Obunga: Palestine must be based on 67 borders........

Quote:

But the truth is, most of the blame for this unnecessary battle lies with President Obama. No doubt annoyed by Netanyahu's decision to solicit an invitation to speak before Congress, no doubt highly suspicious of Netanyahu's true intentions, no doubt frustrated with his failure to achieve any success in the peace process—the president chose the worst possible moment for this fight. With an unstable Middle East, in which the ruler with whom one negotiates today might not be there tomorrow; with Palestinian leadership unwilling to heed American advice; with Israeli leadership still burned by previous battles with Obama—the president hadn't really offered any plausible explanation for the questions of why now, why the surprise, why the haste, why the new language?
Obama seems not to have learned from previous mistakes in handling the delicate peace process. Two years ago, he made settlement freeze the buzz word of the day; he got what he wanted for a while, but ultimately achieved nothing. "The Obama administration's decision to end its insistence on a settlement freeze put an end to months of grueling diplomacy which led the administration to conclude a focus on the settlements was distracting the parties from dealing with the core issues of the conflict," news organizations reported.

http://www.slate.com/id/2295310/pagenum/2

Obama, whom many of us once thought might be a political master, in practice rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

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Good speech by Netanyahu:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_netanyahu_aipac

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@oralloy,

In what way was it a good speech?
There didn't appear to be many details of it in this article.

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Is everyone aware artillery can shell all/most (?) of Israel from the Golan Heights ?

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

In what way was it a good speech?
There didn't appear to be many details of it in this article.

It was just nice that he was standing up to Obama. I grow weary of all the unfair attacks on Israel.

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@oralloy,

The USA could give the Cherokees back their homeland.....I wonder if there is enough of the Iroquois nations to give them back the Great Lakes region ? It just seems hypocritical to want to undo what losing a war has done when it is so far away from home and there are issues at home that could be fixed first .

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

The USA could give the Cherokees back their homeland.....I wonder if there is enough of the Iroquois nations to give them back the Great Lakes region ? It just seems hypocritical to want to undo what losing a war has done when it is so far away from home and there are issues at home that could be fixed first .

Actually, I think the courts should enforce all the old treaties that were signed with the Native Americans and then violated.

I'm not sure what that would mean for the Iroquois, but I think it would give a chunk of Georgia to the Cherokee.

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@oralloy,

Clearly all those white settlers need to be removed...they are in violation of agreements . Building permanent structures is against long term peace . I forget which war, but one indian war had a state governor and the President going against the Congress and the Law . (was it the Kota ? Nakota, Dakota and Lakota)?? Strictly speaking they should have been impeached and tried .

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

I forget which war, but one indian war had a state governor and the President going against the Congress and the Law . (was it the Kota ? Nakota, Dakota and Lakota)?? Strictly speaking they should have been impeached and tried .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

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@Ionus,

I didn't think I'd agree with you, but over this I do.

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The kick in the head involving Israel is that the only legitimate prior claims on the lands in question belong to the Jews and not the "palestinians".

Golda Maier was basically correct in her view that there is no such thing as palestine or as a "palestinian". Mark Twain found mostly just empty space on his visit to the Holy Lands in the late 1800s, other than for a few nomad tribes, and Jerusalem was basically a ghost town. "palestinians Are basically just other arabs who moved in for jobs after the Zionists made something out of the place.

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@Ionus,

The Golan Heights being an artillery vantage is a good point, but the Golan Heights is more of a Israel/Syria issue, not an Israel/Palestine issue. To be quite honest I'm not that concerned with Syrian aspirations, a brutal dictatorship is waging war on its own citizens. I'm more concerned about the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the Gazan blockade.

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@izzythepush,

I would be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause if they didnt fire rockets into Israel and use the lives of their people so callously as a political leverage point .

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@Ionus,

Unfortunately so much Western Media is biased in favour of Israel even the BBC which normally is very imparial The Israeli embassies are very accomplished at persuading various media organisations of their point of view. The charge of anti-semitism is a powerful one, and the BBC is frightened of being perceived in that way. Palestine is almost always viewed as the provocateur and Israel as responding to a threat.

An Israeli Apache helicopter fires missiles at a Hamas official in Gaza. The official is killed but so are schoolchildren who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Israel calls this 'regrettable,' but offers no apology to the parents of the children, making the same claims that they always try to minimise civilian casualties. Palestinian militants fire a glorified firework into Israel in retalliation, which 99% of the time explodes harmlessly away from anyone, and are immediately condemned as terrorists deliberately targetting civilians.

