A CBS News column is claiming that the onus is not on the Palestinians to make the next move in the mideast, now that Israel disengaged from Gaza, because settlers are still moving to the West Bank:
For Palestinians, the Gaza pullout is a little like a settler shell game. The settlers have disappeared from one place, only to pop up somewhere else. And Israel still controls Gaza’s land and sea crossings. In the eyes of the armed Palestinians, that’s plenty reason to keep fighting.
Then there’s the “separation fence” the Israelis are building, which has gobbled up huge chunks of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, in the name of security — yet more provocation.
So when Ariel Sharon says to them, “Look what Israel did for peace, now it’s your turn,” the Palestinians are a little stumped. Essentially, they have to convince the militants to lay down their arms without being able to promise to deliver a net gain in land or independence.
Meanwhile, armed Palestinian groups believe that making the cost of staying in Gaza too high with their constant attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers is what drove the Israelis out. For them, the Gaza pullout proves that violence works.
The sad thing about this analysis is that it’s about to emerge as the Next Big Lie.
Mideast politics is full of these Big Lies. When Israel offered Arafat 99% of what he wanted in Camp David, and instead of accepting it or even making a counter-offer, he walked away and started a war that’s lasted nearly five years and cost thousands of lives, the Big Lie was that Israel wasn’t making much of an offer in the first place. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, the Big Lie was that Hezbollah was still justified in launching rocket attacks because Israel didn’t pull completely out of the Sheba Farms. When Ariel Sharon made a scheduled – and approved – visit to Har HaBayit in 2000, the Big Lie was that mosques were being attacked, and that this was an excuse to launch a war that had been planned for months. Mohammed Al-Dura. Jenin and the massacre-that-wasn’t. The “Apartheid Wall”. I could go on and on with the Big Lies.
They get accepted as truth because there are just so many people in the world repeating them. Media outlets. Arab countries and leaders. “Activists” and sympathizers. When you consider that Muslims outnumber Jews in the world by a proportion of a thousand to one, and that sooner or later the message being shouted the loudest by the most people comes to be accepted as truth, then it’s easy to understand how these Big Lies get propagated.
So now the “shell game” is about to be the next Big Lie. Oh, the world will say, Israel didn’t really do very much. Sure, the country went through the most painful thing it could possibly imagine, forcibly evacuating fellow citizens from their homes and land. But really, they didn’t do anything because more settlers are moving to the West Bank. So the Palestinians don’t have to disarm; they don’t have to talk peace; they don’t have to take the next step.
No matter what sacrifices Israel makes or what unilateral steps it takes, nothing will be enough. It will all be explained away by the next Big Lie. And Israel’s moves will all be in vain.
Over to you, Tre…
Please, DinV!
Tré’s unavailable for comment. She’s learning the steps of that new dance craze; the “intafada lambada”!
Intifada lambasta?
They get accepted as truth because there are just so many people in the world repeating them. `
(Still can’t find the quotation marks…anybody???)
You’ve got to be joking Sari. You are right here repeating the lie that the Palestinians were offered 99% of what they wanted. As I posted on another thread, what was being offered was not going to lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. I agree with the analysis presented here, the Israelis pulled out of Gaza, only to concentrate their forces on annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, Gaza Palestinians will not be able to build a fuctionning infrastructure (much of what there was being destroyed by Israel) when they have no control over their movements within and their borders. Then, they will be blamed for further resistance and for failing to build an functionning economy and democratic civil society.
That “resistance” word again, eh Tré.
The term is heroic, isn’t it? “Resistance” against tryanny, “resistance” against oppression, and yes, even “resistance” against the Nazis.
Groups and individuals that engage in “resistance” are freedom-fighters. They are to be admired, applauded and awarded the status of victim.
Some forms of resistance, though, are illusionary. They amount to nothing more than the refusal to accept the *other*, the refusal to acknowledge the other’s humanity and the refusal to even recognise the existance of the other……you know….like when the *other* isn’t even shown on a map.
So you have resistance, and then you have refusal.
The former, as I stated, is heroic, the latter a symptom of hatred, of chauvinism, of racism and, most of all, implacable anti-Semitism.
