Palestine accorded State status by UN

[Callie Del Noire]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20550864

I think that this COULD be a good thing. There has been a massive LACK of inertia on the part of the Israeli government for sometime, as well outright theft of lands that weren't theirs in the last few years. The US has done little to nothing to prod them into returning to practicing good faith measures.

In all honesty, the BEST solution to defusing the Israel/Palestine solution, as well as taking out the Hammas  control of the Palestinian authority would be to go 'yeah.. we need to give back this land.. and honor our past promises.'.

Don't see it happening though.

My take.. mostly as a semi-self-taught-informed outsider.

The Palestinians have been the kicking boy of the arab world for decades, used by everyone to throw at the Israelis.. and the Israeli government has been over backward to accomodate a small portion of their population (the Ultra-conservative Jews) and between these two issues.. this issue, which could have been fixed back in the 70s Camp David accords along with the issues between Egypt and Israel, has festered for far too long.

Neither side is in the wrong or in the right entirely.

[Black Hand]

Resident of Israel here. We have this problem. Only the far right really wants to continue the occupation just for the settlers sake. We have this problem though. No one here really thinks that if we were to leave the west bank, it would do anything besides give the Palestinians more room to attack us. When we left Gaza in good faith, the PA got overthrown and then Hamas started attacking us. I would love to end the blockade if that would solve anything, but if you think that will mean Hamas will stop attacking, I have a piece of land on Atlantis to sell you.

And while there is something to be said about giving the land to the PA, the PA is not particularly stable. The reason it maintains control of the west bank is because the Israelis keep Hamas out of action there. If we were to leave, I get the feeling the west bank would go Hamas too. And that is perfect breeding ground for another war. and then we'll win the war because Israel can wreck Hamas on it's worst day. And then Israel will be painted as a bad guy when we win the war. And then this whole fucking shinanigans will continue and no one wins. For peace to happen, sure the settlements need to stop. First the Palastinians need to get their shit together and stop supporting an organization that would rather a dead Jew then a living arab.

[Deamonbane]

I could be wrong about this, but wasn't the Hamas organized to stop the Israelis from killing and removing all Palestinians from the Middle East? By this I mean that, when there is no Israel to fight(As in, they stop trying to take back the Gaza Strip and lift the blockade) wouldn't Hamas suddenly lose all of it's use, and lose it's support? Hamas, the terrorist organization though it may be, needs a bad guy to keep it going. Remove the bad guy from the equation by turning him into the good guy, or at least just another guy, won't they stop fighting? Or at least, lose their support to fight, and, like you said, make it easier for them to be rooted out?

Despite all of the good intentions in the blockade, and this fighting, it is merely painting Hamas in a freedom-fighter, David vs Goliath light. And everyone knows that it is harder to find and root out a freedom fighter than to do the same with a 'terrorist'. If the bombings and shit like that keep happening, Israel is going to be doing the exact opposite of destroying Hamas: They will be making them stronger. Especially if Israel keeps hitting civilian targets.

My point being that you can't fight fire with fire, but if you suck all of the oxygen out...

[Callie Del Noire]

Ah glad to see you on Black Hand.. I would LOVE to hear a native look on it.

I know the Syrians are perfectly happy, when they aren't having their own civil war going on, to fight the Israelis to their last Palestian/Egyptian.

Like I said.. it seems to me.. (as an outsider looking in) that you got a lot of Islamic types who are perfectly happy to use anyone ELSE they can find to 'fight' the Israelis.. I know from the far away distance of the US that it seems to be solely a Jew vs Muslim problem.. but when I was in the gulf we noticed a LOT of ethnic classes between different groups of folks. (one of my guys got in a LOT of trouble for calling a man an Arab..turns out he was a Persian.. the kid didn't know the difference)

I get the feeling from my POV that a lot of this is each side has a small but influencial group that refuses to compromise for peace and that there are a LOT of outside interests who are perfectly wiling to keep things going the way they are.

As for Hammas Demonbane.. they are actually a 'late comer' to the issue I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#History

[Black Hand]

The victory conditions for Hamas is the complete removal of the Jewish state and the genocide or exile of the millions of Jews living in the country. Suffice to say these are entirely unacceptable terms.

And you are not wrong in lot of respects. At least not completely. Sometimes Israel is too liberal about the force it uses, often times making too many casualties for comfort. The problem is what happens if Israel stops the blockade. Then by all logic Hamas will be able to get more weapons and higher quality easier. When Hamas has more weapons they are more liable to attack Israel in a mass attack like the wave of 1000 rockets that attacked the south of Israel all this month (Yes even before the fighting started to you westerners. we were already at war three days before the hams leader was killed). And when such an attack happens, the Israeli goverment will no doubt be forced to retaliate. And even if they were to do so with zero civilian casualties, then it will still demonize Israel. We still end up looking like the bad guy, and Hamas gets stronger every time it shows itself as the ones willing to take the fight to the Israelis. So all that changes if the Israelis lift the blockade is that more jews will be killed. So you can see why from my perspective this seems like a terrible idea.

And Hamas are very inteligent enemies. do you want to know where they launch their rockets from? Hospitals, Schools, Private residences. that way whenever the Israelis catch one, there will always be civilian casualties. The majority of the Hamas weapons depots are in crammed hospitals. Crammed hospitals that Israel was even the one who built.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't. While Hamas is so implacable, there isn't a way that Israel can defend itself without making life in gaza hell. It's terrible, and I hate it, but I recognize that every inch of a better life we give them means a worse life for me.

[Black Hand]

Hamas fills a role that the PLO, Black September, and their forunners as well as the goverments of Syria, eygpt, and Jordan used to fill. Whenever Israel makes peace with one, another head rises up to bite us in the ass.

[Deamonbane]

You are right, it is completely unacceptable. And it is very good to have a first hand witness around here to explain it.

Well, I always agreed that the using of civilian shields during a war is unethical, and if you do that, you deserve to lose the war. Which was interesting since the Rebels in Libya did it a lot, and the media around here was wildly in support of them. But that is beside the point.

What seems to be the most logical solution to me is that Palestine gets a lifted blockade if the leaders and heads of the Hamas get turned into the UN forces and is not allowed to hold power there anymore, and the thing is disbanded. Of course, that's probably not going to happen... So the only way to do it would be(Once again, a naive view) Would be to incorporate Palestine and the Palestinians into Israel, and use that as a way to be able to have the UN, Israel, and those Palestinians that dislike them, to be able to find and get rid of them from the inside out. That way, they cease to be freedom fighters, and quickly become common criminals...

[Callie Del Noire]

What gets me is how LITTLE of the stuff that Hamas does on their own people gets out. What about the beating of all the supporters of Fatah? Or the harrasment/assault of women who don't follow the arabic traditions of dress that most folks think of when you say 'Muslim' these days. They are at least as bad on their own internal rivals as they are on Israel.

I knew about some of their storeage facilities being Mosques.. but Hospitals are new to me.

