[Rictor]

Originally posted by Sandwich


Let me put it to you very plainly:

Israel does not want war. Israel does not want to wipe her enemies off the face of the planet. Israel does not want the Palestianians to go through such hardships, live in such crappy conditions, or feel the need to blow themselves up just to strike back.

But Israel's survival as a nation must be the top priority of her leaders. When attacked, we will defend. When threatened, we will respond.

And when we are offered a secure peace, we WILL jump at the chance.

Not before.

You do, but your leaders do not. Several times in the past, when Hamas was either actively engaged in a ceasefire or on the verge of agreeing to a ceasefire, Sharon has order asassination of Palestinian leaders. Every time he has done this, there have been reprisals against Israelis, and the ceasefire goes down the drain.,

This has happened several times, and each time Sharon ordered the asassinations without any previous provocation. So, in my eyes, this is seen as Sharon intentionally breaking the peace and provoking the Palestinians. Let me say that again; whenever Israel and Hamas and/or other militants have called a trcue, Sharon has taken steps to break the peace.

Peace is rather simple to achieve.

1.Take any area where Palestinians form the clear majority and declare that to be the nation of Palestine
2. Station the Israeli army on the borders of Israel/Palestine and have them guard against intrusions.
3. Make sure that all Palestinians who want to go be in Palestine are accomodated. Also make sure that you have not annexed any private property, such as schools, farmlands etc.
4. For a period of several months, disallow any passage between Israel/Palestine. Anyone attempting this will be shot on sight.
5. After several months have passed, and tensions have cooled, allow travel back and forth, but with thorough inspection.
6. Henceforth, allow any Palestinian the ability to gain Israeli citizenship by normal means (with immigration standards of the same level as the international norm) so that any who wish to make Israel their home can do so.
7. For no reason whatsoever, short of a full scale invasion, should the IDF venture into Palestine. It is now a sovreign nation, and any activity will be considered an act of war.

Do this, and within maybe a year, suicide bombings will practically stop. If not totally, they will sharply decrease and popular support for them will fall to zero. Thats peace, but in order to achieve it, yu have to acknowledge that Palestinians must have their own homeland. They will never be happy living under Israeli occupation, and they will respond to the repression with attacks against Israeli targets,

[Janos]

@Rictor:
With huge unemployment and those Pals working on the Israeli side now disallowed to go to work? With no working infrastructure - medicare or even food? With both Israelis/Pals living on the same areas at 60%/40%  or 50/50, those parts would certainly not cause any troubles? How about Jews trapped inside the Palestinian areas? Families broken apart?

Closing the Pals in a ghetto would propably cause only more malcontent, because that. The essence of your idea - trying to separate the warring parts - is, with the efforts to stop suicide bombings-retaliatory/preventive raids -circle of death, the very basis of every single peace proposal.

[Rictor]

For the month or two, you have to stay on your side. Before this happens, you gt to choose which side you want to go to, but have to agree to obey the laws of that nation. So yes, if they chose to remain on sperete sides, families would be broken apart for a few months, but after that they would be free to cross over as they wished.

I may have forgoten to mention, but this proposal would entail  foreign aid to to the nation of Palestine to kick off the ecnomony as well as to rebuild the infrastructure that has either been destroyed by Israel or fallen into disrepair over the years.

[Janos]

Not that bad.

Now add gun-ho militants on both sides and watch the equation fall into chaos and turmoil.

[Liberator]

Originally posted by Janos
Closing the Pals in a ghetto would propably cause only more malcontent...

But, a ghetto is only a ghetto because the people who live there are unable/unwilling to improve it.  They could just as easily head in the other direction to lumber and building material to improve their circumstance, jobs to I would think.  The only reason they don't is because their corrupt leadership has talked them into believing that Israel is the only place where they can get jobs and support themselves and their family.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator


But, a ghetto is only a ghetto because the people who live there are unable/unwilling to improve it.  They could just as easily head in the other direction to lumber and building material to improve their circumstance, jobs to I would think.  The only reason they don't is because their corrupt leadership has talked them into believing that Israel is the only place where they can get jobs and support themselves and their family.

How can you get a job if no-one will hire you?
How can you buy timber if you have no money, because you can't get a job?
How can you get educated and find a job if there is no financing for the schools?


And this applies to any ghetto in the world....ghettos don;t start out as ghettos, they become them.  And it can;t *just* be attributed to the people - it's the investment that goes into the area and infrastructure that causes it.  There are ghettos all over the world - including suppossed 1st world countries.  They just relabelled as areas of social deprivation, or ignored.

EDIt:  anyway, I though you were Christian?  Whatever happened to the act of charity?  Y'know, the Good Samaritan and all that?  (or 'judge not, lest ye be judged'?

[TrashMan]

1. I hate terrorist of all kinds. Palestinian suicide bombers included. There's nothing more despicable than to kill inocent civilians like that.

2. Wait..there is...What Israel is doing. They are responding to terrorist attack with national terror. Hamas and other such groups are just that - groups. They aren't the Palestinian army..
To attack Palestina and level cities and houses..to arrest and kill civilians (and later in news to call them terrorist to cover up the crimes and to leve the people in the belief that they are actualy winning the "war"). An assault on a foreign country with your own military.... that is an invasion. Palestina never proclaimed war or attacked Israel first. Sure, Israel sez that Arafat is supporting the terrorists, but offer little or no proof. And even if Arafat is supporting them, that still doesn't give Israel the right for such an action. After all, it is them who stole Palestinian land.

