The Siege of Gaza is Broken

[747carmen0]

Defending themselves!!!

 

That old chestnut! Israel facing an existential threat, surrounded by enemies. don't make me laugh! We're talking about a country that has somewhere in the region of 300 nuclear warheads and is, in any case, protected by the US nuclear umbrella. Israelies are vicious bullys in respect of their Palestinian neighbours, they grab their land (presumably to gain more liebensraum), treat them like sub-humans, tell great lies about where the aggression is coming from, and justify their actions according to a theocratic imperative - their God-given right to inherit the whole of Judea and Sumaria. If this isn't reminiscent of the nazis I don't know what is. All you apoloigists for Zionism need to wake up; if a third world war occurs it's as likely to be because of the West's continual and historical turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities. Only Israel can get away with murder, landgrabbing and ethnic cleansing.

 

Oh, and while I'm here, why is it that none of these questions are ever seriously considered by the western media? Do the math!

I agree with you 100%

[callippo]

I remember one summer a few years ago when there were no suicide bombings in Israel for a couple of months.

 

Wow. Isn't that great. Either the Arabs cannot find for the period of a few weeks enough confused young men or mentally handicapped adolescents they can brainwash with a perverse form of Islamist ideology to agree to blow themselves and queues of totally innocent civilians up, or, more likely, the Israelis were successful in preventing these attacks, and you think that's a sign of some desire for peace on the part of Hamas or Islamic Jihad?

 

Excuse me, but what have you been smoking? Can you get me some, please ?

 

did those peace-loving Israelis take this opportunity to forge a lasting peace agreement with the Palestinians?

 

Did you ever hear of the Camp David summit in 2000?

 

The following excerpts are from the most pro-Arab account of the Camp David 2000 summit, written by Robert Malley (a member of the US delegation) and Hussein Agha (a Palestinian Arab involved in the process) and published in the New York Review of Books, 9 Aug. 2001:

 

|| Barak was deemed a privileged partner because of his determination to reach a final deal and the risks he was prepared to take to get there.

 

|| Camp David exemplified Barak's political courage and Arafat's political passivity, risk-taking on the one hand, risk-aversion on the other.

 

|| As the President repeatedly told Arafat during Camp David, he was not expecting him to agree to US or Israeli proposals, but he was counting on him to say something he could take back to Barak to get him to move some more. "I need something to tell him," he implored. "So far, I have nothing."

 

|| When Abu Ala'a, a leading Palestinian negotiator, refused to work on a map to negotiate a possible solution, arguing that Israel first had to concede that any territorial agreement must be based on the line of June 4, 1967, the President burst out, "Don't simply say to the Israelis that their map is no good. Give me something better!" When Abu Ala'a again balked, the President stormed out: "This is a fraud. It is not a summit. I won't have the United States covering for negotiations in bad faith. Let's quit!" Toward the end of the summit, an irate Clinton would tell Arafat: "If the Israelis can make compromises and you can't, I should go home. You have been here fourteen days and said no to everything. These things have consequences; failure will mean the end of the peace process...."

 

|| Arafat spent far less time worrying about the substance of a deal than he did fretting about a possible ploy. Fixated on potential traps, he could not see potential opportunities. He never quite realized how far the prime minister was prepared to go, how much the US was prepared to push, how strong a hand he had been dealt.

 

This is what Arafat rejected:

 

CC1. An independent, internationally recognized and sovereign Palestinian Arab state

 

CC2. In 97% of the territories

 

CC3. Contiguous in Gaza and the "West Bank"

 

CC4. Including the Arab neighborhoods of "eastern" Jerusalem

 

CC5. With the so-called "right of return" to the nascent state

 

CC6. And a US$30 Billion fund to compensate and resettle "refugees".

 

Questions:

 

Q1: Why wasn't the Clinton Compromise "enough"? Did Arafat want another 3% = 70 square miles primarily inhabited by Jews - or nothing?

 

Q2: Why didn't Arafat make a counter-offer (traditional in negotiations done in good faith)?

 

Q3: Why was Arafat willing to make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on less than half the territory offered and without eastern Jerusalem and US$30 Billion in aid?

