Fighting For Peace? Or for Surrender under Fire?

[Reffo]

The quote below is an extract from an article written by Dr. Ron Pundak (he was, I believe, one of the architects of Oslo and Chomsky used him as a reference in his debate with Dershowitz) about why the Oslo Peace process failed:

Netanyahu’s “ultimate weapon” in his campaign against the Palestinians was the mantra that the other side was not fulfilling its part of the agreements and that without mutuality Israel would not implement its part. In practice, during Netanyahu’s tenure, both sides committed breaches with regard to the Agreement, but the breaches of the Israeli side were both more numerous and more substantive in nature. The Palestinians did not stop the vitriolic propaganda against Israel by radio, the printed press, television and schoolbooks; did not collthe illegal firearms; did not reach an agreement with Israel on the de facto growth of their Police Force; and did not prove that they were wholeheartedly combating fundamentalist terrorism, including the imprisonment of its activists.

Well, I beg to differ with this guy's value judgement that allowing terrorism and incitement to continue was a lesser breach than Netanyahu "Dragging His Feet"!

Even if he does not say so, Pundak's alternative would have been for Israel to meet their side of the bargain "like good little boys" while the Palestinians were taking pot shots at Israeli civilians and blowing them up. Some peace process

[Womble]

Netanyahu during his tenure has signed two agreements with the PA and transfered the Arab Hebron under Palestinian control- while keeping the Palestinian terrorism at record low. If that's "dragging his feet", what's a peace process?

[Reffo]

I agree. You might note that I put "Dragging his feet" in quotation marks, it's not my view but he has been accused of doing that. I suppose he did slow the process down but that was to enforce a principle of mutual obligations. And there was nothing wrong with that.

[Womble]

I agree. You might note that I put "Dragging his feet" in quotation marks, it's not my view but he has been accused of doing that. I suppose he did slow the process down but that was to enforce a principle of mutual obligations. And there was nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong? I think it was absolutely necessery. What the successive Labor governments were doing was acting on half-baked, idealistic plans that had little substance beyond sloganeering- all for the sake of speeding things up. Even now, a decade later, I do not see any sound plan for a final peace agreement (the Geneva fraud doesn't count). It is STILL too early to sign things- and they expected Bibi to do it in the 90-s???

[Reffo]

Nothing wrong? I think it was absolutely necessery.

Yes, you are right.

What do you think of this Dr Ron Pundak though?

[Womble]

Yes, you are right.

What do you think of this Dr Ron Pundak though?

I couldn't care less, to be honest. But Pundak was one of the architects of Oslo, and Oslo was a failure- that's easy math to do

[Reffo]

duh.......let me try and do the math.......a failure?

[telaviv]

fight for peace and support israel.. its existence is supported on this website: www.pixupisrael.com. dont wait start supporting right now

[Arjunn]

why are the israelies dismantling some settlements...are they giving away their ancestoral lands just so they can have"peace" with an emeny who wont stop till he gobbles it all up?

i thought u guys would know better

i know many in israel were agaisnt the dismantlement..but it was still carried out. i think its preposterous!

[European2006]

why are the israelies dismantling some settlements...are they giving away their ancestoral lands just so they can have"peace" with an emeny who wont stop till he gobbles it all up?

i thought u guys would know better

i know many in israel were agaisnt the dismantlement..but it was still carried out. i think its preposterous!

And why did the Indians give up their ancestral lands to the White European invaders? Actually the original ancestral lands of the Israelites were in Egypt. And for over 1000 years, the Palestinians ancestors lived where they are now and in present-day Israel. So think about that argument carefully and consider whether it really makes sense.

There are people in the US who want to keep this conflict going for electoral ends i.e. politicians stirring up pro-Israel voters, and commercial ends e.g. arms industry, oil industry (as the price soars when things go pearshaped in the Middle East). They should show more maturity and responsibility. This conflict imposes on Western society and not just Israel because it strengthens Islamic extremism because of the resentment at the occupation. Responsible people should be trying to end it.

[MGB8]

No, European, you are flat wrong about the original lands of the Israelites. Where did you get that garbage from.

Israelites are widely considered a, for lack of better term, Canaanite tribe who converted en masse. They did not originate in Egypt, although there certainly where Hebrew's enslaved there.