The one should be admired, the other condemned. The two should never be confused as being equivalent.
Don’t patronize, Johnny-boy. Palestinian resistance is not Hamas. It exists in many non-violent forms, although violence is not always terrorism. Sometimes its just self-defense.
Before you misinterpret, let me give you an example of self-defense:
September 2000. After of a week-end of widespread but unarmed, civilian demonstrations against Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound/Temple mount, after Israeli police and army opened fire with live and rubber bullets on these unarmed demonstrators injuring countless and killing at least five, Palestinian police returned fire on Israeli troops.
There’d be nothing patronising about the term “johnny-boy” now, would there anonymous?
And what was the reason Sharon’s visit was so vigorously protested, anonymous? What did the Palestinians find so offensive? Was it his hair-colour…..or his shoe-size?
And while I’m at it, what do Palestinians find so offensive about Christians inhabiting towns like Nazareth or Bethlehem?
Finally, anonymous, do you consider it an offense to be Greek in Athens?
Anonymous’s interesting concept of ‘self defence and ‘terrorism’
Hum,a Pal terrorist killing Jewish children = self defence and justifiable violence BUT not terrorism. A Jew visiting the holiest site in Judaism = terrorism and racism!
What’s to ‘misinterpret’? Thanks but no thanks for the lesson, anom.
Tre/Hanthala: Exhibit A of people who easily get sucked in by the “big lies”.
The big lie is that there are such a people as Palestinians and that their land was taken from them by the Jews. No Arab would dare call himself a “Palestinian” before 1948.
I’m surprised nobody’s pointed out the latest travesty of the ‘peace’;
First suicide attack since pullout
Sun Wire Services
Monday, August 29, 2005
JERUSALEM — Israeli officials on Sunday issued fresh demands that the Palestinian leadership clamp down on militias after a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bus station in southern Israel, causing numerous injuries. The bombing in the city of Beersheba, south of Tel Aviv, was the first such attack on Israel since it withdrew from all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank. The last settlers were removed last Tuesday.
You go, Tre!
Cliff, you’re putting words in my mouth, I did not say that.
Sari, you are talking out of your…At least give some support statements for your opinion…
John, I don’t know that it was Sharon himself (though he is plenty offensive given his support for continuous annexation of Palestinian territory) as much as the idea of sending in 1000 riot police and soldiers to a holy site during weekly prayers. But so what? Unarmed civilian demonstrations…isn’t that a democratic way of showing opposition? Killing unarmed civilians is state terrorism.
Cliff, looks like Israelis have as much difficulty as you do in discerning terrorism:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/619070.html
The wording of one paragraph in in particular is interesting in light of our recent discussion on hate and racism (particularly surprising to see in Haaretz):
`In Shfaram the murderer was a Jewish soldier, and therefore is not considered a member of enemy forces.`
Why is the word Jewish in there at all?
`The case was the first in which a soldier was found guilty of killing a foreign citizen during more than four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.`
`Hayb, a member of the Bedouin Arab minority, faced up to 20 years in prison.`
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/619085.html
Never mind, I get it now….
Peter,
Of course the Arabs made up a “Palestinian” people soley to find a way to destroy Israel by claiming to be indigenous to Israel i.e. “Palestine.”
Of course Tre never answers my questions about when a “Palestinian” country existed or why Jews were called “Palestinians,” even before the Arabs started calling themselves that.
Tre knows her position is based on lies that is why she can’t answer.
It’s gruesomely interesting to see how support for Israel is increasingly taking the standard forms of dysfunctional diasporic nationalism: the enemy is illegitimate and doesn’t even exist, people who criticize us are bigots, et cetera, ad infinitum.
Yes, the Gaza events have been painful. One might have had more sympathy for Israel had it not been settling the area for a generation beforehand. One doesn’t, or at least one shouldn’t, get thanked if you stop doing something bad. Should you get thanked for trying to reverse it? Maybe, if it won’t go to one’s head.
oh h…..
