greeneggsnham:
“The one thing they'd like in return, however, is the right to be left alone to continue to live in Israel without continuous hostilities.”
Israel will not be left alone. They will still have a large non-Jewish minority that will live as less than equal citizens in the Jewish State. This will cause resentment and unrest amongst that population and among their fellow Arabs and Muslims in surrounding countries.
might I suggest that the issue rankling the Arab nations is not that Arab-Israelis suffer some discrimination compared to Jewish-israelis, much as African-Americans in the 1950s and 60s, but that Arab-israelis have vast freedoms unavailable to citizens of the Arab countries; from the right of any Arab, male or female, to run for office, and win, to the right for women to dress as they please, become educated as they please, and travel freely, to the right to leave Islam and become Christians (or even, shudder, Jews) if they wish without fear of the death penalty. That's what's destabilizing to the feudal theocracies and quasi-fascist "democracies", not any oppression suffered in the neighboring states, or they would have each destroyed all their neighbors, long ago.
greeneggsnham:
The Israelis live the extravagant lives of Westerners in an arid land and will cause resentment for their over-use of the area’s sparse water resources. These issues probably won’t go away if the Palestinians get a state.
Yeah, that's the problem, Israel's extravagance with resources. Doesn't fit into the neighborhood.
"Soaring high above the central business and commercial district, Jumeirah Emirates Towers is a dramatic backdrop to Dubai's skyline and a visible statement of the region's growing corporate success. Set among landscaped gardens, ornamental lakes and waterfalls, Jumeirah Emirates Towers is the ideal environment for the discerning corporate traveller."
Ski Dubai; Indoor Skiing and Snowboarding in the Mall of the Emirates, UAE
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"Israelis are vigilant with regard to conserving water and making the tight supply they have more productive. Given that nearly 80 percent of irrigation water evaporates or seeps into the ground before it can be drawn up by plant roots, it is easy to recognize the importance of one Israeli innovation: drip irrigation. Using this technique, relatively small amounts of water are delivered directly to plant roots. This saves up to one-third of the water that would otherwise be lost during spray applications and enables farmers to double harvests using the same amount of water.
"Israel is also a world leader in wastewater recycling, or reclamation, which now accounts for about 30 percent of its total supply. Reclaimed water, sometimes called grey water, is used for a wide variety of purposes. The vast majority of water is used for industrial purposes, such as cooling, and irrigation, and does not need to be pure. By recycling urban waste water for irrigation, Israel not only saves precious groundwater, but prevents the environmental damage caused by the discharge of waste water into rivers and the sea."
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Are you completely ignorant of Israel's record of groundbreaking conservation initiatives, including the now ubiquitous drip irrigation, as detailed above? All that "made the desert bloom" stuff? the fact that Israeli hallways and stairwells don't even have switches on their lights, just timers, to discourage wasted energy when nobody's there, for just another instance? Desalinization, solar power, treatment of all kinds of waste, etc. etc. etc. which was even exported to African nations as foreign aid, before the current unpleasantness?
Israel's Environmental Performance Index, 2008: 79.6. Rank, 49th/149. If you can find a Middle Eastern country with a better score, let me know, as I can't.
http://epi.yale.edu/Home
greeneggsnham:
“They took some steps in that direction a few administrations ago, got nowhere….”
During the Oslo period the Israeli process of colonization continued. The Israelis have most of the power in this relationship, not the Palestinians.
The Yishuv bought some land from absentee landlords during the Ottoman Period. That land had its own population of Arab peasants who had lived there for generations. The Zionists evicted those peasants. Ask the Irish if they remember that their ancestors were evicted by absentee landlords in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ask Scottish Highlanders or Hebridians if they remember that their ancestors were evicted by absentee landlords during the Highland Clearances. Many remember that history and not fondly. Your argument concerning the Ottoman Period land purchases focuses on legality and not morality.
Like many folks in the world, I myself was evicted by an absentee landlord who sold the house I had nicely fixed up. Yet, I somehow found it within myself not to murder the purchasers in the night. That seemed to me to be "morality", rather than seeking revenge for the injustice of somebody selling something that after all, they owned, despite its putting me to some discomfort.
Are you seriously suggesting that a, let alone the, root cause of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is that individuals were insufficiently compensated for the loss of ancestral lands that, in fact, their ancestors had sold and been compensated for in past generations? And that, moreover, the vast quantities of funds poured into the Palestinian treasury over the years, almost none of which came from their sympathetic Arab brethren, was insufficient compensation? And that the fact that almost none of that trickled down to these impoverished and uprooted individuals is not the problem, compared to the original sin of Jews legally purchasing land?
That in this matter, Palestinians stand alone as victims, unlike the millions and millions of Indians and Pakistanis who were uprooted at the same time? Let alone the Jews who were kicked out of their ancestral homes in the West Bank, without compensation? Let alone those who were kicked out of every other Arab country, without compensation? Or the population transfers now going on as a result of ethnic cleansing in Africa, for instance? Are you in fact in favor of a general international fund to compensate all such victims in the world? Or would they all be within their rights to begin guerilla movements and terrorism until they receive such compensation? Or is that a privilege for some reason reserved for those who are a) Palestinian and b) upset with the israelis, as distinct from those who were massacred and uprooted by Jordan, Syria, etc.? That situation being special because.....?
greeneggsnham:
The Israelis conquered the West Bank, etc. in 1967 and colonized it with their own civilians.