[Deamonbane]

Yes... hospitals... if you think about it, it a devilishly smart tactic. If your enemy hits you there, you can immediately cry foul... if they don't then you have a virtually untouchable base of operations... Not that I approve, mind...

[elone]

Without getting into the history of the middle east and who are the bigger terrorists, Israel or Hamas, it is easy to see the positions of both sides of the argument. However, the issue here is the Palestinian bid for non member status in the UN. The result has been Israeli withholding tax revenues and the threat of building of new settlements around Jerusalem as punishment for Abbas doing exactly what Israel did in 1948. Israel is afraid that Abbas will join the International Criminal court and charge Israel with war crimes and even possible rule on the legality of the settlements if that is possible.

These moves are already stirring up more condemnation from Europe and elsewhere. Israel is putting itself in a position where at some point the world will say enough of the settlements and begin to issue sanctions much in the manner of what happened to South Africa. The idea that Israel can continue forever to build settlements in the West Bank without repercussions is just not going to happen.

As for Hamas, they are the democratically elected party. Of course Israel and the US immediately renounced their election and Israel began to imprison their leaders, and  impose a blockade around Gaza. They even calculated the amount of caloric intake needed to sustain the population, and let that amount of food in to keep from having a humanitarian crisis. They have for years fired at people across the border, not allowing farmers into their fields they consider too close to the border. This is Palestinian land, not Israel. Targeted assassination have been going on for years. And we wonder why they are pissed off at Israel?

In the West Bank, the settlers are the terrorists, burning olive tress, destroying wells, defacing mosques, attacking civilians, and harassing people on the streets. They get away with this under the eyes of the IDF. Does anyone really believe that the Israeli government is unable to stop this? As for the IDF, they continue to blockade towns, break into peoples homes in the middle of the night arresting people without charges, gas, douse with sewage, and fire rubber bullets at international humanitarian protestors at the so called security wall that is in reality a thinly veiled land grab.

The Palestinians want and deserve a nation that is viable and contiguous in its territory. Israel wants security. Neither of these things are ever going to happen until enough pressure is put on both sides to get the job done. The only player in the world who could even remotely achieve this is the US, who doesn't want to do it.  As long as Netanyahu and the right wing are in charge, no peace will be achieved because he believes in his heart that Judea and Sumaria are part of Israel. Of, course, the rest of the world, including the US, see the settlements as illegal in international law.

The real solution is for Israel to go back to their 1967 borders, make Jerusalem an international city for Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike, and to get rid of the settlements. If the settlers wish to remain, let them, they can live in Palestine just like the Arabs do in Israel, under Palestinian authority. If need be, put in United Nations or American peacekeepers on the ground to assure the security of Israel. The other alternative is a one state solution which is demographic suicide for Israel as they would have a growing Palestinian population that would become equal to or a majority to the Jewish population. Of course a third scenario is that Abbas could disband the government and let Israel rule, in a complete colonial fashion. Then once again as the occupying power, Israel would have to take responsibility for the well being of all Palestinians, financially and morally.

The problem is this:

Damned if we do, damned if we don't. While Hamas is so implacable, there isn't a way that Israel can defend itself without making life in gaza hell. It's terrible, and I hate it, but I recognize that every inch of a better life we give them means a worse life for me.

So in order for Israel to prosper, Palestinians have to suffer. Not acceptable.

[Moraline]

Here's something to think about.

All of the Palestinian community around where I live, fled Palestine because of Hamas - not because of Israel.

[Callie Del Noire]

Here's something to think about.

All of the Palestinian community around where I live, fled Palestine because of Hamas - not because of Israel.

A lot of Terrorist groups do suppression efforts on their own people. Hamas has beaten and killed rivals in the past. Both the IRA and the Protestant equals have done similar actions to cement their positions.

[Cyrano Johnson]

The trouble is that the far right of the Israeli political spectrum is in the driver's seat of Israeli politics. And this part of the Israeli political spectrum has never been in the least concerned with "making peace" with anyone, and has persistently made a farce out of the "peace process" whenever there was one (when Yitzhak Rabbin showed some actual commitment to make it work, it was one of these right-wing whackjobs who assassinated him, not an Arab). It essentially used "negotiations" as cover for advancing its settlement agenda (and steadily establishing "facts on the ground" to make a Palestinian state nonviable), and then rent its garments and wailed to the heavens whenever the Palestinians worked up the nerve to fight back: an act which has so persistently fooled the center and left of Israeli politics that the right-wing racist narrative of Palestinian resistance (it's always Israel making the concessions and seeking peace, always the perfidious Arab undermining it, Israel always 'retaliating' and the evil Arab always 'attacking') has gradually become the Israeli narrative.

And it's bullshit. And the endless bullshitting about this is the reason why Israel is an issue that's begun to divide the Jewish community abroad (even as the right and ultra-orthodox have begun to fatally divide Israel itself) while it's steadily soured most of the world on Israel. For a long time, Israel was able to sell the image of itself as a liberal state acting on ethically liberal lines abroad. But since 1967 -- and especially since the Eighties -- that image has gradually corroded due to the frequency with which the standard pro-Israel line on any given event is simply, and pretty obviously, bullshit. People don't like being treated like chumps, they don't like being played, they don't like being lied to; they didn't and don't like it coming from Arab states, and they don't care for it from Israelis either*. The unflattering comparison of Israel with apartheid South Africa is harder and harder to avoid. It's on the surface, now. And once you've seen Jews being accused, abused and slandered as "self-hating" and "anti-Semitic" by other Jews for daring to point any of this out -- which now happens frequently -- the narrative that any departure from the official Israeli line is "anti-Semitism" loses its lustre.

* Western journalists in the Middle East during the Civil War in Lebanon had a name for the shapeless, formless enemy all the factions claimed ultimately to be fighting: it was "the Plot," the universal paranoia about foreign perfidy and elaborate conspiracies. What's noticeable about Israeli rhetoric since Lebanon is how much "the Plot" has infected it. People -- particularly Israelis, for some reason -- are prone to comparing the Occupation to what the Nazis did; but I think the truth is that Israel hasn't become anything like Nazi Germany at all. It's becoming like any other Middle Eastern state, right down to absorbing the region's age-old air of paranoia and hyperbole.

Unfortunately, precisely because of the "facts on the ground" the Israeli right was able to achieve, the "two-state solution" is a mirage, now. You have only to look at a current map of the West Bank to understand what a joke it is. Israel has too much population in place, has invested too much in infrastructure and the defense of that infrastructure, to just walk away from all of that. It's never happening, because any attempt to make it happen would probably mean civil war in Israel; it would certainly make the drama over the Gaza pull-out look like a family picnic. The UN recognition is therefore, I'm betting, far too late to really accomplish anything except dragging out a doomed farce of a "peace process" in which neither side believes and to which neither side is committed. The only real solution that can now be hoped for is a one-state solution in which the Arabs demand full democratic rights within Israel itself, challenging the premise of an ethnic state.

