ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

The Pal attacks have continued for 60 years, despite many, many, Israeli peace entreaties. Isn't it fair, therefore, to conclude that, with the Pals, peace must be imposed. Anyone with common sense would see this.

Advocate, others would say the Israelis have attacked for 60 years. Your absurd statement "despite many, many, Israeli peace entreaties" dont hold up to history. Again I'll point to the obvious assassination of the Israeli PM who had the audacity to sign on to land for peace. Calls for his assassination were in abundance and made by religious leaders and political opponents alike and based on scriptural interpretations. To them G-D mandated the assassination. When it happened Rabbis danced on Rabin's grave and imperialistic minded politicians seized the day. Israel's disdain for being a fair negotiating partner for peace aint lost on most earthlings who care about the issue. You gotta go a far stretch to keep pretending Israel's government wants a 2 state solution. Your personal solution is of increased violence. That's the formula the Israeli government uses. Commit atrocities that lead to retaliation. That of course wont lead to peace. Far from it. You must realize that. As does the Israeli regime that wants to keep war alive at all costs. Insane.

Advocate.
the above reponse from Blueflame is a befitting retort .
Now my question is
Eylu Yetzirot angliyat quasiyot yeshman betargum iviri?

The Pals and blueflame want Israel to voluntarily terminate its own existence. The Pals want this because they believe their god wanted all of Palestine to be given to the Pals after the British left.

More than 3,000 years ago, the Jews fleeing Egypt thought their God wanted the samething for the Jews. That did not work out either. So now, more than 3,000 years later, all the Jews in Israel want is part of Palestine.

I guess it will take another more than 3,000 years before the Pals wise up too, and decide to want only part of Palestine.

ican, I want a 2 state solution. But you can lie about that if you want. Most Palestinians want a 2 state solution too. And most Israelis. So I guess I'm in the vast majority. What we need is a change of regime in Israel from the current imperialist regime to one that gives the people what they want. A 2 state solution.

I'm not lying. I believe everything I previously posted is true.

I don't know what most Palestinians want. I do know that Israel's governments want now and have wanted a 2 state solution ever since 1948. I also know that the non-Israeli Arabs in Palestine at least tolerate in their midst non-Israeli Palestinian mass murderers of Israelis. It is the non-Israeli Palestinian mass murderers of Israelis in the midst of the non-Israeli Arabs that are preventing a 2 state solution; not Israel.

ican, well Israel had a 2 state solution in the bag until Arafat and Hamas plugged Rabin in the back. Wait that wasn't Arafat and Hamas it was right wing imperialist Israelis like those running Israel ever since the assassination.

I am amazed at your gullibility!

ican, you mean Arafat and Hamas really did kill Rabin and made it look like the Israelis did it? Does anyone else know that?

Instead of exposing our ignorance
let us strive hard to enrich our knowledge.

bf, I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions.
You have run away from them again.

Blue thinks he is very cute with his irony. I think that he is boring.

There was, of course, no peace that was in the bag when Rabin was at the helm. Rabin, like his predecessors, hoped for peace and a reasonable agreement, but the likelihood of peace was highly remote.

LAST REMARKS BY LATE PRIME MINISTER RABIN AT TEL AVIV PEACE RALLY,
November 4, 1995


Permit me to say that I am deeply moved. I wish to thank each and every one of you, who have come here today to take a stand against violence and for peace. This government, which I am privileged to head, together with my friend Shimon Peres, decided to give peace a chance -- a peace that will solve most of Israel's problems.

I was a military man for 27 years. I fought so long as there was no chance for peace. I believe that there is now a chance for peace, a great chance. We must take advantage of it for the sake of those standing here, and for those who are not here -- and they are many.

I have always believed that the majority of the people want peace and are ready to take risks for peace. In coming here today, you demonstrate, together with many others who did not come, that the people truly desire peace and oppose violence. Violence erodes the basis of Israeli democracy. It must be condemned and isolated. This is not the way of the State of Israel. In a democracy there can be differences, but the final decision will be taken in democratic elections, as the 1992 elections which gave us the mandate to do what we are doing, and to continue on this course.