You mean, the Jordanians attacked Israel despite Israel's well-publicized pleas not to and promises of nonaggression, and lost the West Bank where they had kept the Palestinians in squalor and poverty since 1947; then, following the tenets of the Khartoum Resolutions, steadfastly refused to sign a peace treaty with Israel, despite their having been the initiators of hostilities, and despite (or because of) this leaving the Palestinians in the West Bank as occupied citizens of an enemy state? That what you mean by 'Israel conquered the West Bank and colonized it"? I have to ask, since there's such a ground swell around the Net regarding the Zionists' plans for world domination and all, as shown by their sticking a few thousand settlers in the West Bank over 50 years of the owners not wanting it back.
It's ironic though; Israelis buy properties from the legal owners, and that makes Israel colonial imperialists; they capture territory in a war initiated by Jordan, who refuse to take the land back; and that also makes Israel colonial imperialists.
Nevertheless, I still maintain that given a realistic prospect of "peace for land", the Israeli public would, in a landslide, vote to give the West Bank over to the Palestinians; the evidence being that they did so, in Gaza, despite the rightwing constant PR of the horror of "Jews chasing other Jews from their homes" etc. Unfortunately, the results of that have not been such as to convince the Israeli voters to continue the process in the West Bank, as a successful example of "peace for land". Imagine instead what might have happened, had the residents of Gaza and their lawfully elected Hamas government managed to restrain themselves from the opportunity to use their newly gained territory as a staging platform for rocket attacks on israeli civilians. Do you think that might have had something of a better effect on the prospects for further Israeli withdrawal?
greeneggsnham:
They continue to nibble away at that land. They continue to deny building permits to Israeli Arabs within 1948 Israel. They continue to resettle Israeli Bedouins and give their ancestral lands to Israeli Jews. All this is designed to grab land, especially land over aquifers, and to immiserate the Isreali Arabs so that they emigrate.
Well, the rightwing has been making plenty of hay with settlements since Hamas cut the limb out from under the "peace for land" folks who stuck their necks out to get the israelis out of Gaza.
And, there is plenty of stress on Arab-Israeli citizens. As I said, it's generally reminiscent of African Americans ca. 40 years ago, except for the part where African Americans were lynched, which isn't a big problem for Israeli Arabs, despite their difficulties getting housing permits. And the part where African Americans weren't related to large populations in the neighboring states who were at war with the US, the way things are with Arab-israelis. But the US managed to make pretty good strides in a remarkably short time since then; I believe Israel can do the same, when and if they're not surrounded by millions of other Arabs chanting death to the Jews. You may disagree, of course. don't forget, the US saw fit to stick Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII; the Israelis haven't gone to those depths of racism.
greeneggsnham:
It’s wrong and the US pays for it. Our support has allowed the Israelis to continue this process for more than a generation. That’s what makes this such an unusual issue for Americans. We have given billions and billions and billions of dollars to a tiny country, we have blocked scores of UN resolutions concerning this tiny country and all of this allows that country to pursue policies that are illegal and/or immoral, that consume a lot of US resources that could be better spent elsewhere and that undermine our credibility with the rest of the world.
That is why this issue is of special concern to Americans who care about the welfare of the US.
Well, up until the invention of Intifada and, more important, the Oil Weapon, in the 70s you may not recall that Israel was beloved of the world; Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. So, by your thinking, was US aid to Israel in those days a good thing, paying off in terms of credibility? Me, I see the general rightness and wrongness as being quite a bit less variant with time than public opinion, swayed as it is by sympathy for the underdog (a good thing, even when somewhat uninformed) and the price of gasoline (not such a good thing). As such, I learned over the years not to see the thing as Israel vs. Palestinian so much as assholes on both sides vs. those who would just like to get on with their lives. of course, the Palestinians haven't been granted much lives to get on with, so that tilts the distribution quite a bit. And, it's been observed, the Palestinians really are a young nation, despite the claims of ancestry leading back to the Philistines (for crying out loud), and it's not unreasonable that they've not forged a solid, mature goal yet given the abuse they have received, from Arab and israeli alike, and their feelings right now of just wanting to express their unhappiness with being screwed over, then getting down to compromises.
And, truth be told, the first Intifida could at least be argued as having served its purpose of waking the Israeli public up; like the proverbial smacking the mule over the head with a two by four to get its attention. But having gotten the mule's attention, it would seem that success would require negotiating with the mule in terms of moving somewhere, rather than continuing with the two by four, before the metaphor changes to beating a dead horse.
In short: putting all the blame and pressure on the Israelis isn't going to work any better than putting all the blame and pressure on the Palestinians did. Nor is either particularly clear "justice". Especially at this point, there is enough bad behavior on both sides that neither can make any claim to being the innocent party with clean hands, and any realistic solution can proceed just on the basis of what's realistically possible and stable. And that kind of looks like a two state solution, or maybe three state; my feeling is that continued punishment of either Israelis or Palestinians is not going to lead to anything useful.
