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A few thoughts on the peace talks

It’s a hard subject to turn to – what the ABC calls the Middle East peace process. The initiativehad to be applauded of course, on the solid ground that almost anything was better than the seriously nutty proximity talks. But it is always hard to talk about somewhere where the head and heart are not in the same place.  Of course there is hope. There has to be hope. But it is sure hard to have much. I haven’t checked but I doubt the bookmakers are taking much money at any odds.

It was always a long shot but it is dispiriting seeing the same old obstacles and smoke screens as the last time and the time before and the time before right back to the very start.. Ultimately the peace talks, if they are about anything at all, are about one big real estate deal. Everyone knows this. It is nonsensical to focus on building freezes when the parties should be talking about who should be the relevant building authority in a particular region at all. If they are not going to talk about that then what is the point of talking about extending freezes? What is the point of talking about anything? Many Israelis see that of course and are rightly suspicious. I suspect the Palestinians do too.

Beyond that the peace process is about passports, residency permits and travel passes for both Israelis and Palestinians. And that's it. Of course there is no formula that will satisfy everybody. But there is a formula.  
 
I’ve said this before. The Palestinian/Israeli dispute is intractable for only one reason.  It’s not up to the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve it. It is not within their power. It never has been.
 
Doubt this? Try this mental exercise. Consider a proposal to leave the whole mess entirely up to the people who live there.  A blockade, perhaps, around the entire region from the Gaza/Egypt border along the Jordanian border with the occupied territories and back to the Mediterranean along the UN recognised borders between Israel and Lebanon and Syria. It covers Israel’s Mediterranean seaports and Eilat and includes restrictions on air traffic into the quarantined zone. Logistically this should not be at all difficult to organise. These are small countries and, let’s face it, most of the blockade apparatus is already in place anyway.
 
The blockade is for a set period, perhaps 30 days. It follows a lead up period of say six months during which all the parties in the zone are free to make all preliminary arrangements they like such as hold plebiscites among their populations and build up civilian stocks of necessities. However all military-use freight is declared contraband immediately. The blockade is enforced by any power in the rest of the world that chooses to do so, presumably by international agreement – but just a few powers will do.
 
What is wrong with this plan?  
 
Let me anticipate the objections. It can’t work. The parties can’t be trusted. Without outside intervention they’ll slaughter one another. It’ll be one massacre after another.
 
Not valid. Of course there will be no slaughter. Only antisemites would seriously think there could be. The Palestinians will hate it and violently protest they have been abandoned? Probably. But I can’t imagine the Israelis being too pleased either. All parties in the zone can show up at talks at the places that are disputed. Or not show up. Or if they prefer they can fight. It’s up to them. The important thing is that everybody else can have their say but must bud out. It’s up to the people who live there and they can make their decisions informed by whatever or whoever they care to hear.
  
So what’s wrong with the plan? There will be peace alright and it is reasonable to expect it would come pretty quickly. But it will be a peace guaranteed by Israel’s overwhelming military might and that’s the rub. Not that sort of peace. The world would rather see this grubby, low level and dangerous war bubble on indefinitely than that.  
 
Ultimately our mental exercise boils down to trust. Please note I have deliberately not brought Iran and its colonies in Gaza andLebanon into the equation yet or for that matter Syria. But that aside, the question for you is can the Israelis be trusted to behave like civilised human beings? Or if you prefer, can the Jews? Not perfect mind you. But at least on a par with how the Americans and allies behaved in Germany and Japan after their war.
 
So it all gets down to this. Can the Israelis, or if prefer the Jews, despite all their democratic institutions, including their judiciary, free media, scholarship, religion, culture and all the rest, be trusted to arrive at a fair peace settlement with any Palestinians who are prepared to talk to them. It seems to me you can either answer yes or no. Either that or you must admit you prefer war to peace and you should at least have the decency to be forthright about it.
 
You may conclude the Israelis can’t be trusted. Not even once. Bear in mind that outsiders have called the shots since before there was an Israel. Not to be trusted not even for just 30 days. That’s fine. That’s your prerogative. Spare me your reasoning though. I’m not interested. You may however have pause before you next blame Israel for the conflict. You can also expect not to be thanked for the insult and you might reflect on why Israelbashers always feel compelled to so incessantly protest they are not antisemites.
 