[Black Hand]

One state solution can't work. We hate each other WAY too much. Immediate withdraw is impossible as well. Cyrano is right in his statement that Israel is too engaged on the ground for such an action. A gradual withdrawal to borders that likely aren't EXACTLY '67 because those simply don't match reality anymore seems remotely plausible (See the offer that Israel made at Camp David in 2000 for the terms I deem exceptible), but not until the Netanyahu is out of office and Hamas isn't there to swing public and governmental opinion away from any more mutually functional relationship. Which is unlikely, seeing as Hamas hasn't promised to lay down arms until Israel immediately accepts all of their demands.

So really we're pretty fucked on that count to. Really, I'd like to be the first one to admit that all of this LOOKS REALLY REALLY BAD. Netanyahu's ability to remain in office is entirely because the Israeli liberals who were working to fix things have been castrated since our big idea of disengagement went tits over end.

This is the opinion that seems to be common consensus. How can you tell us that it's a good idea to eave the west bank when the last time we left a single piece of soil, it pretty much turned into a safe haven for Hamas to fire rockets at us? And Abbas, reasonable as he might be, doesn't have the most stable government. If Israel leaves the PA will almost certainly lose power, Considering it is a wildly unpopular dictatorship who's army forces are small and badly armed. If Hamas controlled Gaza is bad, what would Hamas controlled West Bank look like? How would Israel respond to that. Even that version of Hamas likely couldn't beat Israel in a war. It would be horrific. More for them even then for us.

If the situation now looks bad, which it does, can you imagine how horrible it would be if that scenario came to pass? We wouldn't be talking about one or two thousand deaths a year, we'd be talking tens or hundreds of thousands. Certainly it's an assumption and certainly that might not be result, but that feels much more likely a result then Israel withdrawing and then conditions and relations improving on both sides.

You'll find most Israelis are not the settlers. We want the end of the blockade and the occupation more then anyone in the west. But, we don't want a stupid or badly thought out solution being implemented. We already had that in the Gaza withdrawl. Is there anyone who still thinks that was the right move?

[Cyrano Johnson]

One state solution can't work. We hate each other WAY too much.

Hope that proves not to be true, because the alternatives all look a lot shittier. I do however hold out hope that most Israelis are not the settlers, and the most Palestinians do not want to drive anyone into the sea -- any serious study of either population shows both these things to be true over considerable spans of time -- the trick is getting them each to actually believe it about the other. A pro-democracy movement within a state might remove some of the impediments (like the fear of competition or attacks from a foreign state) to their figuring this out.

Netanyahu's ability to remain in office is entirely because the Israeli liberals who were working to fix things have been castrated since our big idea of disengagement went tits over end.

From the outside -- and this is what Sharon's detractors said at the time -- "unilateral disengagement" didn't look like a "liberal" idea at all, and never looked like either a good idea or a step toward peace. It was essentially the creation of Gaza as a big open-air prison, and the criticism of it was that this truncated echo of independence was going to be played up by Israel as a "test case" for Palestinian self-government while essentially being set up to fail, and thus providing an excuse for an agenda of open-ended conflict. It looks to me like that's exactly what's happened.

[Chris Brady]

So in order for Israel to prosper, Palestinians have to suffer. Not acceptable.

And in order for Palestine to prosper Israel must die to a man, woman, child.

Pick ONE.

[Cyrano Johnson]

What gets me is how LITTLE of the stuff that Hamas does on their own people gets out. What about the beating of all the supporters of Fatah?

Well, you know, after Fatah lost the election, many Fatah elements did after all refuse to be governed by and in fact attempt openly to attack, kidnap and assassinate Hamas officials and personnel. If you're going to bring up the Hamas-Fatah conflict -- which did indeed "get out," BTW -- that's sort of an important detail, isn't it.

Speaking of bullshit, a great deal of it swarms around Hamas. Hamas is far from liberal or squeaky-clean; on the other hand a great deal of the pro-Israeli line about it is bullshit, and easily disprovable bullshit at that. There is much banging on about how Hamas' victory condition is driving the Jews into the sea, but in fact Hamas has long since publicly accepted the basic "two-state solution," along with right of return (falsely portrayed by the bullshitters as tantamount to Jewish genocide) as its victory conditions. [EDIT: BTW, this also bleeds over into immense amounts of bullshit about Hamas and rockets. The common Israeli narrative is that Hamas always just shows up and starts firing rockets randomly, for no good reason; but in fact that's not what happens. It's not that Hamas is always in the right, but there's generally a context of Israeli military actions and pressures that's always conveniently left out of the pro-Israeli, anti-Hamas account. Which is bullshit.] Perhaps Hamas knows perfectly well that no Israeli will now accept the basic two-state solution, but they also know that the "facts on the ground" are a result of Israeli intransigence and deception, not Arab, and so on the world stage it redounds to their benefit. And to an extent, if this was their calculation, they would be right; that's how the UN recognition scenario even became possible.

This is what should give Israel supporters pause. They're very close to completely losing the advantage they once had in manipulating international opinion, even of international Jewish opinion. The Arab side doesn't need now, to whatever extent it ever did, to resort to deception to portray the Israelis as the "rejectionist" party, and that's a huge advantage in the international arena. The facts speak for themselves, and the fog of bullshit that pro-Israeli parties have attempted to obfuscate them with has hugely, and probably irreparably, damaged Israeli credibility abroad. Signing on to the claim that the Arabs just want to drive the Jews into the sea is just signing on to drive another nail into the coffin of that credibility; it would've played in the 1970s, maybe for a time in the 1980s, but it's definitely insupportable now and Israel's far right and their supporters have yet to cotton to that. They're the mirror of the American right wing, riding decades-old con games into the ground while affecting not to notice that the cons are past their sell-by date.

The outcome of all this is that Israel has only two real options: one, try to hold on to the occupation in perpetuity (a doomed strategy when the virtually inevitable one-state pro-democracy campaign materializes, a campaign in its turn which would also provide much greater purchase for the right-of-return campaign); two, try to hold on to the Jewish State by physically deporting the bulk of the Arab populace of the West Bank and perhaps the Gaza Strip (in which case Israel is virtually certain to find out what it's like to really become an international pariah state). Those options are both unpalatable, but the third way was the two-state solution, and unfortunately the fateful lack of push-back at Rabin's assassination put that one permanently in the grave.

[Callie Del Noire]

Well, you know, after Fatah lost the election, many Fatah elements did after all refuse to be governed by and in fact attempt openly to attack, kidnap and assassinate Hamas officials and personnel. If you're going to bring up the Hamas-Fatah conflict -- which did indeed "get out," BTW -- that's sort of an important detail, isn't it.

What about the charges of voter suppression, kidnappings, assaults on Fatah supporters before and after the election. As well as ongoing attacks, and assaults, as well as attempts to enforce 'Islaminization' by elements of Hamas?

I'm not saying Fatah is white as the driven snow, to be honest.. NO one in the region is after all these years, but Hamas isn't a good guy. Fatah is more progressive than Hamas. They want self-sovereignty. Hamas has mortgaged their primacy to elements like Iran and the more radical elements in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.. who are perfectly happy to fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian.

