What is the endgame in Gaza?

[S.A.M.]

None of that matters now does it?

To whom? It never matters to you, you have some vague notion about the value of chosen people, rather than justice.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

But you say they have to believe your bs, take your word for Obama's future behavior.

I think my exact statement was: "They can believe what they want.".

, or it's their fault own the Israelis abuse them. When do Israel's unforced brutalities become Israel's fault?

It is the Palestinians fault for making it easy for Israel to walk their current path. It's Israel's fault for walking the path.

Nope. Ipaid more attention to the part where after five months of no rockets from Hamas Israel was still blockading and taking land and building walls and stuff.

Are you saying that Israel was not attacked in anyway by Hamas for 5 months and Israel blockaded them and stole land from them?

You do know that a blockade is an act of war, right?

So are missile strikes and bombings.

To whom?

To anyone in the world whom would have the power to help them otherwise.

I have yet to find a truce begun, on the Israeli side.

Which doesn't change a thing about what I stated.

There is no such thing as "the international community". Name names.

US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Egypt, Jordan, Mayritania, China, India, Turkey, Africa, ... etc.

 

[iceaura]

Are you saying that Israel was not attacked in anyway by Hamas for 5 months and Israel blockaded them and stole land from them?

That's about what it looks like, yep.

You do know that a blockade is an act of war, right?

So are missile strikes and bombings.

So if the one is suspended, and the other keeps going, who broke the truce first?

There is no such thing as "the international community". Name names.
”
US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, - - - -

You jumped the shark on "Africa", but I don't believe all those countries support Israel's imposition of Fatah on the Palestinians, or favor Israel's blockade of Gaza and continuing theft of land etc.

I think Hamas has made Gazan's without missiles more valuable than Gazans without necessities.
”
To whom?

To anyone in the world whom would have the power to help them otherwise

A small group - apparently they have no qualms about some kind of final solution, this group.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

To whom? It never matters to you, you have some vague notion about the value of chosen people, rather than justice.

Value of "chosen" people? You're not going paranormal on me are you? Justice is legalized revenge and has a scope of applicability. It has very little value towards resolving the present conflict.

 

[S.A.M.]

Value of "chosen" people? You're not going paranormal on me are you? Justice is legalized revenge and has a scope of applicability. It has very little value towards resolving the present conflict.

Like civil rights and apartheid? Justice is what the ordinary man strives for. Its what you will hope for when your society comes crashing down around your ears

 

[iceaura]

Justice is legalized revenge and has a scope of applicability. It has very little value towards resolving the present conflict.

I can well understand why any kind of revenge - legal or otherwise - would not be an attractive prospect to those supporting Israel,

but most people have a significantly different view of justice.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

That's about what it looks like, yep.

So I looked over the conflict history. The first blockade was introduced the moment Hamas took over (Egypt and Israel did it for extremist protection). The truce agreement didn't include the removal of that blockade and Israel was attacked with bombing and kidnapping attempts during the truce period nonetheless. Eventually Hamas just sent in massive amounts of rockets and Israel cut off the borders completely. Also Israel didn't steal any land from Gaza during that time.

So if the one is suspended, and the other keeps going, who broke the truce first?

From the agreement's standpoint it was Hamas... repeatedly.

You jumped the shark on "Africa", but I don't believe all those countries support Israel's imposition of Fatah on the Palestinians, or favor Israel's blockade of Gaza and continuing theft of land etc.

Those countries consider Hamas a terrorist organization and I dont think any of them support west bank land annexes (don't think I stated they did).

A small group - apparently they have no qualms about some kind of final solution, this group.

Hamas has made Gaza very non-valuable. Only they can change that.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I can well understand why any kind of revenge - legal or otherwise - would not be an attractive prospect to those supporting Israel,

It wouldn't be attractive for either Israel or Palestine. I suspect it would polarize them both to the extreme and lead to a nuclear assult of Israel against anyone remotely related to Palestine.

but most people have a significantly different view of justice.

It's because they don't take the time to define it objectively.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

Like civil rights and apartheid?

That's not justice. That's equality.

Justice is what the ordinary man strives for.