The Pal Arabs are mix of Arab invaders and other local groups, but recall that there were only between 400,000 and 650,000 in an area larger than "Palestine" (as there was no such thing as Palestine at the time) in the late 1800's. This is not a huge group.

http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

Population of Ottoman Palestine

The population of Ottoman "Palestine" is difficult to estimate, because:

1. There was no administrative district of Palestine. Turkish census figures were for various districts, including the Jerusalem, Acco and Nablus districts for example. The Acre district included areas in Lebanon, outside the modern borders of Palestine in which there were no Jews.

2. Turkish census figures did not include Bedouins (estimated at a few thousand) and foreign subjects. A considerable proportion of the Jews retained their foreign nationality (usually Russian) in Ottoman Palestine.

3. Both Arabs and Jews avoided the Turkish census. Foreigners who were without residence permits did not want to make their presence known. Arabs and Jews wished to avoid taxes and conscription.

4. In the 19th century, only Muslims were subject to the draft, and accordingly, Muslims tended to avoid the census.

5. According to Justin McCarthy, the census tended to undercount women and children.

6. The Turkish census data were not published regularly, so only partial data are available.

As the data are ambiguous, different sources give different estimates. In particular, Zionist sources may exaggerate the number Jews in earlier years and undercount Arabs, and Arab sources According to Bachi, (cited here) there were there were 489,200 Arabs (Muslims and Christians) in Palestine in 1890 and 42,900 Jews.

According to Beinin and Hajjar the Turkish census for 1878 listed 462,465 Turkish subjects in the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts: 403,795 Muslims (including Druze), 43,659 Christians and 15,011 Jews. In addition, there were at least 10,000 Jews with foreign citizenship (recent immigrants to the country), and several thousand Muslim Arab nomads (Bedouin) who were not counted as Ottoman subjects.

However, according to the data of Karpat, cited here, in the Ottoman Turkish Census of 1893, there were 371,959 Muslims and 42,689 Christians, for a total of 414,648 Arab Palestinians, and only about 9,000 Jews. The data of Beinin and Hajar probably include subdistricts of the Acre Sanjak that are in modern Lebanon. Everyone agrees that the numbers for Jews and Muslims are far too low. Rupin (cited in the same article here) claimed there were a total of 689,275 persons in Palestine in 1893, of whom about 80,000 were Jews. This number is probably an overestimate.

[MGB8]

Also, European, before you post incorrect facts again, recall that, genetically, the closest relatives of the Jews are KURDS!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1626606/posts

This makes sense, given that biblically Abraham came to Canaan from around Babylon. That said, Abraham's grandson married a relative who lived locally, and Isaac did as well.

Also read:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080...lance&n=283155

Book Description
This book addresses one of the most timely and urgent topics in archaeology and biblical studies — the origins of early Israel. For centuries the Western tradition has traced its beginnings back to ancient Israel, but recently some historians and archaeologists have questioned the reality of Israel as it is described in biblical literature. In "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" William Dever explores the continuing controversies regarding the true nature of ancient Israel and presents the archaeological evidence for assessing the accuracy of the well-known Bible stories.

Confronting the range of current scholarly interpretations seriously and dispassionately, Dever rejects both the revisionists who characterize biblical literature as "pious propaganda" and the conservatives who are afraid to even question its factuality. Attempting to break through this impasse, Dever draws on thirty years of archaeological fieldwork in the Near East, amassing a wide range of hard evidence for his own compelling view of the development of Israelite history.

In his search for the actual circumstances of Israel's emergence in Canaan, Dever reevaluates the Exodus-Conquest traditions in the books of Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and 1 & 2 Samuel in the light of well-documented archaeological evidence from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Among this important evidence are some 300 small agricultural villages recently discovered in the heartland of what would later become the biblical nation of Israel. According to Dever, the authentic ancestors of the "Israelite peoples" were most likely Canaanites — together with some pastoral nomads and small groups of Semitic slaves escaping from Egypt — who, through the long cultural and socioeconomic struggles recounted in the book of Judges, managed to forge a new agrarian, communitarian, and monotheistic society.



Read More here:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08193a.htm