And we're supposed to "talk" to these folks

[Plane]

   When problems are very large and complex , it is sometimes helpfull to solve a small part of the problem and then another and another untill the size and complexity of the problem is reduced.


     Can this principal be applied?

[Michael Tee]

<<When problems are very large and complex , it is sometimes helpfull to solve a small part of the problem and then another and another untill the size and complexity of the problem is reduced.>>


<< Can this principal be applied?>>

In this particular case there is a daily or weekly death toll, so time is of the essence.  Also the time available is probably limited.  We could easily come to a point of no return simply because too many people have died, or suffered too much to turn back.  We may even have passed that point already, but as an optimist, I would prefer to assume  we haven't, and go on trying to save the situation.  The alternative would be to just throw up your hands in the air and say "Fuck it."  And that would be a shame.

 Finally, there is no "magic bullet" or instant solution to the problem.  Since no solution will stop the killing all at once, and because of the time limitations and the ongoing death toll, I would say that you have to remove the biggest irritant first, i.e. the occupation simply because the occupation is the single irritant that directly affects three million people on a daily basis - - by contrast even the suicide bombers directly affect only thousands, the families and friends of the victims.

Your principle isn't a bad one - - I've seen it work in real-life conflict resolutions - - but it's not the one I'd apply to the Palestinian-Israeli quarrel.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Nobody KNOWS that, at most it's a reasonable supposition  in certain circumstances that SOME Israeli lives would probably be lost.

==============================================
It is also was a very reasonable assumption that quite a few American troops, contractors (ie mercenaries), reporters would lose their lives when Juniorbush decided to conquer Iraq.

It CONTINUES to be a very reasonable supposition that more Americans (and Iraqis as well) will be killed, maimed, orphaned and widowed for as long as the US continues to occupy Iraq.

Why, pray tell, are the Israelis who might get killed different than the Americans who have been killed, are being killed even as I write this, and will be killed in the future?

[Henny]

B'Tselem: IDF used Palestinian girl as human shield in Nablus
By Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834937.html
 
Israel Defense Forces soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian girl as a "human shield" during an operation against militants in the West Bank town of Nablus last week, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

The IDF said it was checking the information from the B'Tselem group, which monitors Israeli actions in the occupied territory. Israeli law bans the military from using human shields.

B'Tselem said the girl, Jihan Daadush, told its interviewers that IDF soldiers had entered her family home and questioned her and her relatives about the whereabouts of gunmen who had fired at them during the raid.

The soldiers, she said, threatened to arrest her unless she led them to a nearby house.

"[A soldier] ordered me to go towards the house," B'Tselem quoted the girl as saying. "Three soldiers walked behind me. When we reached the house, there were a lot of soldiers. The soldiers ordered me to go inside the house and I went inside."

B'Tselem said Jihan told them the soldiers shone flashlights and asked about the rooms of the house. There was no mention in the report of whether troops found militants inside. The girl said two soldiers then returned her home.

"[One of the soldiers] told me, 'Thank you, but don't tell anyone,'" the girl said, according to B'Tselem. "I was afraid they would kill me or put me in jail. I am still afraid the soldiers will invade the city again and take me away."

B'tselem also said the army had used a 15-year-old Palestinian boy and a Palestinian man for a similar purpose during the five-day raid of Nablus, a militant stronghold.

The IDF ended the operation on March 1. During the incursion, troops shot dead a Palestinian civilian who had observed the raid from his rooftop. Soldiers also detained 11 suspected militants.

[Henny]

UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/835430.html
 
A United Nations committee has called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination made the recommendation in its concluding observations released Friday, in response to a report Israel submitted on the matter. Representatives of a number of human rights groups appeared before the committee, including Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which presented objections to the official Israeli position.

The report recommends that Israel scrutinize its policy in a number of areas. Among them, it recommends that "the state party ensure that the definition of Israel as a Jewish nation state does not result in any systematic distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin." The committee also said it "would welcome receiving more information on how [Israel] envisions the development of the national identity of all its citizens."

The committee's deliberations were made in the framework of overseeing the implementation by various countries of the provisions of the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Israel has been a signatory to the convention since the late 1970s, and should submit a report every two years. However, it has not done so for nine years.

The appearence before the committee of the human rights organizations, which also included B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and Ittijah (the Union of Arab Community Based Organizations in Israel), is part of an increasing
trend to fight Israeli policies in international forums. Adalah said some of the information provided to the committee came from its international advocacy department assigned to UN committees.

The committee also noted a number of positive developments, among them the ministerial appointment of Raleb Majadele and the High Court decision on the petition of the Ka'adans, an Israeli Arab couple, to buy land in the community of Katzir.
 