I think both of these actions are wrong, but it's only the Palestinian action that's viewed as terrorism. The only mainstream newschannel that reports what's going on in Palestine without fear of the Israelis is Al-Jazeera, and I prefer to watch their reporting on Israel than any other channel. There is another channel that's quite fervent in its support for the Palestinians, Press TV, but that's an Iranian news channel, and is every bit as reliable as Fox News so I don't watch it.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

Palestine is almost always viewed as the provocateur and Israel as responding to a threat.

And by always providing that threat and provocation they are losing land but are too stupid or belligerent to stop . If they stopped the violence they would have a far greater chance of a home state . But make no mistake about it, the "refugee camps" would do far better by the people in them if they were disbanded and the people allowed to return to Jordan and resettle .

Quote:

Palestinian militants fire a glorified firework into Israel in retalliation, which 99% of the time explodes harmlessly

Going by the following it doesnt seem that way, does it ?

Quote:

By 15 January 2009, since the beginning of the IDF operation in Gaza (Dec 27, 2008), four Israelis had been killed and 285 wounded by rocket fire. 771 rockets and mortars had been fired at Israel.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm

To me that looks like one in three rockets wounds someone . That doesn't take into account property damage . Isn't that a war crime ? Targeting civilians as opposed to accidentally killing those in harm's way ?

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@Ionus,

Are you being deliberately obtuse? I write about the sort of thing that happens on a day to day basis, and you cherry pick the figures for Palestinian rockets fired during the Gazan conflict.

Four Israelis are killed, I can see why you're very upset about that. I don't see you talking about war crimes for the 1400 Palestinians killed during the same period including over 300 children. Or the deliberate shelling of a UN hospital despite being told of its whereabouts three times. I suppose all that's just regrettable, it's not a war crime unless Israelis get killed.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

The Golan Heights being an artillery vantage is a good point, but the Golan Heights is more of a Israel/Syria issue, not an Israel/Palestine issue. To be quite honest I'm not that concerned with Syrian aspirations, a brutal dictatorship is waging war on its own citizens. I'm more concerned about the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the Gazan blockade.

It is of course your right to arbitrarily select some components in the very complex struggle over Israel & Palestins as more important or significant (to you) than the others. However that also implies that you acknowledge the obvious bias and lack of impartiality that involves. The fact is the Syrians used artillery on the Golan heights to shell Israeli settlements South of Tiberias and on the West Bank of the Jordan just below Galilee - that's why Israel took the heights in 1967. That, plus the history of Syrian opposition to Israel and indeed the continuing state of unresolved aggression that exists between Syria and Israel, are valid Israeli concerns, and, practically speaking, inseperable from the Palestinian issues on the West Bank and in Gaza. Both sides are using precisely this kind of selective treatment to rationalize the continuation of the present rather unsatisfactory situation. I find it odd that you should do the same. This was the same "logic" the radical IRA and Unionist elements in Northern Ireland used to rationalize continued murder and oppression. It led nowhere.

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@izzythepush,

We have been here before.....you don't blame the Palestinians for deliberately targeting civilians because they are trying to make up for the unbalanced kill ratio . I see no evidence of that happening on the Israeli side . People get killed in war . In WWII, how many of the 50 million killed do you think were civilians ? Perhaps the war should have been fought so the Nazis and Imperialists won .

This situation was best shown in "Blazing Saddles" where the hero grabs himself by the throat, holds a gun to his own head and says, "don't move or I shoot the nigger" . That is what the Palestinians are doing with their own people . They WANT civilian casualties . They are endeavoring to out breed the Israelis . They will not allow the refugee camps to close and the people to be resettled in Arab lands . This is the power brokers in the PLO using the lives of their own people and praying on the sympathies of people like you who are so well cocooned that you need a cause .

Where do you plan to put the Israelis ?

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

Where do you plan to put the Israelis ?

She is a European. Don't you know they have all been absolved of their ghastly histories and have no responsibility whatever for the consequences of their own misdeeds. They are now free to pass judgment on those engaged (often imperfectly) in working things out, and are free to do so without inhibition or care. It is a very lofty moral height and we are likely not able to fully comprehend their serene moral detachment - or the sublime hypocrisy it entails.

Did you note the reports of the French Foreign Minister's whining about the lack of American support for their heroic efforts in Lybia ? (I hear through informal sources that Cameron has, with more discretion, made the same pitch to Obama.) Having to fend for themselves in their own neighborhood is evidently too much of a strain. We should not deprive them of the experience.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

It is a very lofty moral height and we are likely not able to fully comprehend their serene moral detachment - or the sublime hypocrisy it entails.

I would have put it down to tall poppy syndrome and how easy it is to do nothing but criticise those who do .

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Obunga: Palestine must be based on 67 borders........

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