Is Peace Really Necessary At All?

[NewsGuy]

If you take a step back for a moment and look at the big picture, you might conclude that all these "peace" initiatives may be all headed down the wrong path and are failing as a result of a basic mistaken assumption that peace is necessary or even achievable.

To be sure, the world loves a Hollywood movie ending in which the battle-weary enemies finally embrace, make peace and become best friends for the common benefit of their people. The audience applauds as the credits roll.

But in reality, the term "peace" implies a state of friendship and collaboration, which is really not possible for Israel and the Palestinians at this point in time. Education of Palestinian children to hate, official anti-Semitism, as well as Islamic and Arabic cultural bias agianst Jews and Westerners all serve to defeat the possibility of real peace in the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, this barrier to peace is the direct result of the Palestinians never considering a scenario other than the annihilation of the state of Israel.

Does this really matter, though?

IMO, not as much as many might think.

Israel is not in need of peace, per se, but rather both sides are in need of a state of non-war and limited cooperation.

I wonder if state of non-war is much more achievable than a state of peace, and if so, should the diplomats turn their attention to a goal other than full peace?

What do you think?

[Mediocrates]

If you mean a great big group hug and sitting down to sip kaffir with one another, no. An armed truce in an undeclared war is the best possible outcome. Other than through passage between Gaza and the West Bank and carefully controlled air lanes between them the border between the two should be a DMZ and sealed off from one another. The Israelis should turn their backs on the PLO in perpetuity, figuratively speaking. Any broach of that should be construed an act of war.

Any terrorist incursion into Israel should be treated as a national security issue and any captured terrorists should be executed as spies in a time of war and not treated as POWs or civilians.

The Israelis should jam any unauthorized electronic transmissions over their country and broadcast their own message in any direction over the West Bank & Gaza.

The Israelis need to develop water purification facilities for the inflow from Syria into Gallilee which is badly polluted by the Syrians today and pump out as much of the Gallilee as they can while maintaining a stable aquifer depth. They should develop water resources with Turkey on the same time table.

They should begin the pullout of the 'settlements' and similar to the agreement with the Egyptians regarding Sinai they should demolish every structure and infrastructure they are forced to abandon. The reverse settlement must take no more than 2 years. The Israeli government on behalf of the settlers must be compensated for the settlements as well as for the effort to evacuate the settlers and that money should come from the Saudis since it is their peace plan initiative. The settlers repatriated across the green line shall be personally compensated and resettled in Israel to a place of mutual agreement.

All Arab countries must renounce all violence against Israel and they must be held accountable to it subject to sanction of the UN and by mutual treaty.

All Arab countries must end all trade embargoes with Israel. They are free to rebuild diplomatic relations or not at their decision.

Israel must be made eligible as a seat on the UN Security Council (only eligible - not guaranteed membership) and the Magen David Adom must be welcomed into the International Red Cross.

All Threats of EU sanctions and embargoes must cease immediately and that protection must be guaranteed by treaty.

The estates of all US citizens killed/injured in Israel by and during the intifada must be allowed to bring suit for criminal death against the PA who must either produce a defendant or pay reparations. Failure to do so results in immediate ending of all aid dollars from the US to the PA and condemnation by the world court.

Any international terrorist act traced back to the PLO. the PA either directly or indirectly via support and funding must be considered an act of terrorism against the victim country perpetrated by the PA or PLO or it's acting bodies as an officially sanctioned act by the PA and its leaders.

Any criminal act perpetrated in Israel by a legal Palestinian who escapes to Palestine or which is directed by a legal Palestinian residing in Palestine shall be subject to extradition to Israel where a public trial shall be held. Israel will determine if the criminal act classifies as a terrorist act or not and if so shall be subject to the definition of terrorist spying outlined above.

All applications for Israeli citizenship by non Jewish Palestinians will be treated as any other application for Israeli citizenship by a non Jew and subject to approval by appropriate Israeli ministry.

[takeo]

I don't see any alternative for a peace-plan except the continuation of the current violence...

"But in reality, the term "peace" implies a state of friendship and collaboration, which is really not possible for Israel and the Palestinians at this point in time. Education of Palestinian children to hate, official anti-Semitism, as well as Islamic and Arabic cultural bias agianst Jews and Westerners all serve to defeat the possibility of real peace in the Middle East. "

Of course, Israel is totally blameless on the Palestinian hate against Israel... who wouldn't like to live in a desert-refugee camp because they are not allowed to return home and who wouldn't like to see foreign tanks and bulldozers destroying your garden and house to build some houses for some nice armed neighbours with some nice fences????
Yes i agree, the Palestinians are biased against israel because Arafat and Mufti told them so and have totally no reason to hate it...

[takeo]

actually your plan is ok, except that if you want recognition of israel and trade with israel, than you will have to open the borders for trade, recognise palestine as well as a state, and treat it as an equal partner, if not your plan will fail. You can not demand what you are not prepared to give yourself.

"The Israelis should jam any unauthorized electronic transmissions over their country and broadcast their own message in any direction over the West Bank & Gaza. "

if israel is not prepared to accept electronic transmissions in their territory the palestinians should not be obliged to accept israeli transmissions.

palestinians aND israeli who wommitted crimes should be persecuted, preferably by an international court, and if not israel should deliver war-criminals to the palestinians while the palestinians should deliver war-criminals and terrorists to israel. Both polices should cooperate in the future and hand-over people who committed crimes on the territory of the other state. Victims of PA/PLO actions should get reparation pays, on the condition that victims of the israeli army should get reparation pay from israel.
Israel has to pay for the relocation of the settlers as its a problem they created themselves.

