Discuss: Fencing Israel

Let’s not mince words.  The occupation of the West Bank by Israel is illegal - that’s the law.  The West Bank came under Israeli occupation when Israel attacked its neighbors in 1967.  The Separation Wall is NOT in Israel. Israel built it largely in the West Bank.  If it was just about terrorism, Israel would have built it in its own country.  It’s about gaining more land for Israel - the slow expropriation of what remains of Palestine into the Israeli state. It is a one-way wall - it keeps Palestinian terrorists (and Palestinians in general) out of Israel, but does not keep Israeli state terrorists in nor its civilian interlopers.  Since year 2000 Israel has killed 4600 Palestinians, a figure almost five times that of Israelis killed, something the author ignores - and it should be remembered that the Palestinians are fighting for their very lives, the Israelis are fighting for a bigger Israel. The occasional suicide bombing is the direct result of a 41 year brutal occupation.  Israelis cannot pretend to be addressing environmental issues as long as they occupy the land of another people.  Illegal occupation and Apartheid rule are entirely antithetical to all notions of ecology.

What should Israel do? What would the US do if Canadians from Toronto were bombing Buffalo?

The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 was stupid and short sighted - which is why Israel withdrew from Gaza and is withdrawing from much of the West Bank. But the refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist is also stupid. 

What ‘Palspal’ calls ‘the occasional suicide bomb’ and the shelling of Israel from Gaza show that the governing agencies of the Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah, and therefore the Palestinians themselves, are guilty of what might be termed ‘attempted ethnic cleaning’ or ‘attempted genocide’.

The fact that it is failing doesn’t justify this attempted ethnic cleansing. The fact that the state of Israel is much stronger than the Palestian governmental organizations doesn’t justify suicide bombing or any other bombing by the Palestinians. It just shows the political unsophistication of the Palestinians.

And while we shouldn’t mince words we should use them correctly. Arab citizens of Israel can vote and serve in Parliment. That’s citizenship not apartheid.

Personally, I’d rather be a Moslem living in Israel than a Jew, Christian, Bhuddhist, Hindu, atheist, gay Moslem or woman living in an Arab state.

And if the so-called “Americans” have the right to occupy the area of North America between Mexico and Canada - taken from the people they call Indians - then Israel has the right to occupy Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan. And if the Americans don’t have the right to what is now called the US, and have to go back from whence came their ancestors - Europe, Asia, Africa; then the Jews all have to go back to the Kingdom of Solomon.

Wise words from Larry. 
while recent history certainly doesn’t shine a favorable light on Israel, the fact is many of the grudges that fuel the violence we see in the region today go back hundreds and even thousands of years.  Neither side in this conflict can claim moral high ground.  And until letting go and forgiveness emerge, wildlife and human life will continue to suffer.  It certainly doesn’t help matters that the U.S. ignores all the violations of international law on one side and not the other.

Larry,
You raise a very valid point about the legitimacy of U.S. land claims.  My ancestors owned slaves, took land from Indians in Virginia, in Kentucky, in Missouri and in Oregon, and probably did other heinous things that I just don’t know about.  Our nation took 1/3 of Mexico (and now we complain because all the “foreigners” keep coming in).  Because I feel responsibility for the advantages given to me by these actions against others, I do everything I can to help compensate the descendants of those who we have wronged.
Just as you expect the Palestinians to respect your “facts on the ground” and get on with their lives, you should respect theirs.  They are stubborn enough to keep fighting for their rights, so you have a choice.  Are you going to brutalize yourselves more by being even more oppressive?  Or are you going to accept that they have some grievance and give ground, literally, so that they can also have the good life you seek?  If you believe the Palestinians who live in Israel are happy and better off, then give the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza the right to vote in your elections.  They have been disenfranchised for over forty years.  Wouldn’t that make YOU angry?

Larry - What should Israel do?? Israel should take its troops and settlers and return to the only legal land they can claim - that which is behind pre-June ‘67 borders.  The question is not what the US would do if Canadians were bombing Buffalo, but what should Americans do if Canada (or whomever) occupied it and in doing so, established an Apartheid regime. As would be obvious to all, American resistance in all its forms would be a RESPONSE to the occupation not a cause of it.  The occupation of what remains of Palestine may have been shortsighted and stupid, but it was a genuine act of aggression for which Israel has not atoned by pulling out totally and going home, but instead continues its aggression even as we read this.  Israel only withdrew its expensive colonists from Gaza, nothing more - thus clearing the way for its life-annihilating siege.  The UN still understands Gaza to be Israeli-occupied.

A refusal to recognize Israel is irrelevant.  Fatah gained not one acre of land in recognizing Israel.  Hamas is avowedly open to negotiations with Israel - that is in itself de facto recognition.  And the outcome of such negotiations is de jure recognition.  It takes quite a bit of chutzpah for Israel to demand recognition in advance when for decades it would not recognize there was a Palestinian people whom they had been removed from their very land.  That’s a ruse on Israel’s part to avoid negotiations. It’s time Israel recognized Hamas as the elected representative of the Palestinian people.

