The Israeli-Palestinian stand off & opposition - crappy titl

[Klondike]

ok, I've had enough of the crap of hearing about the fight for the "Holy Land". I've been thinking about it a little and I've decided that we need to come up with a plan to stop the damn fighting. There has to be a way to stop them and by whatever unruley force placed us on this mudball planet we're going to find a way to make them stop!

[HankMorgan]

In the United States the descendants of former slaves and the descendants of former slave owners live side by side. It's not perfect, yet. It is however good and getting better.

If that's possible, why can't it be possible for there to be one country where both Arabs and Jews live together? Why can't they share and respect the Holy sites of both Islam and Judaism?

I don't think the two "separate but equal" nations of Palestine and Israel have a future. To me it must be one nation.

That's easy to say after a few beers and never having been within 10,000 miles of Jerusalem.

Damn it, Klondike, I'm with you. There must be a way. Too many people on both sides are dying the way things are now.

[Zombie]

This has already been discussed once and not much people though of contributing to the subject. Needless to say that it's a very delicate topic, and one can not simply give an answer or a solution off the top of his head without actually grasping the history that lead to the present conflicts.

HM you said it best when you wrote "That's easy to say after a few beers and never having been within 10,000 miles of Jerusalem."
It is too easy actually.
Sorry I'm not in the mood to further discuss the matter as it's getting late and it would depress me even more than i already am.
I'll look at the older thread that talked about this and post a link, soon.

Z.

[Klondike]

Well, I have an idea I've been brooding over for a while now-Non violent resistence. It worked for Martin Luther King Jr.- his nonviolent movement brought an abrupt end to the legal segregation in America. It worked for Gandhi-he and his fellow Indians brought the British Empire to its knees without firing a shot. It worked for Nelson Mandela-he and the African National Congress brought about an end to apartheid with no violent revolution.
If it worked for them, trust me, it can work for them.
Sure, you can still win through violence. The Vietnamese proved they cold whip the mightiest country on earth. And look at the US-they spent eight years picking off Redcoats, and they got themselves a big country out of all the shooting!

In my next post I'll have more on this way and other ways as well. Sorry I went off ranting on this one.

[Boris Moskovitz]

But the thing is, if the way to finish this is violence, there will be many deaths. Such as in Vietnam, millions of people died in the war, as for the American Revolution, ah, I'm not saying anything for something I don't know.

But non-violence... I kinda doubt it, to me, it seems like both nations are so much against each other, that they would both think that it is necessary to use violence against one another.

But peaceful ways, we could always try!

By the way, why do the Jews claim that Israel is theirs? Because that it belonged to them 2 000 years ago, then there was an Arabic invasion? What the fuck? If so, then doesn't North and South America belong to the natives? This is total bullshit.

[Invader Zim]

I support niether side i think they are both pathetic little facist organisations. The palistinians as much as the Isreil's. As to who should get the land, i dont know. Perhaps thay could co-exist??? Just a little suggestion, surely the two peoples would perefer living in pease to war. But both are being indoctronated from birth to hate the others.

Shit who knows how to solve there problems?

[j]

If anyone had the answer to the conflict it would have been solved a long time ago.

You see, here's the problem: both sides have a right to the same piece of land. However, it all depends on how far back into history you want to go.

Israeli claim this their homeland because as early as like 1200 BC Israelites conquered and settled the area. They held it until 500 BC when the area fell to the Babylonians. The area was then re-claimed by the Israelis and became part of the Roman empire near 60 BC. Rome began to fall and then the Jews there were made to leave and thus had settle in other parts of the world.

The area then came to be ruled by Arab Muslims and was under Ottoman Empire rule until the beginning of the 20th century. In reaction to anti-Semitism in Europe the idea of Zionism or the estabilishment of the Jewish State in Palestine was started.

