Israel furious at UN report detailing torture of Palestinian children
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Looking at the biblical history of Israel, who coupled with other nations and religions many times and in many ways, with terrible results, you can understand their reluctance to embrace other cultures but no where in the old testament does it say to treat the gentile poorly. In fact it says the opposite. Not to embrace their ways, but not to treat them poorly either.
That's OT 101.
Kinda makes me wonder, when the answers are easily available showing Israel not to be the evil vile nation, some, here think it is, what their motivation is to start thread after thread of attacks against Israel, that are SO easily countered.
Amazing
That's OT 101.
Kinda makes me wonder, when the answers are easily available showing Israel not to be the evil vile nation, some, here think it is, what their motivation is to start thread after thread of attacks against Israel, that are SO easily countered.
Amazing
I did not call you stupid. It seems you are muddying the waters intentionally. You say you are not a researcher but you put facts forward as if you are.
Well actually let me put forward some of what I have. What people state in unguarded moments speaks volumes
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
-- Theodore Herzl (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I).
That is the thing about the Zionists. They know how to work discreetly so people such as yourself still thinks the Zionist are looking for compromise.
What happened to all the land that was left behind ?
"We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village." * Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, quoted in Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969.
But wait the Zionist are all about compromise. That is what they are telling you. They would not deceive you right ?
"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism."
-- Moshe Sharett, Israel's first Foreign Minister and later a Prime Minister (p.51 Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel", 1987).
Maybe not. ?
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum."
Now we start to see why the Zionist approve 1000 new settlements just before peace talks. They are not interested in compromise.
Well actually let me put forward some of what I have. What people state in unguarded moments speaks volumes
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
-- Theodore Herzl (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I).
That is the thing about the Zionists. They know how to work discreetly so people such as yourself still thinks the Zionist are looking for compromise.
What happened to all the land that was left behind ?
"We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village." * Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, quoted in Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969.
But wait the Zionist are all about compromise. That is what they are telling you. They would not deceive you right ?
"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism."
-- Moshe Sharett, Israel's first Foreign Minister and later a Prime Minister (p.51 Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel", 1987).
Maybe not. ?
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum."
Now we start to see why the Zionist approve 1000 new settlements just before peace talks. They are not interested in compromise.
The Myth of the Generous Offer
Distorting the Camp David Negotiations
By Seth Ackerman
From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra!
July/August 2002
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented concessions” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s “generous peace terms” (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted “the most far-reaching offer ever” (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was “an unprecedented concession” to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).
But due to “Arafat’s recalcitrance” (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and “Palestinian rejectionism” (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), “Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer” (Salon.com 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat “walked away without making a counteroffer” (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel “offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer” (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn�t clear: “At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!” (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).
This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army’s increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.
Locking in occupation
To understand what actually happened at Camp David, it’s necessary to know that for many years the PLO has officially called for a two-state solution in which Israel would keep the 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate (as Britain’s protectorate was called) that it has controlled since 1948, and a Palestinian state would be formed on the remaining 22 percent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). Israel would withdraw completely from those lands, return to the pre-1967 borders and a resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 would be negotiated between the two sides. Then, in exchange, the Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel (PLO Declaration, 12/7/88; PLO Negotiations Department).
Although some people describe Israel’s Camp David proposal as practically a return to the 1967 borders, it was far from that. Under the plan, Israel would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank—while retaining “security control” over other parts—that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government (Political Science Quarterly, 6/22/01; New York Times, 7/26/01; “Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories,” 9-10/00; Robert Malley, New York Review of Books, 8/9/01).
The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert—about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex—including a former toxic waste dump.
Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new �independent state� would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called �bypass roads� that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
Israel was also to have kept “security control” for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt—putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an “end-of-conflict” agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel.
Violence or negotiation?
The Camp David meeting ended without agreement on July 25, 2000. At this point, according to conventional wisdom, the Palestinian leader’s “response to the Camp David proposals was not a counteroffer but an assault” (Oregonian editorial, 8/15/01). “Arafat figured he could push one more time to get one more batch of concessions. The talks collapsed. Violence erupted again” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). He “used the uprising to obtain through violence...what he couldn’t get at the Camp David bargaining table” (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21/00).
