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
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
@DD: It's written in Articles 28 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention - Article 28 says that the presence of protected persons may not be used to render military targets immune to attacks (basically, a settlement is a valid target regardless of who's living in it), and Article 49 says that the occupying power cannot place its own civilians in occupied territory - in other words, once they enter occupied territory, they stop being civilians.
Again, what is your opinion on the German colonisation of Eastern Europe, and partisan efforts to resist it? Because that's the legal precedent that Israeli settlements are outlawed under.
Oh, and for the record, I'm from the Orkney Celts - we didn't take the Isles from anyone except the occasional grumpy seal.
edited 22nd Jul '17 5:53:48 AM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?
A procrastination in of itself
Yes the West did, and French settlers of Algeria were forced out, the German settlers of Poland were forced out, the Purtugease settlers in India were forced to aceppt Indian rule, etc...
No I don't for a moment thing that any of the militant groups in the West Bank or Gaza care about differentiating civilians from war criminal settlers, but that doesn't mean the distinction doesn't exist.
But again, it's not murder if the person is a military auxiliary participating in a war crime, which is what any adults who moved to the West Bank are.
edited 22nd Jul '17 5:56:09 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
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![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I think that in that state, killing random German civvies is still immoral.note
About the Geneva Conventions, art. 28 (AFAICT) says that you can't put a civvie somewhere and say "because this civvie is here, you cannot conduct military operations here", not "it's cool to murder civvies if they're in the wrong place", and art. 49, while explicitly forbidding "transfer[ring] parts of [the Occupying Power's] civilian population into the territory it occupies", does not say "if that's the case, it's alright to kill them", nor does it make them not civilians. You're talking nonsense and — again — justifying the murder of civilians.
edited 22nd Jul '17 5:59:49 AM by desdendelle
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
If you want to keep pretending that a 70 year old man is a "military auxiliary" go right ahead.
Beware the Crazy Man.
If that man forced out Palestinians so he could have the choiciest land, then there is no problem considering him an auxillary. Especially since said 70 year old man was not always 70 and settlements did not start yesterday.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
(Avatar by Coffee)
Most settlements weren't "OK, you Palestinians should now GTFO, we're building our house here now".
This is the kind of mental gymnastics than can be used to justify anything. Who says that he forced anyone out himself? And hell, even if he did, that still doesn't justify murder.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
The thing about Geneva IV is that it's definitional - it lays out who is a protected person, under what circumstances they're supposed to be protected, and when. Placing civilians in military targets and moving them into combat zones are both banned because they mean that it will be difficult or impossible for the enemy to ensure their safety, and therefore, if you put civilians in harm's way, you will be the one liable if they get hurt, because you broke the rules first. It's harsh, but that's because it's intended as a deterrent for what has been historically (and still is) incredibly dangerous behaviour.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Beware the Crazy Man.
Not really mental gymnastics.
Mental gymnastics is trying to claim moral superiority but not giving a damn about settlements and occupation.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
A procrastination in of itself
He doesn't have to have forced them out himself, the same way the armoury gunsmith on a military base is still a valid military target even if he's never shit at anyone.
Either they are party if a military occupation force and valid targets, or they are human shields and the Israeli government is using civilians as human shields. Neither argument puts the Israeli government in a good light.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
(Avatar by Coffee)
You guys are still rationalising the murder of children. Whatever the legal situation or the way the Israeli government looks, you guys' arguments are basically justifying the killing of children. Look at yourself; how can you claim any sort of moral authority?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Oh, bother.
The Israeli government bears some responsibility for this situation, given that they're basically exploiting their own citizens' need for homes to screw over the Palestinians.
That does not remotely justify some asshole breaking into a home to stab a family to death. That family was arguably the only true innocents in the whole fucked up mess. I blame the Israeli government bigshots for creating this situation, that asshole who thought stabbing a random family to death was a good way to change things, and Hamas for fucking praising and encouraging this. That shit does not help anyone, including the Palestinians who don't think stabbing defenseless families to death is a good idea.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Killing children is horrific, but that's why you keep them off the front lines. It's the exact same reason that someone has less culpability for shooting a child soldier than for hiring one, even if getting shot is obviously worse for the child in question than being given food and money to hold a gun - and, similarly, one would have more culpability for using a human shield than shooting one.
