You need to move where you are sitting. Perhaps a trip to the West Bank would make you realise the real situation.
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Correspondingly, could any of you support a UN sponsored, US-led NATO force on the ground between Israel and a future Palestinian state?
UN sponsored, US-led NATO force are you proposing. There are three different basic kinds of UN forces:
1. Peacekeeping (under UNC chap. VI - some call this Chap 6.5, since the Charter does not spell out the use of military forces very well in Chap VI)
2. Robust Peacekeeping (Chap 6.75 to some), which applies more muscle.
3. Peace Enforcement (Chap VII), which allows a lot more muscle up to and including a conventional armed conflict (e.g., the Korean War which was a Chap VII effort).
I expect I would vote against US involvement in any of the above.
Tom Odom spoke some wise words in his last post - all should take heed.
Regards
Mike
I suppose it would be something akin to proposition 2.
Robert Hunter, over at RAND, has proposed his own security sketch along the lines of something similar (This is the only link I could really find...maybe someone else has a better one) http://books.google.com/books?id=36m...age&q=&f=false
I figure to mostly let them (Palestinians and Israelis) decide how best we can help to accommodate a secure area with the trust of both sides invested. Our happiness sorta depends on both the Israelis and Palestinians being happy...
Since my dog would not be in this fight - period, I'm not the right person to comment on the 2006 Rand monograph.
Read through the International Force section (BTW: hinged on a peace agreement as a pre-condition to any such force). Its logic for a US-led force was that Israel would not trust any other nation to lead the force. Sorry, my lead sleddog is otherwise committed at the moment.
The concept of a "robust peacekeeping" force has been floated into this year. E.g., Israel, Palestinians Could Face Robust Int'l Peacekeeping Forces (by Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2009) - BTW, not US-led.
There are a number of other articles. One of them from earlier this year is on an op-ed by Major-General (Retired) Lewis MacKenzie to employ a Chap VII force in Gaza - the comment is why it won't happen.
The Israeli position on UNIFIL is here, Fourth Committee - Comprehensive review of the whole question of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects (Agenda Item 33) (22 Oct 2009).
For a general survey of UN Peace Operations in their variants, see William J. Durch, The Purposes of Peace Operations (CIC 2009). Mr Durch is not a fan of "robust peacekeeping".
I'm not carrying a brief on this issue. So, the above constitutes my input and fini.
Regards
Mike
This reminds me of one, if not two fiction books by Tom Clancy; 'Sum of all our fears', which had a Swiss peacekeeping force in Jerusalem and a US expedition into Syria to collect lost Israeli nukes (written in 1991).
I think there is more chance of a Swiss role than a UN sponsored, US-led NATO force!
the point missed here is that Jewish Partisans as they called themselves then Killed about 800 men and women of a peace keeping force About 70% of them in last 6 months of the mandate forces serving were not allowed to return fire unless in danger themselves many times we were ordered to stand by and watch. Isreal came into being in May 1948 have defended their borders well since think only time they have attacked was to defend them selves Lebanon, Gaza come to mind
As AmericanPride aptly said, "Islam is not a unitary actor". Correspondingly, there are plenty of pissed off individuals of other religions, ie. Christians, in the populations of Arabs and Palestinians. Seems to me like the problem is more political from the Arab/Palestinian side because any semblance of real unity within the masses could not and would not stem from a single religion, since there are many.
It stems from, as the title of the thread suggests, the displacement of self, family, friends, and brethren... all of which are interconnected with land.
To me, it sounds like something that a lot of people, including Jewish-Israelis, could easily relate to. It certainly is the story of the Jewish people that I was always told.
In terms of a peace-force, maybe we should just have a privatized force on the ground on the borders. You could by-pass the U.N. if both the Palestinians and the Israelis agree to such a force. There would be a lot of money to be made and customer satisfaction would be a high priority....
In terms of reconciling who butchered who, perhaps this is where our religions should and can play a larger role in helping people forgive and move on.
as some one said about American involvment in the peace talks who were the ones who started all this conflict American pressure on united nations in 1945 to create a homeland for Jewish poeple how American Jews poured monies into Palestine 1945 until present day Outside interference, report other day of convoy of 100 vehicles taking aid to Gaza. Outside interference again, how much aid has been poured in Gaza in the past 60 years If America had not got involed in 1945 this would not of exsisted to-day As peace keeping force, the UN went in after 1948 with same idea. Failed
:confused:people appear to forget that before 1948 the state of Isreal did not exsist. Before that all Jewish and Arab people were Palestinians,and as for Arab blood lust just think on it. Who is firing rockets ??, and has been doing same for past 60 years. Eygpt and Jordan made peace with Isreal after a few savage wars
Arthur James Balfour and Walter Rothschild, 2d Baron Rothschild? A little before the '30s...
... according to Historian Walter Laqueur which, despite being an "alternative" history does provide illumination about the present day . An interesting read if only for the possibilities of a road (map) not taken; (apologies if this article has been linked before)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/fi...ia_laqueur.pdf
Division for Palestinian Rights (I don't agree with parts of the reports, in terms of the manner in which the un-named author/s have slanted key fact, but then rhetoric is often disguised as Truth and vice versa)...
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAl.NSF/181...2561150071fdb0
think what would happen IF arabs would accept the rule of marjority