New Israeli/Palestinian peace plan

[Parmenides]

Nope. I have to support Alger here. The Israelis should quit building settlements on the West Bank, and dismantle those that exist. In exchange, Hamas, The Islamic Jihad, and Fatah must all cease suicide bombing, and pledge to recognize Israel. The issues over the right of return and Jerusalem can be haggled out over the next 5 years.

[MMMMMM]

As I said, I don't know what boundaries would satisfy Israel, but let's presume that they are less than infinite. However the only boundaries that would satisfy Hamas, as Hamas has stated, are the null set = no Israel at all. Therefore, even if undefined, and even if substantially expansive, the Israeli position is more reasonable. Further, Israel has typically expanded in response to Arab aggressions (Golan Heights captured from Syria in 1967 war, etc.).

[MMMMMM]

"The Israelis should quit building settlements on the West Bank, and dismantle those that exist. In exchange, Hamas, The Islamic Jihad, and Fatah must all cease suicide bombing, and pledge to recognize Israel."

I agree with this, but if after all that the terrorists still were to keep attacking relentlessly, they would have to be SWAT-teamed by joint Special Forces, and a wall could be a good idea.

It would be great if the terrorists would do what you suggest, but they were attacking Israel long before the settlements were such a big issue, and they have long said they simply won't stop.

[Cyrus]

"As I said, I don't know what boundaries would satisfy Israel"

Don't worry, you're not alone. No one is the Arab world knows either, I can assure you.

"But let's presume that [the borders that Israel wants] are less than infinite."

Hold it! "Undefined" boundaries are equivalent to infinite. Israel cannot conquer the world but when it effectively has no set boundaries or aspirations for those boundaries, every piece of its neighbor's land is in danger. That's an infinite danger in diplomacy, even is the term if different in math. Don't mix your terms, now.

"The only boundaries that would satisfy Hamas, as Hamas has stated, are the null set = no Israel at all."

First of all, Hamas does not dictate Palestinian policy. Zionist settlers don't dictate Israeli policy (I'm so polite today!) -- we cannot invoke the other side's extremists to justify our actions. We then become the same as the extremists. But even if Hamas was the Palestinian leadership instead of the PLO, how does that justify Israel in being in ever-expaning mode? After all, its issue is supposedly with the domestic disobedient lot, the Palestinians -- not the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Lebanese.

"Therefore, even if undefined, and even if substantially expansive, the Israeli position is more reasonable."

I hope you understand the utter silliness of this statement. I'm sorry but there's just no other way to describe how it reads.

"Further, Israel has typically expanded in response to Arab aggressions (Golan Heights captured from Syria in 1967 war, etc)."

You are stubbornly refusing to read anything I have ever recommended! Anything! The result is that you write such terribly erroneous claims. In the 1967 War, the aggressor was not Syria but someone else; check the historical record, please. Israel attacked first, claiming that an "Arab attack" was imminent, a claim subsequently and thoroughly debunked, by members of the Israeli leadership of that time.

Do yourself a favor, please, and order the eminent Jewish historian's book "The Iron Wall". It's not a fanatical book; it's even-handed and honest; it could do wonders for your perspective.

--Cyrus

[MMMMMM]

I think the Palestinians should get some land back from Israel--whether that amount is 22% (settlements?) I have no idea--and the Palestinians should also get some land back from Jordan (and Syria?) (funny how the Palestinians never send suicide bombers there to try to get their land back). Let them split Jerusalem.

As for Israel itself, no I don't think the Palestinians should or will get it back. The American Indians aren't getting Washington back either (although their claim to it is, or at one time was, probably greater than the Palestinians' claim to Israel). What happened in the Mideast happened for many reasons, and even had the stamp of U.N. approval. There's also plenty of land for the Palestinians between the above three contries holding their designated partitioned lands.

