Very true, very true.

Sherman I would love to see your response to my statement in my other post and this post also and what of any of the Palestinian concerns I have listed have your government tried to address FAIRLY in order iron out a final peace deal.

Because shoving someone down throat a piece of loaf and giving them fait acompli i.e. this thing you call offering Palestinians a homeland which basically translates as this: Palestinians get whatever of the West Bank you haven't build settlements in, they keep Gaza which has no land connections to West Bank while you keep it isolated and banished, the Palestinians have no right of return and no form of compensation what so ever, you keep a wall that basically tears major parts of West Bank away into Israel, you keep all of Jerusalem, you get full Palestinian recognition, you get Muslim countries world wide to establish relations with you, they are demilitarized and at the mercy of Israel and other Middle Eastern powers and have no way to protect their citizens how can a country be sovereign and a government claim to govern when it has no means to protect its citizens?... Now does this sound like even a remotely fair deal? HELL NO

Basically what you have offered the Palestinians amounts to tossing a hungry man a loaf of bread and expecting the Palestinians to agree to this humiliating agreement that totally benefits Israel in everyway while at the same time dragging international attention away from Israel while Palestinians get nothing more than scrabs of land that you can't even build a viable state in.


"There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris" (McGeorge Bundy)

I have a question for our Israeli members.... If the fighting were to cease tomorrow, would you be okay with the current "borders" of the countries?

As you wish Somalia.

The Palestinian are not rejecting the 2 state solutions I don't know if you have been following the news but the right wing government of Netanyahu is the one that has so far failed to abide by past accords with the Palestinians such as the Oslo accords and the Annapolis accords. The Israelis keep offering deals that basically fait accompli, meaning they are throwing the Palestinians a loaf of a bread called a deal and expect the Palestinians to forgo all their rights and accept any deal that is shoved in their throat that only address the Israeli concerns and don't address Palestinian concerns such as the right of return of Palestinians, the stopping of the settlements, the stopping of confiscation and bulldozing of Palestinian towns, the removal of the wall, East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and the right of Palestians to have an armed forces just like any country because having armed forces is part of being sovereign otherwise you are unable to protect you populations if their ever arises a contingencie were you country is threatened and basically without armed forces you are at the mercy of others for your safety specially in a tough neighborhood such as the Middle East.

There was a peace process in 1995 and it was soppose to happen in steps. Like I made clear before the Palestinians threw peace down the drain and went to terrorisem. They were offered 97.8% of all the "occupied territories" in 2000 and again went to war. No one is "bulldozing palestinian towns" we bulldoze houses of suicide terorists. We do this because their families get payment for their acts by Hammas, so we makes sure no one can get rich doing it, they have to rebuild the house.

Basically what you have offered the Palestinians amounts to tossing a hungry man a loaf of bread and expecting the Palestinians to agree to this humiliating agreement that totally benefits Israel in everyway while at the same time dragging international attention away from Israel while Palestinians get nothing more than scrabs of land that you can't even build a viable state in.

The Palestinians will get what is reasonable. If you expect Israel to give them everything they want than you are out of you mind, because they want everything. I dont remember Israelis comlaining about the redicules plan of partition in 1947. What we did was make do and build a country.
The entire palestinian national movement is built on destruction not construction, which is why they havent done jack **** to improve their situation but instead concentrate on screwing up israel.

The way to true peace is to talk and COMPROMISE. That's how it worked for Egypt, they talked and talked and hammered things out for a few years and in the end they had peace. In 2000, the Palestinians didn't even offer a counter-proposal. They just said no and walked away.

When, in 2002, arafat told clinton that he was a great man he said that he was a failure and that arafat made him so.

Even the Arabs (the Saudis in particular I believe, don't emember off the top of my head) told arafat that not accepting the offer would be the greatest crime against the palestinian people.

Its not just Arafat. Israel was built by a group of people with a colture of work and buidling. Palestines would be builders have a colture of terror. They are concentrated on destroying Israel rather than on building Palestine.

I believe you may have missed my post SHERMAN...

Sherman you did answer my question without answering my main points as to how Israeli government has FAIRLY addressed the Palestinian concerns such as: the right of return of Palestinians, the stopping of the settlements, the stopping of confiscation and bulldozing of Palestinian towns, the removal of the wall, East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and the right of Palestinians to have an armed forces just like any country because having armed forces is part of being sovereign otherwise you are unable to protect you populations if their ever arises a contingencies were you country is threatened and basically without armed forces you are at the mercy of others for your safety specially in a tough neighborhood such as the Middle East.

How can you give the Palestinians a humiliating peace treaty that leaves them with nonviable state.

I am basically going to list again what the Israelis get in the peace treaty they put forward and what the Palestinians get in the peace treaty you put forward, and here is how the Israelis are short changing the Palestinians like highway robbery: this thing you call offering Palestinians a homeland which basically translates as this: Palestinians get whatever of the West Bank you haven't build settlements in, they keep Gaza which has no land connections to West Bank while you keep it isolated and banished, the Palestinians have no right of return and no form of compensation what so ever, you keep a wall that basically tears major parts of West Bank away into Israel, you keep all of Jerusalem, you get full Palestinian recognition, you get Muslim countries world wide to establish relations with you, they are demilitarized and at the mercy of Israel and other Middle Eastern powers and have no way to protect their citizens how can a country be sovereign and a government claim to govern when it has no means to protect its citizens?... Now does this sound like even a remotely fair deal? HELL NO

Also an important thing everyone should note is that Netanyahu did not put forward an actually peace treaty he merely made a speech with vague statements and nonviable stipulations that he knows no self respecting people or government can ever agree to in order to portray the Palestinians as the rejectionist knowing damn well no sane leader can accept his offer in order to divert international attention from Israel.