As for your assertion that NO Israeli is wililng to go with the two state solution.. that has been refuted right here. Black Hand has said as much.

The problem, like here in the US, is in the massive conservative elements in their government has sold their souls to a small extremist religious faction whose outlooks and goals are not the mainstream ones.

[Cyrano Johnson]

What about the charges of voter suppression, kidnappings, assaults on Fatah supporters before and after the election.

Periodic conflicts between Fatah and Hamas go back a long way, like a lot of grudges in the region. However, the post-election Hamas-Fatah conflict was pretty definitely instigated by Fatah, not Hamas. (By most accounts, the elections that brought Hamas to power met inernational standards for freedom, fairness and transparency. The election was described as peaceful by international observers. Fatah's alternate account of it does not hold water, nor does their story that it was Hamas who instigated the post-election violence. The uncomfortable reality was that Hamas beat them because Fatah's continued participation in an increasingly fictional farce of a peace process had robbed them of credibility; many Westerners prefer the Fatah story because it relieves them of facing up to the reality that the preace process had become a farce... which would also require acknowledging who made it that way.)

There are no white hats. I'm not remotely saying Hamas are "the good guys," just that the persistent narrative that portrays them as being entirely irrational, savage, genocidal and implacable is bullshit. Being aware of their brutality need not mean signing on to an irrational and propagandistic view of them.

As for your assertion that NO Israeli is wililng to go with the two state solution.. that has been refuted right here. Black Hand has said as much.

No, Black Hand is willing to accept a highly modified version of it, not the actual pre-1967 borders (which classically is what the two-state solution means). Things have evolved to the point where most Israelis view the basics of the two-state solution -- those which would render the second state, Palestine, actually viable -- as unrealistic or dangerous. And because their right wing was given its druthers in the West Banks, it's entangled them there to the point where this is de facto correct; the Hamas insistence on the actual core of that bargain is very probably a deliberate means of bludgeoning the Israelis with their own accumulated deceptions.

[Ironwolf85]

we are facing a political Gordian Knot, and I can see why long ago Alexander said "fuck it, just cut the rope"
I'm not suggesting that mind you, but I can see the attraction

[Dashenka]

This whole Palestina vs Israel is a pointless debate. Both nations are too stubborn to accept the other and to have a lasting peace. Palestine is bombing Israel for fun and Israel are taunting Palestine by building houses on (acclaimed) Palestina land. It's like kindergarten really, with two kids bullying each other.

They WANT to provoke each other, it's like their sole reason for existance. Let us, the rest of the world, for the sake of peace, not get involved. When they stop getting attention, they will stop. Works with kids, works with dogs so should work with Israel and Palestine.

Or..

Send some UN troops as peacekeepers and somebody for the love of God tell the Israeli government to make apologies for the Turks that have been shot on that 'conviscated' relief ship. Shooting innocent people trying to send help out to Palestine?? That's low even for Israeli standards.

I should stop now.

[Cyrano Johnson]

IDF has never shown any compunction about killing UN troops, unfortunately. Someone would have to essentially decide to invade the region, disarm all parties and enforce a truce. Not possible: Israel is nuclear-armed and would probably lash out at the first sign of such a development. (Shame the "just ignore them" plan wasn't easier. Maybe the time will eventually come when the MidEast is less strategically important.)

[Dashenka]

As long as we got Russia and other CIS states, who needs the middle east? It's good for the weapon industry but other than that there is no significant meaning that other countries cannot fullfil.

[Moraline]

The issue in the Middle East is two fold.

1) The Arab nations refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. So the only thing what would keep them from conflict is the complete removal of the Israeli nation.
2) Israel refuses to leave. (Call it history, call it whatever.)

The entire conflict between Israel and the Middle East all revolves around the land that Israel occupies. No border will ever be good enough to any of the countries involved. Everything else that happens is just a symptom of this problem.

The only current solution seems to be that Israel has to dissolve as a country or smash the Arab nations into submission. Which is essentially what they've had to do numerous times. (See the Six Days War for incredible detail about what's wrong in the Middle East as far as Israel is concerned.)

Israel's founding was preceded by more than 50 years of efforts to establish a sovereign state as a homeland for Jews. The1917 Balfour Declaration asserted the British Government's support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Palestine became a British mandate following the end of World War I (1914-1918).

Immediately after the end of British mandate on May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed, and the U.S. recognized Israel that same day. Palestinians in Palestine and neighboring Arab states rejected a 1947 UN partition plan that would have divided Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, and the area has seen periods of invasions and armed conflict since 1948.
~ (full article) http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3581.htm

That is where the modern conflict started.

I see why Palestine is upset. I see why Israel has no choice but to fight.

An Unlikely Peace:

They both have to agree to current boundaries and agree to live in peace. Changing or fighting over boundaries doesn't do any good. There are no boundaries that will make anyone happy. If they can negotiate a redraw it's fine, but it's unlikely they'll ever find a happy ground.

Both sides need to agree to live in peace and mean it, then they both need to suppress their own militants aggressively.

They need to open borders and trade with one another in peace. Closed borders can't work because too many countries there are landlocked - trade has to be open and free.

[Cyrano Johnson]

As long as we got Russia and other CIS states, who needs the middle east? It's good for the weapon industry but other than that there is no significant meaning that other countries cannot fullfil.

Well... I am told there's a certain amount of oil there...

[Dashenka]

Kazakhstan's got oil. Where do you think Dubai gets its oil from?

[Cyrano Johnson]

Kazakhstan's got oil. Where do you think Dubai gets its oil from?

The UAE actually has more than double Kazakhstan's reserves, or did as of 2010. A useful guide as to who's got the oil:



More than 60% of the remaining reserves are in the Middle East.

[Deamonbane]

Really? *thinks* I was under the impression that Russia holds quite a few of the largest oil reserves, with Venezuela and Brazil holding many rather important ones as well...

[Cyrano Johnson]

Really? *thinks* I was under the impression that Russia holds quite a few of the largest oil reserves, with Venezuela and Brazil holding many rather important ones as well...

Oh they're significant. You'll see them reflected on the map I linked. But yes, the biggest reserves are quite definitely the Middle Eastern reserves.

[Moraline]

I don't think I am reading that map correctly.

Here's a statistic:

"Alberta(Canada) ranks third, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, in terms of proven global crude oil reserves."
~ http://www.energy.alberta.ca/oilsands/791.asp

[Cyrano Johnson]

"Alberta(Canada) ranks third, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, in terms of proven global crude oil reserves."
~ http://www.energy.alberta.ca/oilsands/791.asp

The map is being reshuffled recently as new technology makes previously untapped fields exploitable. The bulk of the added reserves being claimed for Alberta* and Venezuela are tar sands, once thought to be unexploitable (and still heavily controversial as to whether the cost/ benefit ratio of exploiting them is worthwhile). The 2010 map is tracking the reserves available to the traditional (and still most economical) drilling techniques.

