Mid East policy speech

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

FinnBow:

I'm not really buying that it's the same-0.. I must not have been following Camp David and the peace attempts for the past 30 years or my ears haven't been working..

Let's try some logic.

1) If you START with 1967 borders as an initial condition --- Then
2) In order to swap for anything, Israel has to give UP acreage that it held prior to 1967.
3) The end result being that Israel loses land it held prior to 1967.

NEVER was in the cards previously.. You'd have to give me concrete examples...

What parts of pre-67 Israel were EVER on the table in serious negotiations other than "joint use" travel corridors that amounted to road access?

I guess my point is that I really don't give much of a rat's ass exactly where the ultimate border of a two-state solution is drawn. There is no magic line, although Israel's ongoing (illegal in many minds) settlement policy is all about shaping the "facts on the ground" in their favor (and at our expense in terms of our relationships with everybody in the world except Israel).

Clinton, Dubya and Obama all have had pretty much the same position vis-a-vis 1967 borders with land swaps, although everybody (including Obama until last week) was careful to fine-tune their message with a certain amount of ambiguity out of fear of AIPAC's wrath.

I've long since tired of our kowtowing to Israel and its Zionist ambitions. I, like most Americans, reflexively sided with Israel until I spent two weeks there in ~1983 travelling all over the country, including the West Bank. Their treatment of Palestinians that I personally witnessed changed my views a bit as to the unquestionable righteousness of their cause and our country's blind fealty to it.

[flacaltenn]

FinnBow:

You're talking with an American Jew that got socially blackballed from the congregation for questioning Israel back in the late 70's. I considered it so nasty, I extended it to permanent exile. So I'm not just rubber-stamping a position here. There is no such thing as a friendly or productive 40 year "occupation" of the West Bank. It's that occupation that I join you in questioning. However, you need to realize that the Palis don't value the same stuff that Israel does. Infrastructure, hospitals, schools, are a whole lot less important to them. They have been given money to build stuff, but have little to show for it. And Jordan -- the actual claimant to the West Bank has not cared a whit about them either.. Why isn't Jordan building infrastructure (or significantly aiding the Palis) in the West Bank areas that Israel has ceded to P.A. control?

Different value scale completely.. That's a LARGE part of the disparity you see when you visit there. Technology, commerce, economic growth? Ain't even on their radar. Unless they've already left to live abroad..

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

There is no such thing as a friendly or productive 40 year "occupation" of the West Bank. It's that occupation that I join you in questioning. However, you need to realize that the Palis don't value the same stuff that Israel does. Infrastructure, hospitals, schools, are a whole lot less important to them. They have been given money to build stuff, but have little to show for it. And Jordan -- the actual claimant to the West Bank has not cared a whit about them either.. Why isn't Jordan building infrastructure (or significantly aiding the Palis) in the West Bank areas that Israel has ceded to P.A. control?

Different value scale completely.. That's a LARGE part of the disparity you see when you visit there. Technology, commerce, economic growth? Ain't even on their radar. Unless they've already left to live abroad..

All true enough. What I object to is the enforced & blind fealty on the part of our body politic to Israel's Zionist ambitions (something you seem to have experienced first-hand). Admittedly, Obama's position, as illuminated in the speech, is a nuanced/semantic change (though not substantive) from Clinton/Dubya, but the nerve of Bebe to lecture the President (and leader of Israel's only meaningful ally and biggest benefactor) in public bothers me. Then the body politic virtually demands that Obama "walk back his position" in front of AIPAC. WTF???

Lots of people are complaining that Obama even touched on Israel in his "Arab Spring" speech. But how does he go about expressing support for popular uprisings in Israel's neighbors (Egypt and Syria) while side-stepping the issue of Palestianian rights. Answer - he can't.

Personally, I don't much care about the details of the ultimate resolution of this mess, just that it ultimately gets resolved (as long as our country is so intertwined with Israel). Having said that, I'd much prefer agnosticism or benign neglect in our relationship with Israel and the Palestinians. There's no upside in picking sides in this intractable conflict, especially if it means signing on to the unsavory tactics undertaken by "our" side.

[piece-itpete]

I've got to say, I think saying 'we' use unsavory tactics is, um, funny in a strange way in this case.

How can there be a solution? 'They' can't even enforce a cease fire!

Pete

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

FinnBow:

I'm not really buying that it's the same-0.. I must not have been following Camp David and the peace attempts for the past 30 years or my ears haven't been working..

Let's try some logic.

1) If you START with 1967 borders as an initial condition --- Then
2) In order to swap for anything, Israel has to give UP acreage that it held prior to 1967.
3) The end result being that Israel loses land it held prior to 1967.

NEVER was in the cards previously.. You'd have to give me concrete examples...