The British, who helped topple the Ottoman Empire, then ruled the area--committed to the ideal of the Jewish State. As Iraelis immigrated to Palestine the unrest between the two groups started. In 1929 there were attacks against Palestinians by Jews and Jews by Palestinians.

In 1947, partially in reaction to the holocaust, the UN voted to split Palestine between the Arabs and the Israelis. Palestine rejected this.

They have been fighting ever since.

You can see the Israeli side: This is the homeland that they were forced from centuries ago and thus have suffered immeasurably from anti-semitism. They need the land to prevent persecution.

You can see the Palestinian side: They are the decedents of the original people of the area (before 1200 BC). They had control of the region for over 2000 years. In the course of less than 50 years you have a group of people immigrating to your country and then saying they have rights to the land. The UN then says this small minority is right and you must now give up close to half of your land.

It really has no ties to the struggle for civil rights in this country. I dont get that connection. It has more to do with the situation of the American Indian.

j

[Zombie]

Hey another fellow contryman ;) How you doing J.

For the past month that i was registered here, there had been a lot of discussions over that particular subject. Needless to say people came and went, saying that there should be a solution and some even claimed that it was easily within reach. I lost hope concerning those conversations as it always went back and forth on the matter, leading to no significant result.
As I said before, as long as Sharon and Arafat are in power, you can dream of peace for as much as you want, reality will prove you otherwise. I'm not saying their removal will imminently solve the conflicts, but that their presence is no more wanted in order to achieve a definitive peace process, as it was tried in the days of Rabbin, and thus perhaps lead to a better future between the coexistant nations.

So J. you're also from Lebanon?

Z.

[synthesis]

A common misconception is that the Jews today are the same as the Hebrews from the Roman times. They're not. The Hebrews are basically extinct, but I believe the latest research dictates that they're close relatives to Sephardic Jews - the Arabic ones.

I do believe that the Jews today are mostly converts from Turkish tribes who intermingled with the people of Europe up until the point where they're basically white.

In other words, the Jews today have no ancestral claim to Israel.

[synthesis]

By the way, here's a tale you Israel supports ought to find absolutely stirring.
_____

The Israeli Army’s war-criminal assault on the people of Jenin lasted for 12 unspeakably horrible days and nights, during which Israeli soldiers shot at all ambulances that attempted to pick up the growing numbers of dead and wounded people. Not one person could be rescued in all that time. Those who were injured — civilian men, women and children — were left to die of their wounds, bleeding to death slowly where they fell if they were outside, within range of Israeli snipers. Anyone who attempted to carry the wounded person off the street was also shot by the snipers. In some cases Israeli tanks ran over the wounded people as they lay helplessly on the street — just to send a message. Letting the Palestinians know, in no uncertain terms, just what kind of creatures “The Chosen People” truly are.

If the wounded Palestinian people were lucky enough to be shot or hit by shrapnel while inside a building, out of reach of the tanks and snipers, they died among their grieving family members. In many cases people had to stay inside buildings for many days with the rotting corpses of their loved ones, because if they went outside the Israeli soldiers would shoot them.

When an Israeli attack helicopter fired a round through the wall of one house, it hit a 17-year-old Palestinian young man in the chest and ripped out of his back. His mother and brother were with him, and they called for an ambulance. When it arrived, Israeli soldiers shot at it, forcing it to go back. The young man was slowly bleeding to death, and by 10 o’clock that night his mother could stand it no longer. She ran out into the street screaming for help, and the Israeli soldiers shot her in the head.

Somehow somebody managed to get her body off the street without getting shot themselves, and her son had to spend the next two days and nights with the dead bodies of his mother and brother. This kind of thing happened to many people in the Jenin refugee camp.

