Right. Given the high quality of discussion on OTC about other issues, it would be nice to have some Troper input on this thorniest of Middle Eastern issues. Tropers wanting a brief overview of Israel should check out its Useful Notes page, or Israel
and Palestine's country profiles on the BBC.
At the outset, however, I want to make something very clear: This thread will be about sharing and discussing news. Discussions about whether the existence of Israel is justified would be off-topic, as would any extended argument or analysis about the countries' history.
So, let's start off:
At the moment, the two countries, prodded by the United States, are currently attempting to negotiate peace. A previous round of talks collapsed in 2010 after Israel refused to order a halt to settlement building on Palestinian land. US mediators will be present.
The aim of the talks is to end the conflict based on the "two state solution" - where independent Palestinian and Israeli states exist alongside each other. Both sides have expressed cynicism, although the US government has said it is "cautiously optimistic".
Key issues of the talks:
- Jerusalem: The city is holy to both Islam and Judaism. Both Palestine and Israel claim it as their capital. Israel has de facto control over most of it, a situation its Prime Minister has said will persist for "eternity". Some campaigners hope it can become an international city under UN or joint Israeli/Palestinian administration.
- Borders and settlements: The Palestinian Authority claims that the land conquered by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967 (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) is illegally occupied, and must be vacated by Israel in the event of a future Palestinian state. However, there are over 500,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements across the "Green line". Israel claims that a future Palestinian government would oppress or ethnically cleanse them, whilst many settlers claim that the land is rightfully theirs, as they have an ethno-religious link to it as part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
- Palestinian refugees: In 1948, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left the territory of the new Israeli state. The reasons why are still debated - preferably elsewhere. The Palestinian negotiators wish for them and their descendants to have a right of return to Israel. The Israeli government considers only those who were actually forced away all those years ago to have a legitimate claim (if that). The US government considers them all refugees, to Republican fury.
So you can see why its never been fixed. The religious dimension in particular has a lot of people vexed - asking Muslims or Jews to abandon Jerusalem has been likened to asking Catholics to skip communion.
Still, there's hope. Somewhere. The latest developments in the region:
- Israel has released 26 imprisoned Palestinian prisoners convicted of attacks on Israeli civilians and agreed to release another 78 in the future.
- Israel has OK'ed development of 900 new homes east of the "Green Line" in a controversial move ahead of the talks.
- Hamas is to execute publicly two prisoners in Gaza
- The new Palestinian government will not reunite the feuding Gazan and Transjordanian (West Bank) elements of Hamas and Fatah.
edited 15th Aug '13 2:10:49 PM by Achaemenid
V
A little titbit from this article:
Wait, an Israeli Jew that doesn't believe that Israel should exist because of religious reasons? I admit that goes pretty much against everything I knew about this conflict. I should look for info in this guy's worldview, if only to see if another party is about to join the debate.
That's pretty much the only interesting thing about this, though. Everyone has spies everywhere, after all, and the relations between Iran and Israel couldn't get any worse in the first place.
Decoy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
One of those orthodox Jews who love burning Israeli flags? I love that irony even though I support Israel's existence.
edited 17th Aug '13 2:17:45 AM by CaptainKatsura
My President is Funny Valentine.
V
Well, the most extreme of the Ultra-Orthodox are the Sikrikim.
As always with the Middle East, nothing is as simple as it first appears.
Keep Rolling On
scratching at .8, just hopin'
Some countries have too much history. The joke is that Canada has too much geography. I'm wondering if we can say Israel has too much theology.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Decoy
If they all went Atheist somehow maybe the conflict could be brought to purely nationalistic one.
My President is Funny Valentine.
X5(@Kayeka)
Zionism has been an overall secular movement, first and foremost about national identity and self-determination. From what I understand, a Jewish religious stance that used to be more common was that only the Messiah may reestablish Israel, for the third and final time. Zionism went against that unhelpful idea. Many immigrated here more due to lack of choice than ideology, and not all of us realized yet that this "dream" is also a necessity.
Which would be better how exactly? You can already make the case it's mostly an issue of nationalism.
That makes a lot of sense. Merci.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
. I don't know about you, but it looks like they're trying to slowly cut the city off from the West Bank and force its annexation via a "hard facts on the ground" approach.
Bottomline: A civil discussion of possible solutions for this conflict is always going to be very, very, very thorny, no matter how any of us try to do or say otherwise. The controversialness is just too damn pervasive.
EDIT: It just hit me that "deportation" specifically means "send them out of the country". I wrote the above under the belief that it technically includes "remove the settlers from Palestine and send them back to Israel's side of the Green Line".
edited 17th Aug '13 9:33:42 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
I find it difficult to really form an opinion. I live in America, where missiles are relatively unlikely to kill me and nobody uses the martyrdom of students in elementary schools for good PR. I can't really pass judgement on anyone, aside from Hamas of course.
edited 17th Aug '13 10:08:33 AM by Rem
Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.
