrorist activity and ensures security of Israelis. Control of Jerusalem needs to be unconditionally left to UN/US forces for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, it will not happen unless USA who is a major ally of Israel but also has enormous influence in the area steps up its game and becomes mediator. US is in a unique position to do something about this if it really cares. There will be great costs of course, but the rewards will also be great internationally for the US if its efforts succeed in establishing a peaceful and secure Two State Solution, which the majority of moderates on both sides of the conflict agree on.
If I were to predict, I would say that nothing like this will happen. The conflict will continue to go on for decades with complete control slowly but eventually falling to Israel which has the superior forces and an increasing growth of settlements. If that does happen, Israel needs to account for the vast Muslim Palestinians in the region and offer some sort of political participation and equal treatment if it hopes to peacefully integrate the Muslim community within its borders.
The longer it takes for decisive action, the more difficult it will be to resolve the issue. - Ricochetbiscuit, on 11/07/2009, -5/+11Taking his ball and going home eh? fine!
- RuSTeDs, on 11/07/2009, -0/+6Well, this kinda puts a spanner in the upcoming elections in January. Unless Fatah party comes up with a person within its ranks who can match the unbridled charisma and rhetoric of Yasser Arafat or the calm, cool and educated persona of Mahmoud Abbas, PLO will be doomed. Hasan Nasrallah of Hamas is tremendously popular with the citizens of Gaza as well as West Bank, so there is high chance Hamas will be voted into power and that will again put USA in an awkward position.
- RuSTeDs, on 11/08/2009, -0/+6Why do you think I'm a liberal? Are you saying every liberal is misinformed and is therefore a nitwit, and every conservative is fully informed about the intricate inter-politics of middle east? Khaled Meshaal is the leader of Hamas. So ***** excuse me for messing up the name of Hamas leader with that of Hezbollah's, and thereby earning your unmitigated wrath.
- Dalhectar, on 11/08/2009, -2/+8Just so you know, 12.9% of the Palestinian Legislative Council is female. Doesn't seem like a lot, but in comparison only 10% of the Republicans in congress are female.
And more women are enrolled in higher education in Palestine than men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Pale ...
And literacy in Palestine is high 92.4% overall and 88% for women.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world ...
But don't let facts get in the way of your religious/ethnic stereotyping. - evilawesome, on 11/08/2009, -2/+7to the people digging down myself and others who are supporting the plight of the palestinians, may i ask if you have any reason for doing so other than automatically rejecting any criticism of the country that you have religious or ethnic ties to?
in all seriousness, the reason i ask is because it is going to take jews and israelis to acknowledge their culpability in the carnage and oppression to stop it, and until that happens, it's like asking someone who's face you're stepping on to stop trying to hit your leg. - sciencelovesyou, on 11/08/2009, -0/+5The Transdimensional Spiritualists of Zeta Reticula would like to take a moment to talk to you about the Twin Lord.
- prakash1234, on 11/08/2009, -3/+8US cant negotiate ***** as long as its bed with israel.
- ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -0/+4I don't think that's the only reason. I think oil has enough to do with it to be counted as another reason.
- quirkopatra, on 11/08/2009, -3/+7If I could digg you to infinity Rocknog, I would. These seem dangerous days of "either you do or you dont" about something that doesn't really concern us that much anyway.
I wonder if people in other countries feel like they must either support Democrats OR Republicans on every issue in the USA. - Dalhectar, on 11/08/2009, -1/+4Fatah, Abbas' party, is well ahead of Hamas in every opinion metric in Palestine.
Nice try though. - eumu2, on 11/07/2009, -2/+5Does any of us readers know who's Tony Karon, the writer of the article? I've read a few of his articles before, which were so biased that I could write him off as one of Israeli citizens, but this piece seems different, and it has no doubt its mind "Changed" because it makes me feel a line of fairness for the first time (to take him by his words, here so to speak) and I even feel his deep compassion against the whole picture of a sinking ship, which carries the people and their hope in the sea of diplomacy, while fighting and killing for more than 60 long years that made human beings themselves their best enemy to each other, pitilessly without shame.
According to some thinking people, who believe that our times in which we live makes all compassion senseless, and thus equally pity becomes sin, but needless to say this line of thinking is to tell precisely human history is in truth Darwinian, and this goes on as if permanent while People like Tony Karon knows the truth of who is real trouble maker in the Middle east, and yet not to tell us the truth has become the line of fairness doctrine to which even President Obama is to fall victim, never mind the “donkey” PA President Abbas...
From Bangkok, a voice of "Obama dialectic" - ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -1/+4Phase One of the road map to peace is that Palestine stops it's terrorist attacks and then Israel stops expanding it's settlements. The longer it takes for Israel to stop it's settlement expansion the more likely the rocket attacks will resume.
- Dalhectar, on 11/08/2009, -0/+3Replace "covert to Christianity" with "drop some acid" and you might be onto something.
It's slightly less mind-twisting anyway. - evilresident, on 11/08/2009, -2/+5*everything* is obama's fault.
- quirkopatra, on 11/08/2009, -1/+4Yeah..we should. Before it started, hadn't Israel taken over a thousand rockets...during a CEASE FIRE? And when they finally said 'enough'...idiots condemned them for using superior force.