But the Intifada actually did not start for another two months. In the meantime, there was relative calm in the occupied territories. During this period of quiet, the two sides continued negotiating behind closed doors. Meanwhile, life for the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation went on as usual. On July 28, Prime Minister Barak announced that Israel had no plans to withdraw from the town of Abu Dis, as it had pledged to do in the 1995 Oslo II agreement (Israel Wire, 7/28/00). In August and early September, Israel announced new construction on Jewish-only settlements in Efrat and Har Adar, while the Israeli statistics bureau reported that settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000. Two Palestinian houses were demolished in East Jerusalem, and Arab residents of Sur Bahir and Suwahara received expropriation notices; their houses lay in the path of a planned Jewish-only highway (“Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories,” 11-12/00).
The Intifada began on September 29, 2000, when Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed Palestinian rock-throwers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, killing four and wounding over 200 (State Department human rights report for Israel, 2/01). Demonstrations spread throughout the territories. Barak and Arafat, having both staked their domestic reputations on their ability to win a negotiated peace from the other side, now felt politically threatened by the violence. In January 2001, they resumed formal negotiations at Taba, Egypt.
The Taba talks are one of the most significant and least remembered events of the “peace process.” While so far in 2002 (1/1/02-5/31/02), Camp David has been mentioned in conjunction with Israel 35 times on broadcast network news shows, Taba has come up only four times—never on any of the nightly newscasts. In February 2002, Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz (2/14/02), published for the first time the text of the European Union’s official notes of the Taba talks, which were confirmed in their essential points by negotiators from both sides.
“Anyone who reads the European Union account of the Taba talks,” Ha’aretz noted in its introduction, “will find it hard to believe that only 13 months ago, Israel and the Palestinians were so close to a peace agreement.” At Taba, Israel dropped its demand to control Palestine’s borders and the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians, for the first time, made detailed counterproposals—in other words, counteroffers—showing which changes to the 1967 borders they would be willing to accept. The Israeli map that has emerged from the talks shows a fully contiguous West Bank, though with a very narrow middle and a strange gerrymandered western border to accommodate annexed settlements.
In the end, however, all this proved too much for Israel’s Labor prime minister. On January 28, Barak unilaterally broke off the negotiations. “The pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted,” Ben-Ami said (New York Times, 7/26/01).
Settlements off the table
In February 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel. Sharon has made his position on the negotiations crystal clear. “You know, it’s not by accident that the settlements are located where they are,” he said in an interview a few months after his election (Ha’aretz, 4/12/01).
They safeguard the cradle of the Jewish people’s birth and also provide strategic depth which is vital to our existence.
The settlements were established according to the conception that, come what may, we have to hold the western security area [of the West Bank], which is adjacent to the Green Line, and the eastern security area along the Jordan River and the roads linking the two. And Jerusalem, of course. And the hill aquifer. Nothing has changed with respect to any of those things. The importance of the security areas has not diminished, it may even have increased. So I see no reason for evacuating any settlements.
Meanwhile, Ehud Barak has repudiated his own positions at Taba, and now speaks pointedly of the need for a negotiated settlement “based on the principles presented at Camp David” (New York Times op-ed, 4/14/02).
In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League—from moderate Jordan to hardline Iraq—unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders as well as a “just resolution” to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath declared himself “delighted” with the plan. “The proposal constitutes the best terms of reference for our political struggle,” he told the Jordan Times (3/28/02).
Ariel Sharon responded by declaring that “a return to the 1967 borders will destroy Israel” (New York Times, 5/4/02). In a commentary on the Arab plan, Ha’aretz’s Bradley Burston (2/27/02) noted that the offer was “forcing Israel to confront peace terms it has quietly feared for decades.”
The Myth of the Generous Offer
Distorting the Camp David Negotiations
By Seth Ackerman
From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra!
July/August 2002
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented concessions” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s “generous peace terms” (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted “the most far-reaching offer ever” (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was “an unprecedented concession” to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).
But due to “Arafat’s recalcitrance” (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and “Palestinian rejectionism” (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), “Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer” (Salon.com 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat “walked away without making a counteroffer” (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel “offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer” (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn�t clear: “At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!” (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).
