Israel, Palestinians to try for peace by end of '08

[Kaido]

Whoa...

 

[ProfJohn]

Clinton tried to do the same thing towards the end of his time in office.

I will be highly suprised if this turns out any different.

 

[Stoneburner]

Problem is, abbass has no credibility with his own people. They really think that an america/israel supported and funded palestinian leader will have any authority at all?

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Clinton tried to do the same thing towards the end of his time in office.

Clinton tried to weasel the Palestinians into giving up any chance of ever having a viable sovereign nation.

http://gush-shalom.org/generous/generous.html

That is hardly a plan for peace.

 

[jjones]

Not a chance in hell.

 

[Lemon law]

Why not just declare Olmert the leader of the Palestinian people and cut out the middle man.
Then after months of tough negotiation Olmert can cede two squares inches of waterless desert
for a Palestinian state.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Why not just declare Olmert the leader of the Palestinian people and cut out the middle man.
Then after months of tough negotiation Olmert can cede two squares inches of waterless desert
for a Palestinian state.

If you want to talk squirrely, we could follow Iran?s vision and ensure peace through the removal of one of the two sides.

 

[jonks]

Topic Title: Israel, Palestinians to try for peace by end of 3008

Fixed.

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Clinton tried to do the same thing towards the end of his time in office.

Clinton tried to weasel the Palestinians into giving up any chance of ever having a viable sovereign nation.

http://gush-shalom.org/generous/generous.html

That is hardly a plan for peace.

By brokering a deal that offered them 90% of what they asked for. The scumbag.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...it#Reasons_for_impasse

 

[kylebisme]

Yep, much like if you were asking to keep your body, and I demanded your heart along with a few other organs and appendages while claiming I was making a generious offer by being willing to give you 90% of what you asked for. Surely you would consider that a rather scumbag-ish thing for me to do, wouldn't you?

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Yep, much like if you were asking to keep your body, and I demanded your heart along with a few other organs and appendages while claiming I was making a generious offer by being willing to give you 90% of what you asked for. Surely you would consider that a rather scumbag-ish thing for me to do, wouldn't you?

If my choice was to get my body minus my hands or no body at all, I'd go with the body. But that's me. Some people wouldn't cut off their hands to spite their lives. Ok the body analogy sucks either way.

But you get peace, a sovereign country to build your homes, world recognition of your statehood, and the possibility of future negotiations among unarmed delegates for disputed lands. Or not...

 

[Narmer]

Does anybody honestly buy this crap? Does anybody remember WHY Bush set up this meeting in the first place? It was to strengthen Mahmud Abbas stature in the eyes of Palestinians after his weaklings got routed out of Gaza. This, like all of Bush's goodwill gestures, is all an empty ruse to fool the gullible. MARK MY WORDS, Nothing will come of this. Abbas is in a much weaker position than before. Furthermore, Olmert is under investigation in Israel. All this is a sideshow of the weak.

 

[Stoneburner]

Narmer is correct but the meeting weakens abbas. Bush doesn't seem to realize that people he likes in t he mid east are hated and the ones he hates are liked. It's partially how he keeps playing into Mahmoud Ahmenijad's hands in iran.

 

[HeXploiT]

Bush is a neo-con and the neo-cons have hijacked the Zionist cause. Zionism is no more. Israel is a nation and it's staying that way. Bush, as all others, will attempt to force Israel to give up land.
Land for peace always fails. We need to get the hell out of the area and let Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia & Jordan deal with the issue. Western leaders tromping into the middle-east so they can gain the title "great peacemaker" always ends in disaster.

 

[Narmer]

Originally posted by: Perry404
Bush is a neo-con and the neo-cons have hijacked the Zionist cause. Zionism is no more. Israel is a nation and it's staying that way. Bush, as all others, will attempt to force Israel to give up land.
Land for peace always fails. We need to get the hell out of the area and let Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia & Jordan deal with the issue. Western leaders tromping into the middle-east so they can gain the title "great peacemaker" always ends in disaster.

