To ask if we can please try to have Palestine and Israel thread where we acknowledge how awful it is for everyone, but try not to throw shit at each other?

[theotherfossilsister]

Please

From someone who does have 'skin in the game.'

@ Lemony, You said.
All public buildings (schools, libraries, community centres,
office buildings) as well as industrial buildings, factories, and greenhouses
which could not be taken apart were left intact

You are now being disingenuous. That is true for Gush Katif, Just ONE of the
settlements. You are implying that ALL the infrastructure owned by ALL the
settlers in ALL the different settlements was left in tact. Half of ALL the greenhouses were in reality “dismantled”. If you have any evidence where in Israel, they were reconstructed I’d be interested to see it. I suspect they are somewhere in landfill.

And your statement also includes the weasel phrase " which could not be taken apart ". Israeli Bulldozer drivers are some of the best in the world.

you just wrote,
It was always the agreement that Israel would dismantle and remove
it's rightful property,

which turned out to be over half the greenhouses.

Which contradicts your earlier post in which you wrote
The Israelis who had lived there had established a really awesome greenhouse industry for food production and exports, and had built great housing, schools and hospitals which were left almost entirely intact when they were dragged unwillingly back to Israel.

The reality is
" A New York Times investigation revealed that at least half of the greenhouses had actually been destroyed by Israeli settlers before they left.[62][63][64][65] Two months prior to the withdrawal, half of the 21 settlements' greenhouses, spread over 1,000 acres, had been dismantled by their owners, leaving the remainder on 500 acres, placing its business viability on a weak footing."

Exactly. It’s completely illogical to say that Israel are deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians.

As I have said repeatedly, I am talking about the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Recognized by the UN as Palestinian territory.

To answer your questions:

Yes I do.

Yes I do.

Yes I do.

It's relevant because the person I was replying to said:

'The land they have is much much smaller than the original agreement.

Why is why International support should have been there all along. Help to protect the borders as agreed.'

I do think it matters that, from what Lemony says, the Arabs did not agree to two states back then. As in, they wanted their state but not for the Jews to get one too. I was asking that poster to clarify because if Lemony is wrong we'd all like to know.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth and nearly 60% of its population are under the age of 25, so most have grown up in dire living conditions and in a political situation they are far too young to be blamed for. Israel, on the other hand, is a democracy which has chosen to elect an extremist right wing racist in Benjamin Netenyahu who has been deliberately provocative, aggressive and expansionist. Nothing excuses how Hamas is behaving, but quite frankly if you trap that many young people in a tiny area where they live in poverty and have an exceptionally poor quality of life, and then elect someone who thumbs his nose at and mistreats them in every way he can possibly get away with, you have been actively asking to inspire hatred of Israel in the people of Gaza.

Extremism does not work, it just brings misery and destruction. The people of Israel need to reflect on that when they cast their votes. The people of Gaza don’t have the same luxury.

On R4 PM, most depressing interview with Hamas spokesman who reiterarated that there is no way Hamas will accept the existance of Israel. Jesus F. Christ on a bike..... how can you negotiate with people like that ?

‘It’s completely illogical to say that Israel are deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians.’

indiscriminate air strikes in a highly populated area is deliberately targeting civilians. Cutting off food, water, power to a population who have no other access to food, water, power IS targeting civilians.

Just as Hamas attacked civilians, now Israel is. And on and on.

Look at how Palestinians have suffered.

Is it really any surprise?

@quiteoldad I don't know, but at this stage I'd quite like the international community to present them with a series of sticks and carrots. Give them a piece of land - 67 borders, maybe - and tell them to get on with it. Maybe keep an international peace keeping presence there. Never mind if they are not happy, if the people see their lives improve they'll probably get rid of Hamas themselves eventually.

I can’t see Israel conceding the land outside the 1948 agreement. They’re suffering trauma after Hamas

Hamas want annihilation of Israel, which makes it hard again to concede

Pp may have a point on the land but it feels too far gone atm to get an answer

If they were truly indiscriminate air strikes the casualties would be in the thousands. Israel has the capacity to do that but holds back.

@Takoneko

First off, remember you are here shouting about UN declarations and international law - and in a sense you are right. Israel have flouted it by not returning the the borders they were told to. On the other hand, the other side do not respect international law of any kind so you can't constantly hold both to a different stand? It's a bit like "You clearly were over the speed limit" from someone who is sitting in the passenger seat smoking crack. For agreements to work, both parties do need to do their bit?

They pulled out of Gaza but not the West Bank or East Jerusalem

Fair, although they did pull out of four settlements on the West Bank for the sake of accuracy.

But to add more context than just an order from the UN, Since the Oslo accords of 1993 there were negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians based on principle of land-for-peace, with borders between Israel and an independent Palestinian state to be determined as part of a final status agreement.

Israel made numerous land-for-peace offers to the Palestinians, including during the 2000 Camp David summit, involving a near-total withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank. Those offers were repeatedly turned down by Palestinian leaders. Bill Clinton said Arafat showed up and just said "no" to everything for 12 days.

If we are being fair, it was obvious to all Sharon was genuinely trying for peace. He had a left wing take on it and said in 2023 to the opposition in Likud "You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation. This is a terrible thing for Israel, for the Palestinians, and for the Israeli economy."