Even counting the tar sands, though, note that six of the ten largest reserves are still in the Middle East or North Africa. Point being it doesn't really matter the metric you use, Middle Eastern oil is hugely economically and strategically important. It will remain so for some decades more -- although less so once the fastest-depleting and largest of them, in Saudi Arabia, is mostly tapped.

(* Bit of propaganda in the third-in-the-world claim from the Alberta government, though. I've lived most of my life here and trust me, the Alberta government is not above a bit of creative accounting to make its tar sands project look rosier than it actually is.)

[Moraline]

The figures of Alberta's oil is well known. That link was from Alberta but all you need to do is google or youtube Tar Sands to find out plenty of sources to back that claim up. Some oil companies think there maybe more oil in Alberta then all the Middle East - I've yet to see that proof but watch a few documentaries on youtube for the info.  Whether it's hard to get out of the ground or not, dozens of companies are going ahead with massive operations to extract it.

Alberta, Canada Oil is real. In 10 years, you won't need oil from the Middle East. Our oil might be a bit more expensive because it's in the sand but it's still oil.

[Cyrano Johnson]

The figures of Alberta's oil is well known. That link was from Alberta but all you need to do is google or youtube Tar Sands to find out plenty of sources to back that claim up. . . dozens of companies are going ahead with massive operations to extract it.

The well-known figure is quoted in the WikiPedia article I just linked; it doesn't accord with the Alberta government's claim. And like I said, there is controversy about whether the endeavour is really worthwhile. (Basically, it would take a lot worse than the current levels of unrest in the Middle East for it to make Iranian or Saudi oil look irrelevant. I certainly don't see it happening in the next ten years.) There is of course plenty of tar sands propaganda floating around on the 'net; I would be wary of taking any of it at face value. A lot of it comes from people who, like the Alberta government, are the opposite of disinterested analysts.

EDIT: In the bigger picture, I think the tar sands are likely to be something of a sideshow. The real question of the next few decades is whether solar, an actually renewable resource, can be made economical. There is no scenario in which oil becomes unimportant, but there are possible scenarios that don't involve running tar sands pipelines through crucial watersheds. Since I'm rather attached to the civilized luxury of potable water, I think it might be nice to see those explored with a bit more priority. (That won't necessarily eliminate the Middle East from the equation either, though; Saudi Arabia would be an ideal frontier for the development of large-scale solar power.)

[Moraline]

More off topic Tar Sands and Oil talk

Whether the Tar Sands are worth it or not is a moot point. Dozens of major oil companies have already bought land and are currently in the process of setting up massive Tar Sands oil extraction and refinery plants. If you look up the Wiki article on Tar Sands you'll see a huge list of already approved mines/plants that are in process of being built.

Whether it is good or not, doesn't matter anymore. People are already doing it. It will take 2-4 years for most of those refineries to fully come online but they are already happening. These oil companies have invested 100's of millions of dollars into them. It's not stopping - short of a massive change of government policy. Which I don't see happening.

It's a lot further along then you realize.

Oil is essential and it'll be extracted from the ground no matter what. The world is only using more of it and not less. The oil that we use to produce power/operate machinery only consumes a little over half the oil we pull out of the ground. The other almost half is used for other products (asphalt, plastics, etc..) 

I'll stop with the digression though.. back on topic...

Oil isn't the reasoning though for Palestine and Israel's conflict.

Palestinians want their land back. Israel believes it's theirs. - See my previous post with the real cause for the conflict between the nations. That and the other Arab nations want the land too.

All I know for certain, is that I don't see any end in sight for the conflict. Most governments in the middle east are extremists, even the moderates are extreme by North American standards. I personally find the tension to be intimidating and frightening.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Whether the Tar Sands are worth it or not is a moot point. . . It's a lot further along then you realize.

I happen to know people who live and work in Fort Mac, and I'm plenty conversant with how far along it is, thanks. However, mining projects are known to fail, or to have false starts, no matter how many people have invested in them or how far along they get or how much propaganda is produced by the investors. If the tar sands become nonviable, the investment will shift elsewhere. That's ultimately how these things work. (EDIT: Not that I think absolute failure is likely. Oil is being shipped and money being made from the tar sands right now, and at some level that will continue to be true; the levels will vary along with the economy. But I can pretty much promise you that anyone who is telling you that the tar sands will produce "energy independence" or will eclipse mideast oil in the next decade is bullshitting you.)

The simple fact of the matter is that the economic viability of tar sands extraction is fragile in a way that traditional drilling and reserves are not. The smart bet is therefore that the traditional drilling and reserves will remain more important for a long time to come, and that tar sands are never likely to be the world's leading source of energy in any form.

Oil isn't the reasoning though for Palestine and Israel's conflict.

It is however the biggest reason that it's strategically important. Without Mid-East oil, Israel's right wing would not have a major superpower backing its most radical impulses come what may; the US does this because it believes Israel to be a crucial ally in a crucial region. (I don't think it gets much for its investment, but that's the logic.)

Those factors shape the resolution of colonial conflicts, and that's what Israel is (understanding as one might be about the motivations behind it). Without that unquestioning external backing, the whole project of political Zionism would quickly find its options narrowing, muc as happened in South Africa. With that backing, it has little motivation to come to terms. That's why the conflict is likely to drag out... but it doesn't make the outcomes rosy for Israel, it just prolongs and worsens the divisions already created both in the Israeli populace and in world Judaism by the brutal spectacle of occupation, and increases the likelihood of one-state-democracy campaigning by the Palestinians that will be much harder to oppose credibly.

Of course in a cynical mood, one might say that no "two-state" reconciliation was ever really possible -- that both sides just used it as a transitional demand while allowing their so-called "extremists" take the blame for pushing the long-term agenda ("oh, those crazy settlers, what will we ever do with them" / "oh, those nasty suicide bombers, we really just want peace"). That's highly speculative, though.

(EDIT: At any rate, there is in fact much less to fear from "extremism" of governments in the region now than there historically has been. Iran is well past the peak of the extremes of the Islamic Revolution. Iraq had declined into senescence under Saddam, and since the disastrous invasion is now basically an Iranian client. Saudi Arabia, for all its support of Wahhabism, has never in the past fifty years been more concerned with anything than with oil profits. Egypt's stance of accommodation toward Israel remains intact, Muslim Brotherhood government or not. Israel is no longer even a unilateral nuclear threat in the region as it was for several decades before the early 21st century. There is no government in the region that's eager to renew the 1948 war -- if anything Iran is a bigger worry for most of the Arab world -- and other governments feel much less threatened by Israel ever since Hezbollah demonstrated in the recent "July War" that the Merkava tank could be stopped with the right tactics. Israel's real problem now is the blind alley its own intransigence has led it to.)

(Further edited to remove overuse of the word "ultimately.")

[Dashenka]

Really? *thinks* I was under the impression that Russia holds quite a few of the largest oil reserves, with Venezuela and Brazil holding many rather important ones as well...

Russia has gas, not oil. I think Russia holds the largest gas reserves.

