PA, Hamas won't recognize Jewish state

[Reffo]

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas rejected over the weekend Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people as a precondition for resuming the stalled peace talks between the two sides.......
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Mitchell met on Friday in Ramallah with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other top PA officials, who urged him to pressure the new Israeli government to accept the two-state solution and honor all agreements signed with Israel as a precondition for resuming the peace talks.

Really? So Israel has to accept "the two state solution" but the Arabs don't have to? Abbas claims that they already accepted Israel's right to exist but it seems that they don't consider Israel to be the state for the Jewish people...

Well, someone ought to tell them that the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 was a vote for two states, one for the Jews (Israel) and one for the Arabs. And what that meant was NOT ethnically pure states. Both states were to have both Arab and Jews as citizens but the Jewish state was to be majority Jewish where Jewish values and culture would predominate and the Arab state was to be majority Arab with a predominantly Arab culture... If the UN had anything else in mind, they would have voted for a bi-national state which would have consisted of the whole of Palestine, but they didn't do that.

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with Abbas, said on Saturday that the Palestinians would not return to the negotiating table until Netanyahu publicly accepted the two-state solution.

"We reject Netanyahu's demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state," he said. "This demand illustrates the racist nature of Israel and the extremist policies of its government. It also shows that Israel is not serious about making peace with its neighbors."

Really? If it's racist for Jews to demand that there should be at least one state in the world where the Jewish people are in the majority, then it's also racist for:

• Russians (the majority of whom are Russian Orthodox by religion) to expect to be a majority in their own state..
• Greeks (the majority of whom are Greek Orthodox by religion) to expect to remain to be a majority in their own state..
• ...And I won't even mention all the Arab states who certainly expect the Arabs to be dominant in the various Arab countries...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

[dayag]

There are plenty of officially Arab and Muslim states. Not states that just happen to have Arab and Muslim majorities, but political entities whose official language and religion as Arab Muslim countries are spelled out in their laws and constitutions.

If they cannot accept the fact that we as Jews have the same rights to a national homeland as any other people, then they are racists and not ready to live along side us in peace.

[Tonto]

Well hey. Hamas has been looking over gun barrels at Israel for 60+ years. If they haven't figured out that Israel is here to stay by now then they are undoubtedly the undisputed stupidity champions of the entire world. Unfortunately, too much of the rest of the world is pretty stupid too. Why is Israel negotiating at all? Because the rest of the world DEMANDS it. How meaningful is any negotiation (at any political distance) with muslims? Absolutely zip. When is Israel, and the rest of the world going to realise that the best negotiator with any muslim entity is a napalm bomb, or a couple of white phosphorus? So Israel has to play the peace talk kid games.

[Reffo]

If they cannot accept the fact that we as Jews have the same rights to a national homeland as any other people, then they are racists and not ready to live along side us in peace.

You are spot on.

[Reffo]

Why is Israel negotiating at all? Because the rest of the world DEMANDS it.

My problem is not so much that the rest of the world demands it but rather the concessions that they demand from Israel. The way I see it, Israel has two reasons why it SHOULD negotiate:

First: A small country like Israel, as competent as it is militarily, will never be able to force the unconditional surrender of ALL it's neighbouring countries in the same way that the allies subdued Germany and Japan. So the only way for Israel to get some kind of a peace deal is through a negotiated settlement.

Second: Given the fact that the rest of the world does "DEMAND it", it would be a huge mistake for Israel NOT to negotiate. It would be handing the Arabs a huge propaganda coup and it would enable them to depict Israel as THE war monger..... you know the shpiel, they already try that stunt but not with as much success as they would have if Israel would stop negotiating....

[Mediocrates]

Assuming of course that negotiating means something as opposed to simply listening to threats and demands.

[Reffo]

Assuming of course that negotiating means something as opposed to simply listening to threats and demands.

It does not matter .....

If they are genuine (emphasis on if) you negotiate because you genuinely want to reach some sort of a deal....

If they just threaten and demand (as they seem to be doing) you still negotiate because of the second reason that I mentioned above...