What you call ‘attempted ethnic cleansing’ (how many dead from the ‘shelling’ over the years - 9? 19?) is actually a desperate attempt at resistance from a people steadfastly holding against the loss of the rest of their country to one of the most powerful nations on earth - a state routinely employing that power against an essentially unarmed population. In truth, Israelis ARE carrying out ethnic cleansing, it meets and exceeds the UN definition of that despicable act. Since 09/00 Israel has killed 982 Palestinian children, a figure just short of the total number of Israelis killed - and that includes Israeli soldiers.  And the Palestinian children (and adults) are being killed in Palestine. Israeli deaths are largely in...Palestine.  And that’s even without getting into the hundreds of race-based roadblocks, checkpoints, the Wall, the South Africa-like Identity cards, the arbitrary arrest sweeps of young men, the house arrests, the village shutdowns, the race-based control over water supplies, the control over ingress and egress of people, money, goods.  I can go on.  But THAT is your ethnic cleansing.  That’s the model Milosevich used in Bosnia.

Palestinian citizens of Israel can serve in Israel’s Parliament. But of course they should - Israel loudly proclaims itself a democracy. That should not be a big deal.  Yet they are underrepresented there and in all positions of importance. Palestinians are 1/5th of Israel’s citizenry.  So how many Palestinians have been appointed to cabinet positions in Israel’s entire history?  ONE - and what is he - Minister of Arab Sports?  Palestinians are grossly shortchanged in social budgets and in all segments of societal advancement.  Their schools and clinics are underfunded and they cannot live where ever they choose to. In fact, 93% of Israel is set aside for Jews-only, from anywhere and in perpetuity. Palestinian citizens are restricted to the remaining 7%.  Hows that for a democratic ideal?  Race-based democracy in action.

While you may not want to be a gay Hindu in an Arab state - such an argument is just a diversion from the central truth that Palestinians have every right to be free of Israeli occupation and genocide, and have every right to resist same.

Anyone who believes in human rights knows that what was done to Native-Americans is now being done to the Palestinians.  And anyone who knows that the Native-Americans were, and are, right, also know this is also true of the Palestinians. Americans of European descent have now lived here hundreds of years - there is no going back. Similarly, Israelis have now lived in Israel ‘proper’ for several generations - and there is no going back.  You just have to take your troops and colonists and go home to that Israel.  While you are at it - (in Reagan’s words) ‘Tear down this wall.” After that, the Palestinians and Israelis can jointly discuss regional ecology.

PS - Jerusalem was 4000 years old when Solomon lived there.  It was built by the ancestors of the Palestinians.  So perhaps you meant to say that the Jews should go back to Ur.

Ben - The conflict in Palestine/Israel dates to the turn of the last century when Zionists began their colonizing effort in an already inhabited land.  It has no tangible connection to any Biblical squabbles.

The Palestinians are not looking particularly for any high moral ground - merely looking for what remains of their ground as it is expropriated out from under them by their illegal occupiers. And looking to stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

I agree with you that US financial, logistical and diplomatic support for Israel is the crux of the problem. The world makes it known that Israel is wrong, but then looks the other way while the US vetoes one just resolution after another.  Maybe someday soon a change is gonna come.

Please read Joan Peters book “From Time Immemorial” which clearly describes the misconceptions that the so-call Palestinians perpetrate.  As far as ethnic cleansing, the only ones, in their own words, who are looking to cleanse an ethnic people are the Palestinians who have stated that they want all of Israel and will do so by pushing the Jews into the sea.  On Israel’s part, the Israelis do all that is possible to target only terrorists and their safe havens while the Palestinian terrorists specifically aim to murder innocent civilians.

Under whose rule would any reasonable person like to live - the Arabs or the Israelis?  From my part Israel’s democracy appears the better choice.  I believe that all who believe in a civilization of a higher order can only side with Israel because if the Arabs were in Israel’s position they would not only take over all they could in whatever way they could but they would also be looking to convert the rest of humanity in their Dark Ages philosophy.  Fences would be just the beginning.  In fact, isn’t that exactly what we are seeing the fanatic Moslems attempting at at this very point in history?

Palspal ignores what happened when Israel got out of Gaza; militants took over and now Israel is bombarded daily by rockets and mortar bombs from Gaza. According to Palspal, I guess Israelis should regard each one as a “thank you” note.

Right now there is a political struggle going on within the Palestinian community between nationalists, who are represented in the Palestinian Authority, and terror organizations who do not want to accept the existence of the State of Israel because they use their religion as an axe to grind and to express their rights in term of an Islamic Waqf or perpetual jurisdiction from the Muslim conquest of Palestine which is also the Biblical Land of Israel and was so prior to both Christian and Muslim occupations.

But let us keep to the particular issue at hand. Until there is an agreement with the Palestinians, there is no “international border” between Israel and the territories. I hope that one day the fences can be removed and an agreed upon international border established with peace, trade relations and mutual tourism.

I believe that Israel has to act sooner rather than later in this matter, but none of us are there on the ground, and we are not aware of the particulars that may be preventing action as soon as we would like it.

But to mouth off with slogans about occupation and other charges against a state that has not known one day of peace since its inception in 1948 is a brainless exercise.  I believe we should attempt to keep this discussion as factual as possible and not let opinions and prejudices guide this discussion.