Back to the Palestine/Israel conversation, because there is a relation to the oil. The ONLY reason (self claimed) world leading nations like America and the EU still support Israel, even after so many international war crimes they commit on very large scale, is because they are the only western oriented country in the middle east. If these countries let Israel go as an ally, they won't have 'friends' in the middle east and they cannot monitor what is going on over there.

If America and Europe really condamn what Israel is doing on the westbank by building houses and attacking relief ships in the Mediterranean Sea, they should let Israel know, and not just with words. Israel is behaving the way they are because they have the full support of Europe and America. These two nations/regions have the power to stop the 'war' by telling off Israel and their criminal government.

I believe that this protectiveness towards Israel is the reason why the Russian government is against any military intervention in Syria. If there is going to be a military intervention in Syria, there should be one in Israel as well to relief them from power, which there will never be.

Unfortunately

[Moraline]

I think it's way to popular to condemn Israel. I'm not saying they are saints or even the good guys.

There is no good guy over there and no one is innocent. This is the reason that the US has trouble finding a way to prevent further bloodshed.

Hamas hides behind a human shield wall then cries fowl when Israel attacks them. Meanwhile Hamas blows up bombs in the middle of open air markets killing innocent people.

How is Israel to fight back against an enemy that does this?

What do people want Israel to do? Do you want them to just give up their land, homes, and dissolve their Country?

The Palestinian militants and citizens alike as well as the rest of the Arab nations have said time and time again that nothing else will make them happy. They want the complete and absolute dissolving of the Israel country. (There are numerous interviews, docu's, news articles, etc showing multiple political figures and citizens of the mid east all saying this.)

That's like the native North Americans telling all of the other people to get out of the US. Israel won't do it without a fight.

Oil, international politics, all of the rest of it doesn't matter. It's all about Holy Land and a Holy War for every nation in the Mid-East.

Note: The only reason that Israel hasn't already steamrolled across many nations of the Mid-East is because the US & UN have stopped them. Israel has been more then powerful enough to do it for decades now.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Like I said earlier in the thread, the view that portrays Hamas as just irrationally and savagely on the attack all the time is bullshit. (It's the same bullshit that used to be deployed against the PLO for that matter.) Israel is and always has been an active participant and frequent instigator in the violence and one of two parties "hiding behind a human shield wall and then crying foul."

The line that the only thing the Arabs will accept is the Jews driven into the sea is also bullshit. The various Arab parties to the conflict have far more officially and consistently said that they're willing to accept the two-state solution. That includes Hamas, by the way. So "what do you want Israel to do, just dissolve?" is a loaded and inaccurate question based a bullshit reduction of the Arab world to the most extreme views expressed therein. (If someone pulled that with the Israelis, you'd have no trouble identifying it as anti-Semitism, right?)

What Israel should have done was not allow the settler movement to scuttle the two-state solution; it wasn't the Arabs who destroyed that process. I really do think allowing the far right to kill Rabin without consequence was the turning point there: had Israeli leadership stood firm, chased down the murderers and disavowed the settler agenda, it could probably by now have had a stable Jewish state and a Palestinian buffer zone beholden to it for protection.

Now that it's fucked that up, there are no good options. Israel can basically only hope to try to sell some thin parody of the two-state solution to Hamas (which won't accept it, since there is no way to build a viable state on what's left); or hold on to the Jewish state by perpetuating the occupation indefinitely, which of course is monstrous and will continue to destroy its reputation and credibility around the world.

In the long term the advantage lies with the Arabs. The Middle East is not North America, however much the original Zionists fantasized it would be; the Palestinians will not fade away or quietly moulder on reserves, which is much as it irritates the Israelis is an inescapable fact. The sympathy Israel won in the wake of the Holocaust (and also, now conveniently forgotten, the plain fact that none of the victorious Allies wanted the Jews in their backyard) was real and understandable, but that world has waned -- replaced by one in which the reform and conservative wings of Judaism have been set at odds over the question of Israel -- so the rationale of the Israeli state as sole protection of the Jews has likewise waned. And all the "he started it" games in the world can't change the fact that one side here are clearly the colonialists: the Palestinians didn't travel halfway around the world to dispossess the Jews. That will all be hard to escape once the Palestinians decide (and they're already moving toward it) to go for one-state democracy instead of the two-state mirage.

So, I really don't know what Israel should do at this point. Invest in a time machine? There's a point beyond which one has just shat the bed so badly that there is no cleaning it.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Note: The only reason that Israel hasn't already steamrolled across many nations of the Mid-East is because the US & UN have stopped them. Israel has been more then powerful enough to do it for decades now.

That was long thought to be true. Fortunately, Israel actually accidentally self-disproved it with the June War disaster (EDIT: sorry, I mean the July War), where they attempted just this in Lebanon and failed. Nobody doubts that Israel could overcome a conventional attack, but the threat of its "steam-rolling" the region is a lot more distant than it once was. (This actually is a good thing in some ways: a lot of "drive the Jews into the sea" sentiment in the region was based on the military threat Israel posed.)

[Moraline]

I don't really see how it was disproved with that conflict? Israel never even used tactical nukes or the rest of it's massive missle stockpiles in that conflict - they were holding back big time.

"The conflict is believed to have killed at least 1,191 Lebanese people, and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis. After the ceasefire, some parts of southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to Israeli unexploded cluster bomblets." ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War (from your link)

Also, it was only stopped when the UN brokered a peace treaty. If left unchecked and if Israel had put their full might into the offensive they could have did a lot more devastation to Lebanon. The Hezbollah is lucky the UN intervened.

Israel can never stop guerrillas or terrorists but they can very easily decimate any country in the region. It's only UN & US threat that keeps them from doing it.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I don't really see how it was disproved with that conflict? Israel never even used tactical nukes or the rest of it's massive missle stockpiles in that conflict - they were holding back big time.

The central myth of the IDF was supposed to be that it could reproduce Six-Day War-style whoop-ass on demand against any Arab force if it really, really wanted to. Having declared that it really, really wanted to and then having to settle for gaining a thin strip of territory from Hezbollah when their war aim was to wipe them out puts a pretty large puncture in that myth, which is why Olmert came in for such a drubbing on the home front after the war had fizzled out. Saying "they didn't even use their nukes" is beside the point -- they weren't supposed to need nukes to wipe out Hezbollah -- and besides Israel is also no longer a unilateral Mideast nuclear power: any deployment of Israeli nukes is now at large risk of ingniting wider conflagration with Pakistan and then India.

[Oniya]

Just as a point, using nukes on land that you intended to be habitable later would be particularly idiotic.

[Lithos]

Technically more about how much later but generally yes :p

[Moraline]

The central myth of the IDF was supposed to be that it could reproduce Six-Day War-style whoop-ass on demand against any Arab force if it really, really wanted to. Having declared that it really, really wanted to and then having to settle for gaining a thin strip of territory from Hezbollah when their war aim was to wipe them out puts a pretty large puncture in that myth, which is why Olmert came in for such a drubbing on the home front after the war had fizzled out. Saying "they didn't even use their nukes" is beside the point -- they weren't supposed to need nukes to wipe out Hezbollah -- and besides Israel is also no longer a unilateral Mideast nuclear power: any deployment of Israeli nukes is now at large risk of ingniting wider conflagration with Pakistan and then India.