This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army’s increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.
Locking in occupation
To understand what actually happened at Camp David, it’s necessary to know that for many years the PLO has officially called for a two-state solution in which Israel would keep the 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate (as Britain’s protectorate was called) that it has controlled since 1948, and a Palestinian state would be formed on the remaining 22 percent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). Israel would withdraw completely from those lands, return to the pre-1967 borders and a resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 would be negotiated between the two sides. Then, in exchange, the Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel (PLO Declaration, 12/7/88; PLO Negotiations Department).
Although some people describe Israel’s Camp David proposal as practically a return to the 1967 borders, it was far from that. Under the plan, Israel would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank—while retaining “security control” over other parts—that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government (Political Science Quarterly, 6/22/01; New York Times, 7/26/01; “Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories,” 9-10/00; Robert Malley, New York Review of Books, 8/9/01).
The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert—about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex—including a former toxic waste dump.
Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new �independent state� would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called �bypass roads� that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
Israel was also to have kept “security control” for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt—putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an “end-of-conflict” agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel.
Violence or negotiation?
The Camp David meeting ended without agreement on July 25, 2000. At this point, according to conventional wisdom, the Palestinian leader’s “response to the Camp David proposals was not a counteroffer but an assault” (Oregonian editorial, 8/15/01). “Arafat figured he could push one more time to get one more batch of concessions. The talks collapsed. Violence erupted again” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). He “used the uprising to obtain through violence...what he couldn’t get at the Camp David bargaining table” (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21/00).
But the Intifada actually did not start for another two months. In the meantime, there was relative calm in the occupied territories. During this period of quiet, the two sides continued negotiating behind closed doors. Meanwhile, life for the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation went on as usual. On July 28, Prime Minister Barak announced that Israel had no plans to withdraw from the town of Abu Dis, as it had pledged to do in the 1995 Oslo II agreement (Israel Wire, 7/28/00). In August and early September, Israel announced new construction on Jewish-only settlements in Efrat and Har Adar, while the Israeli statistics bureau reported that settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000. Two Palestinian houses were demolished in East Jerusalem, and Arab residents of Sur Bahir and Suwahara received expropriation notices; their houses lay in the path of a planned Jewish-only highway (“Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories,” 11-12/00).
The Intifada began on September 29, 2000, when Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed Palestinian rock-throwers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, killing four and wounding over 200 (State Department human rights report for Israel, 2/01). Demonstrations spread throughout the territories. Barak and Arafat, having both staked their domestic reputations on their ability to win a negotiated peace from the other side, now felt politically threatened by the violence. In January 2001, they resumed formal negotiations at Taba, Egypt.
The Taba talks are one of the most significant and least remembered events of the “peace process.” While so far in 2002 (1/1/02-5/31/02), Camp David has been mentioned in conjunction with Israel 35 times on broadcast network news shows, Taba has come up only four times—never on any of the nightly newscasts. In February 2002, Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz (2/14/02), published for the first time the text of the European Union’s official notes of the Taba talks, which were confirmed in their essential points by negotiators from both sides.
“Anyone who reads the European Union account of the Taba talks,” Ha’aretz noted in its introduction, “will find it hard to believe that only 13 months ago, Israel and the Palestinians were so close to a peace agreement.” At Taba, Israel dropped its demand to control Palestine’s borders and the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians, for the first time, made detailed counterproposals—in other words, counteroffers—showing which changes to the 1967 borders they would be willing to accept. The Israeli map that has emerged from the talks shows a fully contiguous West Bank, though with a very narrow middle and a strange gerrymandered western border to accommodate annexed settlements.
In the end, however, all this proved too much for Israel’s Labor prime minister. On January 28, Barak unilaterally broke off the negotiations. “The pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted,” Ben-Ami said (New York Times, 7/26/01).
Settlements off the table
In February 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel. Sharon has made his position on the negotiations crystal clear. “You know, it’s not by accident that the settlements are located where they are,” he said in an interview a few months after his election (Ha’aretz, 4/12/01).