 

Those bloodthirsty Israelis continued what they've been doing for years - kill more Palestinian women and children and take more Palestinian land

 

here we go again - the nonsense floated around by the apologists for Arab terror that the Israelis kill civilians totally indiscriminately in the same way as Arab terrorists murder their victims, totally indiscriminately, with the clear intent to inflict the largest amount of casualties possible, in places like buses, pizza parlours, and shopping malls,

 

If Israel REALLY WERE randomly targeting Arab civilians, we'd expect 50% of Arab casualties to be female. Yet less than 5% are... which shows that Israel does a pretty good job of avoiding innocent civilians despite the strategic choice of Arab terrorists to operate from behind their own civilians (e.g. sometimes launching rockets from urban population centers so that when Israel targets the rocket launchers it is difficult to avoid civilians who are in the area.)

 

From the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism:

 

http://212.150.54.123/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=439

 

|| The proportion of females among Israeli fatalities was relatively low in the early months of the conflict, and gradually rose to a level of around 30 percent; since June 2001, this proportion has remained fairly stable. Palestinian fatalities, in contrast, have been consistently and overwhelmingly (over 95 percent) male (see Graph 1.5).

 

http://212.150.54.123/casualties_project/stats_page.cfm

 

Palestinians Arab Casualties: 103 Females out of a total of 3179 = 3.2%

 

Israeli Casualties: 306 Females out of a total of 1010 = 30.3%

 

then there's the trotting out of the deluded western 'peace campaigners' who put themselves in harm's way, and are from time to time, as you'd expect in war zones, hurt or even killed, and then eagerly trotted out by the Arab propaganda machine as 'martyrs'.

 

Rachel Corrie clearly put herself in in a position of what travel insurance companies describe as 'reckless peril' when they refuse to pay out after somebody jumps out a seventh storey hotel balcony hoping to hit the swimming pool, and miss.

 

as far as Tom Hurndall goes, an Israeli soldier was convicted of his manslaughter by an Israeli military court in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years in prison,[1] after his disgusted IDF colleagues informed on him.

 

Soldier jailed for activist death

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4140586.stm

 

I don't suppose you'd care to contrast that with how murderers of Israeli civilians are treated in the territories or in the wider Arab/Muslim world? Are they treated as criminals, arrested, tried, and convicted under the law?

 

No. On the contrary, they are feted as heroes, their families are given in some cases large cash rewards, and monuments are built to them as, not murderers, but shahid or 'martyrs'.

[Wildcat]

Interesting argument, based on a far from pro-Palestinian source. For another account of what happened try this article by Uri Avery.

 

In response to your questions:

 

Q1: Why wasn't the Clinton Compromise "enough"? Did Arafat want another 3% = 70 square miles primarily inhabited by Jews - or nothing?

 

Arafat had already made huge compromises at Oslo, where they formally relinquished 78% of their homeland that was captured by the Israelis in 1948 accepting just 22%. Israel scuppered Oslo, and built settlements all through the period. At Camp David how was Arafat supposed to be able to be able to compromise any more, it was not Arafat that walked out on Oslo.... and how was he supposed to bring his people along with him for even more concessions. Anyone thinking he could has no understanding of the injustice suffered by the palestinians in the last century. Barak and his compromises at Oslo were no such thing, whilst the negotiations were ongoing settlements continued to be built and the roads and walls dividing up palestinians from their relatives and families continued to be built.

 

Also Arafat did make compromises :

 

• He agreed to changes in the green line and to the annexation of 2% - 3.5% to Israel.
   
  
• He agreed theoretically to settlement blocs, which are an anathema to the Palestinians.
   
  
• He agreed to the annexation to Israel of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which for Palestinians are, in every respect, settlements set up in land taken by Israel in 1967.
   
  
• He agreed to hand over to Israel the Western Wall and the Jewish quarter in the Old City.
   
  
• He agreed to relinquish the historical claim of the refugees to return to their homes and accepted, in principle, that Israel will only allow the return of an agreed-upon limited number.
  

 

Q2: Why didn't Arafat make a counter-offer (traditional in negotiations done in good faith)?

 

To his credit Arafat's offer were minimum demands that would be able to establish an independent state there was nothing much more he could compromise on. To his credit he didn't use it as "a trojan horse, or a marker, which would be the first part of the longer term objective to destroy" Israel which is how you characterise Arab politics... because he had sincerity and took to the table what he could offer. Unlike the Israelis.