[sirs]

UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

And Moderate Muslims thru-out the middle east should crack down on militant Islam, in all it's forms, incl Palestinian & Lebonese factions of it

[Michael Tee]

<<And Moderate Muslims thru-out the middle east should crack down on militant Islam, in all it's forms, incl Palestinian & Lebonese factions of it>>

Maybe the moderate Muslims are waiting for the moderate Israelis to crack down on militant Zionism in all its forms incl the American and European factions of it.  Crack down, as in:  END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THREE MILLION ARABS PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN HOMES FOR 39 YEARS.  Crack down as in END THE ILLEGAL JEWISH SETTLEMENTS OF ARAB LANDS.

[Henny]

Maybe the moderate Muslims are waiting for the moderate Israelis to crack down on militant Zionism in all its forms incl the American and European factions of it.  Crack down, as in:  END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THREE MILLION ARABS PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN HOMES FOR 39 YEARS.  Crack down as in END THE ILLEGAL JEWISH SETTLEMENTS OF ARAB LANDS.

Bravo. Couldn't have been said better.

[sirs]

<<And Moderate Muslims thru-out the middle east should crack down on militant Islam, in all it's forms, incl Palestinian & Lebonese factions of it>>

Maybe the moderate Muslims are waiting for the moderate Israelis to crack down on militant Zionism in all its forms incl the American and European factions of it.  Crack down, as in:  END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THREE MILLION ARABS PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN HOMES FOR 39 YEARS.  Crack down as in END THE ILLEGAL JEWISH SETTLEMENTS OF ARAB LANDS.

Won't happen until militant Islam is cracked down on 1st, since ONE MORE TIME, much of what has transpired in Israel is as a result of actions taken over the years, because of militant Islam and the military actions taken by its Arab neighbors, in all its forms and factions.  Ball in their court (and for Js, Scalpel in their hand)

[Michael Tee]

<<since ONE MORE TIME, much of what has transpired in Israel is as a result of actions taken over the years, because of militant Islam and the military actions taken by its Arab neighbors, in all its forms and factions. >>

Nice attempt to fudge over the issue.  Since a great many things have "transpired in Israel," it is easy to confuse the issue with a reference to "much of what has transpired in Israel."

We are not speaking of "much of what has transpired in Israel."  I am speaking of one very particular event, which eclipses everything else in the picture, and that one event is, of course, the military occupation of three million Arabs for 39 years.  It's an enormous injustice that is a daily irritant to three million people and their hundreds of millions of supporters.  As terrible as violent death is, the deaths of a few thousand Israelis and at least four or five times that many Arabs over the past 20 years don't even begin to register next to the direct trauma of the occupation on every single inhabitant of the West Bank.  Not only that, whereas the occupation can be stopped at any time, nobody can do anything about the dead anyway.  In the circumstances, your insistence on a quid pro quo for ending the occupation is absolutely ludicrous.

So if we can stop trying to confuse matters with vague and all-inclusive references to "much of what has transpired in Israel" and focus on the major real-life provocation, the one which dwarfs all other provocations, the occupation - - if you are trying to blame THAT on "militant Islam and the military actions taken by [Israel's] neighbours," that is a crock of shit and you probably know it.  Militant Islam had nothing to do with the occupation of the West Bank.  Hamas didn't even exist in 1967.  The Palestinian leadership of the day was almost exclusively secular (Fatah) and so were the "neighbours."  The only non-secular government in the region was arguably Saudi Arabia's, which had little or no influence on the the war or the occupation.  The impetus for the settlements, if you know anything about their history - - which you obviously don't - - was militant Judaism, in the form of settlers seeking to fulfill a religious mandate to settle the land which in their belief God had given to the Jewish people.

[Plane]

Maybe the moderate Muslims are waiting for the moderate Israelis to crack down on militant Zionism in all its forms incl the American and European factions of it.  Crack down, as in:  END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THREE MILLION ARABS PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN HOMES FOR 39 YEARS.  Crack down as in END THE ILLEGAL JEWISH SETTLEMENTS OF ARAB LANDS.

Bravo. Couldn't have been said better.

That is why we keep him around.



With Palestine free and independant peace will ensue?
With a Palestinian majority in Israel election the government peace will result?

It isn't what I expect , I expect this is a formula for disaster.

[sirs]

<<since ONE MORE TIME, much of what has transpired in Israel is as a result of actions taken over the years, because of militant Islam and the military actions taken by its Arab neighbors, in all its forms and factions. >>

Nice attempt to fudge over the issue.  Since a great many things have "transpired in Israel," it is easy to confuse the issue with a reference to "much of what has transpired in Israel."  We are not speaking of "much of what has transpired in Israel."  I am speaking of one very particular event, which eclipses everything else in the picture, and that one event is, of course, the military occupation of three million Arabs for 39 years.