The purpose of bringing in settlers is to make Israeli bases more practically and ethically difficult to dislodge while they squeeze out the native residents of the West Bank - in other words, they have been incorporated into the war effort.
What's precedent ever done for us?
The law in the night
The people killing civilians in the WB aren't regular military with official and identifiable uniforms.
Geneva conventions doesn't apply to them either, bringing the Geneva conventions over acts committed by civilians and not standing militaries against civilian settles is pointless.
That is unless you recognize every Palestinian as a combatant...
edited 22nd Jul '17 9:24:54 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges
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No matter how you spin it, a civilian town (illegal or not) is not "the front lines", unless there's a rocket launcher right next to its hospital. You keep making excuses for why the stabber didn't do a morally reprehensible thing; you also keep trying to take the direct responsibility off the stabber. In a way, you're racist; you're arguing that the Palestinians have no agency and no responsibility for their actions. What's more, if you believe that's the purpose of the settlements, you simply don't understand how anybody who supports the settlements thinks.
Support the settlements all they want, they're still illegally placed in territory that doesn't belong to Israel. That's occupation. And, if that's not a front line, what is?
(Avatar by Coffee)
The place where fighting occurs. Civvie-on-civvie crime doesn't count.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
A procrastination in of itself
The settlements are actually beyond the front line, the front line is the Israeli-Palestinian border.
As for children, as I stated anyone born there has a legitimate right to be there, while any children taken there aren't the by choice and are being used as human shields.
The Israeli government is the one using children as human shields, the same way Hamas uses Gaza's children as human shields, its despicable in both cases, all effort should be taken to avoid them being killed in both cases but the ultimate responsibility in the end always lays with the one using children a sense human shields.
X6 I would not consider adult members of the family to be innocent if they willingly decided to participate in ethnic cleansing, they're war criminals in that case.
edited 22nd Jul '17 9:59:32 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
Oh, bother.
TBF, I did say "arguably". I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt in assuming that their primary motivation wasn't "I want to drive Palestinians into the desert to die" as opposed to "Affordable housing? Hell yeah!"
Yes, a person living in a house is exactly the same as a gun smith. Sure. And while we're at it, why not justify attacks on other civilians too? Their taxes support the army, after all. Oh, and you might as well justify attack on anyone that can be argued to have benefited, no matter how indirectly, from something the attacker sees as an injustice.
edited 22nd Jul '17 10:16:55 AM by Cag
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
it's not racist to say that the aggressor has more moral responsibility for its behaviour than the defender - it's a fundamental part of the rule of law, both because people who have unreasonable things happen to them tend to react in unreasonable ways, and because extreme acts may be the only way to prevent something horrible happening to you.
This is especially pertinent in regards to regulating war, because the whole point of a war is that people are going to die. War crime legislation is, in perhaps its largest part, about deciding when it's OK for people to die, and who's responsible if the wrong people die in the wrong circumstances. Since Israel is the occupying power in the conflict, that obviously means that it is both the aggressor (the side whose actions are inherently less defensible, because they're not a reaction to someone else's) and the most powerful, and thus most responsible, agent (as in, if you occupy the country, that automatically means you control it, so the wellbeing of its residents is your responsibility). In other words, its own actions mean that legally, it is held to a vastly higher moral standard than the Palestinians, for much the same reasons that a bank robber is held to higher moral standards than any staff he's holding hostage.
The other angle you keep waving off is that if illegally-placed settlers are occupying an area, that naturally means the natives don't have access to it, which is kind of a big deal in an impoverished desert country. Is taking and refusing to share life-preserving resources a violent act? If so, are the rightful owners allowed to use violence to dislodge you?
What's precedent ever done for us?
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
A procrastination in of itself
X4 Still, being okay with being a part of ethnic cleansing in exchange for affordable housing, that's pretty dam horrific and scummy.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
I think this is starting to get a bit out of hand folks.
I get some of you are hot about certain aspects of the situation but the fact remains it was a civilian attacking other civilians.
It isn't a military action, force on force, or really even a member of a well established insurgency carrying out violent acts.
edited 22nd Jul '17 11:14:45 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
The west did and in the mind of terrorists is still doing far worse than what we are doing. Still doesn't justify murder. Also I love how you pretend that this guy would care for the difference between settlers and non settlers given the chance. In their mind we're all settlers.