Also, Israel represents I believe 1/980 of the total Arab land mass, and Palestinians are essentially Arabs--they were never considered a separate race or culture until the last 30 years or so of turmoil. Jews on the other hand are a separate culture and have suffered immense persecutions in Arab lands long before the formation of Israel. Seeing as how both parties can't just seem to get along, and both have a long historic claim to the area, it apparently made sense at that time for the world to designate a miniscule chunk of Arab desert as Jewish homeland. Massive return now would essentially destroy Israel. The Palestinians need to give up on this dream because it's just not going to happen. Advocating and practicing violence in order to get this dream will just lead to their failure to get even a state of their own alongside Israel. They need to adjust to a new dream, and work towards that new free state, and then try to make it flourish and grow instead of devoting their energies to fighting an impossible quest which has only brought, and will only bring, greater misery.

[Chris Alger]

"and the Palestinians should also get some land back from Jordan (and Syria?) (funny how the Palestinians never send suicide bombers there to try to get their land back)"

"Palestine" is an ancient geograhic term, derived from "Philistine." For hundreds of years, Palestine described a poltically subdivided "holy land" surrounding the Jordan River until the Ottoman Empire collapsed in WWI and the League of Nations Mandate subdivided it between France and G. Britain in 1922. From 1922 until 1948 (when Israel decalred independence), Palestine officially (and on maps) consisted of what is now (1) Israel within the 1949 armistice or "green" line; (2) the West Bank; (3) the Gaza strip; and (4) the Golan Heights. Since 1967, all of these areas have been under Israeli control. So there is no Palestinian land occupied by Jordan, Syria or Egypt (although there was from 1948 until 1967). None of the land designated by the UN for partition in 1947 (under UNGAR 181) is controlled by any country except Israel.

"Palestinians are essentially Arabs--they were never considered a separate race or culture until the last 30 years or so of turmoil."

This isn't true at all. The roots of Palestinian nationalism, including specific efforts to secure poltical indpendence for Palestinians, are almost as old as Zionism (late 19th century), although both movements varied and tailored their rhetoric and demands to objective conditions and opportunities. Anti-Zionist Palestinian newspapers (such as Filastin) and organizations appeared before WWI. Palestinian nationalism was quite active during the mandatory period.

It is true that Zionists were better organized and more specific in their objectives, but then they had to be because they were seeking to organize mass emmigration to politically displace an indigenous population. They also had the backing of the British rulers of Palestine. Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, had lived in ancestral towns and homes dating as far back as 1,000 years and no official support for their efforts. By 1947, the Zionists had established a "state within a state" while the Palestinians had nothing comparable, and were forced to look to other Arab states for protection, none of which cared much about Palestinian nationalism except when they were outwardly hostile toward it (Jordan). Zionist encroachment overtook the less urgent, less well organized nationalist aspirations of the Palestinians and eventually came to largely define them.

"Palestinians are essentially Arabs--they were never considered a separate race or culture until the last 30 years or so of turmoil."

This is a racist myth. Thanks to Israel's expulsion of the Palestinians (either by forcibly driving them out or forcibly preventing them to return) millions of these "essentially Arab" people have spent four generations in refugee camps or under Israeli military occupation, a plight unique among Arabs. The notion that they have no unique rights or that Israel bears no responsibility for this ethnic cleansing is bizarre, explainable only by ignorance or racist sympathies. Contrast it to the ubiquitous notion in the West that common religous practices render Jews a nation with rights to a land that few of them had ever visited prior to WWII, despite their disbursal around the world and absence of a common tongue until the 20th century (Hebrew being liturgical). Contrast it to the notion that Palestinian Arabs should allow their country to become the national home to the victims of foreign anti-Semtism and the European holocaust. It's a double standard.