Early in the morning on April 3, the first day of the assault, Israeli soldiers firing from within an occupied house shot a young Palestinian man in the leg as he stood at the front gate of his house. He fell and began screaming in pain, and when he tried to stand up and run back inside they shot him in the abdomen and chest. A Palestinian nurse and her sister in a nearby house heard his screams and ran out to try and help him. The Israeli soldiers shot the sister in the leg, and shot the nurse in the abdomen. Before the two women could drag themselves back to their house, Israeli soldiers shot the sister in the other leg, and murdered the nurse with a bullet through the heart.

On the evening of April 3, two old Palestinian men, one 85-years-old and the other 72, were sitting in a house when Israeli soldiers shot the door off and burst inside, shooting the 85-year-old man dead. The Israelis then pushed the 72-year-old man at gunpoint through the house as they searched it. Finding nobody else, they tied him to a chair with plastic tape and left him there for ten hours. The next morning they cut him loose and used the 72-year-old man as a human shield as they went from house to house looking for more people to kill.

Israeli soldiers often used Palestinian people as human shields. In one case the soldiers rested their rifles on the shoulders of a Palestinian man and his 14-year-old son and fired into the houses of other people.

On April 5, an Israeli sniper shot a 44-year-old Palestinian man as he stood in an upstairs room of his home. He was the father of four children, one of whom was dead, the young man who was murdered along with the nurse on April 3. The 44-year-old man’s wife and three remaining children heard him call for help after he was shot, and they all ran up to the room and saw him collapse, a gunshot wound to his head. The wife screamed outside for someone to call an ambulance, but when it arrived the Israeli soldiers shot at it, preventing the crew from rescuing the man. He died within an hour.

On the afternoon of April 5, Israeli soldiers attached a bomb to a Palestinian house, then called on the people inside to come to the door. When a woman opened the door the bomb exploded, killing her. While her sisters and others screamed in futility for an ambulance, the Israeli soldiers were laughing because the bloody face of the woman they’d just murdered was horribly disfigured by the blast.

On April 6, a 37-year-old disabled Palestinian man was in his house when an Israeli soldier in a huge armored bulldozer began to destroy it. The disabled man had been unable all his life to speak, eat or move without help, and his mother and sister ran outside and begged the soldier to stop just long enough for them to get the helpless man out. The Israeli soldier called them “*****es” and bulldozed the house down on top of the disabled man, burying him alive. His mother and sister were unable to find him in the next few days. His dead body was finally recovered from the rubble, fifteen days later.

On April 10, a 57-year old Palestinian man who was confined to a wheelchair was rolling down a road in the refugee camp when he came upon an Israeli tank. The Israelis shot him, and then just for good measure they ran over him with their tank, crushing him and his wheelchair flat.

All during the massacre at the Jenin refugee camp, the Israelis kept the entire city of Jenin, which is next to the camp, under complete curfew for eight days. On the morning of April 11, the Israelis told the people of Jenin city that the curfew would be lifted for a few hours, allowing them to get food. Two Palestinian boys, aged 8 and 14, were walking with a group of Palestinian women to a nearby grocery store when they saw an Israeli tank in the middle of a road about 220 feet away. The tank turned toward the group and without warning began to fire. The 14-year-old boy was hit, and he died on the street. The 8-year-old boy and the women survived and carried their friend’s body to a car.

During the first week of the Jenin massacre there was a sporadic but determined resistance from the relatively small number of Palestinian fighters who were there. They were truly courageous men, armed with nothing but rifles and small explosives, totally outnumbered and outgunned, fighting a powerful military armed with tanks and helicopter gunships and all the latest technology, paid for by American taxpayers. The Palestinian fighters were rightfully defending themselves, their families, their wives and children, their mothers, fathers and grandparents against the murderous, criminal assault by the viciously racist Israeli state terrorists.

On April 9, the Palestinian fighters managed to ambush a group of the Israeli war criminals, killing 13 of them. Predictably, after the ambush the stinking Israeli soldiers became even more brutal than before, killing anybody and everybody they could get in their sights. The helpless Palestinian man in the wheelchair was shot and run over by the Israeli tank the next day, no doubt for revenge.