In your enlightened post of 08.30.05 – 9:31 am .You said”Cliff, you’re putting words in my mouth, I did not say that’
I reply’Huh? Care to elaborate,H?’ I’m all ears.When you find the ‘words I inserted in said mouth’ in this thread,please let us know.In the meantime, you might come to the conclusion as we have, that you are delusional hatebot and have lost touch with reality!Unless of course,you were posting as the troll ‘Anonymous’. In that event you are a trolling liar and a bigot.So what is it h? BTW, if you don’t like the names I label you as, perhaps you should stop trolling around labeling and libeling others who don’t agree with your warped sense of justice! You absolutely deserve all that’s coming to you.
Next:You said @ 08.30.05 – 1:00 pm ‘looks like Israelis have as much difficulty as you do in discerning terrorism:’ Really,h? Hum, putting words in my mouth again,eh? Did I take your ‘widdle terrorist’ test and fail,h? Truth is h,I have no problem ‘discerning’ who the good and the bad are in this scenario.Terror is terror, doesn’t matter by who, what or where, it’s terror! You on the other hand, refuse to admit that the grotesque acts of murder perpetrated by your child killing war criminal heros is terrorism, you label it’resistance’! Way to go h.
Tre; your arguments are getting more bizzare. Chinese immigrants have been coming to Canada since the 1800’s, however recent waves of Chinese immigrants have been far wealthier than their predeccesors and have been buying up vast amounts of Western Canadian Real Estate. Some areas of Greater Vancouver are now 40%+/- Chinese. Does that mean that the homeless in Vancouver can declare jihad against their Chinese nemesis,and bomb the crap out of them with impunity? And yes it is a fair comparison.
No Dan, there is no parallel. Gimme a break.
There’s no parallel because there’s no violence and the newcomers have juiced up the local economy. Oh yeh, nobody’s egging on those who can’t afford homes in the ‘new economy’, suppling them with weapons and inciting them to kill.
But then you can’t see that.
Still no parallel, Dan. The newcomers, as you call them, did not decide that those who lived there previously, and who did not share the same ethnicity, be denied citizenship in the new state they decided to form.
And if you want to replace the ethnic with the economic factor, if the proportion of disafected reaches that in Palestine-Israel, you might just see guns, bombs and violence. But while the numbers are still relatively small, the individuals rather the socio-economic system can, and is, still blamed by those in power.
Tre, Tre, Tre, man, you are obtuse!
The early Zionists were subjected to hostiity from the get go (into the 1920’s). There WAS no State of Israel to deny Arabs citizenship; the Europeans had already de facto done that by breaking up the Ottoman lands into mandates. In the areas of Jewish settlement, standards of living and the economy improved dramatically to the benefit of ALL residents. If it weren’t for the venomous hatred spewed by a few influential Arabs, at that time, there wouldn’t have been any eventual conflict and abandonment of homes by the local Arab population.
Look in the mirror Tre,…jeez!? You can’t see your own image?!!!
😉
Tis is as good a summary as you’ll find, I’m thing:
http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm#The%20British%20Mandate
“thing” = ‘thinking’
hey h/tre
You there tre/h? Please answer my questions.Your silence will be interpreted by all of us as a sign of defeat.
PS: I won’t go away.
Dan, are you out of your mind? The ZIonist Congress was in 1897. The Balfour Declaration was in 1922. The plan was to create a Jewish state of which these inhabitants would not be citizens.
According to your own source:
`They were not concerned about the Arab population, which they ignored, or thought would agree to voluntary transfer to other Arab countries. In any case, they envisioned the population of Palestine by millions of European Jews who would soon form a decisive majority in the land.`
Unfortunately, it did not work out that way and terror campaigns were necessary to drive the undesired `infidels` out of the land.
European mandates were set up as a transitory means to self-government (Which occured for Syrians, Joranians, etc.). These mandates explicitly stated that no harm should be done to the populations living under them.
Speaking of big lies and ethnic cleansing, where`s Golda/Malia?
Hey H. you said’Speaking of big lies and ethnic cleansing, where`s Golda/Malia?’
Speak for yourself.You lying fraud!
Can’t even answer a question honestly.
PS
I won’t go away H!
Ah, DaninVan. Do you really think that the well-off have a right to displace the poor because of the latter’s poverty?