From the beginning, Zionists sought to mask, both out of ignorance and for propaganda reasons, the aggressive aspects of their enterprise, what Benny Morris calls the "morally dubious" character of Zionism. After 1949, the Arab states sought to limit the influence of Palestinian nationalism. These efforts, combined with a general ignorance in the West about the Palestinians and their history, obliterated hundreds of thousands of Palestinian nationals from public or even academic discourse until the 1970's. You see this reflected in

-- the old slogans "a land without a people for a people without a land," a settlement movement that made the "desert bloom." In fact 600,000 Palestinian Arabs were permanent residents of the "land without a people" in 1890 and exported agricultrual produce throughout the region;

-- the Balfour Declaration's reference to "non-Jewish" communities in Palestine, defining Palestinians as a function of what they weren't, rather what they were;

-- the constant refrerences in the press, scholarly works and official documents (such as Resolution 242) to Palestinians as "refugees" instead of a nation;

-- Golda Meir's famous comment that the Palestinians don't exist;

-- decades of US diplomacy and political rhetoric making no reference to "Palestinians" as anything but refugees and terrorists;

-- right-wing propaganda and phony scholarship and historiography to prove that Palestinians don't exist ("From Time Immemorial," "Myths and Facts"), or that their claims to nationalism are suspect.

Your reference to 30 years is interesting. 30 years ago Egypt launched the war that lead (in 1978) to the seperate peace between Israel and its most potent adversary. Until then, Palestinians were generally seen in the West, if at all, as tragic byproducts of Israel's security needs. However, when peace with Egypt was followed by aggressive colonization and repression in the West Bank and Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon to crush Palestinian nationalism in order to facilitate control over the occupied territories[1], Palestinian national aspirations and Israel's ruthless, ideological determination to destory them could no longer be hidden from view. Explicit efforts to delegitimize their national identity now largely exist only on the racist fringe, although understated assumptions and half-truths to this effect remain a staple of pro-Israel propaganda (Mona Charen is a good example).

"Jews on the other hand are a separate culture and have suffered immense persecutions in Arab lands long before the formation of Israel."

Another myth. Israel resulted from foreign colonization that in turn directly resulted from 19th century nationalism and European anti-Semitism culminating with the holocaust. It had next to nothing to do with Jewish persecution in Arab lands (anti-Jewish violence during the mandatory period was always a reaction to perceived Zionist encroachments, although often characterized by anti-Semitic rhetoric and atrocities, occasionally returned in-kind by the Jewish settlers). The handful of Jews living in Palestine in the 1890's wanted nothing to do with Zionism, then or afterward, and were generally at odds with the more secular nationalists that followed. It's not about the inability of Jews and Arabs that lived with each other for hundreds of years to "get along," although this has been a standard perception in the US for decades, less so now.

"Massive return now would essentially destroy Israel."

This again reflects the racist double standard that legitimate Palestinian aspirations unfairly impinge on Israel, rather than saying the legitimate rights of both impinge on both. Always lurking behind such statements are images of Bedouin savages hoping to slit the throats of all the Jewish Israelis while they sleep and dumping the bodies into the sea. The same applies to the nonsense about the legitimacy of Israel's exclusivist character (it's "right to exist"), as if any self-respecting people would acknowledge the right of another country to do to it what Israel did to the Palestinians.

It wouldn't "destroy" Israel, but obviously would make it harder if not imposible for Isreal to remain an exclusivist Jewish state. I'm not so sure this is a bad thing -- pre-state Zionists were divided over a "Jewish state" or a Jewish homeland.

I agree that unqualified "return" is a negligible possibility, but Israel refuses to make (hardly) any accomodation at all, and even hard line Palestinians have been willing to negotiate the terms of "right of return." The current pro-Israel consensus in the US is that the Palestinians should unilaterally surrender this right, and that Israel should give nothing in return. This is equally impractical. It reflects not so much the poltical difficulty of making concrete concessions, but of the refusal, for psychological and propaganda reasons, of Zionist ideologues acknowledge and come to terms with the original sin of the nakba .