Incorrect. The ordinary person strives to collect energy and persist. Equality levels the playing field.

Its what you will hope for when your society comes crashing down around your ears

My "society" is something you are very unfamiliar with. But that is neither here nor there.

 

[S.A.M.]

That's not justice. That's equality.



Incorrect. The ordinary person strives to collect energy and persist. Equality levels the playing field.



My "society" is something you are very unfamiliar with. But that is neither here nor there.

I'm guessing in your society, you don't have to worry about some fanatic coming to bulldoze your home in the morning.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I'm guessing in your society, you don't have to worry about some fanatic coming to bulldoze your home in the morning.

We worry about life in general.

 

[noodler]

You mean, you worry about Jewish life in general, and you think settlers are deserving "nice" people, instead of a pack of criminals and thieves, all deluded with ideas of self-righteous "claim" to something or other that has never, and will never exist?

Those worries.

I mean, what's a country to do in 20 to 30 years when the settlers take over?

 

[S.A.M.]

I mean, what's a country to do in 20 to 30 years when the settlers take over?

Khalidi has written about that:

[T]he putative locus for a truly independent, viable, contiguous Palestinian state is constantly and perhaps irrevocably shrinking, and may now indeed have shrunk beyond the possibility of recovery. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that, as historian Tony Judt has memorably noted, what one politician – American or Israeli – has done, another can undo. One of the new realities is that by removing the last feeble assertion of America’s objection in principle to Israeli acquisition of territory by force, and to the building and expansion of illegal settlements, President Bush has given perhaps the last impetus necessary to the bulldozer-like progression of Israeli settlement enterprise across the length and breadth of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.

One can assume that the present Israeli government will make the most of the opportunity provided by the new circumstances. …The ongoing and ceaseless expansion of these settlement blocks, and their enclosures in the system of great walls, fences, and barriers being rapidly erected by Israel at enormous cost, has now been legitimized by President Bush, and will eventually turn the West Bank permanently into numerous small cantons…

The future of the Palestinians and of the state of Israel, and the question of whether or not there will ever be a state of Palestine, will in some measure be defined by these realities and by how they develop in the near future. In the end, of course, this attempt to impose an American-Israeli devised settlement will backfire: no “agreement” that does not have the freely expressed consent of the Palestinian people will stand, any more that would an agreement made in the absence of representatives of the Israeli people… Sooner or later Israelis themselves will realize, as some of their most respected intellectuals already have, that the way to deal with the hostility of the colonized is not to repress it, but to dismantle the structures of colonialism and repression that originally engendered it.

In the meantime, the entire process will involve further damage to the standing of the United States, whose effective support of settlement, colonization, theft, and occupation make it look to all the world like a superpower bully, conniving its powerful local ally to impose its will on the weak and the powerless…
What are we left with, as far as the state of Palestine is concerned? Certainly the aspirations of the Palestinians to live as a sovereign people in their own land are likely to be further denied, for a time at least and perhaps lastingly….

The realities on the ground will drive the Palestinians and the Israelis now living under the unique sovereignty and control of Israel into an entirely new configuration. How long the current configuration will continue (a situation worse, in some senses, than apartheid); what will follow after its evolution, if it does evolve; and what the state of Palestine will be at the end of the process, no one can say. It will certainly not improve if there is a continuing refusal to look honestly at what has happened in this small land over the past century or so, and especially at how repeatedly forcing the Palestinians into an impossible corner, into an iron cage, has brought, and ultimately can bring, no lasting good to anyone.

- The Iron Cage

But there are two things he did not anticipate. The economic crisis which will cripple the United States and the rise of the nonviolent resistance in Palestine.

Those are going to be very crucial for Israel.

 

[pjdude1219]

Well, the ones that preceded the occupation would seem to be likely candidates, offhand.

You could go so far as to argue that the occupation is itself a response to Palestinian - or, really, Arab - attacks in the first place.

Eventually you might notice that these sorts of childish arguments over who started it don't lead anywhere productive. This is because they are premised on the false notion that all blame lies on one side on the conflict. But, then, why be productive when you can indulge a fantasy ideology?

their very important what a reaction and whats a action is vital under the law.