I think Israel should either annex the land they rightfully won or give it all back to the Palestinians. Anything else is just wasting everybody's time.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Narmer

Originally posted by: Perry404
Bush is a neo-con and the neo-cons have hijacked the Zionist cause. Zionism is no more. Israel is a nation and it's staying that way. Bush, as all others, will attempt to force Israel to give up land.
Land for peace always fails. We need to get the hell out of the area and let Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia & Jordan deal with the issue. Western leaders tromping into the middle-east so they can gain the title "great peacemaker" always ends in disaster.

I think Israel should either annex the land they rightfully won or give it all back to the Palestinians. Anything else is just wasting everybody's time.

Israel should have kept all the land they gained in the six day war and used it as a bargaining chip. Think of it, they were attacked by multiple nations, defended themselves and gained a huge swath of land and then they gave it all back!(except the Syrian Heights)

What were they thinking?
I will answer this question. They were thinking they didn't want to cause any trouble and thought that if they gave the land back they'd be left alone.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: sirjonk

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Yep, much like if you were asking to keep your body, and I demanded your heart along with a few other organs and appendages while claiming I was making a generious offer by being willing to give you 90% of what you asked for. Surely you would consider that a rather scumbag-ish thing for me to do, wouldn't you?

If my choice was to get my body minus my hands or no body at all, I'd go with the body. But that's me. Some people wouldn't cut off their hands to spite their lives. Ok the body analogy sucks either way.

But you get peace, a sovereign country to build your homes, world recognition of your statehood, and the possibility of future negotiations among unarmed delegates for disputed lands. Or not...

A nation surrounded by foreign nation's boarder supervision and divided by their settlement blocs, bypass roads, and roadblocks, is "sovereign" by what definition of the word?

As for the body analogy, it obviously sucks to argue against. However, a nation's land is its body, and what Israel has been "offering" to take from Palestine is far more than it's hands. Palestine's "hands" better fit in the vast majority of what was once Palestine but was taken from them back in 1947.

But anyway, I don't want to be too much of a scumbag at the moment, so you can just give me your hands for now.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Narmer

Originally posted by: Perry404
Bush is a neo-con and the neo-cons have hijacked the Zionist cause. Zionism is no more. Israel is a nation and it's staying that way. Bush, as all others, will attempt to force Israel to give up land.
Land for peace always fails. We need to get the hell out of the area and let Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia & Jordan deal with the issue. Western leaders tromping into the middle-east so they can gain the title "great peacemaker" always ends in disaster.

I think Israel should either annex the land they rightfully won or give it all back to the Palestinians. Anything else is just wasting everybody's time.

Israel should have kept all the land they gained in the six day war and used it as a bargaining chip. Think of it, they were attacked by multiple nations, defended themselves and gained a huge swath of land and then they gave it all back!(except the Syrian Heights)

What were they thinking?
I will answer this question. They were thinking they didn't want to cause any trouble and thought that if they gave the land back they'd be left alone.

Your history is a bit off there, the Six Day War started with Israel attacking Egypt.

 

[Lemon law]

I don't think its totally hopeless. The concept of a Palestinian State has great appeal. And in many ways, I think the 06 Israeli incursion in Lebanon shook Israel to the core when their vaunted military took two weeks to advance 20 miles against Hezbollah resistance. Suddenly there was a sea change, not a storm yet, but its not a good sign if the trend of
increasing Arab weaponizing continues unchecked. And suddenly Israeli guns and tank face something more potent than rocks and bottles.

As weak as Abbas is, if he can negotiate a Palestinian State made viable by funding from the Arabs, the US, and even the Israelis, the Hamas led Palestinians in Gaza may be forced to buy in also. But any peace must go far beyond just a Palestinian State, because a Palestinian State with a GNP of a nickel is a non starter. The problem with the possible motive of Bush propping up the stature of Abbas may become a failure and this peace conference may well finish Abbas and Fatah as being credible with the Palestinian people if nothing credible come s from it.

And the other gamble of this peace conference is that any deal Abbas inks with the Israelis won't be worth the paper its printed on if the Hamas faction of the Palestinians do not
buy in. And then the hatreds on both sides will end up being deeper and more intractable than they were before.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Narmer

Originally posted by: Perry404
Bush is a neo-con and the neo-cons have hijacked the Zionist cause. Zionism is no more. Israel is a nation and it's staying that way. Bush, as all others, will attempt to force Israel to give up land.
Land for peace always fails. We need to get the hell out of the area and let Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia & Jordan deal with the issue. Western leaders tromping into the middle-east so they can gain the title "great peacemaker" always ends in disaster.

