Of course the restarting of negotiations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East is to be welcomed. More than anything the whole region deserves some peace after decades of killing.
George Bush was right to call for the Palestinian Authority to reject violence and instead discuss their differences over a table with Israel.
What i don't agree with is the way the whole focus, and blame, seems to be laid at the Palestinians door.
Yes, the Palestinians have been guilty of suicide attacks on innocent civilians in Israel and firing rockets in Israeli towns and they should be roundly condemned for their actions. Israel have been just as guilty of atrocities and mass killings themselves and should be lent upon by the White House with just as much vigour to stop their excursions into Palestine and rocket attacks on cars that not only take out the intended target but any innocent unlucky enough to be in the vicinity at the time.
Both sides are to blame and both are as guilty as each other of killing civilians and retaliating to each others aggression so both should be warned to cease their murdering, not just one of them if we want to be seen as even handed.
9 comments:
lucy -
This kind of post deserves a comment. And I hesitate to do so for fear of inviting anonymous (and non-anonymous) retaliatory posts and flames.
My feeling is similar to yours, that there is blame for this on all sides, yet it is hard to really point the finger at Israel given the history they've had of their neighbors doing everything possible to harm them, ever since they were established (and well before then, too).
I suppose part of the need to lay blame at their feet is because, as the (arguably) only progressive, free, democratic, and reasonable society in the region, more is expected of them. Yet it is difficult to justify that in light of their having suffered so much. I don't begrudge the Israelis for using violence against violence, nor for causing casualties among non-combatants, as they have absolutely been provoked, though I do cringe at it. Yet there does seem an imbalance in blame, where Israel's actions are condemned out of proportion to their size, while those of any number of muslim groups are forgiven or ignored far beyond what they deserve. Again, the only thing I can imagine is that we in the west simply expect more in terms of balance, behavior, and temperance from Israel.
It seems to me that the only way any meaningful and lasting peace can come to the area is if both Israel and their opponents stop playing the feud game of pointing to a prior act to justify a future retaliation. Inevitably it keeps going back and back ad infinitum, with no resolution. Just like the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, the Hutus and the Tutsi, the Serbs and Croats, the Hatfields and the McCoy's. Eventually someone, somewhere, somehow has to say enough, and not retaliate or accelerate the fighting. Israel has tried this in the past only to suffer more assaults on their citizens, and to stop. It is a lot to ask them to do it again, but there seems little alternative.
Many would say that is an irrational and unrealistic view, and it may be. But it's apparent that rational and realistic aren't working too well right now.
Ook ook
I agree Fez, one of these have to stop the endless cycle of retaliation and hopefully this will bring them together to sit down and talk through, and hoefully solve, their issues.
What i take exception to is the west making demands of the Palestinians while blatantly favouring Israel.
Remember that democratic elections were one such demand and that went wrong when the least favoured party were elected.
The UN have declared the Wall as illegal and Israel have defied countless UN resolutions for its aggression and building on occupied territories.
The Palestinians have been held down under the Israeli thumb for decades but yet, we seem to make more demands of them then we do of Israel. We have to be seen to be fair and not crack down on one side while arming and funding the other.
Hopefully, we can have an adult debate about the middle east now the blinkered subjective one has gone.
I couldn't resist that opening, Lucy.
I think that targeting bomb-makers in their cars and inadvertently taking out civilians is regrettable and sad, but not on the same immoral level as deliberately targeting civilians as the Palestinian homicide bombers do. That said, I am against Israelis building in disputed territory and illegally expanding borders. I do agree with Fez that we have higher expectations of Israel than of the Arab countries and Iran, and Israel also has a higher standard for itself. That isn't necessarily bad, but it does often create unfair/uneven critique.
Sometimes I think that the PTB on both sides aren't interested in an end to the violence, as it keeps them in power. Hamas/Iran do not seem to want peace anytime soon. Then their own people might start to wonder why their lives still suck even though Israel isn't to blame any longer.
If this series of meetings actually bring about a solution and both the Palestinians and Israelis stick to it, it will remove a major excuse given by other arab states for the violence against Israel.
I would agree that suicide missions are more immoral than targeted asssinations that kill anyone unfortunate enough to be close enough at the time to bear the brunt but both show a disregard for innocent citizens, and i find that abhorrant.