Trying to avoid landmines in this discussion, please forgive me if I set a few off.
The Likudniks are similar to the Republicans in ideology; far-right ideologues whose viewpoint is heavily couched in religious tautologies and touchstones. Benjamin Netanyahu consistently refers to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria" precisely because of the religious freighting of the language, and as a signal to everyone that he will not obey international statements that insist that Israel stop settling in the West Bank.
So any solution to the dispute is either going to require, A, a recognition of Israel's claimed right to these territories, B, a political wind shift in Israel, or C, the use of the U.S. military against Israel. And C will not happen unless the Bavarians let me have the keys to the orbital mind control lasers.
-selfthump-
edited 17th Aug '13 11:32:03 AM by Ramidel
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
When you say "US Republicans", I take it you're referring to the current Republican Party rather than what it was before the Tea Party essentially took over it, right?
... Wait, isn't this technically off-topic?
edited 17th Aug '13 11:13:37 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Best Of said we could discuss solutions so long as it didn't involve genocide or mass deportation or stuff like that. If I misread him, then I apologize.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Judea&Samaria is the place's name, used by everyone before Jordan renamed it.
Hamas are our sworn enemy; Why should we care how they get their power, except in the practical sense? Does being elected erase their past, present and future crimes? A billion people could vote for them and they would still be dedicated to our destruction.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
I was referring to talking about the "rights of the Palestinian government/people to X" thing. That seems to violate the spirit of the explicit ban in the OP on "[d]iscussions about whether the existence of Israel is justified".
You're sure it's Jordan and not the Ottomans (or their Arab viceroys in the region) that did the renaming — assuming that it was actually renamed, that is?
edited 17th Aug '13 11:31:59 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Ah yes. Selfthumped, I shouldn't have taken the bait.
Let's get off this derail before it goes the same way as every other Israel topic.
edited 17th Aug '13 11:33:10 AM by Ramidel
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
...Hamas uses human shields, has launched numerous deadly rockets at Israeli civilian populations, and has been known to treat it's own civilians like prisoners or worse when they publicly disapprove of it's actions. In the west, it's popularly considered to be a terrorist organization. Pardon me for my lack of sympathy.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Is it on-topic to ask and discuss about why the US stubbornly supports and protects Israel in the UN Security Council?
Problem: They and the Palestinians weren't the ones who started the massacring the other side's civilians willy-nilly. That's all I'm going to say on this, to avoid derailing.
edited 17th Aug '13 11:40:16 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
Sometimes past butchers have to be rewarded for their evil, if only to forge peace in the now, and as long as we build forward from there. A lot of countries with histories of civil war have war criminals as coalition partners in the government, because power-sharing was the way to get them to stop shooting (i think Liberia has a Senator called Prince Johnson, who personally murdered a former Liberian president while he was a rebel leader. Such like that)
From what i've heard, Hamas is the more honest and people-oriented of the Palestinian groups, and would easily be the preferable party were it not for their Jihadi ties and sentiments. Fatah just seems corrupt to me, and too given to Israeli good faith, which the Likud government has not demonstrated at all.
Basically Israel holds all the cards in this, however, so the best solution would just be to wait for a leftward shift in Israeli politics. Likud is weakening, as the last election demonstrated, although part of that weakness is about being sapped by even further right-wing parties.
People, I know I answered something I shouldn't have, but we should really get off this tangent before it gets the thread closed down.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Didn't we? We're now discussing the merits of including Hamas into any peaceful solution, which admittedly goes against what most people around the world expect.
edited 17th Aug '13 11:47:10 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
I was more talking about the derail on Hamas' past actions.
Anyway, yes, part of Israel's reason for brazenness is that the US' foreign policy in the Middle East has consistently been to defend Israel's actions, but I don't think that the SC vote is the whole story. Netanyahu just laughed at Obama when Obama tried to insist that he start playing nice, and Obama's the one man whose words should have carried some kind of weight there.
So even without a Security Council vote in their hip pocket, I don't think that anyone has any ability to leverage significant pressure against Israel. So what can be done in the absence of pressure tactics?
edited 17th Aug '13 11:55:50 AM by Ramidel
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
A procrastination in of itself
Netanyahu laughed at Obama because the idea that Obama has the power to change US policy on Israel is laughable. US policy on Israel is set in stone, the only president who could change it would be one who was so obviously pro-Israel that he couldn't be questioned (so he's probably have to be a Jewish war-hawk), a kind of Nixon goes to China moment.
V
Nothing — and knowing the length of time an Israeli Government lasts...
Keep Rolling On
Noam Chomsky: Israel's West Bank plans will leave Palestinians very little
.