I think Israel should either annex the land they rightfully won or give it all back to the Palestinians. Anything else is just wasting everybody's time.

Israel should have kept all the land they gained in the six day war and used it as a bargaining chip. Think of it, they were attacked by multiple nations, defended themselves and gained a huge swath of land and then they gave it all back!(except the Syrian Heights)

What were they thinking?
I will answer this question. They were thinking they didn't want to cause any trouble and thought that if they gave the land back they'd be left alone.

Your history is a bit off there, the Six Day War started with Israel attacking Egypt.

Showing a little bias are we? Why did they attack Egypt? Egypt, Jordan & Syria were massing for an attack. There isn't a historian in the world that will refute that.

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Your history is a bit off there, the Six Day War started with Israel attacking Egypt.

True, thought it leaves out a bit of the backstory. It's like if I got in your face and said, "I'm gonna punch you, and I'm gonna do it right now." And you then kicked me in the balls because you knew if I actually hit you, it'd knock your head off. So technically you attacked me first, but if you didn't you'd be so dead right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_day_war
(edited for brevity)

At the end of May 1967 Nasser proclaimed: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not of more declarations."

On June 3, days before the war, Egypt flew to Amman two battalions of commandos tasked with infiltrating into Israel and engaging in attacks and bombings so as to draw IDF into a Jordanian front and ease the pressure on the Egyptians. Soviet-made artillery and Egyptian military supplies and crews were also flown to Jordan.

This put Arab forces just 17 kilometers from Israel's coast, a jump-off point from which a well coordinated tank assault would likely cut Israel in two within half an hour.

At the same time several other Arab states not bordering Israel, including Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait and Algeria, began mobilising their armed forces.

On the eve of the war, Egypt massed around 100,000 of its 160,000 troops in the Sinai, including all of its seven divisions (four infantry, two armored and one mechanized), as well as four independent infantry and four independent armored brigades. No less than a third of them were veterans of Egypt's intervention into the Yemen Civil War and another third were reservists. These forces had 950 tanks, 1,100 APCs and more than 1,000 artillery pieces.

Syria's army had a total strength of 75,000.[81] Jordan's army had 55,000 troops,[82] including 300 tanks, 250 of which were US M48 Patton, sizable amounts of M113 APCs, a new battalion of mechanised infantry, and a paratrooper battalion trained in the new US built school. They also had 12 battalions of artillery and six batteries of 81 mm and 120 mm mortars

The Israeli army had a total strength, including reservists, of 264,000, though this number could not be sustained, as the reservists were vital to civilian life

On 2 June Jordan called up all reserve officers, and the West Bank commander met with community leaders in Ramallah to request assistance and cooperation for his troops during the war, assuring them that "in 3 days we'll be in Tel-Aviv"
******************

So yeah, Israel attacked first.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: sirjonk

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Your history is a bit off there, the Six Day War started with Israel attacking Egypt.

True, thought it leaves out a bit of the backstory. It's like if I got in your face and said, "I'm gonna punch you, and I'm gonna do it right now." And you then kicked me in the balls because you knew if I actually hit you, it'd knock your head off. So technically you started the fight, but if you didn't you'd be so dead right now.

Love the layman's terms.:laugh:

 

[maddogchen]

i see a trend for the next president to continue when he or she is about to leave office...

 

[Lemon law]

The problem is that the B grade wild west morality exhibited here may justify a few bad guys being punished, but does not explain why many thousands of arabs that were doing nothing now have get punished. But that is the Israeli rationale here dating back to the right of return.

And anyway, in wild west morality, the good guy is still supposed to wait for the bad guy to draw first. And does not a get pass for bushwacking the bad guys before they actually attack.

 

[eits]

isn't this exactly the opposite of what bush said he was gonna do whenever he ran for office?

edit: not knocking bush on this or anything... just wondering. i would have sworn that i heard him saying something about this during a debate.