SherriMunnerlyn, ima,
et al,
The conflict is Occupation, it is not The US War On Terror, and an excuse to start yet another war and kill another 1 million inhabitants of The Middle East. And why do you desire to be a NeoCon Puppet? We really need to get beyond all that crap, wars and civilian massacres based on one lie after another, lies and spreading fear all to start more wars and put yet even more money in the hands of special interests and war profiteers.
(COMMENT)
This is a moral argument that I cannot argue against. I'm not sure what a NeoCon Puppet really is, but all of us come with strings attached. It is how we resist the string pulling that distinguishes us in our character.
Clearly, in some fashion, the correct answer here is that none of us wants the continuation of the conflict. But it is the degree to which we want peace that set the conditions to realize peace.
The Occupation began in 1967, and Israel and Iran/Persia were friends, did you know my husband's grandfather had a neighbor who went and fought for Israel in one of the Arab wars? The Shah recruited Iranians to go fight for Israel against Arabs. In the Iran Iraq War, guns issued to Iranian soldiers were made in the USA and bullets to use in those guns were shipped to Iran from Israel. My husband was issued a rifle made in the US and he delivered boxes of bullets in boxes showing they were shipped from Israel, and he delivered those bullets to the front lines, where the fighting was. and where the fighting was, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers, chemical weapons made with components shipped to Iraq from Germany and the US. The horrors experienced by those soldiers attacked with those chemical weapons, well, books could be written about that. Robert Fisk addresses it a bit in his book The Great War For Civilisation.
(COMMENT)
Yes, I think we are all familiar with the history of the US in the region, and the fact that, at one time or another, the US had a favorable relationship with each of the governments.
There is little question that you will find remnants of the American footprint in every country in the region; time dependent.
The Occupation is the source of the conflict, not this so called Palestinian/Arab/Persian alliance you or your Neo Con handlers have dreamed up. Israel chose to occupy Palestine and anytime they choose, they can stop the Occupation.
(COMMENT)
Ah, the issue and perspective!
Yes, it is TRUE. Israel can stop the Occupation at any time; BUT, not without assuming an unacceptable risk to its sovereignty and inviting further aggression by the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance.
In contract law, there are several critical elements to a contract, that make it a viable contract. One of them is a "benefit for a benefit;" it is an exchange - something of value in exchange for something of value." It is not a real contract if one party gets nothing of value. We generally refer to this as "Consideration" --- the price paid in exchange for the promise from the other party to the agreement.
We use this concept in our every day lives, more often than we might image.
What does Israel get in exchange for the Occupied Territories? Does it get the asking price: Peace!
The answer has generally been NO! There is no Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance assurance of delivery on the contract for peace. There is no competent authority that can give a reasonable assurance that the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance will not challenge the sovereignty of Israel again. In you appeal for moral justice,
supra, I hope we can assume that "peace and security for all" is not an unreasonable price to pay for the surrender of the Occupied Territories
(AKA: The "freedom" your heroic Islamic Jihad, HAMAS, PA, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Quods Force, etc, etc, etc) is attempting to attain. As is often said, freedom is not free.
It is not a true contract for peace when there is no reasonable expectation that the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance cannot deliver on the promise of peace.
An Occupation was not intended to last forever, it is supposed to be A TEMPORARY measure. No matter whether an intl court addresses legal issues or not, intl law most certainly defines many of Israel's acts as unlawful in this Occupation. The fact the unlawful acts have continued for over 45 years is because we do not have effective mechanisms built into intl law to force nations to abide by their obligations under intl law and the US shields Israel from accountability to abide by intl law through its veto power in the UN.
(COMMENT)
Agreed, it is suppose to be a temporary measure.
You cite two different concepts here.
- The first issue is the legality of the Occupation.
- The second is the Administration of the Occupation.
These are mutually exclusive issues; they are not co-dependent. You discuss the first of these in the next segment of your commentary; so I'll proceed to the second.
Without regard to the legality of the Occupation, law and culture
(excluding the barbarity of Islamic examples demonstrated to date) require humane actions across the board. There has been no culture in the world, in all of history, that has ever been perfectly fair, equitable and ignoble in the governmental oversight of its constituants.
(Least of all, the US, Western Civilization as a whole, and every nation we consider part of the Middle East and Persian Gulf.) There are now, there have been in the past, and there will be in the future examples of improper and unlawful discharge of public obligations relative to the administration of the Occupied Territories. It is not unfair to say that there have been many cases in which the Occupation Authorities wrongful performed acts, that would have otherwise been normally lawful, that were unnecessarily injurious to the indigenous populations.
(I've spoken on a couple of these issues; most recently the Water Distribution issue in the West Bank.) It would be most fallacious to assume or suggest that Israel
(or any other power on Earth) could have possibly administered the Occupation Territories without fault; particularly relative to the unrestrained and crudely mannered population to which one has to contend with in the Occupation Territories. In fact, with rare exceptions, the entire region, from Tripoli to Tartus and east beyond the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, has been dominated by despotic governments and tyrannical leadership of treacherous or deceitful indigenous populations. Hense, if there is nothing to fight over, they invent a cause
(the Arab Spring is an example where the insurrections traded one bad government for another).
