Israel, Palestine and the Arab/Israel Conflict

funny , because it wasnt isreal in '45. It was Palestine, a colony of the british. What many people view as Isreal is a promised land, but people actually lived there, before the mass migration in to Palestine.

 

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what if they tell lies, will u choose to believe it then?

 

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There is some educational value in hard facts, not dependent on opinion.

The conflict began in 1948, when Israel was formed. Before that all
the land in the area was held by arabs.

Israel's land holdings have increased every year since then, with
most of the fighting on the rim of that expansion.

Israelies and palestinians live and work in the same areas, yet Israel
provides citizenship (and voting rights) primarily by religion, making
them a theocracy rather than a democracy.

Israel kills 4 muslims for every Jew killed in the area.

Palestine does not have sovereignty over any significant land, nor
are they permitted to hold elections or select their leaders in any
other organized fashion. They have no army, no police, no national
councel on city management.

And on those facts, I draw some conclusions.

In every classic sense of the word, Palestine is not a nation.
The entire area is controlled solely by Israel's army, and as such is
not merely occupied land, but conquered territory. To speak of
Palestine as anything but a portion of Israel is to speak of the past.

As such, all palestinians should be considered de facto citizens of Israel.
Most of the worlds frowns upon nations that pay its workers pennies a
day, demolishes that work force's living spaces, and strip-searches citizens
based only on race. By pretending that Palestinians spend their days as
warriors instead of as Israeli factory workers, the world allows their
indentured servitude to continue.

 

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Hardly. The conflict began in the late 1800's when Zionists first began moving to the region. Prior to 1948, the area was a British possession, and before that was an Ottoman (Turkish) possession.

No, Israel has shrunk several times. For instance, they captured the Sinai peninsula from Egypt at one point, but later returned it. Likewise, they have ceded territory near Lebanon and Syria, and just recently pulled out of the Gaza strip. Fighting on "the expansion rim" and in the heart of Israel are indistinguishable, since Israel is such a small country.

While there's no question that Israel is a religious state, they do provide equal voting rights to non-Jews, and decisions are made by an independent political entity, not a state church, so they're not a theocracy.

I think you mean "Arab," not "Muslim," although the two are highly correlated in that area.

All false except for the first (no sovereignty over significant land).

Not sure what any of these issues have to do with the conclusions you claim to draw from them...

 

actually, he means muslims, as Arabs means those of Saudi Arabia(i presume, thats where it came from).

And the only reason the territory has shrunk,is because the surrounding countries had to wage war to get their land back.

Go look up 6 Days War

 

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Wrong again. The surrounding countries have LOST territory every time they've fought wars over it. The 6 Day's War is a great example: Egypt lost the Sinai and Gaza Strip, Jordan lost the West Bank, and Syria lost the Golan Heights. Every decrease is Israel's territory has come about through diplomatic means. Indeed, the phrase "Land for Peace" has characterized Israeli foreign relations for decades now.

 

what on earth makes you think it was "their" land? the british owned it untill '48.

 

lets say that the palestinians lived there, even before any jew came to the land.
does it mean they have a claim on the country? why?
i'll tell you why not:

they didn't rule, there was no "palestine" nation.
yes, they owned some of the lands - but no jew took any land by force.

 

Where on earth do some of these people get their 'facts' from? And please spell it correctly, there's no such country as 'Isreal' anymore than there's 'Jodran' or 'Sadui Arabia' or 'Egpyt'.

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It's also an argument from numbers, without knowing the actual demographics. For instance, there's been at least 10 times as many killed israeli women as arab women, since the second intifadeh was started in september 2000.

 

And what's yout point?

 

no i am not, muslims are different from arabs

 

I thought it was obvious: 4 times as many killed palestinians as israelis does not make the palestinians the wronged part by default.

 

Source please, ............looks bogus
Yes more Israeli women get killed but not that much more.
And, why cherry pick? Are not men humans too? Why those years?

I know why the Israeli side wants some deaths to count and other deaths to not count; it is because the Israelis have not been nearly as victimized by the Palestinians as the Palestinians have been victimized by Israelis.


This conflict began at about 1880 when migrations of Jews from outside the region began entering the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Turkish overlords and the wealthy Syrian and Egyptian absentee landlords benefited from the European foreign exchange currency that the Jews brought with them. The tenant families (who had been working the land almost as if the owned it, planting trees, building houses, passing it on to their sons, while only paying nominal rent to the absentee oficial owners) were the first victims of the Jewish migration because the the arrival of the Jews by their desire for land and possetion of some financial resources, changed the supply and demand relationship between absentee landlords and tennant farmers.

Later tensions got worse when even the non-tennant farming Palestinians (Palestinians is the new name for an old but nameless people) came to believe that the long term goal of most non-Palestinian Jews living among them was to displace most non-Jewish Palestinianis from the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean.

Now they have been mostly displaced but the Palestinians keep having kids even as they live in their prisons /Bantu Stands/ Indian reservations. Even now, most Israelis seem to support the continued displacement of Palestinians from much of the land they still inhabit in the West Bank.