[1] For years the press portrayed the Lebanese invasion as Israel's reaction to cross-border Palestinian terrorism despite all evidence to the contrary (such as the PLO's scrupulous adherence to the pre-war cease fire). Every now and then, however, you see some acknowledgement of reality. "The [Israeli] government's goal was to install a friendly regime and destroy the Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization. That, the theory went, would help persuade Palestinians to accept Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." James Bennett, NY Times, 1/24/2

[Cyrus]

"What happened in the Mideast had the stamp of U.N. approval ... There's plenty of land for the Palestinians between the above three countries ... Israel represents 1/980 of the total Arab land mass ... Palestinians are essentially Arabs ... they were never considered a separate race or culture until the last 30 years or so of turmoil ... Jews have suffered immense persecutions in Arab lands long before the formation of Israel ... Massive return now would essentially destroy Israel."

Dear M,

What is the matter with you ?

Do you have something against reading books?? Maybe you refuse to read something when it is recommended by a person you disagree with. However, this is a recipe for an unnecessary burdened advancement of your knowledge. Just think how far you'd have come (not very!) if you had refused to read any book about Poker that was written by people you never heard before!

I have tried to provide you a short but comprehensive list of books, mostly written by Jewish scholars, highly respected or working in the West, that would disabuse you of the gross delusions and fallacies that you once more exhibit through posts such as the above, about the Middle East conflict.

I beg of you to reconsider and order some of them. Summer is near. The beach beckons. Time for some pleasant and inspirational reading!

Respectfully,

--Cyrus

Summer reading assignment

[Chris Alger]

"Yes it does...the neighboring Arab states were poised and determined to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth...Israel had the right to hold ALL lands gained from their failed war."

Aside fromt the racist notion that disenfranchised Palestinians should suffer because of the actions of foreign states because both are Arabic, this is nonsense as a matter of fact. The Egyptian forces in the Sinai were dug into defensive postions and had no intention of attacking Israel. Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian air forces were all destroyed in two days (Egypt's in about 2 hours). The consensus is that the war resulted from poltical miscalculations and that Israel -- which initiated the fighting -- acted as a result of domestic political pressure based on mass fear and hysteria.

"The aggressor can't just attack without risking something...all through history when a war of aggression fails, it often loses land along with its failed attempt at conquest. That's sort of the hidden penalty for wars of aggression, and it's how borders have often been redrawn."

Then Israelis deserve to lose their country because they were the aggressors in 1956? 1978? 1982? Now?

"If there were no risk of land for the aggressor in war--if the aggressor could try to take another country's land but not risk any of his own--that would be a helluva proposition."

No it's not. Outside of the Zionist propaganda sites and organs like Commentary, nobody ever makes this argument, at least not since the Versailles Conference. It's dumb. Taking territory from an aggressor doesn't punish aggression, it just tends to make the next round more ferocious. The corollary is this: a war of aggression lasting many generations should not be concluded until the initial "aggressor" suffers punishment through loss of territory, even when a workable peace is possible or when the initial reasons for the war have expired or become forgotten. In other words, belligerants should fight war for the sake of conquering territory from an aggressor, even if they don't really need it. It's the same thing as saying: a party should wage war to make an abstract point about fault, which is no different than saying that wars should be waged to vindicate national pride.

Your last sentence completely contradicts what you previously said. If aggressors must always be punished, isn't the US at fault for its post-WWII policies for not punishing the aggressors by taking territory that the US neither wants nor needs?

[MMMMMM]

Chris you know damn well that when Israel attacked the joint Arab forces pre-emptively, that was a defensive war, because the Arab forces had even proclaimed that this war would be the war to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth. The 1967 war and the Yom Kippur war were defensive for Israel even if Israel struck first, because it was obvious the Arabs were preparing to launch a massive attack.

To claim that Israel was the "aggressor" in these wars is akin to a schoolkid surrounded by a bunch of bullies who are intent on beating the hell out of him (and they even say so) but he bravely manages to get in the first punch and somehow wins. You would call that kid the agrressor. Your position regarding this is intellectually dishonest and immoral.

