it's important to remember that in 1948 Israel begged the Palestinian Arabs to stay in their homes, but they instead packed up and left on the promise by the Arab nations that the Jews would be pushed into the sea and the Palestinians could then return. at that point no Arab country would take the now homeless Palestinians into their countries, preferring to use them as a symbol.

This is the sort of nonsensical statement that I meant when i talked about the drive to constantly establish moral equivalence and moral superiority that both sides and their supporters have.

For a good general overview of the complexities the Wiki Article on Palestinian Displacement isn't a bad place to start.

The Mideast Org Overview is another middle of the road view.

Then we have Jeet Heer: the Pro-Palestinian View and Efrain Karsh: the Pro-Israeli view

My point was not that one view is right and another is wrong. I don't know how the Palestinians got displaced: ultimately no one can know after so many decades of so many people muddying the waters. Indeed the idea that there is "one answer" is palpable nonsense; history is very rarely that neat. In this case there were thousands of people making thousands of decisions that led to the displacement.

My point 401kboy is that I don't care: I don't care because statements such as yours are empty rhetoric. They mean nothing. They lead nowhere but to another round of blood letting.

Let's say we accept your statement as true (and there is some truth that Arab governments have manipulated the refugee issue). Ok, now what? How does this move us any closer to a solution? I can't see how it does anything but place blame, but I am willing to be enlightened.

This... huh.

I honestly don't know how to react to this article. The opening paragraph is, frankly, disgusting. Even if it's sarcastic, it's in poor taste and disgusting. The reality of the current conflict in Gaza is starting to become very clear as media from there begins to reach the rest of the world, and it's not anything to be made fun of in that way. I understand that you're a world away, and it's hard to really wrap your head around the violence and death that's taking place right now, but I just saw photographs of firefighters using a power hose to wash pools of human blood off of a street. Let's not compare it to Wrestlemania, okay?

You consider the Israel-Palestine conflict a "festering boil on the backside of the world." Imagine how an Israeli or a Palestinian feels. Imagine waking up every day, not knowing if your friends are still alive, or whether you'll make it through the day with all your limbs, or whether your school will exist tomorrow. Imagine living in a world where running for your life in the hope of reaching a bomb shelter is a regular occurrence, the way we think of eating out at a restaurant, or having a party. Imagine being surrounded by guns, explosions, and dead people, all the time. Imagine the opera house in Sydney or the cricket ground in Melbourne exploding in front of your eyes. For a lot of people living in this part of the world, those kinds of scenarios are very, very real. So real, in fact, that they're at least in some sense unremarkable. They're factored in, they're a given, they're part of the culture. And that, frankly, is horrifying to me.

So to read as you reduce the conflict down to an annoyance, something that the world tolerates with a sigh until it finally goes away, like a cold or some shitty weather, is appalling. You're bitching about having to read the media coverage about people dying, while people are actually dying? Unbelievable and disgusting.

I'm not Pro-Israel or Anti-Israel. I'm not Pro-Palestine or Anti-Palestine. Like you, I think that this is a conflict that has too many causes stretching over too long a time period to be anyone's fault anymore. Like you, I think that assigning blame instead of working toward a solution is irrelevant, counterproductive, and deadly.

But unlike you, I think that it's a conflict that deserves our respect. I think that treating the conflict without respect is what keeps this conflict from being solved. Israelis don't respect the Palestinian point of view, and honestly, who can blame them when they're getting rockets shot at their houses? Palestinians don't respect the Israeli point of view, and honestly, who can blame them when they see tanks rolling across the border? I can't fault either side in this conflict, because people at gunpoint are no longer people. They're unpredictable, illogical, terrified animals that will do anything they possibly can to save themselves, their family, their friends, and their people.

But you know who I can fault? Everyone else who thinks that it's productive, poignant, or funny to reduce this kind of conflict down to the absolutely trivial realm of things like the Super Bowl or the World Cup. It's shit like this that moves us further away, tiny fraction by tiny fraction at the hands of person after person over and over again, from any hope of ever solving this conflict. And people do it all the time. Every day.

So when I wrote at the beginning of this post that I didn't know how to reply to this article, apparently I was wrong. Now I know how to react. I'm disgusted.

oh, come off it. the disgusting part is what's actually happening, not the tone of some pundit half a world away. get your priorities straight, man.

So you're blaming civilians for fleeing from a war zone?

Okay, I have imagined. Now what?

Maybe I'm using the word respect diffrent then you, but I don't respect these people with their stupid wars. Respect is something you need to earn and they have not managed to earn mine yet.
So they (at least some of them) are surviving in a dangerous enviroment. People have done that since the beginning of history and before that.

Now if anyone managed to find a solution, that would impress me.
But I have to agree with gfvella, that this might be impossible.
For every time, when talking was stronger then fanatic killing, there are many times, the violence won.
With modern weapons and the high development level of religious and political mind control technics, this situation is more serve then ever before.




