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aka Dave
Joined: 02 May 2008
Location: Down by the river
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 Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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Support for Israel in the U.S. is not monolithic and varies considerably. The average American who doesn't closely follow current events probably views it thusly:
1. Israel is a democracy. Hamas is a fanatical terrorist group. Fatah is inept, corrupt, and incapable of governing effectively.
2. Israel genuinely wants peace and to share land with Palestinians. Palestinians want to wipe Israel off the map.
This would probably be the genuinely held, typical position of the average American. When Clinton and Ehud Barak put everything on the table for Arafat and they just walked away, without even a counter-offer, America patience evaporated and many figured the Palestinians were not ready to reconcile with Israel.
Regarding the settlements, most liberals are deeply opposed to them.
But look to the opposite view; why is Europe and the rest of the world so obsessed with Israel? Israel is *tiny* country. The scale of the conflict in Gaza is much lower than many conflicts that have been going on for years, particularly in Africa. Yet Gaza is in the headlines of Le Monde every day for the past month.
Why this obsession with this tiny country with negligible ressources, surrounding by millions and millions of people, who, if they could snap their fingers and obliterate every Jew in the world, would promptly do it?
Israel went after terrorists firing rockets after them, and suddenly people scream its genocide. Where was the outcry of what Mugabe is doing in Zimbabwe ("I'm Zimbabwe!")? In Darfur? In the Congo?
Look on this board. Tons of threads about Israel. I personally think the Isaeli right is just as bad as the American right, and destructive to Israel's long term interests.
But I also am quite convinced Israel is a lightning rod, a scapegoat, and submitted to scrutiny no other democracy has ever undergone.
And I don't rule out a whole lot of jew hating going on out there.
However, the ultimate bottom line is this: everyone who's been involved in the negotiations knows what a final deal has to have to be accepted by both sides, and this includes arabs who've dealt with the process.
Right now, the Palestinians, as a people, simply are incapable of making a deal. As a society they don't decisively want peace. So everything else is BS, when you want war, you get war, and you fight until you realize fighting is pointless or until you win.
And that's what they're going to do. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| aka Dave wrote: |
Support for Israel in the U.S. is not monolithic and varies considerably. The average American who doesn't closely follow current events probably views it thusly:
1. Israel is a democracy. Hamas is a fanatical terrorist group. Fatah is inept, corrupt, and incapable of governing effectively.
2. Israel genuinely wants peace and to share land with Palestinians. Palestinians want to wipe Israel off the map.
This would probably be the genuinely held, typical position of the average American. When Clinton and Ehud Barak put everything on the table for Arafat and they just walked away, without even a counter-offer, America patience evaporated and many figured the Palestinians were not ready to reconcile with Israel. |
The problem is, if your description of it is anything to go by, the typical American position is not very well informed.
Firstly, the idea that it was the Palestinians that walked away from the Oslo talks is contentious. In fact, there are many who hold that the opposite is true. Arafat and Clinton continued talking but Barak would not come back to the table (a little election stunt on his part they say). If you want a starting point for an analysis of the Oslo talks, I would recommend the late Tanya Reinhart's book: Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948. She looks at the claim that it was Arafat who walked away from the talks, and provides ample evidence to the contrary, and much evidence that it was Ehud Barak who did the lion's share of sabotaging those talks.
Here is a little snippet of her discussing the book: Interview with Tanya Reinhart
Also, while Hamas is known for being a 'fanatical terrorist group' it has finally succumbed to the idea that they should abandon terrorism and instead participate in the political process. They have been trying to do this since 2005, and infact won a democratical election fairly and squarely in 2006, as Gazans themselves had determined that 'Fatah is inept, corrupt, and incapable of governing effectively.'
Here from the former chief UN Middle East peace envoy (from 2005-2007):
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Mahmoud Abbas had a remarkable early success in March 2005 when Hamas agreed to stop attacking Israel and to participate in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.
These were substantial steps by Hamas, the most powerful Palestinian resistance movement, which had denounced Yasser Arafat's agreement to the Oslo accords and refused to participate in the elections for the first legislature in 1996. Some time before, Hamas leaders had begun to talk about a long-term arrangement to co-exist with Israel and thereby implicitly recognise it.
In September 2005 the international community gave its tacit blessing to the participation of Hamas in the elections in the face of the opposition of then Israeli leader Ariel Sharon.
Hamas is much more complex than simply a terrorist organization; it is a grievance-based resistance movement that thrives on the continuation of Israeli occupation, and it has a wide and plural following. It has become a formidable political player. They cannot be ignored in the search for peace with Israel.
And yet ignore them, and beyond, undermine them and sidestep them, is precisely what the international community has done since their election to a majority in the Palestinian legislature. Instead of reaching out and seizing a rare opportunity to bring a militant movement in from the cold and into the mainstream, the international community disregarded their initial steps in the direction of democratic rule and peaceful negotiations, punished the population in the hopes that they would oust their elected leaders, quashed efforts at reunification, and condoned Israeli policies which can only be seen as collective punishment. It should not surprise us that many in Hamas have interpreted this as meaning that there is no interest in a move by them toward democracy and peace, leaving no other recourse but continued armed struggle. |
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/alvaro-de-soto-few-will-thank-un-when-this-war-ends-1380408.html
Abbas, with the support of the International Community, persuaded Hamas to eschew terrorism and embrace legitimate politcal methods, and when they did so, we (the world) did nothing to celebrate or reward this progress, and instead hung them out to dry.
Lastly, while many Israelis may genuinely want peace with the Palestinians, they are often deluded about how far their leaders have truly gone to attain this goal. Too many observers (including many Israelis themselves) have come to the conclusion that Israelis leaders see peace as secondary to the more important objective of securing as much of the West Bank as possible. The peace process is deliberately stalled while Israel creates more 'facts on the ground.' |
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