Also, your logic is faulty again if you presume I am saying that victorious defenders must take lands from aggressors. I'm saying they sometimes do, and they frequently have the option, and it's a good thing they frequently have the option.

Syria should never get the Golan Heights back, and if Hezbollah starts seriously shelling Israel from a certain vantage point in Lebanon and Lebanon/Syria allow this to continue then Lebanon should lose that vantage point permanently.

[Chris Alger]

"Chris you know damn well that when Israel attacked the joint Arab forces pre-emptively, that was a defensive war, because the Arab forces had even proclaimed that this war would be the war to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth."

No, that's all crap. I doubt you can find a mainstream historian who believes it. "There is general agreement among commentators that Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel. What he did was embark on an exercise in brinkmanship that was to carry him over the brink." Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 237.

The background to the 1967 war is complex, but the precipitating act was the USSR's desire to shore up the Syrian-Egyptian alliance, shaken by a strong antipathy between the two regimes. The Soviets attempted a gambit by falsely claiming that Israeli forces were massed in preparation for an invasion of Syria. Syria then requested that Egypt act to deter the nonexistent "threat." Unable to ignore its superpower patron and ally, Nasser ordered UN peacekeeping troops out of the Sinai and, beginning on 5/14/67, sent in 100,000 troops and 900 tanks of his own over a three week period. At all times, they remained in defensive positions on Egyptian soil.

Israeli leaders weren't alarmed. IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin "assumed -- probably correctly -- that the Egyptian move was deterrrent and political, meant to persude Israel not to attack Syria, and to demonstrate Egypt's fraternity, resolve, and strength to the Arab world. ... Egypt would probably not seek war with Israel; and without the Egyptians, the other Arab states were not likely to march." Morris, Righteous Victims, 302-03.

On May 23, however, Nasser blockaded the Gulf of Eilat from Israeli shipping. Although of negligible strategic importance, the blockade amounted to a classic causus belli for war. These moves, together with blood-curdling rhetoric from the Arab press -- which the Israeli press was only too willing to dish up -- inflamed and terrified the Israeli public, bringing incredible pressure on Prime Minister Eshkol, who bowed to military demands that Israel launch surprise attacks on Egypt and Syria.

The most comprehensive work about the war, Michael Orem's Six Days of War, which came out only last year, describes the following meeting between Nasser and his senior officers on June 2, who were debating whether to withdraw Egyptian planes from their foward bases in the Sinai or leave them there:

"Now it was Nasser's turn to object, stepping in to explain that Egypt could not risk alienating world opinion by assaulting Israel, or jeopardize its newfound rapport with France. Ther were also the beginnings of a dialogue with the United States, and Muheiddin's scheduled visit to Washington. Isreal had suffered a serious strategic defeat [already], but that, too, would be forfeited if Egypt started the war, Nasser reasoned." p. 158. Egpyt was preparing for an Israeli retalliation for the blockade and the Sinai deployment; it had no ability, interest or desire to "wipe Israel from the face of the earth," and certainly never planned one in concert with Syria, who in any case refused to coordinate its own military actions with Egypt's.

Nasser was terrified of having to go to war with Israel becasue he knew first-hand the same facts that led the CIA to conclude that any Israel would probably win any war with Egypt in less than a week. Subsequent events proved this estimate to be conservative.

The first IAF wave was in the air by 7:30 a.m. on June 5. It destroyed nearly half the planes of the Egyptian Air Force and rendered inoperative all six forward Egyptian air bases. As the second wave began to hit what was left, Gen. Ezer Weizman, deputy chief of general staff, telephoned his wife and announced: "We have won the war." An hour later, IAF Commander Gen. Mordechai Hod reported to Rabin (chief of staff) that "The Egyptian Air Force has ceased to exist."

It was only after Israel neutralized any threat of foreign aggressin that it embarked on its conquest of the Sinai, the Golan and the West Bank. Israel was every bit as much of an aggressor during the war as the Arab states.