They safeguard the cradle of the Jewish people’s birth and also provide strategic depth which is vital to our existence.
The settlements were established according to the conception that, come what may, we have to hold the western security area [of the West Bank], which is adjacent to the Green Line, and the eastern security area along the Jordan River and the roads linking the two. And Jerusalem, of course. And the hill aquifer. Nothing has changed with respect to any of those things. The importance of the security areas has not diminished, it may even have increased. So I see no reason for evacuating any settlements.
Meanwhile, Ehud Barak has repudiated his own positions at Taba, and now speaks pointedly of the need for a negotiated settlement “based on the principles presented at Camp David” (New York Times op-ed, 4/14/02).
In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League—from moderate Jordan to hardline Iraq—unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders as well as a “just resolution” to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath declared himself “delighted” with the plan. “The proposal constitutes the best terms of reference for our political struggle,” he told the Jordan Times (3/28/02).
Ariel Sharon responded by declaring that “a return to the 1967 borders will destroy Israel” (New York Times, 5/4/02). In a commentary on the Arab plan, Ha’aretz’s Bradley Burston (2/27/02) noted that the offer was “forcing Israel to confront peace terms it has quietly feared for decades.”
The Myth of the Generous Offer
Iran gets daily threats.
look at the Egypt/Syria/Libya/Iraq....destroyed or in the process.
how about daily?
Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories
They’d deliberately wreck the house
testimony catalog number: 44524
rank: Staff Sergeant
unit: Engineering Corps
The truth is that the Shimshon Brigade did the worst of the things I saw. That house where they destroyed a wall, they went like crazy looting it . . .
What do you mean, “looting”?
They, say, they shat on the . . . they shat on the couches, they stole.
They shat on the couches?
Shat on the couches before they left, just shat on the couches. They stole suits, they lifted all of the suits in the closet.
You saw that?
I was there. I left the house with them.
They just put a suit in a backpack?
No, they just, like, threw the suits in the APC.
Okay.
They’d leave behind, like deliberately, a house that was totally wrecked. They’d turn the house upside down, like when, when the family’s locked in a room . . . they’d just turn their house upside down . . . And also how they . . . their arrest procedures were very, very violent . . .
What do you mean? Give me a specific example.
We ran into some . . . we were separate forces for a while, we’d come from one place, and they’d be stuck with, with the tank in some alley, they couldn’t get out . . . So they were with the tank, and there were some four cars in front of them, blocking them, and a porch. Like the whole entrance to a house, an old Arab house, and they drove up with the . . . they drove the tank over the cars. Of course, they could have got out by reversing, but . . . they decided they had to turn around, they drove over four cars with the tank, they just went up, they turned around, and took off the whole entrance to the house with the back of the tank. They took down half a house, like with the tank, and left. And say, also that . . . I got there and they’d detained people, like there were, we’d round people up and all the men had to come to . . . before we’d break into the Mukata’a, [the administrative offices of the Palestinian Authority] the commercial area, they’d announce that all the men had to go somewhere where they’d all be checked, and then we went into the Mukata’a, and then they were allowed back. And when they got all those men, they just . . . they’d make them undress to . . . undress down to nothing. Anyone who hesitated a bit, they’d start beating him, pushing him, hitting him, shooting in the air . . . things like that. And then they released them. These are people who came, who were told they had to come and they came of their own volition. And by the way, when we went into that Mukata’a, it was supposed to be, the way the Shimshon commander had characterized the mission in the briefing, he said, “Some of you won’t come back,” just like that. “Some won’t come back, there’s going to be some insane fighting.” When we went in they didn’t fire at us once, but those Shimshon guys were firing all over the place in fear. With the . . . acting like they were in their APCs.
breakingthesilence
pfffft.
they know.
“May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them. It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones.” - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 2001 Passover sermon.- Haaretz, April 12, 2001
oh i KNOW - little boys with rocks and impotent canisters means you have to drop white phosphorus and break little bones.
poor little Dimona.
..................
