And there we go. I was wondering what dog you had in this fight.
That literally has nothing to do with the information I've presented. Yes, it means that I am closer to the situation, but as you say below, I've introduced facts.
You've introduced a lot of good facts and information in this thread. At the same time, there is a flip side to the coin that is largely being ignored.
What is the flip side?
Regardless of how anyone here feels about Israel as a nation and how it was birthed into existence incrementally following WWI to resemble its current state here are some things to consider:
1. After a whole bunch of back and forth and such during and following the world wars you had the Six-Day War where Israel captured Gaza from Egypt.
2. Almost all of the issues today stem from the fact that from 1967 towards the present Israel treated Gaza as an occupied territory.
No, the issues, I'm not even going to say the issues as it is difficult to single out one point in time, but if you have to, it would the Nakbah "the catastrophe" in 1948. "The catastrophe that befell the Palestinians would be remembered in the collective national memory as the Nakbah, the catastrophe, kindling the fire that would unite the Palestinians in a national movement. Its self-image would be that of an indigenous population led by a guerrilla movement wishing without success to turn the clock back. The Israelis' collective memory would depict the war as the act of a national liberation movement fighting both British colonialism and Arab hostility, and winning against all odds. Their loss of 1 percent of the population (6000) would cloud the joy of achieving independence, but not the will and determination to Judaize Palestine and turn it into a future have for world Jewry in the aftermath of the Holocaust." Ilan Pappe
People have introduced "this would be like Mexico..." and that's a poor comparison. It would be like something happening with Puerto Rico or Guam.
No, it would be like what we did to the Indians.
Egypt and Jordan and a lot of other players have had a disastrous impact on how the Palestinians have been treated in this territorial tug-of-war.
Definitely.
3. There have been many, many efforts to develop a true sovereign Palestinian states and they have all broken down for one reason or another. Most of them center on Palestinian leadership being unrelenting on their demands relative to Jerusalem/land rights.
This isn't true, the peace negotiations are a joke. Since the United States has been the moderator in the negotiations, the number of Palestinian homes that have been destroyed by settlers more than doubled to 20 to 25 thousand every year. The Palestinians argue that there cannot be honest negotiations while settlements are taking place.
4. Israel demolished all Israeli settlements in 2005 and moved out giving the Palestinians free reign to establish self-governance. What happened? Hamas took full control by 2007.
Yes, they left, but not for peace. Most of the illegal settlers had already moved out because of mounting Palestinian resistance, pushing Israel to finally redeploy its military without any coordination with the Palestinian Authority. The decision was motivated by the need to disengage demographically from 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians and was based on cost-benefit analysis, not peace strategy. All of which partially explains why Israel has being laying siege to Gaza and reckons it has the right to intervene militarily at will ever since.
5. Hamas is a terrorist organization.
What is a terrorist organization? Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, everyone, including the United States, recognizes them except Israel. Israel simply doesn't want Palestinians to be united. How we got to this point is a direct result of Hamas. If starting in 2007 they kept the peace and kept Gaza demilitarized, etc. none of this would be happening. But they didn't.
In an ongoing study of violence between Israel and Gaza, The Jerusalem Fund, a non-profit in Washington, D.C., has catalogued cease-fire violations on either side. The principal finding is as follows: “Palestinian launches have been rare and sporadic and occurred almost always after successive instances of Israeli cease-fire violations.”
6. Remember, Israel withdrew from Gaza
of their own volition in the 2000s. So Israel as bloodthirsty conquerors doesn't jive with facts.
Don't say bloodthirsty, that is baiting. Have you looked at maps of the West Bank over time?
These images are maps of the West Bank. Do you see how the settlements snake their way in? It is divide and conquer.
The legitimate concerns over how Israel operates directly relate to their acceptance of collateral damage. The amount of civilians that perish in their military operations would be intolerable to people in this country and deserves serious revue. But they have the most legitimate claim to the territory of any existing nation stemming from 1967, they left of their own volition and destroyed their settlements (evicting 9000+ Israelis) in 2005, and have been dealing with a petulant group of terrorists in control since 2007.
It's convenient to paint Israel as a nation full of Europeans bulldozing schools full of innocent children as part of a diabolical land grab. That's bullshit. The situation is much more nuanced than that. Last decade, Israel tried to get the hell out of dodge and leave them alone. They fucked it up and it's been heading progressively towards this boiling point since then.
How did they fuck up?
