Part 5: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

New thread again.

Thread 1 - started when 3 Israeli boys were found murdered.

Thread 2 - in which we mainly discussed Operation Protective Edge.

Thread 3 - in which we continued to discuss Operation Protective Edge, the wider conflict and international involvement.

Thread 4 - in which Operation Protective Edge was examined further and we looked at the different views from inside Israel and the international community.

Another reminder of the Mumsnet Talk Guidelines.

"I see many who see death and war and look no deeper than that and believe the sides with the most deaths must be in the right."

I don,t believe that at all. But I do believe deliberately targeting UN safe havens full of sleeping children is wrong.

Yes, it's total nonsense to say that Israel has no alternative and though Finkelstein is a hugely persuasive writer, his stance on most things is to the right, and often wrong- for example, he defended Coulson and thought that MPs shouldn't have to declare expenses. He's also a good friend of George Osborne. Now of course it is possible to be right wing, of dubious morality regarding corruption, and a mate of our slimy chancellor and still be right on international issues. Sadly, for all his hand wringing over casualties, the overall direction Finkelstein takes in that article is not constructive to peace or progress. There are always alternatives.

QnBoudi I thought of Eran Efrati immediately as well. (Also I've only just realised you're also in Liverpool, even though you mentioned in an earlier post having the same MP as me, duh!)

That's an interesting article tiggers. I agree with a lot of the pro-Israel points, namely:

• there wouldn't automatically be peace if Israel went back to pre-1967 borders
• peace in Israel wouldn't mean peace in the whole Middle East (although I'm not sure anyone's arguing it would)
• the occupation (as distinct from the illegal settlements) is to some extent created by the war rather than vice versa
• it's not as simple as calling on Israel to 'end the blockade' when that has previously led to more civilian deaths, although I don't think the current situation is tenable either and something needs to be worked out

BUT (big but), the author makes it sound like a choice between what's happening now and doing nothing. Few people are arguing that Israel shouldn't defend itself at all, only that it's using excessive force in doing so, and not taking enough care to avoid civilian casualties (if not deliberately targeting them). So while I agree that Israel is in a position where it has to do something, I don't agree that it has no choice but to do what it is doing at the moment.

I also think it's implausible that the West would sit back and do nothing if Israel were under heavy attack. Possibly not if it was being attacked by Hamas rockets/suicide bombings, because it has an army that's perfectly capable of practically wiping out Gaza if it were that desperate, it doesn't need help from the West. But if it was facing a clear, immediate and plausible threat to its existence that the IDF couldn't deal with, the internal pressure for the US at least to intervene would be immense, from right-wingers and weirdo 'end times' Christians as well as Jews. I can see why given their history Israelis might not see it that way, though.

And I believe that taking as gospel everything that an organisation that kills its opponents, homosexuals and is generally not big on free speech and restricts journalists accordingly is inadvisable.

I also do not know why there seems to be this huge reluctance to believe that Hamas could use its own citizens to protect its position. This is an organisation which openly states that it worships death and that those who kill themselves and take infidels with will go to a better place. This is an organisation that has been sending suicide bombers into Israel for years.

I believe you should be able to get on a bus, or go to a shopping mall without worrying that you and your children will be blown to smithereens or severely injured.

I believe you should be able to send your children to nursery without worrying a rocket will hit them.

I also do not believe that if the UN allows rockets to be stored in their schools, for whatever reason and under whatever pressure that they are a "safe haven" or even "neutral territory". Rockets were found in the UNWRA schools on 3 occasions and mysteriously returned to Hamas.

ISRAEL FINDS IT HAS NO ALTERNATIVE

..provided you take it as fact that:

• Israel cannot ever give back the land it has stolen
• Israel cannot give non-Jews full citizenship
• Israel cannot treat dispossessed Palestinians as human beings
• Israel is always right

In terms of solutions you cannot make peace or create a new way of life by yourself - it requires a partner.

Whether the PA (who also have an interesting record on human rights and statements about Israel's existence) are that has yet to be tried. Whether the PA could compromise and still be accepted by its electorate has also to be seen.

I read an interesting article the other day on which the argument was that to try and construe Western democratic principles onto another culture is firstly patronising and secondly leads to the danger of not getting the full picture. Its argument was that democracy requires a high level of inter-personal trust that all your people share common ideals and trust each other enough to implement them. It argued that the Arab culture is based on tribal systems based around honour and shame and that such a system cannot recognise compromise it only recognises winning and losing and compromise means losing and you need to assuage this shame by taking back what you've lost. One example given was how in 2000 Arafat was offered 94% of the West Bank and Gaza and turned it down on the grounds that he didn't want to be the next Sadat (ie assassinated) because any Arab who conceded any land would get that fate.

It was an interesting theory. I don't know how strictly you can construe it but I think it is clear that what goes on in the Middle East and the way that various societies behave is rather different than Western democracy when it is working.

But what that theory does mean is unless Israel can develop a partner who can compromise and remain in power the current unfortunate situation will remain.

By the way thanks for clarifying about Zionism Springheeled. In that case I think this may be contributing to some confusion - I don't know about anyone else but I was taking 'anti-Zionist' to mean holding the view that Israel shouldn't exist, which is obviously quite different from how you're using it!

By the way I think the Golda Meir quote is actually "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children." (No less bad, I'm just saying.) I've also heard it as 'sons', which suggests she was talking about soldiers rather than actual children, possibly in reference to the 1967 war (as it was said shortly afterwards)? If so I find that a bit more understandable, otherwise it's despicable.