The solution: What would be "the best"? - That what reduces further loss of human lifes to a minimum. - How can this achived?
I think it does not work by talking and trying to find a peaceful way. They will just keep on fighting for generations. Now, if one side anhilated the other one to the point of destroying the whole identity, that might end the conflict. And maybe it will happen sooner or later anyway, so why postpone it? As soon as they are clear, the winner might be able to raise a new generation that grows up in peace and might get used to the idea of peace. ... Unless the winner finds a new group to start a stupid war with (and the last one only sterengthend him in the believe that he in invincible and it is good to solve problems with violence). I'm happy, that I don't need to find a solution.

I didn't say anything about respecting the people. I said I respect the conflict. That's an important distinction.

I think we are leaving out an important part of the reason this conflict has gone on so long. That is the psychology of both sides and why that land is more important then life itself.

I heard a Podcast recently by Dan Carlin who discussed this topic. Listen to it and see if you agree with him or not.

Show 142 - The Samson Suicide Pact
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 6:37 PM
http://www.dancarlin.com/cswdc.xml

i don't recall saying that. but if that's what you got from it I would ask you to study up a little.

I can't take sides on what's going on over there. both sides are wrong in thinking that violence will bring about a solution. I do believe that Israel wants a peaceful solution, and one that would benefit the Palestinians. I also believe that other Arab nations actively support the minority of Palestinians who want to kill Jews rather than work toward a resolution.

The problem with this article is that you can only come off neutral as long as you don't get into too much detail. But if you actually get into the issues in detail, I think you have a problem. For instance:

"it is hard to fault [Arafat's] complaints about the right of return."

I certainly would; it's an untenable solution. This is because the 1947 borders proposed by the UN would have separated Palestinian Arabs and the Palestinian Jews in a way that is impossible today. I'd be curious how you think that idea is "hard not to fault." It's got a lot of problems.

The devil is in the details. I don't think you can remain neutral, or evenhanded, and get into those details. Ask Clinton.

I believe that Israel has proven a willingness to make peace based on the actual peace it made with Egypt and the de facto peace that it made with Jordan and Iran (they only really opposed Israel after the 1990s). The same cannot be said for the PLO or Hamas, who, while being funded to terrorize Israel by Arab countries, have been universally mistrusted in the Arab world.

This is the biggest problem with your argument, because you have lumped Arab countries in with the PLO and Hamas, which are really quite different kettles of fish. Israel and many Arab countries have shown a willingness to find peace over the years, demonstrated by actual peace agreements. The Militant Palestinian organizations cannot make that claim.

The Palestinian problem is absolutely no justification for attacking Israel and a middling position simply fails to address the conflict in any meaningful way. I think in the end you will probably have to sidestep actually answering any particular question about the conflict if you want to remain neutral.

I now go to look at young naked goth chicks.

Cheers.

well, like you said--details. Israel's been able to find official, government-to-government peace with a number of Arab countries--but those same countries continue to fund the PLO, Hamas, and other groups that can be alternately labeled 'Palestinian' or 'anti-Israeli'.

i think you can remain neutral so long as you get into the details on both sides, rather than just one or the other. i don't think most people will call you neutral, though--they'll call you a proponent of which ever side the details you're discussing at the moment happen to make look good. it's hard to be neutral. it's even harder to convince everyone else that you're neutral.

To refresh:

It's only "important" in that it's propaganda.

That's a bullshit excuse that places blame for Israeli land grabs on Palestinians fleeing from a war zone, rather than on the Israeli government. It's also used to try and dispute Palestinian claims to a right of return while allowing Israel to continue with its right of return policy.

It ignores the decades of violence, often directed at or at least impacting civilians, between Zionist and Arab Palestinian guerrilla groups that created a climate of fear that justified unarmed civilians "packing up and leaving" once Britain said "Fuck this shit" and left.

It ignores other factors, such as the Deir Yassin massacre, that inspired Palestinian Arabs to flee. It paints all Zionist groups as being equally tolerant of Palestinian Arabs, and assigns a genocidal motive to Palestinian exiles.

I agree with your first two sentences, but I think that the Israeli far-right doesn't want a peaceful solution, and previous peace negotiations have been flawed.

Arab nations have a long and sordid history of fucking over Palestinians for their own political goals, though.

Israelis and Palestinians have conflicting interests so any solution requires compromise, and there are just too many people on both sides of this conflict who refuse, in principle, to compromise.

The only way I can see this conflict ever being resolved is if enough Israelis and Palestinians stop supporting the extremists on both sides. Unfortunately the ongoing violence only serves to further entrench people's views and promote extremism.

The ridiculous beliefs on both sides that they have 'God' on their side further complicates the issue.

This conflict reminds me of why when I was younger I hated being a human because I despised the species for all the destruction and suffering we collectively cause.

This is true. Should this war escalate and "elements" from Lebanon, Syria, Eqypt unite with other Middle Eastern nations and together form an Anti-Isreali "front". Isreal may find that it may not have the sheer manpower and resources to continue a sustained campaign in Gaza. In the past Isreal was able to fight off invading forces, but the sheer volume of people who may flock to Gaza's banner could be staggering. In addition to this one must remeber that Isreal is the only Middle-eastern country besides Pakistan that has Nuclear Weapons.