I want to say that I am proud of the fact that representatives of the countries with whom we are living in peace are present with us here, and will continue to be here: Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, which opened the road to peace for us. I want to thank the President of Egypt, the King of Jordan, and the King of Morocco, represented here today, for their
partnership with us in our march towards peace.

But, more than anything, in the more than three years of this Government's existence, the Israeli people has proven that it is possible to make peace, that peace opens the door to a better economy and society; that peace is not just a prayer. Peace is first of all in our prayers, but it is also the aspiration of the Jewish people, a genuine aspiration for peace.

There are enemies of peace who are trying to hurt us, in order to torpedo the peace process. I want to say bluntly, that we have found a partner for peace among the Palestinians as well: the PLO, which was an enemy, and has ceased to engage in terrorism. Without partners for peace, there can be no peace. We will demand that they do their part for peace, just as we will do our part for peace, in order to solve the most complicated, prolonged, and emotionally charged aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This is a course which is fraught with difficulties and pain. For Israel, there is no path that is without pain. But the path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this to you as one who was a military man, someone who is today Minister of Defense and sees the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility, to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace. Even with Syria, is will be possible to make peace.

This rally must send a message to the Israeli people, to the Jewish people around the world, to the many people in the Arab world, and indeed to the entire world, that the Israeli people want peace, support peace. For this, I thank you.

In response to BF's posting of Rabin's speech:

First we see that Rabin did not always 'make nice' with militant Palestinians.

(emphasis mine)

EYE ON BALL FOR ISRAEL; Peace and Terror: Search for Balance
by Clyde Haberman
April 1, 1993

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has repeatedly said since he took office last July that talking peace with the Arabs is one thing and fighting Arabs who shoot and stab Israelis is something else entirely. His slogan is "We shall fight terrorism as if there is no peace process, and pursue the peace process as if there is no terrorism."

To Mr. Rabin, Israelis have to keep their eye on the ball, which means not letting bursts of Arab violence get them so hysterical that they lose sight of the bigger objective they have pursued for years: a peace treaty.

But that ball has been awfully elusive for many here after a violent March that came in like a lion and went out the same way, with 15 Israeli soldiers, policemen and civilians killed by Palestinian assailants -- the highest monthly toll in several years. About twice as many were wounded.

It does Israelis no good to hear that, by the traumatic standards of American big cities, 15 deaths in a month may not seem startling for a population of 5 million. New York City, with a population of about 7 million, often has 10 homicides in a single weekend. It certainly does them no good at all to hear that many more Palestinians, at least 26 in March, died in conflicts with Israeli soldiers. Sense of Vulnerability

There is an easily inflamed sense of vulnerability in this country born of the Nazi Holocaust, and with the press and television showing vivid images of spilled Jewish blood, no national leader could let the death count rise as it has without doing something.

On Tuesday, Mr. Rabin acted. He was not nearly as dramatic as in December, when he responded to another spurt of killings by expelling more than 400 accused Islamic militants from the territories to Lebanon. But he did enough so that, despite his own slogan, he may have wrapped the fight against terrorism and the Middle East peace talks into a tighter bundle.

Starting today, for an indefinite period, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are closed, meaning that military checkpoints have been set up to turn Palestinian vehicles around, including those carrying the 120,000 Arab workers with jobs in Israel. Jewish settlers in the territories and other Israelis, whose cars bear different license plates from those of Arabs, can drive past the checkpoints.

Even for Palestinians, however, the West Bank borders are porous, and the police today rounded up several hundred of them who were found to be in Israel in violation of the new orders. Tightening Controls
Military operations and hunts for wanted fugitives are to be intensified, Mr. Rabin said, and loosened regulations permit soldiers now to shoot at any armed Palestinian, whether or not he presents an immediate threat.

A main goal, the Prime Minister said, is to separate the two populations for a while so that tensions can subside. Indeed, the policy appeals to many Israelis on both the political right and left: the right because it makes it more difficult for would-be Arab killers to maneuver, the left because it means de facto recognition of the line separating the territories from pre-1967 Israel.