So what is the point of this exercise? It is only this. This is not a war between Israel and the Palestinians, and at a time whenIran’s head of state is jeering over the Lebanon border in a determined effort to destroy any remaining hope of the talks succeeding, it would be useful to stop pretending it was. Please acknowledge the bleeding obvious. The causes of this war lie outside our mythical quarantine zone. Until the world focuses on this then the war will continue for as long as the world chooses it to be.

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When compassion trumps hatred you get this...

"There's so much coverage about Muslim-Jewish strife and conflict," Kerber said. "It's important to tell people that's not the whole story, and these are examples of Muslim-Jewish respect, tolerance and love"
Homo sapiens could do with more of that.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions - must be a lie.

In Geoff's world, if he thinks we don't know about it then it never happened - I don't know why he bothers really. 
No "Palestinians" lost or abandoned  their homes, or had them  destroyed other than in the course of the war of 1948 and the civil war within British occupied Palestine immediately before it.. It is a lie that Arab houses were destroyed to make way for settlements after the1967 war. Check your facts.

Bullshit!! this: from Haaretz:

More than 800 people protested in front of the Knesset on Monday against the government practice of demolishing Bedouin homes in the Negev.

The protestors came in 17 buses from southern Israel, and called on the government to "stop destroying homes."

Of course the demolishers will provide the most eloquent reasons for making Arabs homeless.

However all is not lost, for not all Israelis are neocons, and some do try to put things right:

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Shalom

 

The final straw

You're talking bullshit mate. If you are somehow determined to conflate the enforcement of building and planning regulations on Israeli citizens inside Israel ( incidentally strongly pro-Israel citizens who willingly serve in the Israeli military, as Beduins do) with "settlements" or the Israeli/Palestine issues outside the "green line" then you are so drenched with ignorance and bigotry you are indistinguishable from any other ignorant bigot who routinely pollute this issue. These laws are there for one purpose, to make it possible to deliver basic government services, that you take for granted, to people who have lived without them for far too long, including water, power, sewerage, education and health.

How dare you criticise these policies. How dare any Australian criticise them, given our track record with indigenous welfare. This is a matter for Israelis and frankly they have made are far better fist of it under very difficult circumstances than we have.

Mind your own business. You have far more pressing concerns to deal with closer to home than buying into issues about which you are profoundly uninformed.

Minding our own business

"Mind your own business. You have far more pressing concerns to deal with closer to home". I quite agree Geoff, except that it's you who started this thread...

 Let's talk about the intervention, or the inability of our child welfare workers to cope with workloads. Or our health system (though I personally don't believe our health system is in crisis).

no and yes.

Let's not forget Geoff's basic point- the problem is intractable largely because of the out comes of the history of the region and Europe during the first part of the century.

Specifically the denying of Arab aspirations after ww1. Then there came the other flaw of Versailles, its incorrect guess as to how Germany would cope with its defeat and following enmiseration.

No doubt Balfour and others based their thinking on demographics. Seemed like a good idea to encourage dissafected or persecuted Jews to go to Palestine for a fresh start, when  European antisemitism was a simmering problem, even before the Last Great Pogrom instituted by Hitler and his trogdolytes precipitated the big rush to get to Palestine, from the thirties onward, The sheer outflow of frightened Jewry from Europe dismantled the more cosy arrangements and communal peace that had lasted till the late twenties, based on a certain balance of population and political influence. This also after places like the US had curbed immigration, a safety valve.

  Since ww2  the region has assumed even greater iimportance, due to geopolitical reasons and precisely the sort of almost divine intervention that would have been the only thing that could have had better arrangements in place, was squelched first by the cold war, then American hegemony, since the current arrangements suit US plans, even at the expense of a fair result as to Palestine/Israel and the salvage of the collective sets of souls.

You can criticise Israel if you're Australian, but if you do that, you first must understand White Australia and then what Hansonism was/is and our neurotic response to refugee movements and the aspirations of hundreds of millions of poor people in  Asia. The collective Aussie response, over time, has been at least as miserly as that of any Shylock- at least Shylock's responses were provoked.

