Israeli-Arab Wars and Palestinian Population Displacement

[82redleg]

Yes, give and take is exactly what is needed. The Israelis should give the West Bank back to the Palestinians and take themselves back to the west of the 1967 border.

WHY?

From where I sit- the history looks like this.

Israel is established, as promised by the west, belatedly, in response to the Holocaust.

The Arab states tell the Palestinians to leave (so they aren't in the way of the second Holocaust) and attack Israel. Despite their primary malefactors being thei Arab gov'ts, the Palestinians leave, hoping to take advantage of the development the Jews have accomplished once they are all dead.

Oops, the Arabs fail miserably and Israel survives.

The Arabs attack several (3, 4) more times, with generally the same results. Israel expands.

Israel gives back some land, in hope of peace- good luck with that. Arabs don't want peace, they want to kill Jews.

Look at all the conflicts in the world today- the vast majority are between Islam and someone else. It pains me to say it, but we are going to either:
1- wipe out Islam
2- force a drastic change in Islam (it may become a peaceful religion, but it is NOT a religion of peace at this time)
3- fight forever with half measures.
4- surrender and accept dhimmi-tude.

I'm not comfortable with any of these choices, but I don't see another one.

[Gareth Davies]

WHY?

From where I sit- the history looks like this.

Israel is established, as promised by the west, belatedly, in response to the Holocaust.

The Arab states tell the Palestinians to leave (so they aren't in the way of the second Holocaust) and attack Israel. Despite their primary malefactors being thei Arab gov'ts, the Palestinians leave, hoping to take advantage of the development the Jews have accomplished once they are all dead.

Oops, the Arabs fail miserably and Israel survives.

The Arabs attack several (3, 4) more times, with generally the same results. Israel expands.

Israel gives back some land, in hope of peace- good luck with that. Arabs don't want peace, they want to kill Jews.

Look at all the conflicts in the world today- the vast majority are between Islam and someone else. It pains me to say it, but we are going to either:
1- wipe out Islam
2- force a drastic change in Islam (it may become a peaceful religion, but it is NOT a religion of peace at this time)
3- fight forever with half measures.
4- surrender and accept dhimmi-tude.

I'm not comfortable with any of these choices, but I don't see another one.

You need to move where you are sitting. Perhaps a trip to the West Bank would make you realise the real situation.

[Tom Odom]

You need to move where you are sitting. Perhaps a trip to the West Bank would make you realise the real situation. As for your 4 choices, if you really do believe what you have written, people like you scare me!

Ok let's back it off on the rhetoric--especially ad hominem attacks. If this spirals I will close this thread

Tom

[bluegreencody]

Correspondingly, could any of you support a UN sponsored, US-led NATO force on the ground between Israel and a future Palestinian state?

[jmm99]

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

[bluegreencody]

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...

[jmm99]

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

[davidbfpo]

Correspondingly, could any of you support a UN sponsored, US-led NATO force on the ground between Israel and a future Palestinian state?

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!

[serviceman]

You need to move where you are sitting. Perhaps a trip to the West Bank would make you realise the real situation.

No Gareth Davis, Iseal was not promised to Jewish people after 1945< it was promised in the 30's by a american JEW. Arther Rosthchild

[Ken White]

Arthur James Balfour and Walter Rothschild, 2d Baron Rothschild? A little before the '30s...

[Tukhachevskii]

... 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

[serviceman]

... 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

not far out then

[serviceman]

Arthur James Balfour and Walter Rothschild, 2d Baron Rothschild? A little before the '30s...

not that far out then

[serviceman]

not that far out then

Foreign Office,
November 2nd 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild
i have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of HM government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations
Arther James Balfour

[Tukhachevskii]

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

[bluegreencody]

Look at all the conflicts in the world today- the vast majority are between Islam and someone else. It pains me to say it, but we are going to either:
1- wipe out Islam
2- force a drastic change in Islam (it may become a peaceful religion, but it is NOT a religion of peace at this time)
3- fight forever with half measures.
4- surrender and accept dhimmi-tude.

I'm not comfortable with any of these choices, but I don't see another one.

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.