 

As Uri Avnery puts it:

 

As an aside, if there were any truth to the stock Israeli assertion that the Palestinians employ the "slice method" (take what is offered and ask for more, until Israel is destroyed) then Arafat surely would have grabbed Barak's "generous offer" in both hands and left the demand for more to his heirs. The fact that Arafat turned down the offers proves his sincerity. He regarded the agreement as "the end of the conflict" and therefore required the minimum necessary for the Palestinians to establish an independent State. It was precisely this insistence by the Palestinians, that so infuriated Ben Ami, which demonstrates their willingness to recognize Israel and end the conflict.

 

Q3: Why was Arafat willing to make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on less than half the territory offered and without eastern Jerusalem and US$30 Billion in aid?

 

Because he was willing to make compromises contrary to what you have been arguing ?

 

The Camp David proposals were a trap for Arafat, his initial reluctance to attend turned out to be true. The proposals put to him were impossible for him to accept on behalf of his people, it would have divided the West Bank up into enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and soldiers and it gave Israel control over the temple mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

 

The contemptuous offers of Israel in no way matched what Arafat had and was prepared to offer at Camp David. Arafat was even prepared to compromise and at Taba presented a counter-map, which relinquished 2.34% and left the large settlements and the bypass roads to them in Israel, but without the Palestinian villages around them.

 

But by then the insults from Israel had already begun the initial stages of the Intifada and with the murder of Muhammad al Durrah a young boy targetted and shot by the Israeli army, resulting in the events of October. There was nothing Arafat could do to prevent what happened, especially after Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut" had gone to gloat over the Temple Mount in a deliberate provocation.

[callippo]

Interesting argument, based on a far from pro-Palestinian source

 

now you are joking. What you mean is, that just because Avnery happens to both Israeli AND Jewish, then that means that he is not 'pro-Palestinian', when he most definitely is. What else would you call the first Israeli ever to meet Arafat?

 

Despite his clearly pro-Arab views, Avnery regularly gets the chance to air his, for many Israelis, contoversial opinions in the Israeli media all the time - as you'd expect in a liberal democracy like Israel. Needless to say, Israel has a level of press and general political freedom and respect for individual/minority rights far in excess of anything else you will find elsewhere in the Middle East.

 

what next? Are you going to say that Amira Hass, Illan Pappe, and Noam Chomsky, to just pluck a few names out of the air, not to mention the Nuteri Karta religous nutjobs you've mentioned, are 'far from pro-Palestinian', or using that piece of sophistry beloved of Israel-haters, are not 'anti-Zionist', just because they happen to be Jewish, too?

 

anyway let's turn to Avnery's spin on Camp David II and Taba you linked.

 

If Arafat agreed to all the aspects of the Clinton parameters/compromise, then why did he walk out of Camp David? Why wasn’t an agreement reached at Taba – which may well (nothing is certain in Israeli politics) have allowed Barak to be re-elected?

 

The reason Arafat didn’t take the generous offer and then ask for more (the slice or salami method) was that it explicitly included a clause terminating the conflict, i.e. that there could be no more slices after that.

 

Indeed, further on, Avnery himself writes:

 

|| But they did not reject the Israeli offers, as Ben Ami claims. On the contrary, since then they insist that every negotiation begin at the point that Taba ended.

 

Which is to say, “we accept Israel’s previous concessions, now let’s start from that point and get some more slices….”

 

Avnery makes some other nonsensical claims:

 

|| The Palestinian interpretation is very different. They made their historical compromise at Oslo, when they formally relinquished 78% of their homeland that was captured by the Israelis in 1948, and accepted the remaining 22%. Israel now comes (assisted by the Americans) to demand a compromise on these 22%. For the Palestinians, this is out of the question.

 

OK, by that token, the Israelis made their compromise in 1922-23, when 78% of historic Palestine was made into Arab-only Trans-Jordanian Palestine (no Jews allowed). So now what?

 

I find it funny that Avnery later references “mandatory Eretz Israel”. There was, of course, no League of Nations Mandate by this name and the only person I've heard of, in my entire life, that has ever used this expression, is him in the article above.

 

But this is, of course, his way to reference only the western section of Palestine that was chopped into two by the British in 1922-23, the smaller portion out of which a Jewish national home was supposed to be re-established under the Palestine Mandate established after WW I. The purpose of this League of Nations Mandate was to re-establish the Jewish state:

 

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/midea st/palmanda.htm

 

|| The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions.

 

In 1923, the British divided the "Palestine" portion of the former Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts. Jews would be permitted only west of the Jordan river. In effect, the British had "chopped off" 75% of the originally proposed Jewish Palestinian homeland to form an Arab / Palestinian nation called Trans-Jordan (meaning "across the Jordan River").