When asked by a television interviewer how long the closing will last, Mr. Rabin replied that it is up to the Palestinians.

"Dear friends, if you want to solve the problem, the place is around the negotiation table," he told them. "It is permissible for me to keep the territories closed for as long as is required."

That response was an example of how Israelis and Palestinians listen with
different ears. Many Israelis heard the call to the peace table, and sensed a reasonable gesture. To many Palestinians, it sounded like a threat: If you don't talk to us, the crackdown will continue.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DD1431F932A35757C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

And Natanyahu. certainly a hardliner, had no intention of making war and did make significant concessions to the Palestinians. The history since Rabin's pretty speech in 1995:

1995
On September 28, Arafat and Rabin sign the Taba agreement (known as Oslo II) in Washington to expand Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza and allow Palestinian elections (held on January 20, 1996). However, on November 4, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by Yigal Amir, an orthodox Jewish student opposed to Israeli withdrawals from the occupied West Bank. Shimon Peres becomes Prime Minister of Israel.

February--March 1996 A series of Hamas suicide bomb attacks kills 57 Israelis. Shimon Peres suspends negotiations with Syria. Hamas is an Islamist political group founded in 1988 that opposes Israel and rejects the Oslo peace process and other negotiations. Hamas is not an abbreviation but a nickname, and comes from Arabic for "zeal." The full name is Harakatu Mujawamati Islamiya, or Islamic Resistance Movement.

1996 In May, Likud candidate Binyamin Netanyahu wins the election for prime minister, defeating incumbent Shimon Peres, of the Labor party. Netanyahu had campaigned against the Labor party''s approach to the peace process, promising that he would provide "Peace with Security." Yet in September, violence claims the lives of 61 Arabs and 15 Israeli soldiers over Israel''s opening of an archaeological tunnel site close to Muslim shrines in Jerusalem.

January 17, 1997 Under the leadership of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel hands over 80% of the West Bank town of Hebron to Palestinian rule, but holds on to the remainder, where several hundred Jewish settlers live among 20,000 Palestinians.

October 23, 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu signs the Wye River Memorandum outlining further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank. The Wye River Memorandum resulted from meetings between President Bill Clinton and Netanyahu at the Wye Plantation in Maryland. The U.S. had been pressuring Israel to end 18 months of stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

1999 On May 19, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak is elected Prime Minister of Israel, defeating Likud party incumbent Binyamin Netanyahu. Barak campaigned on a platform of bringing an end to all of Israel''s conflicts with all its neighbors, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians.

On September 5, 1999, Israel and the Palestinian Authority sign a revised deal based on the stalled Wye River accord, aimed at reviving the Middle East peace process. On November 8, 1999 final status talks resume between Israel and the Palestinians.

2000 In February a summit between Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat breaks up over a disagreement on a promised Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank under the revised Wye accord. Final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are deadlocked as the deadline for a framework agreement (basic guidelines for an eventual final agreement for peace between Palestinians and Israelis) is missed. In March, Israel hands over part of the West Bank to Palestinians as part of a land transfer agreed to at the Wye River conferences of 1998. The land amounted to 6.1% of the total of the West Bank.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2001/promises/timeline4.html



And by 2000, the beat goes on. . .

It was Bill Clinton who nudged a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to set the seal on that accord by shaking hands with his old adversary, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, on the White House lawn.
But building on the Oslo accord proved to be one of the most daunting tasks of the 1990s.

Setbacks

Time and again the peace process has been derailed, whether by the suicide bombers of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, or by the hardline policies of Binyamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli Prime Minister who never really accepted the formula of swapping land for peace.

When Mr Netanyahu was defeated in elections last year by a former general, Ehud Barak, President Clinton's hopes rose. Here at last was a man he could work with, and who seemed to have new and bold ideas about what needed to be done.

The focus of peace-making was initially on wooing Syria's President Hafiz al-Assad. But even before his death in June, that hope had evaporated. And Mr Barak and Mr Clinton abruptly switched their efforts to the Palestinian track of the peace process.

