Why can’t the Israelis and Palestinians just live in peace?!!

Your post does sound naive but I've wished for the same. At the end of the day we're all humans, hopefully all of us want the best for our kids. There's so much hatred on both sides I don't think there will be peace for anyone anytime soon.
Sadly

Religious ideology, culture clash, indoctrination and exposure to violence from a young age that repeats the cycle of violence justified as revenge. This conflict will never end.

I understand your point of view and like I said, we can agree to differ.

I have heard an awful lot of Jews and Arabs saying the exact opposite of this, and that in fact both peoples lived in peace for hundreds of years and most still want to.

I think that things changed politically at around the time of 1st ww because Zionists who were basically extremely wealthy and powerful on the world stage persuaded various British politicians to allow a Jewish homeland to be created during the 1st ww. The resultng vague Balfour Agreement went against promises to the Arabs, and also wasn't discussed with Arabs, and was fairly vague, and it has led to 100 years or so of problems.

The problems around that time were geopolitical and to do with wealth and power rather than a clash of culture. This is still what we face today. See also how the Young Turks who were also funded took over control from the Ottomans and what happened from 1915 onwards and into ww1 too. And read MP Arthur Ponsonby's commentary in 1928 about the propaganda used during ww1. As a complete picture you can see why things happened as they did and why they have led to where we are now in the world.

Basically the only way to get a peaceful solution is for there to be international unity in pushing for a 2 state solution as we have a small window of opportunity in relation to that now, and also international unity in relation to ensuring people are valued more highly than excessive wealth all across the globe.

The gender quotas were not that 30 percent of the Irish government must be female.

The gender quota said that when parties nominated candidates for the public to vote for, thet must now make sure that at least 30 percent of the candidates are female.

Very few women were even being NOMINATED for a public vote. So no one could exercise any choice to even vote for a woman.

The male dominated parties kept nominating male candidates for the public to vote for.

The public didnt even have a chance to vote for women

The gender quota has been working well in Ireland

It wasn't me who brought up the topic of Northern Ireland on this thread.

Other posters did. I saw Northern Ireland being mentioned and I added to the existing discussion.

If you have an issue, and I dont know why you do, take your issue up with the first poster who mentioned northern ireland on this thread.

@Helenalove

It's not really clear what your agenda is here, but you have successfully taken over a thread about Gaza and pretty much put off anyone who might want to talk about Gaza . Do you do this in real life too?

I think we will have to agree to disagree. I don't agree with quotas at all. I think they are patronising and unnecessary and dangerous to women. I think women will be able to be successful on their own merit without help, as long as we have laws about equality, and enforcement of laws. The way to ensure positive changes for the future, in education we need to empower both girls and boys and treat them equally and give them the right expectations that hard graft will lead to success, not sex. (As well as teach about root causes of conflicts such as NI!)

We actually can promote women just because they are women. Especially in an area such as politics, where women have been kept down and discriminated against for a long time.

Looking at Ireland as an example.

The percentage of women in Government in Ireland was extremely low. One of the problems was because the Government parties kept nominating men, so voters had no choice but to vote for men.

Ireland introduced gender quotas into politics. Now politicial parties when make nominations, at least 30 percent of the candidates must be women.

You raise a lot of interesting points!

Are you saying that the GFA doesn't work for NI any more because most people want to be aligned with Europe not the UK?

In relation to Europe, do you not think that Europe right now is completely failing, with such high living costs a lot of normal people are really struggling day to day? I live in the EU. Just paying for food and petrol is becoming increasingly difficult, i am seeing more and more people around me struggling, mostly older people, and more and more businesses shutting. I don't want to be negative but I think the leadership need to address these things. There are demonstrations in more than one country about leaving the EU and leaving NATO (and spending the defence budget on basics like housing). The EU seem to be incapable of effective geopolitical management and negotiation too. Or am I being overcritical? Not that the UK on its own is a beacon of hope at the moment either.

Thatcher too, in relation to Philippines.

Does Timothy Snyder say that what is happening in Ukraine is about imperialism? If so I thought that current thinking was that it is about (or caused by) globalism, not imperialism?

In relation to Europe, what is he saying European countries need to do about imperialism, is he saying they should stop any influence abroad, such as removing all presence and influence in other countries such as Africa?

We can't promote/vote for men just because they are men.
We can't promote/vote for women just because they are women.

Having a women in power does not make is less likely that we will go to war for land, or anything else, was the point I made. Several women in Europe are very pro war, and Kamala Harris would have pursued the war line too if she had got in (she said).

We also just can't promote men because they are men. As we all know, women were kept down in politics by men for a long time. And it is still happening today.

Currently, women make up a fairly small percentage of leadership roles in the UN Member States. In these 193 Member States, only 21% of Prime Ministers are women.

Governments decide what happens to the people in the country, so it is hugely important to have a gender balance in Governments

To be fair, Barack Obama was not hugely successful when it came to maintaining peace and balance in the world.

I think he is being investigated now in relation to misinforming people that there were outside influences in relation to the 2016?

The best people to lead are those with the right skills, we can't promote women just because they are women. It has to be a meritocracy.

They definitely don't teach the Irish -UK conflict in a lot of U.K. schools.

I have friends from the UK. Many of them were never taught anything about it.

I don’t think they “go overboard to”. They just teach more of the full story about colonialism- there’s nothing scary or unpatriotic about that - we can’t truly love this country if we kid ourselves about its past as we can’t then move on (also see Brexit).

They do all also teach “British values” and usual have a flag as part of a display somewhere.

Edit - you need to read Timothy Snyder about how countries that hold on to imperialism are never going to be about to function as mature democracies. He’s primarily talking about russia and their approach to their past and current imperialism, but he goes on to talk about how EU countries need to be able to divest themselves of this imperialism in order to be a functioning part of such a union. The UK never managed it and that’s how we’ve ended up with the Brexit shambles.

How come you don't know anything about what happened between the U.K and Ireland then?

You are coming across as extremely ill informed of what happened.

You are wrong, as I proven with multiple historical facts.

I put a historical fact. You ignore it. That is extremely immature

You asked me to explain why UK isn't occcupying NI.

I gave my response.

I can't help it if you don't like it 🙄

@Helenalove "Its like they edit out anything where the U.K. was bad to other countries. I mean - you can't do that!"

What utter poppycock !

Schools go overboard now to teach that the British were big bad colonisers and we should be ashamed of our colonial history. Apparently we should be ashamed of our flag and ashamed to be British, well 'bottoms' to that, I'll fly the Union Jack outside my house and Y Draig Goch as my in laws are Welsh.

So stick that up your jumper !

True - but we need those female leaders who would rise in a system that is not a patriarchy, not just the female leaders who can rise whilst living in one.

We need people - both men and women - with the qualities that would lead to success in a balanced society.

I do think you’re right, although I wonder if there comes a time when this ceases to be the case and whoever lives in a particular places becomes “from there”, and allowed to decide. However, there are more people from an Irish/ Catholic background in NI than British/ Protestant now I believe, so we’ll see what people choose to do going forward.

This is why the Good Friday agreement worked so well when the UK was in the EU and doesn’t any more.

The ideal for NI would be to move towards a federal Europe, or at least a more closely united one, of which both UK and Ireland were both a part. That’s where I thought and hoped we were going with it all until 2016.

I’m British/ Italian but went to schools where most people were Irish so was sort of brought up to see things from the Irish pov if that makes a difference! This might also be why I always hoped for a united Europe as that’s my main identity.