It is unreasonable to just assume, that the indigenous population of the Occupied Territories, would have been any more benevolent to their constituents. It just runs against the historical record of the immediate region.
Having said that, it does not negate the requirement to extend justice to the Occupied Territories, no matter how debase their basic instincts may be. And over the last four decades, like any major population centers in the Western World, there are numerous examples of events that represent legitimate complaints and legal cause of action.
The problem is, how does one governance put a system in place, where the uncivilized nature of the population will attack it and prevent it from functioning?
Needless to say, there is a very great need to put in action a system of equal treatment, where every constituent can trust in receiving the same services and benefits as other territorial citizens. It is a matter of HOW!
Israel can end her Occupation in Palestine anytime she chooses, just move all her soldiers and illegal settlers out of the lands they illegally occupy. It does not take a rocket scientist to see who is keeping this conflict going, it is the Occupiers and their voluntary Occupation of Palestine. Security, this so called insatiable need for security of The Jewish State , does not justify deliberate killings of civilians and children and land thefts and ethnic cleansing and Apartheid and genocide, and all of the many crimes against humanity of the Occupation, it does not, and it never will.
(COMMENT)
This assumes the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance is blameless. I cannot argue against a notion set in stone.
Occupation, Israel unlawfully occupies Palestine. Look at all the UN Resolutions calling for Israel to end it. Right to resist occupation, that is the Palestinian's right. And self defense has nothing to do with anything, let Israel argue that after they end the unlawful Occupation. We do not have to have an intl legal opinion to tell any of us the Occupation is unlawful, its daily war crimes show us that, all a legal opinion would give us is intl pressure to apply on Israel. And yes, we do need that, we need the unlawful Occupation to end and we need for Israel to abide by her obligations under intl law. And anything that pressures Israel to do that is what needs to be done. I think Iread it took 5 intl court of justice opinions before Apartheid ended in South Africa.
(COMMENT)
Again, you are mixing up the legality of the Occupation with the judgement on its proper administration. Here, the discussion will be on the need for litigation on the legality of the Occupation
(not its administration which I've already rendered - has its many faults).
When we evaluate a traffic accident (the Occupation), we do not question whether the mangled wreckage exists (Israeli over Palestinian), but rather, we attempt to determine the circumstances which set the conditions for the collision between the vehicles (who had the right of way). In the case of the Occupation, we don't argue that the Occupation is in place, but rather how the Israelis came to be there, on top of the territory they occupy.
In some traffic accidents, the velocity of the impact and the extent of the damage to each vehicle and the area covered by the wreckage (the Occupied Territories) and the number of fatalities (the population injured) are all factors attributable to the total energy involved in the impact (Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance 'v' Israeli).
The Occupation came to be as a result of Act of War by the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance
(Arab Armies on Palestinian Fifth Columnist) attempting to intrude on the sovereignty of Israel
(Israeli right of way).
Now, there are many that would argue that Israel doesn't have the right to exist (a right of way). This is analogous to a driver of a vehicle not having a drivers license, but otherwise obeying the rules of the road (Israel), and the oncoming traffic (Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance) saying - he (Israel) has no business on the road without a license, so let's run the license-less driver off the road and kill them. Unfortunately, the oncoming traffic discovers, much too late, that the Israelis are in a fully armored H1 HMMWV and the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance are only in a Nissan Compact Car. The impact has a less than favorable outcome for the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance. But more importantly, in the attempt to pull apart the wreckage, parts of the Nissan Compact Car front-end are imbedded in the rolled-bar bumpers of the HUMMWV. Pieces of the Nissan (bumper to firewall) are lost to the HMMWV; stuck to the damaged HMMWV. The HMMWV is willing to give the pieces back, but the Nissan driver says, once we repair our car, we will run you off the road again. And they further deny any claims to damage done to the HMMWV.
- In this analogy, does the HMMWV driver give the Nissan driver the front-end of the car back (the Occupied Territories)?
- In the analogy, does the Nissan driver have the right to intentionally cause an accident (attack Israel)?
The Occupation came as a result of the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance attempting to interfere with the Israeli right to self-determination. The Occupation continues because the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance will not recognize the Israeli right to self-determination. This is the nature of the exchange that the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance rejects. Thus, it is the Palestinian/Arab/Persian Alliance that opposes the "Palestinian right of self-determination and promotes the continued Occupation." Not the other way around.
To reduce the "windbag/fartsack" effect so eloquently described by our friend "ima," I'll stop here.
Rocco's a windbag/fartsack who's occasionally got something interesting to say, if you have the patience to wade through all his fart smoke.
(COMMENT)
I suspect I lost your attention a long time ago, but I'm not quite as clearly expressive, or nearly as persuasive as you in discussing these complex issues in sound bites. I wish I was.
Most Respectfully,
R