Hamas hid behind women and children..
This conflict has ended for now...it's my hope rockets can cease on both sides...but to claim Palestinians are innocents is *****. - lolerskate, on 11/07/2009, -1/+3Like that will change anything, they have been fighting for over 50 years i doubt it gonna change anytime soon.
- quirkopatra, on 11/07/2009, -4/+6I don't think the Jews are fighting with the Christians.
- Dalhectar, on 11/08/2009, -0/+2Actually, the time frame of who established what is irrelevant. We don't give the British credit for founding America's first, oldest, and most prestigious universities (for example, 7 of the 8 Ivy League schools were founded pre-independence).
The Israelis don't credit the British for founding Hebrew University or the Israeli Institute of Technology- Israel's two most prestigious universities which also happen to be founded during British Occupation of greater Palestine.
Founding a university during a colonization/occupation time frame does not justify permanent colonization, occupation, or transfer of land from one ethnic group to another.
However, if I demonstrated that the Palestinians aren't "backwards" as you so put it, then I'm done my job.
"I am sure the Muslims will not be short of land if Israel settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem."
BTW, using your subjective standard of "backwards" to justify annexation and disenfranchisement or what I assume would be the forced removal of over a million people from the West Bank and Gaza to other Muslim lands is particularly disgusting. Trail of Tears anyone? I think we "forwards thinking" people call that ethnic cleansing. A human being has the right to live where they were born, and they also have the right to self-determination.
You might be surprised that I don't have an issue with Israel being Israel, with even a united Jerusalem as its capitol. I feel that way not because of some fetish for a Jewish nationalist state, but that the people of Israel have dedicated themselves to equal protection under the law. I know there are Israelis committed to building a society that's fully and completely open to all ethnic groups/religious in the state, and are working to erode current inequities that happen to exist there (similar inequities exists for many minorities in both western and non-western states). But for Israel to be Israel, Palestine must also be Palestine, where ultimately it's residents are also free to make their own destiny. Netanyahu at least understands that, and that's why he stands for a 2 state solution. A shame actual Israelis understand that, and that you don't. - stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -1/+3It wasn't theirs.
Actually, most of them had just moved there. And why? Because the Jews created an economy and jobs. - Glayden, on 11/08/2009, -2/+4At some point America needs to stop being Israel's bitch.
There's no way the US will help foster peace in the Middle East as long as they continue to turn a blind eye to Israel's aggression.
Every act of violence and intolerance committed by Israel is excused as self defense by our government and our media.
If you want the truth just look at the casualty rates on both sides.
The number of Palestinian civilians killed absolutely dwarfs all the suicide bombers and Israeli casualties our media goes on about.
Does that justify the actions of Palestinian terrorists? Of course not. But the civilian deaths caused by the Israeli military's actions aren't justified either and they're the one with any actual power.
When an overwhelmingly more powerful adversary violently takes over your neighborhood, destroys your possessions, and kicks you out of your homes its to be expected for you to be immersed in hatred. No one is born a suicide bomber or a terrorist. They are made. - AgeofMastery, on 11/07/2009, -5/+7So Abbas pulls out of an election he wouldn't have won anyway and blames it on Obama. And the right wing celebrates...The same people who would have accused Obama of betraying Israel if he had given Abbas what he wanted.
- evilresident, on 11/08/2009, -0/+2how about:
'drop all magical creatures from life, without proof.'
there goes your Jesus then - evilawesome, on 11/08/2009, -1/+3thank you, dalhectar, for taking the time on this.
- stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -1/+3"Far from being settled by Palestinians for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the Land of Israel, according to dozens of visitors to the land, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty.
Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book, Recollections of the East, he writes "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound.."
None other than ...Mark Twain, who visited the Land of Israel in 1867, confirms this. In his book Innocents Abroad he writes, "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely.. We never saw a human being on the whole journey."
Even the British Consul in Palestine reported, in 1857, "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population."
In fact, according to official Ottoman Turk census figures of 1882, in the entire "Land of Israel" ["Palestine" on BOTH sides of the Jordan River.., there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab. This number was to skyrocket to 650,000 Arabs by 1922, a 450% increase in only 40 years. By 1938 that number would become over 1 million or an 800% increase in only 56 years. Population growth was especially high in areas where Jews lived. "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1019315/p ...
The truth is, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran. And wasn't considered a holy site by Muslims until it became politically useful for the grievance parade. - SLuM, on 11/08/2009, -1/+3EXCUSE ME! YOU'RE TOYING WITH MY BIGOTRY HERE AND FIGHTING IT WITH FACTS!
- LinuxLiberty, on 11/08/2009, -6/+8US peace efforts??? When did this start to happen. The US has been supplying trillions of dollars of arms to Israel for years now. Everybody knows the Israeli lobby calls the shots in the US, its a ***** joke to call the US a neutral arbitrator.
- stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -1/+3Yes, under Muslim RULE. But the area was largely depopulated by the 1800s. This is according to reports from several Western writers at the time AND complaints from local rulers.