"I would agree that suicide missions are more immoral than targeted asssinations"
A tricky issue, this. But I don't think that I would necessarily agree with the above sentence. Blowing yourself and others up in the belief that you're going to go straight to paradise for a swift rendezvous with (I think it is) 72 virgins, when there is precisely no evidence that any such place exists (either your own paradise or the "enemy's" version of heaven) seems to me to be the perfect definition of sheer bloody insanity, rather than 'immorality' per se (although the deaths of the innocents that suicide bombers bring about is undoubtedly a very immoral result).
As for these 'targeted' assassinations... well, they're nice in theory. But when the end result is that you take out ten times more civilians than the ones who are notably trying to kill civilians then, if you take a utilitarian position, then the results are 'immoral' for ten times as many families.
I think it's ten times as stupid too, by the way... i.e. ten times more reason for the affected community to breed more and more terrorists/suicide bombers/people with a grudge against Israel and the west.
"What i take exception to is the west making demands of the Palestinians while blatantly favouring Israel. "
Frankly if "The West" did more to keep it's nose out of everyone's business, it would have fewer problems overall, I think.
"Sometimes I think that the PTB on both sides aren't interested in an end to the violence, as it keeps them in power. Hamas/Iran do not seem to want peace anytime soon."
Touchdown. And the same works here, also, as anyone who has noticed that hightened security alerts always seem to accompany dips in the administration's popularity have seen. At this point, if we were to be attacked here again, I would not want to give this administration more power to prevent it happening a third time, I'd want to give them a firing squad for letting it happen a second time.
This all touches upon this post as well, so I'll leave with this link:
http://underthebridge.blogdrive.com/archive/78.html
Joe -
Of course you realize that Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.
Prophecy, or just clarity?
Ook ook
PS: My verification word is pynllgln -- who knew Blogger was Welsh?
The bottom line is that, in 1945, the Palestinian people had their land taken from them without compensation by Western Powers who were acting under pressure from Zionist imperialists.
That illegal act: the forming of Israel, and the brutal occupation and land grabbing that has followed is completely immoral and unjustifiable.
Daniel,
Nice misinformation. The timeline is completely off. The UN partition plan was offered in '47 and the Modern State of Israel was declared in in 1948.
There has never been a Palestine that was ruled by the people you call Palestinians. .
In 1929 and 1936 the Arabs in Hebron conducted massacres of the Jews living there.
You'll note that this was years before the existence of the state.
You might also recall that from 1948-1967 Gaza was controlled by Egypt and Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Ever wonder why they didn't simply hand the land over to the Palestinians.
Or why has there not been an outcry over Jordan. A land that is a 20th century creation.
Just for kicks you might read
The 1922 White Paper (also called the Churchill White Paper) was the first official manifesto interpreting the Balfour Declaration. It was issued on June 3, 1922, after investigation of the 1921 disturbances. Although the White Paper stated that the Balfour Declaration could not be amended and that the Jews were in Palestine by right, it partitioned the area of the Mandate by excluding the area east of the Jordan River from Jewish settlement. That land, 76% of the original Palestine Mandate land, was renamed Transjordan and was given to the Emir Abdullah by the British.
The White Paper included the statement that the British Government:
* ... does not want Palestine to become "as Jewish as England is English", rather should become "a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride."
After the partition, Transjordan remained part of the Palestine Mandate and its legal system applied to all residents, both East and West of the Jordan River, who all carried Palestine Mandate passports. Palestine Mandate currency was the legal tender in Transjordan as well as the area West of the river. This was the consistent situation until 1946, 24 years later, when Britain completed the action by unilaterally granting Transjordan its independence. Thus the British subverted the purpose of the Palestine Mandate, partitioned Palestine and created an independent Palestine-Arab state with no regard for the rights and needs of the Jewish population.
According to Sir Alec Kirkbride, the British representative in the area, Transjordan was:
* ... intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which [Britain was] pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the River Jordan into an independent Arab state.
In 1925, the British added 60,000 sq. km. of desert to eastern Transjordan forming an "arm" of land to connect Transjordan with Iraq and to cut Syria off from the Arabian Peninsula. The British continued to favor exclusive Arab development east of the Jordan River by enacting restrictive regulations against the Jews, even when Arab leaders sought Jewish involvement in the development of Transjordan.
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