un palestine vote, 1947
 

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history


concise history of just what has led to decades of conflict in israel between the jewish and palestinian people.

i just saw a documentary called "the gatekeepers".

it's not a particularly great piece of filmmaking. it's the standard gray toned talking head interview doc but the content of those interviews is just incredible and depressing.

the director interviews 6 former heads of israel's anti-terror shin bet. none of them believe israel's security is enhanced by the failures of the peace process but all agree that there is virtually no chance that israel will change the path it's on.

one quotes yitzak rabin as saying that they have to fight terror as if there is no peace while wageing peace as if there is no terror. all urge that israel talk to anyone. none thinks that's going to happen.

i'd figured no one would reply...

it's odd, tho. you look at how things have been done, and how they've gone since the brits first made this move. the euro's certainly have managed to get most of the fighting to occur away from their shores these days. it's mostly confined to the middle east. was that the plan all along? or just an unintended outcome?
why has israel been able to keep all the land for itself all these years, if all along it was supposed to be a split?

it's a depressing subject. there are no simple out's.

national conflicts are hard to resolve. ethnic conflicts even harder. and religious conflicts impossible. when the model is two states negotiating there's still some hope. but there are those on both sides that benefit by pushing the conflict into a broader arab vs. jew ethnic divide or a jew vs. muslim holy war.

i don't blame anyone for avoiding the subject. i only commented because i had just see the movie and remembered you had posted earlier.

yeah, not easy at all. it's a colossal mess. it's going to take some people who are absolutely devoted to coming up with a solution-and even then you'll have people on both sides unhappy.

The split was proposed by the brits. At the time, they administered Palestine by a "mandate" from the UN which expired in 1948. The proposal was accepted by Israel, but rejected by the arabs. Israel declared itself a nation and was recognized by the UN. Arabs declared war and lost so many of the arabs living in Israel either fled or were forced out into Jordan, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria. Later, in the 6 day war, Israel captured Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. They eventually gave Sinai back to the Egyptians, but retained control of the Golan and the West Bank.

Israel doesn't have all the land. The Palestinians have plenty of land.

By the way, if the situation was exactly the opposite, every single person in the world would be on Israel's side. Israel has less than 1 % of the land in the Middle East. Can you imagine if the situation was reversed? Let's pretend Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and all of those countries were Jewish states and then you had this tiny little Muslim country called Israel. And then let's suppose you had some Palestinian Jews. Under that circumstance, do you think anybody would suggest that Israel (being a Muslim state in my hypothetical) should give land to the Palestinians Jews? It would be laughable to even suggest that anyone would be against Israel if Israel was a tiny Muslim state surrounded by all Jewish states. Nobody would be suggesting that Israel had too much land and should give some away, if Israel was a tiny Muslim state surrounded by Jewish states.

Great Post! Wonder who will ask you how much land Israel had in 1945.

I invite you to read the Wikipedia article on the Bosnian genocide and then get back to us about treatment of Muslim minorities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide

I'm not sure what your point is. I don't know anyone that condoned the genocide in Bosnia. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. The UN came to the defense of the Muslims there. That is exactly my point. If Israel was a tiny Muslim state surrounded by Jewish states and there were Palestinian Jews firing rockets into Israel, the UN and the whole world would be outraged. But since Israel is a tiny Jewish state and not a tiny Muslim state, much of the world condemns them. It's absurd.

I saw reference in your other post about 'condemning' israel. Im certainly not doing that.
But where do palestinians have plenty of land? If the un said this is yours, and that is theirs, and both agreed....why are they still fighting about it? I dont know why. Theres no easy answers here for anyone. It would be nice if they could reach a compromise, but i think too many outside groups dont want it settled.

I was not implying that you were codemning Israel. I was saying that much of the world was against Israel.

Ever since 1948, the Arabs were never willing to accept a Jewish state in that area, even though Jews have a history in that area dating back thousands of years. Ever since 1948, the Arabs have been militarily attacking Israel. Practically every time this has happened, the Arabs ended up losing some land as a result. Most of the countries that engaged in the attacks on Israel have finally gotten smart and stopped attacking Israel. The Palestinians are the only ones that keep attacking Israel. They want some of the land back that they lost in previous wars. The Palestinians don't even recognize Israel's right to exist.

I think Israel would be crazy to give any land back. Why would you give land to people who say they want to destroy you? It would be one thing if the Palestinians accepted Israel's right to exist and wanted to co-exist in peace. But that is not the case. The Palestinians have continuously repeated their position for years that they do no accept Israel and they want to destroy them. If you owned some disputed property would you give some of that property to a person who says that their goal is to kill you?

By the way, one thing that many people forget is that the Palestinians are not some distinct people. They are Arabs. Some of them are Egyptians, some are Jordanians, some are Lebanese, some are Syrian, etc. Like I said before, the Arabs have 99% of the land in the Middle East. Israel has 1%, yet people think Israel needs to give some of that land back to the Arabs. It is absurd.

i just didn't realize that the original intent was for that land to be split between the two. that hasn't happened. is it giving land back if it wasn't supposed to be held to begin with? i get that israel was attacked-does that justify holding land that is supposed to belong to the palestinians? should palestine essentially be punished because other countries attacked israel? i don't know. i don't know if anyone knows. it's a bad situation all the way around.

and the highlighted...the palestinians want the homeland they were promised. it has nothing to do with whether they are arabs or not.
hell, we sure didn't tell the kuwaitis they could live elsewhere when iraq invaded. they're all arabs too.

There would have never been a problem if the Arabs would have accepted the original land split. If you keep declaring war and you keep losing the wars, you will probably lose some land. By the way, much of the land taken was land that wasbeing used to wage attacks. It was strategic land. I'll bet if Canada kept waging war on us and they kept attacking us from a hill by the border, at some point we would probably take that hill by the border.

All this stuff happened 40-60 years ago. I think people need to move on. Mexico is not still crying over the land that we took from them. I think most people in the US are pro-Israel. But there are certainly some people that are extremely pro-Palestinian and they think that Israel should give land back to the Palestinians. I wonder if these same people would be in favor of us giving a lot of land back to Mexico and back to the Indians.

With regard to Iraq and Kuwait, Iraq attacked Kuwait and tried to take their land. If it was the other way around and Kuwait had attacked Iraq, I don't think people would have complained if Iraq was victorious and took some land away from Kuwait.

Here is some good info about the whole Israel/Palestinian conflict:

http://www.targetofopportunity.com/p...nian_truth.htm

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...elligence.html


read that a few minutes ago on slate.

c'mon Bibi loosen up...

When Abbas gives speeches in English, he sounds like a moderate. But when he gives speeches in Arabic, he calls for the destruction of Israel.

that would be surprising since the palestinian authority has recognized israel as a state with a right to peaceful existence for almost 20 years and plenty of israeli's speak arabic.

do you have a credible source for this incredible claim?

maybe he's confusing abbas with hamas?

Do a search for "Abbas calls for the destruction of Israel". By the way, Abbas' Fatah party still calls for the destruction of Israel in their charter.