"There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris" (McGeorge Bundy)

Originally Posted by mmarsh

And what does that change? All countries are entitled to self-defense. Isreal cannot reasonably expect that Palestine would accept such a stipulation. No country would. The right of self-defense is a guerenteed right of all nations. Would Isreal accept peace with Iran if Iran held demilitarization of a condition of the peace agreement? Nobody would accept that.

I don't think it takes a genius to see that this "demilitarised" stipulation is designed to kill the proposal, now Israel can sit back and claim that they "tried" but the ungrateful Palestinians once again wanted it all and life will carry on as usual.

The reality is that no nation can call itself a sovereign state without being able to defend its borders and to do so would make it little more than Vichy France.

SHERMAN (MY response in BOLD)

LOL. Sharon gave up Gaza and we got rockets. Personnaly Im still happy with it because the less we have to do with the Palestinians the better. But it can hardly make a good cae for peace.

Not at all the same. You were dealing Hamas a known Terrorist Organization. Hamas is a far-right religious fundimentalist organization and doesnt want to talk, so their is no point in trying. I am talking about the Palestinean people and PM Abbas which do want peace but not under some BS terms.

Let me tell you, the far-right and settlers on the west bank are just as militant and violent as Hamas, remenber who killed Yitsak Rabin? It wasnt Hamas. I am from New York, I know those people they come largely from Brooklyn (thats a few subway stops from where I grew up) they can be just as radical as the people shooting rockets at you. I actually watch people celebrate on the news when Baruch Goldstein commited murder. I have no sympathy for either side.

BS. I have already established in other threads the diffrence between Israels acts and the Palestinians. I have taken statistics brought by members who have your opinions and made mince met out of them. Israel dosent target civilians. As a policy. Palestinians do, as a practice. Always have been this way.

You can rationalize it anyway you want, the point remains the same. Which is (A) the Palestineans don't see it that way. And (B) no matter how you excuse it the losses of Palestinean civilians are 50 times greater than yours. You kill 1000 innocent people to retailiate against the loss of 16 of your own sorry that doesnt fit anyone's bill of "self defense". Its morally indefensible.

Ahhh....America is probably responsible for more colleteral damage than any other western country. I dont have an issue with it, because when you fight in cities civilians die. You refuse to accept that because you have never been in a Kasba with RPGs aimes at your head.

We are not proud of it, not unlike you we dont attempt to justify it, or rationalize it. Unless your a member of the neocons (whom most of us think are insane) most of us realize that every time we cause collateral damage (espicially Muslim countries) it only serves to create more enemies. That is something Isreal hasnt learned in 40 years. Think about this rationally, if someone drops a bomb on your house and kills your entire family wont that want you take up arms against the culprit? Does it matter whether the attack was deliberate or not?

LOL...Yeah we are a terrible neighbour. We allow countries around us to harbour and aid terrorisem so we dont get in trouble with the world opinion. Hezballah is rearming in Lebanon as we speak. And Israel again waits. And I dont see any bleeding heart leftist saying "Thank you Israel for not attacking Hezballah while it orgenizes to attack you". Meanwhile the entire eropean communiety and the USA are kissing up to Iran which is developing WMDs and openly saying it wants to destroy my country. And what dose Israel do? It waits.

Why is it people round the world hate you then? You tell me. And since when has Isreal ever cared about world opinon? Isreal is in violation of (I believe its 138) UN resolutions. That doesnt really suggest too much interest in world opinion does it? They hate America too, but at least we know why.

Screw that. We have more patience than a Budhist Monk. We left Lebannon in 2000 and let them be. They made us go in again because they kept herrasing our civilians and attacking our border patrols. We left Gaza and let them be. They made us go back by shooting rockets at civilians and kidnapping one of our soldiers.

But you failed on one critical aspect. You withdrew but you failed to make peace or resolve any of the outstanding issues. Remember you are occupying their land (and it is their land) on the West Bank. Until Isreal makes a deal with the Palestineans you will never know peace. Look at the situation in Northern Ireland, the Catholics and Protestants have been fighting each other alot longer than in the Middle East. It was only when they sat down and made a deal when the killing actually stopped and people got on with their lives.

You would not think we over react if you had to run for cover 4-5 times a day because a rocket is comming you way. You wouldent think we are over reacting if you were the father of a soldier who was kidnapped inside Israeli land, by people who used territory Israel gave back as a base of operations.

Come on my friend, thats really just an excuse. The actual losses from that are extremely low. More Isrealis are killed in traffic accidents then in actual attacks.

MONTYB

Thats exactly my point. This isnt a real peace attempt, its just a charade to shift the blame back to the Palestineans. When Bibi took power the first thing he said was that Isreal wouldnt recognise any treaty made previous and that Iran was the real threat to the US-Isreal. As I said in the very first sentence of my first post: the tune he is singing now is one thats totally different from a few months ago. Either hes seen the light (very unlikely) or he's stalling.

The Vichy France is a good anology. Vichy was technically a independent country too, but nobody anywhere was really foolish enough to believe that.