I reject Geoffs criticisms of educated historians, social and political scientist outsiders, of course, who have merely chronicled the long term process and exposed its contradictions.

 Israel is now a nuclear power and military power and placed well beyond even the US, as to the imposing of any fairer settlement than Israel is prepared to accept.

  Botoxing Israel image-wise, does nothing to alleviate the injustices to Palestinans that form the basis for modern Israel and the consequent set of problems for Israelis and Arabs alike. Shifting the ghetto from Warsaw to Gaza really doesnt save our souls. In  fact all that's come of it has been a surge in Islamist solidarity, as Muslims and Arabs continue to react to the West's (including Israels') attitudes in ways that undermine us, as war  and garrison spending drive us into debt and perhaps, eventual collapse, ourselves.

Credibility

"I've had a gutfull of this shit; you tell me unequivicably where you believe the borders of the state of Israel are in a precise geographical manner and if you can't do that honestly you lose all credibility."

Easy.

As appalling as I'd already guessed

'Nuff said  Geoff and I'll apologise for my previous intemperance.

Just where in light of that does it leave your two state solution though?

Israel and the Gaza strip from what I can see and it makes you wonder why Israel would build a hideous wall through the middle of it's own land; going to be a bugger to clean up eventually although looking to the future I don't see it happening. It's going to be a hard sell and it sure is about a few real estate deals.

Knocks your ideas about the peace process into a cocked hat doesn't it?

Why do men fight?

Krishnamurti: why do young boys fight?
You sometimes fight with your brother, or other boys here, don't you? Why? You fight over a toy. Perhaps another boy has taken your ball, or your book and therefore you fight. Grown-up people fight for exactly the same reason, only their toys are position, wealth and power. If you want power and I also want power, we fight, and that is why nations go to war. It is as simple as that, only philosophers, politicians, and the so-called religious people complicate it. You know, it is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience-to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears- and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.

Cute Furry Animal Liberation Front

Even wombats have been known to fight back.

Thanks, Geoff.

The discussion made me go and do a bit of research on the topic - Wikipedia, which I find fairly balanced.

I don't believe you and I disagree on the facts:

in 1946, 58% of the population of the land currently called Israel were Muslims. By 1950, this was down to 9% ( Demographics_of_Israel). The exodus of approximately 750,000 was probably partly fuelled by deliberate Arab and Jewish strategy. However, Israel passed laws refusing the vast majority of the refugees back and confiscating their property.

There were  massacres by both sides.

Where I believe we disagree is that I don't believe Israel can take the high moral ground. Yes, European Jews were horribly treated by their European brethren. This does not excuse the dumping of this problem on the Middle East, or Jews carrying out cleansing tactics (albeit far less directly lethal compared to what happened to them in Europe) on the aboriginal population. 

Displaced populations

Jay, it is true that the generally accepted number of Palestinians Arabs made refugees by the conflicts of 1947 and 1948 is about 750 000 which is approximately the same number of Palestinian Jews and Jews from Arab countries made refugees in the same conflicts or earlier (and whose descendants incidentally are a majority of the population of modern Israel).

The best analysis of the population mix of mandatory and Ottoman Palestine prior to 1948 that I have seen is here. It punctures myths from both sides.

Fair comment

The ongoing war against the Jews

Rupert Murdoch gets it.

...

Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimising it. The battleground is everywhere: the media, multinational organisations, non-government organisations. The aim is to make Israel a pariah.

The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracised, while Iran - a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel's destruction - pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly and without apparent fear of rebuke.

For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life.

Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel.

No wonder the fascist antisemitic "left" that infest our universities and public media hate Murdoch with a fury that borders on violence.

This is who

For the people who are actually living there, rather than pontificating and moralsing from the other side of the planet, a  "two state solution", if it means anything at all in that tiny place, must get down to the drawing of a boundary town by town, suburb by suburb, street by street, house by house. In some places it would probably get down to the division of individual buildngs or sites.