What parts of pre-67 Israel were EVER on the table in serious negotiations other than "joint use" travel corridors that amounted to road access?

I am ok with that and shouldn't this be on the table?

[flacaltenn]

FinnBow:

What I got exiled for was a comment about how a flight of F16s leveling a village in the Heights might not be an entirely proper response to a couple crazed Palis with a mortar and bad aim. Guess I also stuck my foot in it when I asked some of the dittohead zealots when was the last time they got to VOTE in an Israeli election. That -- pissed them off for sure.

What I object to is the enforced & blind fealty on the part of our body politic to Israel's Zionist ambitions

Israel's Zionist "ambitions" might have been a threat BEFORE Israel was established in '48. But today the sum total of the Zionist "ambition" is to survive as an advanced country and refuge from persecution and hold Jerusalem. I'd say that is a pretty small "threat" to ANYONE in America or outside the Muslim sphere. So even the phrase "Zionist ambition" is one of those super-charged lightning bolts that stokes the fire. As if the solution to TODAY'S Zionist ambition is to sweep Israel into the sea. Or at least celebrate their demise in some fashion.

If I didn't get the Zionist agenda memo and I'm missing something important --- Please FinnBow -- let me know...

BTW: I'm all for honest representation of the Pali cause. Like any other "occupation" -- I'm against it...
None of that leftist "grey area" here -- as if there were GOOD occupations and BAD occupations. You win, you occupy, you get out or absorb the refugees with full rights.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

I've got to say, I think saying 'we' use unsavory tactics is, um, funny in a strange way in this case.

How can there be a solution? 'They' can't even enforce a cease fire!

Pete

I guess I'm tired of being told that I should care deeply about Israel's plight (and that my concern has to be one-sided and equipped with blinders), so much so that the semantic turn of a phrase by the President (that deviates, slightly at most, from our postion of the past 20 years) causes so much harrumphing, hyperbole and indignation.

Without going all "chapter and verse" on ya, there are plenty of unsavory tactics on both sides of this conflict. Our media reports it like all the unsavory stuff is perpetrated solely by the Palestinians against their generous, gracious and unfailingly kind Israeli hosts. It simply ain't so.

FlaCalTenn - My "Zionist Ambitions" reference is to their ongoing settlement practices on the West Bank, actively establishing "facts on the ground" to the detriment of our foreign policy interests and in violation of numerous UN resolutions (FWIW) and international law (whatever that means).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli...t#Legal_status

[piece-itpete]

I'm certainly not saying Israel is a nation of saints. What I'm saying is, what are they supposed to do, say 'oh OK it's just some nuts shooting rockets, that's OK then'?

Or, 'Well, they couldn't even keep a cease fire so let's give them their own country, I'm sure it'll stop once we do that'?

Any US President who did so in their shoes would probably be impeached and rightly so.

Pete

[flacaltenn]

NoOneReal:

I am ok with that and shouldn't this be on the table?

It has been on the table in SOME form as FinnBow twisted my arm to admit for a long time. But there's a certain diplomatic parsing and lexicon to present that idea. It is NOT as the Pali.Author. wanted it to be a one acre for one acre swap as logic would dictate. Was never intended that way. Anyone who's been there knows how much wasteland surrounds the habitable parts.

When you just blurt out "pre- 1967 borders" as a starting point, it just shows that you are oversimplifying the concept and avoiding all that special diplomacy that it takes to sell an international solution..

For instance, it comes AFTER some other important pre-conditions, such as identifying who SPEAKS for the Palis? -- recognizing the rights of the other parties -- and deciding on the luncheon menu...

[flacaltenn]

FinnBow:

Our media reports it like all the unsavory stuff is perpetrated solely by the Palestinians against their generous, gracious and unfailingly kind Israeli hosts. It simply ain't so.

I got friends that I work with in Tel Aviv. They said it tears their hearts out to see Pali moms stopped at the border with children who need hospital. In the times BEFORE the intifada, MOST Palis worked in Israel and had quick access to medical care even schools. The hostilities end all those reciprocations.

Anyway -- after they vent about misery caused by isolating the Palis -- they always remind me....

If all that Arab moolah that funds the intifada and those damned to hell muslim "schools" that turn out little rock-throwing, hating, know-nothings -- if all that money went to building a Pali Hospital or a real University -- there might be hope...

As for the "Zionist ambitions" of letting Israeli settlers build in the occupied lands... It's been 45 years.. The guys who fought over that land are close to dead. I'd say that showed some restraint.. Or it's only a half-assed zionist ambition. Hitler didn't wait a week to start building stuff in German occupied lands.

Don't give a packaged shit about UN resolutions.. If you want to know why -- I'll start a thread...