Ironically speaking, "if you knew anything about their history", you'd grasp that this so-called "occupation" begain when Israel had to take lands in defense of their country, as every one of their border neighbors, Jordan included was massing its military along their borders, and Egypt's President declaring their intentions of taking on Israel.  They didn't simply "occupy 3 million Arabs"  Everything that Israel has done has been in RESPONSE to something being done or about to be done to them.  Nearly every one of Israel's military incursions into Gaza or the West Bank was as a result of some attack directed at Israel.  What part of the math are you not understanding here, Tee?

IF the Arabs were to come down hard on militant Islam, (vs these continued rationalizations of how that just can't happen, because we simply don't understand the diversity of the Muslim culture, and their religion) then IN RESPONSE we can start pusing Israel to alleviate some of their harsher immigration policies.  And they PROBABLY WOULD.  However, I'm not going to be in that camp that expects Israel to unilaterally weaken itself, and gamble the lives of it's citizenry that those nations and terrorist elements will then play nice, and stop targeting and killing Israelis.  Even YOU referenced how that was unlikely

So, ball in the Arab's court

[Xavier_Onassis]

Israel was a very, very bad idea to start with.

Palestine was the worst possible place for a colonial Jewish occupation.

There is no right of any nationality on the planet to limit citizenship by religion or ethnicity.

Jews are given special privileges because of their religion over people who have lived in this place for thousands of years.

What frigging right does some family of Hassids from Queens have to settle in Hebron,m subsidized by my tax money?

[The_Professor]

<<And Moderate Muslims thru-out the middle east should crack down on militant Islam, in all it's forms, incl Palestinian & Lebonese factions of it>>

Maybe the moderate Muslims are waiting for the moderate Israelis to crack down on militant Zionism in all its forms incl the American and European factions of it.  Crack down, as in:  END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THREE MILLION ARABS PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN HOMES FOR 39 YEARS.  Crack down as in END THE ILLEGAL JEWISH SETTLEMENTS OF ARAB LANDS.

It is like when you are married: regardless of whether you think you are wrong or not, you go ahead and apologize in order to move forward. There needs a lot more of this thinking in the region.

[Michael Tee]

<<Ironically speaking, "if you knew anything about their history", you'd grasp that this so-called "occupation" begain when Israel had to take lands in defense of their country, as every one of their border neighbors, Jordan included was massing its military along their borders, and Egypt's President declaring their intentions of taking on Israel. >>

You obviously know next to nothing about he Six Day War.  The events you are describing are a fairy tale.  I suggest you go to Wikipedia and look up "Six Day War."  The idea that you are trying to sell us on, that the Six Day War was a purely defensive war on Israel's part, is ludicrous.  This "massing" of Jordanian military along Israel's borders was not something that happened overnight.  It was preceded by massive Israeli tank and infantry strikes into Jordanian territory and preparations for more to come.   

<<They didn't simply "occupy 3 million Arabs"  >>

Plain and simple, since the Six Day War ended, that is EXACTLY what they have done.   They launched and successfully prosecuted an offensive war and  - - in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention - - have occupied and settled on the territories seized by their armies ever since.  For 39 years. 

<<Everything that Israel has done has been in RESPONSE to something being done or about to be done to them.  >>

Well, once again you are fogging the issue, muddying the waters.  What do you mean by "Everything that Israel has done?"  Israel has done a lot of things.  I do not propose to discuss each and every one of them.  There isn't enough time left in the  year.  Of all the things that Israel has done, ONE THING - - the 39-year occupation of the West Bank and its three million Arab inhabitants - - stands out massively over every other thing.  Affects many more people, over a much longer period of time, than any other Israeli action.  If you mean to say that THE OCCUPATION "has been in response to something being done or about to be done to [Israel]" then that is a vertitable crock of shit and you ought to know that by now.  Israel was the aggressor in the Six Day War as the results clearly show and the history of it clearly demonstrates.

<<Nearly every one of Israel's military incursions into Gaza or the West Bank was as a result of some attack directed at Israel. >>

I have already demonstrated that at least with respect to the original seizure of the West Bank and the very start of the occupation, that is just one big lie.  If you propose to sidetrack this discussion of the occupation with an item-by-item discussion of the reasons for each and every Israeli military incursion into Gaza or the West Bank since the end of the Six Day War, I say, nice try, sirs, but nobody's falling for it.  It's completely irrelevant to the basic injustice of the occupation itself, and would be a laborious but useless exercise in cataloguing an endless succession of tit-for-tat provocations, reprisals and counter-reprisals.  A pointless illustration of the already too-well-known "cycle of violence."

<<What part of the math are you not understanding here, Tee?>>

My understanding of the math isn't really a problem here, sirs.  The problem seems to be that you (with a little help from your Zionist mentors) seem to have constructed an elaborate alternate reality to take the place of real Middle Eastern history, and you find it very frustrating when members of the sane and reality-oriented world fail to take into account your make-believe world's "historical" explanations of the roots of the conflict.