In an effort to force the pace, President Clinton summoned an eager Mr Barak and an unwilling Mr Arafat to the presidential retreat of Camp David, only to find after more than two weeks of intense negotiations that the Palestinian leader stood firm in demanding East Jerusalem - with its important religious sites - as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/920067.stm

This is the introduction from the link I used to post Rabin's last speech. Introduction
Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin was assassinated by right-wing religious settler fanatic Yigal Amir at a giant peace rally on the evening of November 4, 1995. The rally had been called to protest violence that had been rising on both sides, and to reaffirm the commitment of the government and the Israeli people to peace. Amir assassinated Rabin in order to prevent the continuation of the peace process, as he said.

The assassination was preceded both by Palestinian violence in the territories, despite pledges by the PLO to renounce violence and terrorism, and by constant agitation by Israeli right-wing settlers and religious fanatics. Rabbis in the West bank gave sermons in which they proclaimed that Rabin was a traitor and a persecutor of the Jewish people, worthy of death. This agitation was aided and abetted by members of the opposition Likud party and other right-wing politicians. The Likud and the right had long since replaced themselves in the national consciousness of Israelis as the true "fathers" of the Jewish state, rather than the Zionist movement. They called themselves "The National Camp" (Mahaneh Leumi) as opposed to "The Other Camp." The implication that the opposition was composed of traitors and supporters of terror - "Ashafistim" was made either implicitly or explicitly at countless rallies. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu presided over a right wing rally at which posters were carried showing Yitzhak Rabin in the uniform of a Nazi SS officer. An atmosphere that legitimized violence against political leaders had been created.

Rabin had devoted his life to the defense and security of Israel. He played a key role in defending Jerusalem against the Palestinian blockade in 1948, served as Chief of Staff in the 1967 Six day war and as Prime Minister in 1976, presided over the daring raid that rescued a hijacked airliner at Entebbe in Uganda. These achievements were apparently unknown to settlers and their supporters, who were alienated from the historic mainstream of Zionism and from the democratic traditions of Israel.

Rabin's funeral was attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including HM King Hussein of Jordan, who broke the taboo of Arab leaders against visiting Jerusalem to pay tribute to his friend. US President Bill Clinton coined the epitaph for Rabin, "Shalom, Haver" - Goodbye, Friend.

But nothing could change the fact. Rabin was gone. The unthinkable had happened in Israel. Israel had entered upon a new era. Fanatic groups gave tacit approval to the assassination and justified it. Though opposition Likud leaders all disavowed any association with the act, and condemned the violence and the assassination, the act paved the way for the return of the Likud to power. Though politicians vowed that the course of Israeli democracy would not be determined by an assassin's bullet, it was. In a world of replaceable people, Yitshak Rabin was indispensable to the success of the peace process. It is likely that only he had the credentials and the commanding presence to lead Israel out of the mud of the occupation. Only his sure hand and clear mind could reassure Israelis that security issues would be handled correctly, and that the peace would be worth the sacrifice. Only Rabin had the understanding of the United States and the prestige in Arab countries and international forums to ensure that the PLO would keep their side of the bargain. With Rabin gone, the Israel Labor party began its slow and sure disintegration. Shimon Peres did not have the charisma and leadership ability to keep the party united and to attract voters. Aided by election fraud and Arab voters who stayed home, Benjamin Nethanyahu won the elections in 1999, and proceeded to adopt an aggressive policy of building settlements deep in Palestinian territories. As he alienated the United States and Arab countries, Nethanyahu was also unable to summon the support needed to quell growing Palestinian violence and lawlessness. The fate of the peace process was sealed. Aided by Palestinian and Israeli extremists, Yigal Amir got his wish.

Ami Isseroff

Biography - Yitzhak Rabin
http://www.mideastweb.org/rabin1995.htm

In today's The Observer: Israel: 60 years of hope and despair

Those maps from the print edition (The Observer, 29.04.08, page 19) are rather good

The Arabs started and lost two major wars with Israel. As a result, they forfeited territory. Moreover, the Arabs continued to attack Israel and Israelis, causing the latter to erect checkpoints and fences.

It is sad to look back and see what the Arabs gave up due to their intransigence vis-a-vis coming to terms with Israel.