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
United Earth
The status of Dhimmi is a textbook and explicit case of systematic discrimination. Let's not whitewash. We could also say "they had it better than in the West", and that might be arguably true, but, you know what? When black folks got crap in Europe due to racism, Europeans told them "at least you have it better here than in the US!". It's just not a very good thing to say.
(Avatar by Coffee)
@Marq - Considering Arabs have twenty countries, you can't really chastise Jews for wanting just one.
United Earth
That is a very flawed logic.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A procrastination in of itself
I mean it works for a comparative, but if we're talking about the morality of having nations devoted to ensuring their own ethnic purity...
Thing is Israel is far from the worst even in the developed world when it comes to aggressively pushing an ethnic purity driven agenda, I'd wager that Japan is worse, Austrlaia is very bad and there may well be others.
edited 23rd Jun '16 8:47:04 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Yeah but at this point is seen less as "I want my own country where dont have persecution" to "why can you persecute other people but not me? I want to do it too!" this is just insane
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Jews have a right to no be persecuted and Israel has a right to exist. Nobody has a right to enforce ethnic purity, history be damned.
Oh really when?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Indeed.
I didn't mean to justify Israeli apatheid or other ethnic manipulation policies (and my history in this thread will show that I'm very much against those things), but its a bit of a pot to kettle thing for Arabs to be the ones to call them out on it, that too by wording it as "why do they need a majority state?", which comes across as a disingenuous question, given the circumstances of Jewish history when they were a minority, as mentioned by an earlier post, and given the fact that in all twenty of the Arab states, they do the same thing.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
edited 23rd Jun '16 6:11:35 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Perhaps...but then Palestinians counting living descendants of the evacuees is also not exactly on the up and up, given that said argument is what the Jews make for Israel in the first place.
Which means either Israel is accepted as a middle eastern nation (and not merely tolerated) by the Arabs as a whole or the Arabs live up to their argument and only count those Palestinians who actually lived in what is now Israel.
On the flip side, Israel really needs to make a choice and stick with it on whether it is a democracy or if it is something else. If it decides it is something else, it needs to abandon the rhetoric on how it's supposedly this great shining light in the middle of an evil horde (at least, thats what gets told here in the US).
(Avatar by Coffee)
Yeah, the whole "we're the bestest of the bestest in the middle east give us some slack" thing Bibi has going on is really annoying. Have you heard of the thing where he wanted to spend NIS 11 million on promoting gay tourism? After his government shot down multiple gay-rights-related bills a few days (weeks? I don't remember) earlier?
So as part of my government internship I do daily media scans on a few topics, and some of those include stuff that some has relation to Israel. Now I have a pretty solid understanding of English language media in Canada, the US, the UK, etc but not in Israel. What sources are generally reliable? I think the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz are relatively big/mainstream. What are some less reliable ones? Anything I should outright avoid clicking on?
edited 23rd Jun '16 8:23:02 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Basically, if you ask the average Arab, he'd most likely tell you that the descendants of any person (and not just Arabs/Muslims) whose property has been unjustly seized have an absolute claim on said property unless they voluntarily give it up (emphasis on "voluntarily"; coercion automatically invalidates any "conset" to forgoe said right). So no, it's not that we/the Palestinians are claiming a special right for us/themselves; we/they are essentially calling out the rest of the whole world on believing in the idea that refugee status should not be passed down to descendants if the wrongs that led to said refugee status have yet to be rectified.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Emhm, let's see. In no particular order:
- Israel Hayom (lit. Israel Today) is a free newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson. It's called "הביביתון" (habibiton — a portmanteau of "Bibi" and "עיתון" iton, newspaper) and it's about as neutral as you can expect.
- Ynetnews is Yediot Akharonot's English-language website. Aside from a raging Bibi hateboner, some very clickbait-y science-related articles and terrible proofreading, it's OKish.
- Ha'aretz used to be respected. I guess it's still quality news, but it has a definite left bias and its opinion pages are full of dingbats and wingnuts. It's also paywalled.
- NRG.co.il is basically Israel Hayom #2.
- JPost... I guess it's OK? IDK really, it doesn't seem too biased to me but I tend to filter connotations out of the news I read.
- Maariv is... well, it's not exactly Sun yellow, but it's not very good, either.
- INN (AKA ערוץ שבע Arutz Sheva, channel 7) is the settlers' site. 'nuff said.
- Globes is solid, but it's a business paper.
- The Times of Israel is... OK? I guess? Same as JPost.
EDIT:
Sorry, I don't see why the Palestinians should get special treatment, compared to any other refugee.
edited 23rd Jun '16 9:02:53 PM by desdendelle
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Jews can argue much the same about Israel back in the day though. And indeed do. So then there is an impasse and perhaps it might be, for the sake of peace and practicality, worth giving up on descendants getting anything.
Awesome, thanks.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
(Avatar by Coffee)
I think it's irrelevant. The Palestinians/Arabs shouldn't get to peddle their own culture in order to get special treatment.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
At the very least, it isn't practical.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
As if the reverse — that is, the Western world trying to peddle its own culture to us as an absolutely and unquestionably "better" alternative that is somehow a requirement for being considered an upstanding civilized nation — is any better. There's a reason why the West is still popularly perceived in the Arab World as a bastion of neo-imperialism (which partly undermines the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, among other things).
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Right now, most of the power in the world is concentrated in the West or in places like Russia and China, neither of which have Arab cultures; since Might makes Right in this world, you gotta deal with it.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
United Earth
They deal with it by rejecting it. Plus, that is not entirely correct; might will get you a long way, but you usually need consensus and the appearance of justice to truly win. See the Irak war, for instance. Or, well, Israel.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A procrastination in of itself
It's just the West who think that refuge status shouldn't be inherited, I'm pretty sure Russia, China, Korea, Japan, India, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are all on the same page on this one.
Unless they could as part of "The West" for some reason.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Thats why I said instead of looking at it that way, you have to look at it from a practical standpoint as something you cannot seriously expect Israel to agree to. Negotiation is the art of the possible, not perfection.
If by "peace" you mean "allowed to live as long as they know their place, with occasional blood libels and pogroms".