 

So Avnery is playing dumb and asks why the Arabs (after getting 78% of Mandatory Palestine) should compromise about 22% of the 22% which was “Mandatory Eretz Israel”, then why not also ask: why should the Jews make any compromise on “mandatory Eretz Israel”?

 

Of course, it’s further garbage given that Oslo was based on UNSCR 242 which does NOT (another myth) call for a full (let alone immediate or unilateral) Israeli withdrawal. Oslo was in large part about negotiating the border, so why pretend otherwise?

 

Look how Avnery continues to contradict himself:

 

|| there was a very clear finish line. It had been on the table all the time: the establishment of a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories beyond the green line

 

So Arafat had an inflexible position. This is the opposite of a willingness to compromise.

 

Avnery is also guilty of gross intellectual dishonesty:

 

|| From Robert Malley, Clinton's aide, we know that Arafat was coerced against his will to attend. He believed (correctly) that he was walking into a trap.

 

Yes, Arafat was in a manner of speaking “coerced” - or at least highly pressured - to attend, but given what Avnery argues, why was such coercion necessary?!

 

Furthermore, the parenthetical “correctly” remark is Avnery’s and contradicts Malley and Agha, who wrote:

 

|| Arafat spent far less time worrying about the substance of a deal than he did fretting about a possible ploy. Fixated on potential traps, he could not see potential opportunities. He never quite realized how far the prime minister was prepared to go, how much the US was prepared to push, how strong a hand he had been dealt.

 

Look further:

 

|| Arafat's sole purpose was to emerge unscathed and whole.

 

Avnery tells us that Barak’s wanted peace only so that he could get re-elected.

 

And Clinton only wanted to achieve peace so his wife could get elected.

 

OK, so they both wanted to achieve peace… yet Arafat’s purpose was to emerge “unscathed” withOUT achieving peace?

 

What I've always found baffling is why so many are willing to accept on faith the assertion that Arafat rightfully rejected a bad deal, as if 8 years of violence is a legitimate alternative to negotiations. Is there anyone out there that seriously thinks that if there ever is to be any peace deal that it will look any much different to what was offered to, and rejected by Arafat in 2000?

 

Uri Avnery seems a bitter old man who is trying to settle political scores by lashing out and criticizing people (just look at all the personal attacks built-in to the article). If this was directed against someone on the other side of the political spectrum (say, Netanyahu) I’d understand it. But this is against someone like Ben Ami, who refused to serve in the Sharon government and resigned from the Knesset!

 

the rest of your post degenerates, in the familiar way, into cheapo sound-bite propaganda Israel-bashing :

 

the murder of Muhammad al Durrah a young boy targetted and shot by the Israeli army

 

As simply reading the very lengthy and well-linked Muhamad al Durrah Wikipedia article ought to be able to show to anyone, it is by no means clear that the unfortunate boy was shot by the IDF at all, and as to his being 'targeted' - whether he was shot by Palestinian gunmen or the IDF, then that is simply total nonsense.

 

In fact, there is now even some doubt that the child died at all. There is no blood in the "scene" and unedited video finally revealed in a Paris court shows the allegedly dead child opening his eyes and peeking from behind his hands. It appears that the entire event, with the collusion of the photographer, may have been staged to frame Israel.

 

http://www.seconddraft.org/home.php

 

of course, this wouldn't be the first, or the last, time we got the spectacle of 'Pallywood' in our living rooms.

 

If you aren't familiar with the concept of 'Pallywood', then watch this "60 Minutes" report:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_B1H-1o pys

 

see the funeral processions in which the dead person, after falling off a stretcher, gets up and climbs back onto it?

 

Remember, in the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war, how Hizbullah pulled the same bodies out of the rubble, over and over again, for different Western journalists... thus inflating body counts (and, in one case, making children something like 150% of the dead). Remember how the same woman wailed in front of different damaged houses claiming it was hers and that she had lost everything? Remember brand new stuffed animals strewn amongst the rubble to make it appear that children were slaughtered... necessary precisely because they weren't?

 

ever get the feeling you've been had?

[Wildcat]

Interesting argument, based on a far from pro-Palestinian source

 

now you are joking. What you mean is, that just because Avnery happens to both Israeli AND Jewish, then that means that he is not 'pro-Palestinian', when he most definitely is. What else would you call the first Israeli ever to meet Arafat?