When Jews from Europe started moving there and BUYING land, their energy and industry and ambition created an economy. Arabs started moving into the area.
After 1948, the UN group in charge of helping the "Palestinian" refugees defined them as anyone who had lived in the area for more than two years. Two years! Not the 100s of years we're told about. Not the 1,000s of years raising olive trees. TWO YEARS. Why did the UN do that? Probably to increase the numbers for the Arab grievance parade. - Dalhectar, on 11/08/2009, -0/+2Salam Fayyad is a likely candidate to take reigns from Fatah.
- ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -4/+5Let's take a look at last winter's conflict.
Israelis did horrible things to Palestinians, such as killing 1400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and wounding thousands more.
Palestinians did horrible things to Israelis, such as killing 13 Israelis. - iptunnell, on 11/08/2009, -1/+2Why isn't anyone surprised that Obama is waffling on something? He's a fantastic politician, and that's what good politicians do. That said, that's not what great leaders do. Hold onto your britches for the next 3 years, it's going to be a bumpy ride!
- inactive, on 11/08/2009, -2/+3@btschul,
Yes, you're right Israelis have never bombed civilians ever.
/s - SamurAchzar, on 11/08/2009, -1/+2Unfortunately people don't understand this simple logic. When Israel gave the Palestinians the exclusive control of Gaza, the Palestinians chose Hamas and started firing rockets from the land Israelis used to reside on, each and every day expanding their rocketry coverage until Israel could no more and did Cast Lead.
Now why in their right mind would expect Israel to give even MORE territory? - stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -0/+1Arafat was not "ineffective". He was a bloody murdering, lying terrorist. And pretty good at it.
- stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -0/+1Muslims have been killing Jews for 1,400 years. The difference is, since 1948 the Jews have been able to fight back.
- ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -0/+1Also, I like how this story is almost tied in Diggs with "The end of Aerosmith? Singer Steven Tyler 'quits' the band". I'm not going to read that article because I want to continue to fantasize that Steven Tyler is 'quitting' the band as part of some calculated political kabuki to force Obama's hand into showing stronger support for Aerosmith.
- SamurAchzar, on 11/08/2009, -0/+1What does it have to do with Israel? Israelis overwhelmingly approve of the arrangement you've suggested. This is why the Israeli public chose the Sharon/Kadima government, just to disengage from Gaza. This is an agreement Israel will take with both hands. Israel can't accept the Palestinians demands for right of return, which ultimately means the Palestinians will now have two countries - Israel and Palestine - and the Palestinians have never agreed to stop terror. And who controls the Palestinians today anyway? The Hamas gangs throwing adversaries off rooftops in Gaza? The corrupt PLO who has no public support whatsoever?
How would twisting Israel's arm solve anything here?
Where were the Liberals to demand, after the Gaza disengagement in 2005, that the momentum will be used and an agreement forced on the Palestinians? - quirkopatra, on 11/08/2009, -0/+1Well.. yanno...I clap my hands. I have no horse in this dysfunctional race.
Uh...nice try though. - ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -1/+2It's not two unrelated issues. They are related because they are both conditions set forward in Phase One of The Road Map to Peace.
Phase I : End to Palestinian violence; Palestinian political reform; Israeli withdrawal and freeze on settlement expansion; Palestinian elections.
The Palestinians have to do those 3 things, the Israelis have to do that 1 thing. Those are the concessions offered and regardless of how well Palestine has or hasn't kept to or approached them, Israel has shown no interest make progress towards their end of the bargain. - prettychristy, on 11/08/2009, -1/+2First, you can thank the Universities created by Israel: read the first paragraph to your source: "In West Bank and Gaza...most universities were set up and grew mostly during the period of Israel occupation." Second, the percentages provided factors in the Israels occupying Palestinian territory.
- SamurAchzar, on 11/08/2009, -2/+3The rockets are shot by Hamas, in Gaza. There are exactly 0 Israelis in Gaza; Israel, showing good intents, did ethnic cleansing of JEWS from the Gaza strip. And they still shoot rockets, more so than ever, until Israel came and did some straightening up with Cast Lead operation.
It's pretty ridiculous to take two unrelated issues - rockets and settlements - and try and tie them together to appear balanced or informed.
After Israel withdrawn from Gaza, there were only more rockets, and the Gilad Shalit affair. Unfortunately giving the Palestinians more territory meant the rockets reached farther into Israel.
Now with the Hamas new 60km rockets, that can reach Tel Aviv, we can fully expect Gaza to be annexed, or an operation that would cause Cast Lead to look like an Amnesty relief event. See where this is headed? - stevebee, on 11/16/2009, -1/+2Right. Ottoman rule. Turkish rule. Colonial rule. Rule-from-a-foreign-land. The Ottoman Empire is gone. Is it your contention that all Muslims are part of one big nation? Maybe a caliphate?
Anyway, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The whole area was made into brand new countries. And the Jews, who had been there first, were offered maybe 2% of all the land. They eventually got 1%. - ClaireQuilty, on 11/08/2009, -5/+6You're right btschul, the Jews don't walk places when they want to blow up Muslims, they fly there in U.S. made Apache helicopters.
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