To feel it is high time that Israel/Palestinian issue got resolved?

[SippyDippy]

conflict us starting up again. I cannot bear another round of children being killed indiscriminately. The super powers would have you believe that it is all oh so very complicated. its not though is it. It is so bloody unfair how those children will keep dying if the status quo is maintained. Something needs to change.

I also condemn the killing of civillians on both sides. A child is a child, whether jewish or Arab. Surely, surely, no child deserves to be shot, even if he is trying to hurt someone. They can be restrained by all those soldiers.

Can you not see that these stabbings are not occuring in vacuum? There is a cause and effect and the blame lies solely at the door of the occupying power.

"Unfortunately, this kind of uncritical or downright deceitful and dishonest statement is exactly why we're in the situation we're in.

People with dubious motives publish this stuff, other people who are at best gullible and at worst malicious believe them and spread it, and suddenly Israel is the worst country in the world for democracy/human rights/apartheid etc."

It's been happening all over the thread. Misinformation - either accidental or possibly lies. Makes you wonder. Don't people realise who dangerous this can be, how people can be incited by what the read?

That's true, Sordid.

I don't think the power imbalance is quite as clear cut as you seem to think it though. If you look at any map of the Middle East you'll see that Israel is absolutely tiny geographically (about the same size as Wales) - a pretty small population of just over 8 million (compared to 82 million in neighbouring Egypt alone!) and surrounded by Muslim neighbours who hate its guts and have been trying to wipe it off the map since day 1. Neighbours who are hardly short of funding themselves - the Middle East has plenty of oil wealth to fall back on.

So it's hardly surprising that Israelis feel pretty bloody terrified a lot of the time. They endured weeks of non-stop rocket attacks last summer, when thousands of rockets rained down, they've had terror tunnels directly into their country and numerous terrorist attacks on civilians - huge numbers in just the last week.

Assuming you're British, if you can remember how the UK felt after 7/7, which was a single attack on UK soil, in a much bigger country - now try to imagine how Israel, which has the equivalent of 7/7 happening on a virtually daily basis will be feeling, and try to understand why they're going to be nervous about trusting Palestinian promises. They gave up land for peace in 2005 - and instead of this being the start of moves towards peace, the Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas and terror attacks on Israel. It's not a simplistic goodies v baddies situation.

I'm not suggesting this justifies over-eager Israeli soldiers with guns - but I think comparing total numbers of deaths last summer may just tell you that Israel spends its cash on building a protective 'dome' and bomb shelters, while Hamas spent its millions building terror tunnels (which don't come cheap) instead of bomb shelters to protect its citizens. Had the choice of spending priorities been reversed, total numbers of casualties might well have been reversed also.

Bambambini - yes, they realise.

Or maybe some of them really don't appreciate why accuracy matters.

But glad that many of these lies or 'mistakes' have been picked up.

SippyDippy - it was all going so convincingly and then you came out with this clanger:

"Can you not see that these stabbings are not occuring in vacuum? There is a cause and effect and the blame lies solely at the door of the occupying power."

Ahem - actually, in my opinion, Palestinians are human beings with the same moral duties as the rest of us. They are not suddenly excused a conscience or free will just because they've experienced bad lives. Lots of child abusers were themselves abused as children. Lots of murderers grew up in violent homes Does that mean they get let off their crimes scot free? No it bloody doesn't.

It's one thing to argue that you can see why they feel stressed or that you feel sympathetic to their plight. That is all entirely reasonable. It is another entirely to remove all agency from their actions as though they were robots, as though their actions were dictated by the Israeli state.

Clearly 13-year-old children who stab other children have been put up to it by someone and that person/s deserves to share some of the guilt for their indoctrination. But I can see no justification for adults doing that.

The fact you think their actions are not only justified and inevitable but that the guilt is all Israel's tells me everything I need to know about you and your 'morality'.

To quote...er, myself, actually:

"I don't know how anyone can defend those murdering or attempting to murder civilians. And I couldn't give a damn about which side the civilians are on.

And if you do, if only those civilians who belong to the 'good' race matter to you, then yes, you're a racist."

Something for you to think on, SlippyDippy...

Well the vacuum arguement is true enough but the person making it fails to realise that it applies to everyone - including those evil Israelis. If you are going to use that arguement then you have to apply it across the board. Why do the Israelis fee like and act as they do. The whole situation is a vicious circle. People who can only point at one side and be black and white about who is to blame and who is innocent are the people that just encourage and help keep this conflict going - usually from the safety of their living room and iPad.

Just read through this thread and find it quite disturbing that the Palestinian supporters on this thread are the ones who are condoning the violence and seem to think it is justified due to the 'occupation' . Odd that.

It's not so odd because it twists and turns and is so complicated. The Palestinians are suffering way beyond what the Israelis do. I understand why the Palestinians hit back. I also can see why the Israelis have come to this but I think they have to be held accountable for their policies as the privileged side with the power.

I'm just not surprised that people who have spent time in the region with both Israelis and Palestinians - are the ones who find it hard to reduce it simply to the black and white Israeiles are evil and Palestinians are victims discourse.

In the latest wave of violence, the current death toll stands at 7 Israelis (my source for this is the New York Times) and "over 30" Palestinians.
Can anyone honestly say this suggests a fair or proportionate response?
Is anyone okay with the recent instructions to the IDF to use live ammunition on protesters? They're basically experiencing Bloody Sunday every day, to put that in context.