Jay, I know from experience this is a waste of time, but for the record, "Palestinians" can be either Muslim or Christian, never had any citizenship to lose in the first place, and if they are descendants of refugees of 1948 (a minority BTW) were made refugees by a war brought about by the Arab League and the "Palestnian" leadership itself. They are roughly equal in number to the Jews made refugees by the same war or expelled from Arab countries.

No "Palestinians" lost or abandoned  their homes, or had them  destroyed other than in the course of the war of 1948 and the civil war within British occupied Palestine immediately before it.. It is a lie that Arab houses were destroyed to make way for settlements after the1967 war. Check your facts.

Glib or disingenuous?

"if they are about anything at all, are about one big real estate deal. Everyone knows this. It is nonsensical to focus on building freezes when the parties should be talking about who should be the relevant building authority in a particular region at all."

Just who are you going to convince with that kind of claptrap Geoff?

You must live in a different reality to most reasoning people. Ever heard the expression "good fences make for good neighbours"?

Three decades ago I first became aware of the situation where Arab houses were being trashed outside Israel's mandated borders to make way for settlements and that is what transformed a supporter of the state of Israel to  someone who strongly disapproves of it's tactics.

Work it out for yourself.

Who's Who?

Being half a world away, I have never been very clued up about the middle east situation.

Geoff, could you tell me - when we call someone a "Palestenian" do we really mean a Muslim Isaeli refugee? That is, a person who was forcibly evicted from their homes in what is currently called Israel by the European Jews who settled there by the Western nations? Would it have been what would elsewhere have been called an ethnic cleansing?

I suppose we could argue that these refugees are living in the past, that they lost their land, houses and citizenship over sixty years ago, and they should simply stop living in the past.

Ethnic cleansing

"Would it have been what would elsewhere have been called an ethnic cleansing?"

What would you call this? And this? and this? And this? And this?

And this?

I have to say that in all the torrents of words that have poured from Israel bashers and their allies since 1948 I have never once seen even an incidental reference to these events. Not once. For them it never happened.

There is only one possible reason for this.  When it comes to massacres, murders, dispossession, property theft and ethnic cleansing, Jews, especially Jews in the Middle East, don't count.

This and this and this

Couldn't be bothered Geoff to follow those those links; do I need to see more evidence of atrocities? Whatever you were alluding to I can believe to my sorrow has happened.

"It is a lie that Arab houses were destroyed to make way for settlements after the1967 war. Check your facts."

I'll say it again, I've seen video footage of Arab houses being destroyed,. Now if you want to dispute it  you give me facts. Do you seriously want to state that Israeli settlements are not being constructed outside the mandated borders?

And what is this? Are you playing "no speaks"?

The bleeding obvious

My reply, and links, here were to Jay's comment about ethnic cleansing, Scott. I'll respond to your comment about the "settlements" when I have a bit more time. But really, what can be said about these that hasn't already been said a thousand times before? 

With this thread I was attempting a new angle on one aspect of this vast and messy issue. Who is to blame, and perhaps more to the point, why have all efforts to resolve it failed so completely? Worse than useless really. Every time there are face to face talks innocent people get murdered.

So what about my point? What's your response? We will go over old ground again if you like but we all know where that leads. It's a simple enough question. The Israelis want a two state solution and have offered it repeatedly. Fatah and the PA say they want a two state solution (although they have rejected it repeatedly). Therefore it should only be a matter of drawing the boundary and all parties of goodwill agree more or less where it should go. So why no two state solution?

I have offered an explanation that from my perspective is no more than a statement of the bleeding obvious. It's not within the power of the Israelis and Palestinians to make peace. It never has been. I have suggested a mental exercise to prove the point.

Do you have a reply?

My reply

"The Israelis want a two state solution and have offered it repeatedly."

On what basis?

For christ's sake Geoff, talk about going over old ground. Where's your reply to my point about "fences"; mandated borders etc.. Ignore Arab houses destroyed if you will. What about olive groves and thereby peoples livelihoods destroyed? This stuff has happened.

I've had a gutfull of this shit; you tell me unequivicably where you believe the borders of the state of Israel are in a precise geographical manner and if you can't do that honestly you lose all credibility.

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