Oh wait, apparently it continues "We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us" - in that case I retract my attempt to defend it, it is actually just racist

Sorry tiggersreturn I keep re reading but are you reading stuff that is suggesting that Israel can't find peace and democratic solutions with its neighbours because its neighbours are Arabs? Isn't that a bit racist?

Piglet John

If by land Israel has "stolen" you mean land conquered in 1967. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. The Egyptians controlled it from 1948-67. The result was a huge upsurge in rockets. Hardly encouraging of a repetition.

Israel does offer full citizenship to non-Jewish citizens within the 1948 borders. I believe it's a bit hard to be a judge on the supreme court without it. Since your position is that the Palestinians have a right to their homeland surely it would be insulting to offer them citizenship? Wouldn't that be attempting to wipe out their national identity.

Regarding your last 2 points, no one in Israel would ever say that Israel is always right. 2 people 3 opinions is the more common state of affairs. I am not denying there are human rights infringements and poor treatment of Palestinians as a result of the current situation. However, the situation is not helped by the many terrorist attacks on Israel and that these have been occurring from before 1947.

my other post sums up the difficulties and why the situation is so difficult to resolve.

I don't know alaswad really, it's just that when I use it it's meaning I have an issue with the actions of the Israeli state. I don't think it was formed fairly in the first place, either.

Tiggersreturn- so are you saying that if there were rockets stored in a school full of children, it would be acceptable for that school to be bombed?

Springheeled I don't think it's racist to say that cultures are different and have different methods of regulating their societies.

The UK and the US are both English speaking democracies but would you say it's racist to say we're culturally very different? How about the UK and Saudi Arabia?

The honour culture is easy to observe in many Arab and some Asian cultures. Honour killings of girls who shame their families by having illicit relations or not marrying who they are told to?

In addition, the constant theme that all will be ok if you behave as if both sides are experienced democratic partners is predicated on the basis that both parties are and want to be. Israel demonstrates democracy by a ridiculously over democratic system and an adherence to values of justice, free speech and rights of the individual. The best you can say is that the countries and people surrounding it do not always come off so strongly in these areas.

The interesting thing now is going to be to see how the landscape has changed since the Arab Spring.

Previously the rest of the Middle East used Israel as a useful foil for popular hatred to distract from the real economic and social issues in their own countries. The Palestinians were kept in refugee camps partly for this purpose from 1948-67 in Egypt and Jordan. With the Arab Spring however this may all change. Now the leaders of the remaining non-civil war countries with the exception of Qatar are looking to Israel for stability. The monarchies and dictatorships are under threat from Islamic Fundamentalism and as the old saying goes "my enemy's enemy is my friend". It is noteworthy that most of the Arab countries have been silent on the conflict this time whereas they are usually the first to condemn.

So maybe an alternative will be found in a rather untraditional place.

Springheeled why do you think Israel was not formed fairly in the first place?

Tiggers

No I don't.

Tiggers

No I don't.

Erm, because people already lived on the land tiggersreturn

That doesn't help with now though.

Triggers please please don't bring up the human shields myths again. They have been disproved many times. Unless of course you are referring to israels use of palestinians as human shields.

Israel was not formed fairly. It has every right to exist now. But it must stop annihilating it's neighbours. Is that so difficult to understand? Hamas too must do the same.

Re the poster who questioned if I really thought NuttyYahoo was evil. Yes, yes I do think he is evil. He is despised by many in Israel, in political circles and worldwide.

It would be easy to say that Jews lived on the land too but it's also true.There were communities in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron and Safed throughout the ages and from the end of the 19th century and the start of the Zionist movement there were Jews building up waste land that they had bought from the owners and turned into usable land. It's also true that the situation could have gone so differently then as well if the UN partition plan had been accepted by the Arabs as well as the Jews.

But I agree with you that none of it helps with now and the situation is very different now.

I'm not running away but I do need to go to bed and since I have work and holidays coming up I probably will be able to resist looking at this thread for a couple of week.

But I would like to thank you for making this evening an actual exchange of views and not leaving me with the feeling of wanting to for the first time ever seriously consider moving to Israel because of the fear of where this sort of discourse is going to lead.

Triggers return, do you think it is justified to target a school full of sleeping children if you think there might be rocket launcher in it?

Tigger I'm sorry to hear you have felt unsafe here. Genuinely. I'm very sad to hear of all the accounts of anti semitism I've heard about on this thread.

Somewheresafe- if you conduct warfare from an urban environment, store your weapons in schools and hospitals then you are using the civilians who live there as your "human shields" because there is no way to try and stop those attacks without injuring and killing some people.

I assume you've seen this and consider it a myth.

I assume you've also read blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alanjohnson/100283063/hamas-manipulated-and-intimidated-the-media-in-gaza-why-was-that-kept-from-us/this and can therefore explain why Hamas spent so much time showing horrible injuries and tragic deaths but weren't too eager on journalists reporting on anything else.

and that really is it for tonight.

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alanjohnson/100283063/hamas-manipulated-and-intimidated-the-media-in-gaza-why-was-that-kept-from-us/

with working link

So targeting UN safe havens full of sleeping children is acceptable?

It's an easy question- yes or no?

Somewheresafe, it would be nice if you had read my post a bit more carefully. I didn't ask if you thought Netanyahu was evil. I asked how you could think he was the "biggest evil there [in the ME]" - worse than Assad, worse than ISIS, worse than the butchers who mutilate virtually every Egyptian girl.

I explicitly said I could understand an argument that said he was evil