 

Despite his clearly pro-Arab views, Avnery regularly gets the chance to air his, for many Israelis, contoversial opinions in the Israeli media all the time - as you'd expect in a liberal democracy like Israel. Needless to say, Israel has a level of press and general political freedom and respect for individual/minority rights far in excess of anything else you will find elsewhere in the Middle East.

 

 

My point was that you misrepresented Camp David by putting up Robert Malley's views of Camp David as the most Pro-Arab view of the summit here. When clearly there are other views of the summit that take a very different view of where blame for the failure of the talks lies.

 

 

Did you ever hear of the Camp David summit in 2000?

 

The following excerpts are from the most pro-Arab account of the Camp David 2000 summit, written by Robert Malley (a member of the US delegation) and Hussein Agha (a Palestinian Arab involved in the process) and published in the New York Review of Books, 9 Aug. 2001:

 

 

I'll come back to the other points later.

 

But just as a passing comment the 1922 settlement you mention was a betrayal of the promises made to the Arabs in the Hussein McMahon Correspondence, something Lawrence of Arabia felt very guilty about.

 

The Palestinian grievances predate 1922.

[callippo]

The Palestinian grievances predate 1922.

 

by how long - two years? Because that's how long the Mandate Palestine had been in force prior to 1922. Before that, there was no entity, governed locally and not as part of an empire governed from afar, that was ever called 'Palestine'. 'Palestine' is simply the Latin-European name for what Zionists call Yeretz Yishrael, that the Romans/Byzantines renamed 'Palestine' from Judea in a fit of pique following a series of Jewish revolts, the most historically significant of which was the 132-35AD Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba's_revolt#Long-term_consequences_and_historic_importance

 

The Land of Israel became part of the Eastern Roman Empire ("Byzantium") after the division of the Roman Empire into east and west (a fitful process that was not finalized until 395 CE).

 

Around year 390 CE, the Byzantines redrew the borders of the Land of Israel. The various Roman provinces (Syria Palaestina, Samaria, Galilaea, and Peraea) were reorganized into two diocese of Palaestina.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine#Byzantine_Period_330.E2.80.93638_CE

 

here's an excellent Middle East history graphic which might assist you to get an overall view of the history of the area - better than any timeline or chronology you could possibly hope to read.

 

graphic : 5000 years of history in 90 seconds

http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html

 

Ever wondered why the Arabs don't say 'Palestine', but 'Falestin'? There's no P sound in Arabic. That's why 'Pakistan' is called 'Bakistan' in Arabic.

 

2. The Palestinian grievances predate 1922.

 

so which kind of Palestinian 'grievances' are you talking about? Arab - be they Muslim, Christian or Druze Palestinians - or Jewish Palestinians? Because don't forget, Jews were just as much inhabitants of British Mandate Palestine, or indeed the land the Byzantines renamed Palestine as Arabs were, and nobody in those days drew a distinction between them, except, in the British press, Jews might be referred to using a term that is now almost obsolete - 'Hebrews'. The Jews weren't yet Israelis and the Arabs weren't yet Palestinians as we today know them as Palestinians, i.e. Palestinian Arabs. They were BOTH Palestinians.

 

this is why I always refer to them as 'Palestinian Arabs' - because once upon a time, not all that long ago, there was such a thing as 'Palestinian Jews', too.

 

Hence, the Palestine Philarmonic Orchestra is now the Israel Philarmonic. The original Palestine national soccer team (not the current one) is now the Israel soccer team. The Palestine Post newspaper is now the Jerusalem Post. The list is long.

 

and don't just take my word for it. The Arabs themselves were often ready to deny that there was ever any entity called 'Palestine', and that was such a thing as 'Palestinians'.

 

ARAB DENIALS OF PALESTINE

 

Initially Arabs welcomed the idea of a Jewish return to Syria (yup, they didn't yet identify the land as "Palestine").

 

Summarizing the proceedings of the 1913 Arab Congress, Abdul-Hamid Yahrawi wrote:

 

|| All of us, both Muslims and Christians, have the best of feelings towards the Jews.... they are our brothers in race and we regard them as SYRIANS who were forced to leave the country at one time but whose hearts always beat together with ours, we are certain that our Jewish brothers the world over will know how to help us so that our common interests may succeed and our common country will develop both materially and morally.

 

At the Paris Peace conference of 1919, Emir Faisal would write:

 

|| ...there is room in SYRIA for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other.