The enemy suffered 10x the number of causalities. Hezbollah was not going to win that conflict - they lived because the UN stopped Israel.

I don't think anyone would expect the same type of action as the 6 Day War but it's pretty clear from the conflict that you posted that Israel was by far the more superior military force. I posted the base stats that showed what happened.

Also, I don't believe that Israel was intending to take over Lebanon in that conflict. As I recall from the article it was a retaliation for missile strikes by Hezbollah. The intent of Israel was to see that the Hezbollah couldn't do it again. Which they succeeded in doing by taking that thin strip of land and beating the living tar out of Lebanon until the UN stopped them. Then the UN brokered a peace treaty that was supposed to disarm the Hezbollah - that's why Israel agreed to it. Hezbollah didn't disarm, but they certainly didn't try that stunt again because they knew they couldn't win a direct conflict with the Israeli war machine.

I could be wrong about the intent to gain ground but the stats are clear about who was winning that conflict. It most certainly wasn't Hezbollah.

Just as a point, using nukes on land that you intended to be habitable later would be particularly idiotic.

To get back to the nukes for a moment - Keep in mind that Israel doesn't want to take over the other countries. They want to live in peace in the land that they've already occupied. So bombing other countries isn't really that big of a deal to them accept for the factors that Cyrano mentioned but those other far off countries that have their own set of problems.

Also, remember that every country in the middle east hates the other and they've all betrayed one another multiple times over the last 50+ years(and even longer.) They may all be united in their hatred of Israel but they are not united in their support of one another.

Also in most cases they are barely maintaining stable governments within their own countries. As we know over the last couple years some of them are in the middle of currently crumbling governments.

Again it bares repeating. I'm not supporting Israel or any Mid-East country.

I'm just saying that this isn't a conflict about oil. The media paints the oil picture for oil hungry North Americans but on the ground in the mid-east this conflict is about the Holy Land.

[Oniya]

To get back to the nukes for a moment - Keep in mind that Israel doesn't want to take over the other countries. They want to live in peace in the land that they've already occupied. So bombing other countries isn't really that big of a deal to them accept for the factors that Cyrano mentioned but those other far off countries that have their own set of problems.

Even detonating nukes near land that you want to be habitable in the immediate future is usually dis-advised.  I imagine if the U.S. dropped nukes on northern Mexico, the folks down in south-western Texas, southern Arizona and southern New Mexico would be rather peeved at the resulting conditions.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I don't think anyone would expect the same type of action as the 6 Day War but it's pretty clear from the conflict that you posted that Israel was by far the more superior military force. I posted the base stats that showed what happened.

In a conflict where a supposedly elite conventional force manages to maneuver a guerilla force like Hezbollah into conventional engagements -- which is what happened in 2006 -- what should happen if the conventional force is living up to its hype (especially when it's hype like the IDF's) is that the guerillas should get flattened. Not bloodied, not disproportionately damaged, but DESTROYED. Guerilla irregulars are not designed to go head to head with tank divisions.

Hezbollah's destruction (or at minimum complete disarmament) was IDF's stated aim. They failed. That Hezbollah was able to stand up against them in head-to-head engagements and not only survive but ultimately drive them back (under the skirts of a UN peace with nominal and unenforceable disarmament clauses for Hezbollah that amounted to nothing) was a massive shock, and a massive failure. The rest is painting lipstick on a pig, pure and simple.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I'm just saying that this isn't a conflict about oil. The media paints the oil picture for oil hungry North Americans but on the ground in the mid-east this conflict is about the Holy Land.

But again, it is a conflict that is only important because of Mideast oil. Without that, it would attract as much international attention as Liberia.

[Moraline]

Even detonating nukes near land that you want to be habitable in the immediate future is usually dis-advised.  I imagine if the U.S. dropped nukes on northern Mexico, the folks down in south-western Texas, southern Arizona and southern New Mexico would be rather peeved at the resulting conditions.

Middle East is a big place. A small nuclear strike on a capital city wouldn't be out of the question for keeping Israel out of the fall out zone (think Hiroshima or Nagasaki) However, the strike itself would completely decimate a countries ability to form any sort of government. Also most likely in the small nations of the middle east it would cripple their military.

By the way, the US has detonated 100's of nuclear devices within the US itself. It wouldn't be out of the question for the US to drop a few on Mexico with little affect to the US from fallout.

Nuclear devices are scalable.

In a conflict where a supposedly elite conventional force manages to maneuver a guerilla force like Hezbollah into conventional engagements -- which is what happened in 2006 -- what should happen if the conventional force is living up to its hype (especially when it's hype like the IDF's) is that the guerillas should get flattened. Not bloodied, not disproportionately damaged, but DESTROYED. Guerilla irregulars are not designed to go head to head with tank divisions.

Hezbollah's destruction (or at minimum complete disarmament) was IDF's stated aim. They failed. That Hezbollah was able to stand up against them in head-to-head engagements and not only survive but ultimately drive them back (under the skirts of a UN peace with nominal and unenforceable disarmament clauses for Hezbollah) was a massive shock, and a massive failure. The rest is painting lipstick on a pig, pure and simple.

I think we just see that conflict differently.

From what I read about the conflict at no point did the Hezbollah put up any sort of measured resistance. The Israelis out maneuvered them and tore them apart in every instance of combat. The only reason Hezbollah survived was by hiding and using guerrilla tactics. They didn't drive the Israelis out of anywhere. Israel left when the UN forced them to leave. Hezbollah had nothing to do with that withdrawal.

[Cyrano Johnson]

From what I read about the conflict at no point did the Hezbollah put up any sort of measured resistance.

Haha yes we have definitely been reading different things about that conflict. But the thing is, if the things you've been reading were in fact correct, Israel never would have settled for as little as it did. It never would have allowed a UN-brokered peace if it was actually tearing up Hezbollah. The thing about propaganda is that it can warp accounts of events, but it can't actually change results.

[Moraline]

Propaganda works both ways, Cyrano. I read the Wiki article and looked at the statistical facts. That's where I made my judgements from.

As for why Israel withdrew, it never wanted nor does it want to occupy any country other then the one that they claim. Why wouldn't they back out? The world was crying for them to stop and they bowed to political UN pressure. Has Hezbollah made any serious attacks against them since that time? No.

I'd say that means that they accomplished their goal.

[Cyrano Johnson]

As for why Israel withdrew, it never wanted nor does it want to occupy any country other then the one that they claim. Why wouldn't they back out?

I'm not talking about occupation. If everything you claim is true, why would they back out without destroying Hezbollah? That was their most important victory condition. Why would they be satisfied with abject failure in their victory condition? (Their other aim was to terrorize southern Lebanon with indiscriminate airstrikes, and that worked, but leaving Hezbollah in place and intact was not part of the plan.) It did no wonders for Olmert's career, it damaged the IDF's image... what would be the point?