3. I hate the U.S. for looking the other way and leting Israel go unpunished for what it's doing... Hell, ewven when that american student was run down by a Israel buldozer they didn't intervene...

4. Defensive wars and preemptive strikes...nice littel words used to hide the fact that YOUR'E the one who's attacking. Regardless of what your neghbour is doing on his side of the fence, you don't have the right to attack first...you just don't...

[Grey Wolf]

The most dangerous thing about a policy of preemptive strikes? You set a precedent. Precedents can be abused. Or used against you.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
The most dangerous thing about a policy of preemptive strikes? You set a precedent. Precedents can be abused. Or used against you.

Plus it follows the 'are you looking at me?  right then, come on - square go ya basturt!' line of thinking, which never worked in pubs either.

[Rictor]

Oh, don't start thinking that the word pre-emptive was thought up the day Dubya came into office. Its very dangerous to tie all your complaints regarding US foreign policy to a single man, and then when that man is gone, you think the coast is clear. The system that produced the man, that supported him and enabled him to do what he did is still in place. The people, the organizations, hell even the money, they're all still there.

Bush never set a precedent. All he did was have the balls to call the war what it was - pre-emptive. If Clinton or someone else were in power, they would have thought for a second before opening their mouths and figured out that they shouldn't use such an ugly word as pre-emptive. It would have been the same war, with a bigger coat of happy paint over it.

[Grey Wolf]

Who said I was accusing anyone? I was just making a statement
Since you assumed that I meant the fool who is in office, then that implies that you have doubts about him yourself.

[Rictor]

Hehe, yeah, doubts. I doubt Bush the way Italians doubted Mussolinni, right before they strung him up by his neck. I loathe the man and everything he stands for.

[Ace]

Originally posted by aldo_14
EDIt:  anyway, I though you were Christian?  Whatever happened to the act of charity?  Y'know, the Good Samaritan and all that?  (or 'judge not, lest ye be judged'?

Calvinism Aldo. If anyone wants to take this conversation on the tangent of Calvin, his beliefs, the Puritains, etc. feel free to do so since I really don't want to go there here. The religion in the modern world thread is a better place for it, since it is more theologically rooted.

[Ghostavo]

Please no, if someone starts a religious discussion out of this I will shoot him!!

[Liberator]

Originally posted by aldo_14
anyway, I though you were Christian?  Whatever happened to the act of charity?  Y'know, the Good Samaritan and all that?  (or 'judge not, lest ye be judged'?

Charity has it's limits.  My sympathy ends when the people I'm suppose to sympathize with begin bombing targets with innocent women and children in them, and the rest don't actively take measures to see that it stops.

Besides, how can there be charity when they've killed all the charity workers.

*edit*
That's the trick of it, you see.  If the "Achmeds on the street" in Palestine would band together and take out the warmongers and corrupt leaders and stopping the bombings thus showing that they can take care of themselves, I suspect Israel would more than happy to stop the Gunship attacks.  "God helps those who help themselves" as they say.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Rictor
Bush never set a precedent. All he did was have the balls to call the war what it was - pre-emptive. If Clinton or someone else were in power, they would have thought for a second before opening their mouths and figured out that they shouldn't use such an ugly word as pre-emptive. It would have been the same war, with a bigger coat of happy paint over it.

Preemptive wars are still wars.. U.S. is the agressor in this case, and NOTHING...I repeat - NOTHING can justify a country for starting a war...
You can shout as much as you want that it was necessary (lol), it was defensive(yeah, right), and that it was them who attacked first(they didn't). Unless another country formaly declares war on you or assault you with their military forces under command of their leadership - then ..and ONLY then can you strike...

[Rictor]

Trashman, remember who you're talking to. I agree with you :D

[Liberator]

Originally posted by TrashMan


Preemptive wars are still wars.. U.S. is the agressor in this case, and NOTHING...I repeat - NOTHING can justify a country for starting a war...
You can shout as much as you want that it was necessary (lol), it was defensive(yeah, right), and that it was them who attacked first(they didn't). Unless another country formaly declares war on you or assault you with their military forces under command of their leadership - then ..and ONLY then can you strike...

We didn't start it, they did by ramming 3 airliners into the WTC and killing 3000 innocent people.  DO NOT FORGET THAT!

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
We didn't start it, they did by ramming 3 airliners into the WTC and killing 3000 innocent people.  DO NOT FORGET THAT!

Except Iraq didn't do that. In fact they had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Hell Afghanistan didn't have anything to do with it either except that they were stupid enough to not arrest Osama instantly.

[Rictor]

Well, that depends on how much you want to limit your view.

The way I see it, you did start it. You started it by arming and training bin Laden. You started it by installing the Taliban in Afghanistan. You started it by giving the Saudi Royal Family lucractive business agreements, whereby Osama was able to gain the funds to run a terrorist group. You started in by stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia, which is to this day one of the main reason Osama is pissed at America. You started it by unconditionally supporting Israel, which I think you can agree would piss off of Islamic fundamentalists.

If you choose to, out of convenience, see 9/11 as the starting date for the whole terrorism issue, then yes; they did start it. But if you choose to look at the history of the conflict, as most reasonable people would, then you can indeed see that 9/11 was a direct result of American operations in the Middle East.

The CIA has a term for the unexpected consequences of US.  military (and also "intel") activities, they call it "blowback". 9/11 was the textbook defintion of blowback.