Is the only solution for the Palestinians to forget they they ever were the people who lived between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. If other countries will not take in the Palestinians this can not happen. If Nations no longer have the right to do what America did to it's native Americans and what China did to Tibet and what Sudan is doing to Darfur then Israel does not have the rght to do what it is doing to the Palestinians.

What's next? Where can this conflict go from here?

 

http://www.ict.org.il/casualties_project/stats_page.cfm

You're right, I was severely wrong about the factor: Israeli women killed outnumber palestinian women, but not 10 times. It's only twice as many (and 3 times as many if just comparing non-combatants). However, there are also 3 times as many palestinian dead as israelis, so it is percentage wise 6 times as many. This is significant in showing what targets each side picks.

Of course. It was merely to illustrate the poverty of arguing by numbers: Merely stating that 4 times (actually 3) as many palestinians have died, is not in itself an argument for anything. How many were armed, in combat? How many were killed by their own side? How many were suicide bombers? A simple ratio gives answers to none of these important questions.

Because Arafat launched the second intifada in september 2000. It is the most violent non-war (at least officially) period in a long time. How each side discriminates and picks targets during such a time (do they target civilians specifically, etc.) is important, I think.

 

in simple words: what is israel doing to the palestinians, and why has it
no right to do so?

 

The simple words: Israel is engaged in a slow speed, as unviolent as possible, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land that they had been living on.



The context: While it seems that the majority of Israelis have decided to allow the palestinians to keep Gaza forever, this does not seem to be majority Israeli intention towards land that Palestinian inhabit in the West Bank. It is unclear how large of a non-Jewish minority Israelis are willing to allow to live in their nation.

Until about 1940 any nation was free to do genocide to their minorities without fear of being punnished by the other nations of the world. Until about 1940 nations were free to aquire land by conquest without fear of being punnished on moral grounds. Prior to 1940 if A nation was punnished for gain by agression, they were punnished for the reasons that the Mafia boss of bosses punnishes under bosses for unsanctioned activities. They were not punnished for morral reasons unless other nations had religious or ethnic ties to the afflicted minorities. At about 1940, the sentiments that led to the creation of the UN determined that allowing nations to gain land by aggression creates to many problems for humanity. The worlds great powers agreed to jointly hurt any lesser power that that tried to gain land by aggression. This new agreement was presented to the worlds people as if it was moral law and sort of an extension of, thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt not steal.

Common sense says that nations taking land from other nations through violence always did violate though shalt not kill and though shall not steal. Only be pretending that some humans were not human because they were of the wrong race or wrong religion did we gain the right to steal their land. We could also pretend that they were a danger to us either by being a pollution or because they want to kill us or steal our land. The holocaust, by being so blatant, helped to create the will to create international laws banning genocide and ethnic cleansing. Sometimes we have the will to enforce our international laws banning conquest, ethnic cleansing and genocide and sometimes we don't have the will to enforce those laws. I think we should enforce those laws a necessary step towards creating a global utopia, but I recognize that whether or not the great powers enforce international law depends on selfish ruthless Machiavellian reasons rather than moral reasons.

Israel has been allowed to be a law breaker. Sudan in Darfur and Myanmar with their minorities are being allowed to be worse law breakers than Israel but they don't have the spotlight of being on the "holy ground" focussed on them. More important to me, they don't have my tax dollars being spent to support their ethnic cleansing. The UN decision to give %50 of the British mandate to a people who owned %10 of the land and were %30 of the population also focusses attention on Israel because it was so out of step with the morral principles that we would like to be the basis of international law.

 

The British mandate was broken into Transjordan (perhaps 80%) and Palestine (20%). It is of these 20% that Israel was allocated half, by the UN, as you say, as their land to build a state in. So, there was no land stealing. And, of course, Israel has repeatedly returned the land it conquered when attacked to it's agressors in return for mere peace.

Attacking Israel of land stealing is a bit ludicrous.

 

I stand corrected, I should have said Palestine rather than the British mandate then the 50% statement I intended to make would be correct.

There was land stealing. In 1947 the UN stole land previously stolen by the british and the league of nations and previously stolen by the Turks and previously stolen by thousands of others,and then the UN gave this stolen land to Israel. In 1948 The palestinians tried to steal the land back while the Israelis tred to steal the rest of the Palestinian land and Jordan stole the West Bank.

Israel started the 1967 and 1956 wars. Egypt and Syrya started the 1973 war. The Palestinians started the 1948 war but they were completely justified although rediculasly unprepared and overconfident and over reliant on help that would not come at the levels needed for victory. I am glad for the Israelis that they did not suffer a disaster in 1948, but the love of truth requires an aknowledgement by the supporters of Israel that the original partition of Israel and Palestine by the UN was a gross injustice to the Palestinians.

 

I have a question about terminology: when British India was split into indepedent India and Pakistan, huge numbers of Hindus moved from Pakistan to India and Muslims from India to Pakistan. Was this ethnic cleansing?