Looking Back at Past Peace Process Futility
Until the late 1980s, the US and Israel were content to ignore regional and other calls for peaceful diplomacy, but that began to change with the outbreak of the first intifada mass uprising in 1987 when oppressed Palestinians fought back and caught the media’s attention. The region exploded again when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, and the Gulf war followed in 1991. When it ended, the US and Soviet Union jointly sponsored the watershed Madrid peace conference at which Israel negotiated face-to-face with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians for the first time. They continued after its conclusion on two parallel tracks to resolve past conflicts and sign bilateral peace treaties along with multilateral negotiations on issues affecting the whole region.
Madrid promised hope and was the catalyst for the Oslo Accords and their Declaration of Principles that were signed on the White House lawn in September, 1993. They began secretly with a post-Gulf war weakened PLO and delivered betrayal. They established a vaguely-defined negotiating process, specified no outcome, and let Israel delay, refuse to make concessions, and continue colonizing the Occupied Territories. In return, Palestinians got nothing for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and leaving major unresolved issues for indefinite later final status talks. They included an independent Palestinian state, the right of return, the future of Israeli settlements, borders, water rights, and status of Jerusalem as sovereign Palestinian territory and future home of its capital.
Israel got more as well – the right to establish a new Palestinian Authority (PA) to police a restive indigenous population. Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders were in exile in Tunis following the 1982 Lebanon war. They got to come home, take control of their people, and be rewarded for being Israel’s enforcer.
Oslo I led to Oslo II that was signed in Taba, Egypt in September, 1995, countersigned in Washington four days later, and made things even worse with its complex document. It called for further Israeli troop redeployments beyond Gaza and major West Bank population centers and later from all rural areas except for Israeli settlements and designated military zones. The process divided the West Bank into three parts with each having distinctive borders, administration and security control rules – Areas A, B and C plus a fourth area for Greater Jerusalem. A complicated system was devised as follows:
– Area A under Palestinian control for internal security, public order and civil affairs;
– Area B under Palestinian civil control for 450 West Bank towns and villages with Israel having overriding authority to safeguard its settlers’ security; and
– Area C with its water resources under Israeli control and its settlements on the West Bank’s most valuable land with them all connected by special by-pass roads for Jews only.
Israel has total control of the Territories and occupies most of the West Bank with its expanding settlements, by-pass roads, separation wall, military areas and no-go zones overall that are off limits to Palestinians in their own land.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum came next and was signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on September 4, 1999. Its purpose was to implement Oslo II and all other agreements since Oslo I in 1993 that included the following:
– a 1994 Protocol on Economic Relations;
– a Cairo Agreement on Gaza and the Jericho Area the same year;
– the 1994 Washington Declaration and Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities between the two parties; and
– the 1995 Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities. Both sides agreed to resume “permanent status” talks and discuss other elements of a peace plan relating to Israeli troops redeployments, land transfers, safe passage openings between Gaza and the West Bank, a Gaza seaport, prisoner releases and other issues related to security, normal civilian life activities, international donor community aid, and a timetable for final status talks on the toughest issues.
“Permanent status” talks followed in July, 2000 at Camp David where Bill Clinton hosted Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak.
Betrayal was again planned and delivered, but the major media called Barak’s offer “generous” and “unprecedented” with Arafat spurning peace for conflict. Barak insisted Arafat sign a “final agreement,” declare an “end of conflict,” and give up any legal basis for additional land in the Territories. There was no Israeli offer in writing, and no documents or maps were presented.
All Barak offered was from a May, 2000 West Bank map dividing the area into four isolated cantons under Palestinian administration surrounded by expanding Israeli settlements and other Israeli-controlled land. They had no direct links to each other or to Jordan. The cantons consisted of: Jericho, the southern canton to Abu Dis, a northern one including Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm, and a central one including Ramallah. Gaza was left in limbo as a fifth canton that was resolved when Israel disengaged from the Territory in August and September, 2005 but kept total control over it and right to reenter any time. The Barak deal was so duplicitous that if Arafat accepted it any hope for real peace would be dashed. He didn’t and was unfairly blamed.
The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) analyzed the deal as follows:
– Israel only proposed relinquishing control of from 77.5 – 81% of the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem and likely intended to keep the Jordan Valley;
– Israel claimed sovereignty over all West Jerusalem, one-third of occupied East Jerusalem, and as later developments proved wants all Greater Jerusalem exclusively for Jews;
– Israel wanted control of the Temple Mount that Palestianians call al-Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary and is the site of the sacred Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.