 

[pjdude1219]

The PA is protecting its people by not challenging the IDF (they don't have a means to do so that wont destroy themselves). Most of Israels expansion in the last 60 years was land taken when defending themselves from agression. "The world" doesn't have a problem with that. What is a problem are the current west bank annexes. They are acts of aggression.

not only is that untrue it doesn't fucking matter. The montevideo convention( a restating of things already a part of international law) makes all land gains by force during war invalid.

 

[iceaura]

So I looked over the conflict history. The first blockade was introduced the moment Hamas took over (Egypt and Israel did it for extremist protection).

You accept that as the motive for the blockade, without question? Your timeline is a bit off - Israel imposed the more severe blockade on Gaza after Fatah had been returned to power, by violent coup with Israeli support, over the West Bank.

And the attacks on Israel do not seem to have been by Hamas, in all this - Israel seems to have been intent on removing Hamas regardless of whether such attempts increase or decrease the threat of rocketry and other terrorism: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1122/p06s04-wome.html

The truce agreement didn't include the removal of that blockade

Hamas thought it did. The Egyptians said it did. All the news reports at the time said it did: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/18/world/fg-truce18


btw The context of the breaking of the truce: http://www.themediaoasis.com/Hamasrockets.htm

So if the one is suspended, and the other keeps going, who broke the truce first?
”
From the agreement's standpoint it was Hamas... repeatedly.

Israel never kept the truce in the first place. How could Hamas have 'broken" anything?

but most people have a significantly different view of justice.
”
It's because they don't take the time to define it objectively.

"Legalized revenge" is not an objective definition of justice. If all Israelis are unable to consider justice in this situation as anything other than legalized revenge, the next stage in Gaza is going to be very ugly - endgame or no.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

You mean, you worry about Jewish life in general,...

No. I mean life in general. How do humans as a species survive and prosper given our current knowledge, education, resources, behaviors, and environment.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

not only is that untrue it doesn't fucking matter. The montevideo convention( a restating of things already a part of international law) makes all land gains by force during war invalid.

You know my position on international law. If you want to address it then go to the appropriate thread.

 

[noodler]

I mean life in general. How do humans as a species survive and prosper given our current knowledge, education, resources, behaviors, and environment.

Well it depends I suppose, what you think (you can, for example, think what you like, as you pointed out). How humans survive first of all goes directly to how they cope with lack of resources, like food, medicine, food, schools, food, stable leadership, and food, and water, and food.
If these are lacking, social disintegration and migration are the usual solutions; if there is no migration available for humans, the only alternative is social disintegration.

Take America as an example - colonialists migrated there because they wanted opportunity and access to resources, and some of the first colonialists wanted religious freedom, to oppress women, slaughter natives, and get rich.
Take Israel as another example, people migrated there because they wanted access to religious freedom, the opportunity to oppress natives and slaughter them, and get rich.

In both examples the resources are running out and the colonialists are having to face the fact that exploitation, based on any rationalization, leads to depletion of resources and economic depression. When you spend a significant fraction of GDP on defense and slaughter of natives, active oppression, and you recruit a civilian militia to move onto lands owned and farmed by natives, eventually the resources wall gets banged into.

America, being a much larger country has lasted what, 250+ years? Israel 60 years. It's interesting to look at the parallels - the larger country's infrastructure is falling apart, the smaller having fewer resources and a population of disparate, uncooperative groups (except for agreeing on the native oppression and dispossession tactics), is going to get there sooner, if it hasn't already. Since it depends on the largesse of America, when this is no longer available, or that resource is depleted, same old dynamic - social disintegration. This will occur more rapidly in Israel because there is no clear group in the lead - they will fight each other, in that case, which is what has always happened.

 

[iceaura]

Take Israel as another example, people migrated there because they wanted - -- - the opportunity to oppress natives and slaughter them, and get rich

Seems an unlikely motive, for the average Zionist. The ones I've known look upon Israel as a sort of hardship post, a sacrifice of riches for a noble cause, and the joys of slaughtering natives doesn't come up.