I have never condoned any individual attacks on civilians. I find them all horrendous. To look to understand the context of an action is not the same as condoning it. This violence is not happening in a vacuum. It's happening in the face of an occupation. Gaza remains rubble. The West Bank has to endure checkpoints, night-time raids, violence from settlers, violence from the IDF, and constant death, even when things are supposedly stable. The IDF kill a couple of youths a month. It never makes the BBC. It's not considered newsworthy at all.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, they either have to die in quite large numbers (preferably with lots of dead kids), or kill an Israeli, in order to get the world media's attention.

I disagree particularly strongly with the assertion that Israel is small and vulnerable. It's heavily armed with the latest and best military technology, and it has a very wealthy and generous patron in the form of the US.
They managed to flatten Gaza without breaking a sweat whilst Hamas' best efforts were easily intercepted by their Iron Dome.

I'm also a bit bemused at the argument that borders change all the time so that's okay. Most of the changes to borders in Europe have been the consequence of war, with large-scale death and displacement. It's a painful process. The constant "shifting" of the Israeli border equally has consequences to those on the receiving end, already living there. Conflict, death and refugees. So it's pretty wrong to talk lightly about borders shifting as if it were no big deal.

Horriblemotherco why do you put occupation in quotation marks? How would you describe what is happening?

Ahem - actually, in my opinion, Palestinians are human beings with the same moral duties as the rest of us. They are not suddenly excused a conscience or free will just because they've experienced bad lives. Lots of child abusers were themselves abused as children. Lots of murderers grew up in violent homes Does that mean they get let off their crimes scot free? No it bloody doesn't.

Flawed analogy. Children who were abused by their parents or other adults go on to become adults themselves, and the situational power balance shifts. Palestinians won't ever reach the 'adult' stage of your analogy as long as they're living under an occupation.

Ahem - actually, in my opinion, Palestinians are human beings with the same moral duties as the rest of us. They are not suddenly excused a conscience or free will just because they've experienced bad lives

Good of you to acknowledge that they are human beings nomnom. So now that you acknowledge that they are humans, when will the occupying power give them their human rights? Or is it that Israel is suddenly excused a conscience because they experienced bad lives in Europe? And then the abused became the abuser. Yet they get let off their crimes 'scot free' as you call it.

oh, the hypocrisy.

They're basically experiencing Bloody Sunday every day, to put that in context.
Er, no. Talk about flawed analogies. Over 30 dead Palestinians is over 30 too many dead Palestinians, but it's not 'Bloody Sunday every day': Bloody Sunday resulted 14 deaths.

There is a definite theme in this thread: terrible things happen to Palestinians and they turn to violence and that's understandable. Genocide and/or dispossession were visited upon the immediate forebears of much (probably most) of the current population of Israel and they do bad things but that's NOT understandable, not at all, not in any way, not even slightly.

And no, I don't think that saying something is understandable is the same as saying it excuses it.

If this is all about occupation, why didn't the Palestinians accept the peace deals offered under Barak and also Olmert? They could have had their own state by now.

I'm sorry that some of you are bothered that fewer Israelis have died. The next time there is a knife or axe attack, better make sure a least one Israeli dies before the assailant is shot so the numbers are even. Just today there were three knife attacks, the assailants were all shot. Sadly for sippy Israelis were 'only' wounded, how very unsportsmanlike of them!

And those asking about the motivation of the attacjers: it's mainly kids who have fallen prey to Palestinian incitement and rumour mill that the al aqsa mosque is in danger. As well as the well known Palestinian celebration of martyrdom.

Shak,

So kids fall prey to 'palestinian incitement' as you call, and then Israeli 'most moral army in the world' finishes those children off.

How very moral. Such high standards that you have compared to those savages that you occupy.

From what I understand, Abbas and Olmert were close to a peace deal but then Netenyahu took over - and he's a very different proposition.
And that's why having a violent, belligerent loon in charge isn't really good for anybody.

No, that's not what happened.

Abbas' rejection of olmert's offer with no counter-offer helped Netanyahu to win the elections.

The Israeli right say that the Arabs don't want peace. Abbas did nothing to disprove that claim.

Abbas claims otherwise.
Link
The question is who ones believes. I suspect this will depend very much on one's stance on the issue.

Yep, just checked the dates.

Abbas rejects olmerts offer Sept 2008

Netanyahu becomes PM March 2009

The anti Israel lobby here, as opposed to those who are just pro peace, have a really really hard time saying 'yep, the Palestinians fucked up here' because it always has to be the Israelis who are the villains in their narrative,

They squirm and squirm and distort and distract because they just can't handle that sometimes Israel is ok and Palestine not.

slaggy it may also depend on your sources.

On radio 4 this morning, a news item about Palestinian violence blithely mentioned that there had been at least 40 deaths in the most recent wave of violence - without bothering to point out that at least three quarters of them were Palestinians ...

So much for balance.

You're flogging a dead horse on here though.

Funny that Abbas retrospectively invented that timeline to fit later events precisely yet didn't bother to inform Olmert about it at the time :)

He's shown himself already to be a barefaced liar.

Here's another one for you Shakshuka:
Los Angeles times so again you can't accuse them of bias:
Link
Not so cut and dried as you claim now is it?

Indeed Mistigri it feels that way. Time for some fresh air I think.

Sippy

Your post is rather hysterical and bonkers.

I'm afraid I don't occupy anyone and I think it preferable you refrain from personal attacks of that nature.

Ah, you see I don't claim anything is cut and dried in this conflict.

It's an interesting article but still doesn't explain why Abbas rejected olmerts offer.

I think it's hinted at: Abbas knew it wouldn't fly. After all that the Palestinians had lost and suffered in the second intifada and they were right back at square one almost with a similar deal to camp David in 2000.

This current round of violence may seem shocking but it is no anomaly: it is a direct result of government policy determined to normalise Israel’s occupation, now nearly 50 years old. Stop the war