I despair at Israel sometimes

[AndHarry]

Well, often really. I have family out there who have a bomb shelter in their house and have had to evacuate for weeks at a time so I have great sympathy for ordinary Israelis trying to go about their lives. What happened to 3 sch

The Palestinians turned down the offer of statehood in 2000 and in 2008 which would have involved huge israeli compromises.

Why? They had the most to gain.

By turning down these offers, and especially the second intifada, they also destroyed the Israeli left by effectively fulfilling the predictions of the right.

It will take us a long time to get back to the offer of 2000 or 2008, if ever.

Israelis are now terrified of a hostile.Palestinian state in the west bank given what happened in Gaza once it was evacuated.

DogcalledRudis - I'm sure you are right. And let's not forget Rachel Corrie or Tom Hurndall.

www.rachelcorriefoundation.org
www.tomhurndall.co.uk

I agree with everything TheHoneyBadger said.

Dog

The reports on settler.violence make the Israeli press. There are journalists like gidon Levi, Amira hass and.shlomi eldar who report on it.

There are also groups of Israelis who travel to the west bank and join Palestinians in things like the olive harvest in hotspots of settler violence. A friend of mine is very active in one of these groups. All Israelis I know, even those who support settlements politically, condemn this kind of violence.

You should read the link to yuval diskin that I posted. He headed the Jewish section of the shin bet so knows more about Jewish settler extremism than anyone. To be honest it terrifies me more than Palestinian extremism.

Shakshuka: what is your friends' justification for 'supporting settlements politically?

Quivering: I do not see any attempt for peace on either side. I keep on and on saying it, but you cannot keep building settlements which steal land and farms and simultaneously say you are interested in peace.

Why didn't the Palestinians accept Barak's offer of statehood in 2000 or Olmert 's in 2008? They'd have got 96-99% of the wb and Gaza and a state of their own. Why did they turn it down????

Shak you have palestinian friends?!

Agree with the dehumanising of the Palestinian people. They truly are caged and as mentioned earlier, most children know someone who has been killed and are deeply traumatised. On mumsnet, most of us get concerned if our child is exposed to something deemed age inappropriate and do what we can to keep our children safe. Imagine the effects of what happens in Palestine on your own child. Not so easy to bear then is it.

I was reading about the recent 'peace' talks that failed and the US official said that for the Israelis, the Palestinians have become ghosts. He cited the most meaningful personal moment during the talks for him being when a Palestinian Told his Israeli counterpart across the table, "you just don't see us".

it's still a hell of a lot less than what has been thrown at them. this is david and goliath stuff and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

After hundreds of palestinian deaths this week forgive me for having no sympathy for the destruction of a single petrol station. To even compare that to the loss of lives is ridiculous. I have every sympathy for any loss of life, of which there has been none bar the death of the 3 teens who were tragically killed.

israel have destroyed hundreds of homes and lives this week. Lets focus on that for a minute.

Any loss of life on the israeli side.

knew you'd say that. thing is it was a story - 99.9999% of the time in this world goliath wins - especially when he has super goliath (US) standing behind him.

cleanmean - that's what i mean about the israeli framing of this being pathological. a petrol station!!! hundreds of homes and lives of people trapped in a ghetto destroyed is ok, probably they were 'deathseeking' and deserved it apparently. but a petrol station!?! that's shocking.

quivering

what an honest post, and I could not agree more with your comment:

accept that there are two sides to this horrible, long, conflict. There is no one aggressor and one victim.

making pro/anti comments against one race or nationality will serve noone- but who the fuck can fix this?

the dehumanisation is SO clear. generations raised to see palestinian lives as being less than and not important and something akin to a vermin problem. it's so embedded it isn't even questioned.

i don't think anyone can fix it. at some point there will be a war. thus far no one has really stood up and fought with their sides because of terror at what the outcomes would be but the world is very volatile now and things are really up in the air.

the 'oh egypt or jordan should sort it out' mentality (re: come and make YOUR people behave) isn't going to suffice. those countries are in enough flux and changing dynamics of their own to fall into old roles of appeasement and placating.

if israel continues escalating it's violence against gaza then sooner or later someone in the region is going to join in and yes all hell will break loose.

incidentally israel has no qualms of attacking other countries such as syria if they don't like what they're doing yet if another country like iran says it will take military action if israel don't desist attacking gaza then that is.....? different somehow. why would that be? because they're an arab nation? so that makes them somehow animals unlike your clean decent selves?

there is so much xionist superiority in this.

war is when two armies fight each other. this is not war. a few rockets launched against an iron dome and a fully financed, weaponed and advanced military, a nation with national service for all and a huge army and money and infrastructure is not war.

jesus wept.

besides which you can't have it both ways re: hammas are terrorists and radicals not to be recognised AND this is a war. no. one or the other. either they're a small group of extremists as you want us to have OR they are the democratically elected power whose army is fighting you.

Quivering, you speak of writing ignorant posts on mumsnet in early days.

Who ended up dead between david and goliath?

Writing stuff like this is still spectacularly missing the point!

Agree with every word that honey has said.

shak your concern for palestinians comes across totally disingenuous.

Israel is an aggressor. It cannot stand Palestinians having any human rights or any recognition in the world. One of the conditions for the most recent 'peace' talks was that Palestine puts on hold international recognition as a state. I wonder why!!!!!