And last: "All applications for Israeli citizenship by non Jewish Palestinians will be treated as any other application for Israeli citizenship by a non Jew and subject to approval by appropriate Israeli ministry."

This is racist and in contradiction to un-resolutions and gneva-conventions. racist= selecting people on grounds of their racial origin instead of on the place they lived or theirnationality. everyone living for generations in a place has the right to apply for the nationality.

[Mediocrates]

Nonsense - any country has the right to protect itself from propaganda and the right to make its own propaganda.

Nonsense - it is simply applying Israel's immigration laws to all non citizens equally. Every country has quotas, even yours.

[Mediocrates]

Nonsense - Israel doesn't HAVE to recognize anyone as a trade partner if they don't want. They are free to recognize the existance of Palestine as you wish. Sign a piece of paper that says so. They are not by that under internatioal law compelled to deal with them or even have an embassy or any diplomatic contact. There is actually NO LAW against that. You are of course free to create an UN resolution that compells every country in the world to deal with Palestine. In fact you are free to write a UN resolution ceeding various parts of all the countries of the world to Palestine if that is your wish. My vote is for Ille de France.

[takeo]

OK, well fine so your plan will have this consequences:

Israel won't necessarily have an embassy or consulate in palestine, there is no law against that but than there won't be either a law that forces Arab countries to recognise israel... (they won't do it if israel doesn't promise to establish full diplomatic relations).

if every country has the right to make their own propaganda, than so do the palestinians, and they even have the right to make anti-israeli propaganda...

"it is simply applying Israel's immigration laws to all non citizens equally. Every country has quotas, even yours"

OK, but our country doesn't require that you have to be of racially pure origin to go living in France... actually that could have happened if the elections yesterday had another turn...
and actually people who can proove they lived there before should automatically get citizenship. By the way not all non-citizens are treated equally, someone with no other link to the country except that he is Jewish will not be treated equally... that's called racism.

[Mediocrates]

Tell it to the Hugenots.

[takeo]

that was 400 years ago...

[Mediocrates]

Every country has quotas, even yours. Some use income, some use parentage, some use geography, some use race, some use whatever reason they want. It's called national sovereignty. Odd that Arab countries who use the "no one but muslim" or "anything but Jew" criteria, meet with your approval.

[takeo]

ok, some Arab countries have a racist policy as well, are you happy that israel is not the only one in the middle East? Note that australia changed its immigration policy because the high court considered it racist, they only accepted "white" people untill the 70's. Clearly israel is much more comparable to its middle eastern neighbours that to Western countries.

but that's not the point, the point is that those Palestiian refugees are no immigrants, they are inhabitants who left their houses some decades ago. they should have the right according to the Geneva-conventions to return if they wish so, their are no immigrants to their own houses and lands.

[Mediocrates]

600,000 Jews must be compensated for being thrown out of Iraq 1948-54. As soon as 200,000 Jews must be compensated for being thrown out of Egypt 1948-54 and so on......

[takeo]

OK, why not, on the condition that all palestinians are compensated or can return to their land of origin.

[thrud]

Originally posted by takeo
OK, why not, on the condition that all palestinians are compensated or can return to their land of origin.

The Jews do not expect to be compensated and they do not expect a right of return to the homes they lost in Europe. The Palestinians need to give up their right to return claims and just move to Jordan where they can have full citizenship.

With today's violence, the Palestinians should not expect anything, but the rage of a nation where its children were murdered by homicidal animals. The Palestinian's should see that they were nearing peace, but only made their situation worse by justifying incursions into Gaza.

They targeted teenagers who were enjoying the greatest times of their lives. They cut down people who might have been willing to not hate. They killed young people who had nothing more political on their minds then youthful intimacy and fun.

This is evil, and it needs to be erradicated.

[Jorge]

To NewsGuy:
Congratulations my dear fellow! You seem to have a talent for initiating threads by posing interesting questions;
sometime ago it was that about "Where are the good arabs"
and now this one about whether Peace is really necessary at all.
Keep up the good work!

Your opening remarks, namely:
If you take a step back for a moment and look at the big picture, you might conclude that all these "peace" initiatives may be all headed down the wrong path and are failing as a result of a basic mistaken assumption that peace is necessary or even achievable.

are quite sensible. After all these years of talking so much about peace (and doing so little to promote it) it is high time to step back and discuss whether both sides can manage without it.

I don't know if you are familiar with Demonology; as the story goes once upon a time Lucifer had the brilliant idea that the
most efficient way to condemn human souls was through the verbiage they may have uttered or written in their lives.
Lucifer entrusted a minor fiend called Tittivulus with the task
of collecting the verbiage; the operation was quite a success and in a few hundred years all the empty caves in Hell were overflowing with verbiage. Tittivulus had to be given scores of assistants and
in no time was promoted from minor fiend to CEO of the Verbiage Collection Department. I mention this story because I suppose
that in our times Tittivulus must have been very busy collecting verbiage from Peace Statements, Declarations, Conferences and what not. If we conclude that peace peace is unachievable or unnecessary or both may be israelis and palestinians could put aside all this rhetoric and get on with the business of living amicably together. In future notes I intend to discuss your propositions in detail.