As for your claims about having read "the statistical facts," it sort of depends on which ones, since there are no readily-accessible statistical facts about Hezbollah casualties: guerillas don't wear uniforms and the IDF have a habit of counting slain civilians as "combatants" anyway. Israel's own high estimate of Hezbollah casualties, BTW, does not claim the 10:1 kill ratio that you claimed. The high IDF estimate, probably inflated, is 600 Hezbollah killed -- less than five for one, which is a shocking statistic for the IDF to actually admit to. If one assumes the Hezbollah estimate to be lowballing, the likeliest real ratio is three or two to one, which is singularly unimpressive for a supposedly elite conventional force against guerillas and makes nonsense of the rosy propaganda claims about how the IDF had achieved "victory." (All that info is at the Wiki link I provided earlier.)

Your claims about "statistical facts" don't seem to have a way of holding together very well or explaining observable reality. Propaganda may go both ways, but as far as I can see here (on the July War tangent at a minimum), only one of us has been taken in by propaganda going only one way.

(One of the best analyses of the July War, incidentally -- informal and stand-up-comic-ish, but it still holds up years later -- came from the infamous War Nerd Gary Brecher. I recommend it.)

[Callie Del Noire]

Increased settlement.

This will not end well. Someone needs to tell the Ultra-Orthodox faction to get bent.

[Chris Brady]

I'm not talking about occupation. If everything you claim is true, why would they back out without destroying Hezbollah?

International pressure.  If their 'allies' decide that enough is enough and stop trading with them, or worse side with their enemies, then they have a problem.  The reason for their ceasing attacks on the Hezbollah is more complex than what you're assuming, and it's got many layers.

[Moraline]

<snip>
As for your claims about having read "the statistical facts," it sort of depends on which ones, since there are no readily-accessible statistical facts about Hezbollah casualties: guerillas don't wear uniforms and the IDF have a habit of counting slain civilians as "combatants" anyway. Israel's own high estimate of Hezbollah casualties, BTW, does not claim the 10:1 kill ratio that you claimed. The high IDF estimate, probably inflated, is 600 Hezbollah killed -- less than five for one, which is a shocking statistic for the IDF to actually admit to. If one assumes the Hezbollah estimate to be lowballing, the likeliest real ratio is three or two to one, which is singularly unimpressive for a supposedly elite conventional force against guerillas and makes nonsense of the rosy propaganda claims about how the IDF had achieved "victory." (All that info is at the Wiki link I provided earlier.)

Your claims about "statistical facts" don't seem to have a way of holding together very well or explaining observable reality. Propaganda may go both ways, but as far as I can see here (on the July War tangent at a minimum), only one of us has been taken in by propaganda going only one way.
<snip>

I guess I'm going to have to assume your hostility is passion for the topic. It doesn't feel particularly polite though.

It boils down to this:  I read the link you gave me, that's where I got the stats from and I read the article.

I see it one way and you see it another. I see the Hezbollah as deceitful terrorists - so to me anything that comes from them is most likely propaganda. It occurs to me that perhaps you believe what they say more then what the Israelis say (maybe).

It's just a difference of who we think the propaganda is coming from. I don't actually beleive either of them but considering the nature of Hezbollah and Hamas, I'm more inclined to believe Israel.

Don't mistake that for Israeli support though - I believe they are on occupied land and that they should not be on it in the first place - so I don't actually support them per se.

I think that's a good enough place to leave it.

"So long and thanks for all the fish."

[elone]

Increased settlement.

This will not end well. Someone needs to tell the Ultra-Orthodox faction to get bent.

As usual, the US and European union condemn the new settlement plans but stand by and do nothing. The article you cited even says that the Israeli's know that no one has the balls to do anything but offer lip service, so they go on about the business of wrecking any chance for a two state solution with a viable Palestinian state. Since the UN bid by Abbas, Israel has decided to punish the Palestinian Authority through threats and actions. I would think they are trying to push Abbas to negotiate some type of settlement. Unfortunately, there is no Palestine left to negotiate for, Israel has swallowed it up.

The only real hope for Palestine as a viable nation will come when the rest of the world, US included says "enough" and gets tough on Israel with sanctions, withdrawal of aid, or something equally punitive. Good luck with that!

[Cyrano Johnson]

I guess I'm going to have to assume your hostility is passion for the topic. It doesn't feel particularly polite though.

Oh. Uh, sorry about that. See below.

It boils down to this:  I read the link you gave me, that's where I got the stats from and I read the article.

It occurs to me maybe you misread the section about Lebanese civilian casualties as meaning Hezbollah casualties. There's a lot to assimilate there.

I see it one way and you see it another. I see the Hezbollah as deceitful terrorists - so to me anything that comes from them is most likely propaganda. It occurs to me that perhaps you believe what they say more then what the Israelis say (maybe).

I generally expect both sides to lie in ways that flatter them -- I most certainly do not expect the Israelis to be less guilty of that, that would be very far from their historical pattern * -- and who's a "terrorist" is meaningless to me as a factor in that. (To whatever extent Israel ever did hold the moral high ground, that position has deteriorated by now to nonexistence; there is very little that's done by Hamas or Hezbollah in terms of war crimes that isn't by now mirrored or exceeded in cruelty by the IDF, as note the July War wiki page's section on war crimes. The term "terrorist" has in that context functioned for the IDF as basically a meaningless weasel word that justifies a wide swathe of atrocity.)

* Again as I've said earlier, what has really begun to drag on the Israelis is the sheer amount of bald-faced deception that's become necessary to justify their occupation and war-related policies. If I seem to grow irritable at times, it's not meant personally; it's just that someone who's been having debates like this for years has seen certain tropes and claims and rhetorical habits so many times that they become hard to treat seriously. But I don't mean to be needlessly hostile and I appreciate your willingness to debate seriously. So again, sorry about that.

[Cyrano Johnson]

International pressure.  If their 'allies' decide that enough is enough and stop trading with them, or worse side with their enemies, then they have a problem.  The reason for their ceasing attacks on the Hezbollah is more complex than what you're assuming, and it's got many layers.

I don't think international pressure would explain it. The main ally they generally need to keep the international community off their backs -- and the only ally to whose pressure they respond, and that in a resistant and limited fashion -- is the Americans, who were extremely enthusiastically in their pockets for the July War and even now (though having retrenched to a somewhat saner posture) are a long way from being willing to threaten Israel with any real consequences for misbehaviour*. In the post-war recriminations, there was little reference that I'm aware of to having somehow knuckled under to international pressure as a reason for having let Hezbollah go; the recriminations were about having been beaten by Hezbollah in an operational sense (or at least about a "lacklustre" performance by the IDF), which indeed is what the numbers seem to reflect. They appear to have been tentative basically because they were losing too many men to inflict too little damage.

(* Though at least they can now be relied upon to exert some pressure against smaller operations like the recent bizarre escalation in Gaza, which the IDF kicked off by assassinating their own ally who was supposedly brokering a ceasefire with Hamas. I wonder what the real story is there...)