So he thought the best thing for Israel was to pull out, do the right thing and genuinely strive for peace and fairness and about 60% of Israelis backed the disengagement plan. However, not everyone did. Some religious folks felt Gaza was part of Israel promised in the Bible, similarly the Jordan Valley.

He was opposed by Netanyahu who claimed pulling out would give rise to terrorists. And in the end I guess, when they did pull out of Gaza as the first phase of disengagement that's exactly what happened. Hamas took hold and turned it into more or less a terrorist base and it was pretty much a disaster.

Shortly after that Sharon was not leader anymore and by 2009 Netanyahu was PM again and he had very different ideas that were much more aggressive and less conducive to peace.

So I think it would be fair to say that the change of leadership of Israel, as well as loss of support from the public - combined with a very disastrous attempt at pulling out of Gaza probably led to the whole thing falling apart?

Netanyahu didn't want to - he wanted to keep territory - and Hamas also didn't want to negotiate peace or behave in a reasonable way so it is I suppose why it ended up awful

Lots and lots of groups of people on Earth have suffered. No, they don't all react like that, not even close.

This is from the Hamas original charter:

'the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).'

And an Israeli Rabbi has said it’s permitted to rape Palestinian women.

Why not report that?

They didn’t have to agree to it for it to be binding on them and on Israel though. There are two different ways that an agreement can become binding in international law. The first is by a bilateral or multilateral treaty. That sort of agreement would have needed the Palestinians to agree for it to become legally binding. The other is via the UN.

Resolution 181 was passed by a supermajority at the UN general assembly and was legally binding on the Palestinians and Israelis regardless of whether they agreed or not. It was especially irresponsible of the UN not to have had an enforcement plan in place when the Arabs had not in fact agreed and the future Israelis had agreed reluctantly but were deeply unhappy that the “international zone” of Jerusalem was going to be entirely surrounded by the new Arab state with the potential for the sizeable Jewish communities there to be effectively cut off from the new state of Israel and left as sitting ducks with no UN plan for ensuring peace in the “international zone”.

You can't negotiate with hammas.

All you can do is try and get people in gaza educated, treat them well, and try and assimilate them which I believe was happening before this.

I don't question the suffering of the Palestinians and the wretched lives they are leading, mainly at the hands of Israel. I can even understand what drives them into firing rockets, but how on Earth can you reach a settlement with an enemy who insists that the only outcome of those negotiations that will satisfy them is your destruction? Hamas need more realistic negotiators.

BUT YOU WERE REPLYING TO A POST TALKING ABOUT THE WHOLE TERRITORY!!

Aaagh.

You can't pretend to be critiquing a previous post, when you have chosen to talk about something else!

(Although tbf to you, the previous post was unclear as it had chosen to quote a single line out of context.)

I don't care what is or isn't legally binding or about UN resolutions or international law. I'm interested in why the Arabs apparently didn't agree to the two state solution back in the 1930s and 1940s when it seems the Jews did. That seemed like a very sensible proposal by the British at the time. Morally, I'd view breaking an actual mutual agreement as far worse than breaking an imposed UN resolution which one side had already refused to agree to. Why didn't the Arabs agree to it then?

@Shumpalumpa I was responding to another poster and I don't do whataboutery, ever.

I'm not sure you're right about this strengthening Netanyahu. This massacre has happened on his watch and it's a horrendous intelligence failure.

‘And an Israeli Rabbi has said it’s permitted to rape Palestinian women.’

there are nuts on both sides, which is why seeking examples of who’s the shittiest really is pointless.

Top trolling.

Because of course the supposed words of a single, unnamed rabbi is completely equivalent in significance to the founding Charter of the group that rules over 2 million people in Gaza.

I shouldn't respond though because you're just going to post more non-sequiturs, more unevidenced balderdash.

@quiteoldad

You really are hell bent on trying to make it sound like Israelis are bad guys!

Leaving infrastructure, almost all public buildings, a number of agricultural facilities and some houses for Palestinians was, in fact, a massive gift that could have set them to to start off their own communities with great facilities for the Palestinian people.

They chose to smash them all up, and described smashing up the Synagogue as a "joy". It doesn't matter if they were left 10 or 20 greenhouse - they chose to smash them up rather than use them to produce food for the people who needed it.

Here is it reported in the news:

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9331863
and again a year later
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/2/13/looters-steal-gaza-greenhouses

This is Hamas. Stripping their own people of much needed resources, jobs, food, stealing for themselves, putting suicide vests on children and truing to get sympathy.

My statement was correct.

You were shown the text of the agreement, which clearly said they would take their property with them where it was possible. If a New York times article has decided to phrase that as "destruction", then it's crappy journalism. I showed you the actual legislation.

All the schools, office building and hospitals WERE ALMOST ENTIRELY left in tact. In addition to decades of infrastructure, from roads to plumbing. Some of the greenhouses were dismantled. That does not make my statement that those things collectively were not "almost entirely" left in tact.

Yesterday you were attemting to re-characterise Jews living in the middle east through history as a kum bay ya brotherhood of some sort that was only broken down by the evil Jews demanding a state when this could not be further from the reality of living in Dhimmi status.

And you are somehow trying to re-characterise Hamas (terrorists) taking the fantastic facilities provided that their own people desperately needed, for food, jobs, education, medical care and utilities and wilfully destroying them for spite as also being the fault of the evil Jews who had the gall to take some of their own property with them when they left?!!!

Gordon Bennet man!