 

Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission (1936):

 

|| There is no such country! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of SYRIA.

 

In 1946, speaking before the Anglo-American Committee, Arab-American historian Professor Philip Hitti (Princeton University) stated:

 

|| There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history.

 

The Arab Higher Committee [the body which represented the Arabs of Mandate Palestine] submitted a statement to the UN General Assembly in May, 1947, saying:

 

|| Palestine was part of the Province of SYRIA... politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political identity.

 

Ahmed Shuqiri, who would later be the first chairman of the PLO, told the UN Security Council:

 

|| It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern SYRIA.

 

Arab leaders further understood that "Palestine" was one of their colonial aquisitions, no different than Spain or Iran. Arguing against the UN partition compromise, Azzam Pasha, Arab League Secretary, spoke before the UN (16 Sep. 1947):

 

|| The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely... that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine.

 

After the Arab loss of 1948, during the 20 years that the territories were under Arab rule, there was no imperative to establish an Arab Palestine. No one considered the territories as "occupied" (by Egypt and Jordan). There was no talk of "self-determination" for Palestinian Arabs. It would have been nonsensical at that time to speak of 'self determination' for former Palestinian Arabs, who never themselves made any sign or move to gain autonomy from the illegal occupation of the West Bank by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt - they simply weren't regarded by Arabs in the same way as Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese were.

 

It was only after 1967, when Israel took the territories in a defensive war, that the modern pretense of an "Arab Palestine", retroactively creating a history that never existed, came into being.

 

The reason why this was done is best explained by Zuheir Muhsin (who was Secretary-General of the Sa‘iqa terrorist group from 1971 to 1979 and a member of the PLO Executive Council):

 

|| There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in contrast to Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

 

this opinion is reflected by rejecters of the two-state solution like Hamas today. Because they, of course, basically reject the idea of a political entity called Palestine, EVEN TODAY.

 

Because Hamas are of course, Islamists. They dream, like their fellow mass murderers Bin Laden and his ilk dream, not of some 'secular bi national state', or a Palestine for Arab Palestinians and governed by Arab Palestinians, but a regional if not a global Islamic caliphate, stretching across not just the entire Middle East, but north and central Africa, parts of southern Europe, and central and south east Asia too. Witness what the Hamas foreign affairs spokesman,Mahmoud Zahhar said only last week :

 

....like your European Union”, the Arab nation will form one state across its historic lands, joining up with other Muslim nations such as Turkey. “We [Palestinians] were never an independent state in history,” he notes. “We were part of an Arab state and an Islamic state.”

 

Economist article, February 2008 edition

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10609550

[Wildcat]

Perhaps I didn't explain the importance of McMahon correspondence and make explicit what it was about. In 1915 the British promised the Arabs the area including Palestine as their homeland if they would support the British in ejecting the Turks from the area. This they did. The British reneged on this and also promised the area to the Zionists. This created a horrible mess that is one cause for the problems in the Middle East. The British denied they had promised the land to the Arabs, but significantly in 1939 the British Commission set up to look into the claims concluded:

 

"it will be found that the words used throughout the Correspondence can only be interpreted as meaning that Palestine was not, directly or indirectly, excluded from the area of Arab independence"

 

and

 

Throughout 1916 and the greater part of 1917, the attitude of the military and political officers of the British Army was clearly based on the understanding that Palestine was destined to form part of the Arab territory which was to be constituted after the War on the basis of independent Arab governments in close alliance with Great Britain

 

Ref

 

Calipso you have a very strange view of history. You say there was no Arab nationalism under the British Mandate.

 

What about the 1936 general strike in Palestine? the longest general strike in history (6 months) that required a third of britains total military force and thousands of dead palestinians to break? The strike was provoked by the actions of for example the Histradut, Zionist only Union that used the slogan "Jewish land, Jewish labour, Jewish produce" and blacked any Jew employing or buying produce off the local Arabic population. The period saw the rise of the Haganah militias and atrocities from both sides. To say there was no arab nationalism in the period flies in the face of the facts.

[Wildcat]

Also contrary to what I said before Hamas is prepared to enter negotiations on a two state solution recognising Israel. (ref) It is Israel that is not prepared to talk.

[BEETHOVEN]

Do not forget that Israel is subject to daily missile attacks which are deliberately targeting civilians!

[Jason Bourne]

^^^^^^^^^^

 

And why is that? It is because Israel has stolen another peoples land