@Robert Gentel,
Robert Gentel wrote:To pretend that the Palestinians are the only obstructionists is to take a blind eye to one side of the conflict.
It is the Palestinians who responded to the peace process with a massive orgy of murderous violence until it collapsed.
It is the Palestinians who refuse to return to the negotiating table today.
Hardly Israel's fault.
Robert Gentel wrote:If the Palestinians said all of that tomorrow the Israeli extremists would still be systematically settling their land, trying to "build facts on the ground" that preclude a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state.
If the Palestinians showed a genuine interest in peace, either Netanyahu would negotiate the creation of the new Palestinian state, or the Israeli voters would replace him with someone who would.
Robert Gentel wrote:The primary obstruction in the last 5 years have been on the side of Israel.
All the Israeli voters have seen from the Palestinians over the past five years is more attempts to murder Israeli children.
They are not terribly interested in restarting a peace process with people who don't want peace.
Robert Gentel wrote:Israel has never had a better partner for peace but has shifted to the right and doesn't currently want it enough.
Israel only shifted to the right because they got sick of being murdered by Palestinians. They will shift back as soon as the Palestinians become peaceful, but not one moment before.
Robert Gentel wrote:The current Palestinian leadership has renounced violence, the Palestinian Authority emphatically so, saying it is simply not an option and Hamas giving a generational truce (they said that their current generation can't bring themselves to make this promise of eternal peace without having their statehood in return but that they offered a generational truce of their own and would let the future generation decide on a permanent truce when and if Israel agrees to a settlement).
In reality, the Palestinians are refusing to negotiate, are trying to get the UN to allow them to have a state without making peace with Israel, and are trying to end the blockade so that they can resume firing artillery at Israeli civilians.
Robert Gentel wrote:The "Saudi Proposal" of around 2001 or 2002 also offered pan-Arab normalization of relations. Not just recognition and peace, but of normalized diplomatic and trade relations.
It was unfortunately offered just after the Israeli negotiating attempts were answered by such a violent storm of murderous violence by the Palestinians that negotiations were over and done.
It was also offered with poisonous language implying that Israel was being unreasonable, and the Saudi offer was to try to coax them to be reasonable.
Now, maybe the timing was because the Saudis saw that the Palestinians were dooming peace efforts with their orgy of violence, and the Saudis were desperately trying to rescue things.
And maybe the language was just because if the Saudis were honest about Israel, their own people would explode into a murderous rage (though if that were the case, the answer was not to lie about Israel, the answer was to drive tanks over the rioters until they stop rioting).
But even if the Saudi offer was offered in good faith, the timing and the poisonous language pretty much made it a non-starter.
Robert Gentel wrote:So Israel has a partner for peace now,
How come the Palestinians are refusing to negotiate? How come they are trying to end the blockade so they can fire more artillery at civilians?
Robert Gentel wrote:and the whole world pretty much agrees on what the framework should be (the "1967" borders that are in the graphic I posted in the first post) but now Israel unfortunately has an obstructionist leader in Bibi that does not want to accept this international consensus (even Israel's staunch ally, the US has not ever had a president that did not agree with this framework) and Bibi has announced that the 1967 borders leave Israel too small, too narrow in places and that for "security concerns" this is not an acceptable basis of negotiation.
It's hard to say that Netanyahu is obstructionist when it's the Palestinians who are refusing to show up at the negotiating table.
But if Netanyahu were obstructionist, and the Palestinians were ever genuine about peace, the Israeli voters would replace Netanyahu with someone who actually would negotiate.
Robert Gentel wrote:sleestak wrote:By the way, if you are going to do an Arab-Israeli conflict history, you need to take it back a couple thousand years further than 1516.
Not if you care about the question of who should have what land. I don't care a whit what someone thinks some god told people thousands of years ago, or what people were living where thousands of years ago, that is not an excuse for expansionism today.
I disagree. The Israelis never gave up their rightful ownership of their homeland, and the Palestinians never had any right to invade other peoples' land and steal their holy sites.
That said, if the Palestinians were ever genuine about peace, they'd have a good shot at getting 1967 borders. (At least until they provoke Israel into annexing land. Once that happens, 1967 borders will never happen.)
Robert Gentel wrote:That is not an excuse to appropriate private property today, that you claim some distant ancestor of yours lived somewhat nearby thousands of years ago. It's wholly irrelevant to the territorial dispute of today.
I disagree. Why do Muslims get a divine right to keep the land and the holy sites they steal from other people?