Barak’s Camp David deal was all take and no give with no chance for reconciliation or resolution of the conflict’s most intractable issues. It was all pretense by design, but when Ariel Sharon took over in February, 2001 he ended all further peace negotiations.
It stood that way until George Bush unveiled the Quartet’s fake “road map” for peace in a June 24, 2002 speech. In it, he called for an independent Palestinian state along side Israel in peace by 2005 with good faith efforts on both sides to achieve it. The process was to be in three phases, but its prospects were doomed from the start. After the plan’s launch, the region was beset by violence, Israel increased its land seizures and targeted assassinations, Palestinians responded in kind, and the humanitarian situation in the Territories became so dire it was impossible convincing either side that the road map was credible. It wasn’t, and it failed like all previous efforts before it.
That’s where things stood until Condoleezza Rice restarted the current Annapolis round to salvage a warmaking administration, reinvent it as a peacemaker, and manage to manipulate a fake outcome to prove it. The scheme is this, and George Bush spelled it out on November 21 when he spoke to Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to lay the groundwork for Annapolis:
– forty-nine countries were invited;
– who’s coming isn’t sure, but Iran wasn’t invited;
– Saudi Arabia accepted with reservations; and
– Syria was a maybe but AP reported November 25 it will now send its deputy foreign minister unlike other attendees sending foreign ministers; Syria will come because the occupied Golan is on the agenda, even though, like the Saudis, it has no formal relations with Israel.
Others listed are members of the Quartet, G-8, Arab League, permanent members of the Security Council along with Israel and the Palestinian Abbas quisling government with its legitimate one excluded that renders the process a sham.
Rice is pathetic saying “very clear signs” are evident, and “everybody’s goal is the creation of a Palestinian state” with both sides on board for it. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is just as bad claiming “Annapolis will be the jumping-off point for continued serious and in-depth negotiations (that won’t) avoid any issue or ignore any division (in) our relations with the Palestinian people for many years.” Nearly sixty to be exact and over 40 under occupation with no serious effort ever for resolution.
Snags still remain in the window dressing surrounding the conference with both sides so far unable to reach an acceptable joint statement to be presented in Maryland. If they’re still apart when it starts, the conference will end with Rice’s statement and not a joint Israeli-PA one. Either way matters little as once again fanciful language will substitute for substantive results. With Gaza under siege, Hamas uninvited, and an illegitimate government in its place, peace and any progress toward resolution can’t happen. That’s how it’s always been and won’t change until Israel begins negotiating in good faith. But that won’t happen until the world community accepts nothing less because world public opinion and people of conscience demand it.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
- See more at: Israeli-Palestinian Middle East “Peace Process”: Tragedy and Travesty at Annapolis | Global Research
look at the Egypt/Syria/Libya/Iraq....destroyed or in the process.
how about daily?
Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories
They’d deliberately wreck the house
testimony catalog number: 44524
rank: Staff Sergeant
unit: Engineering Corps
The truth is that the Shimshon Brigade did the worst of the things I saw. That house where they destroyed a wall, they went like crazy looting it . . .
What do you mean, “looting”?
They, say, they shat on the . . . they shat on the couches, they stole.
They shat on the couches?
Shat on the couches before they left, just shat on the couches. They stole suits, they lifted all of the suits in the closet.
You saw that?
I was there. I left the house with them.
They just put a suit in a backpack?
No, they just, like, threw the suits in the APC.
Okay.
They’d leave behind, like deliberately, a house that was totally wrecked. They’d turn the house upside down, like when, when the family’s locked in a room . . . they’d just turn their house upside down . . . And also how they . . . their arrest procedures were very, very violent . . .
What do you mean? Give me a specific example.
We ran into some . . . we were separate forces for a while, we’d come from one place, and they’d be stuck with, with the tank in some alley, they couldn’t get out . . . So they were with the tank, and there were some four cars in front of them, blocking them, and a porch. Like the whole entrance to a house, an old Arab house, and they drove up with the . . . they drove the tank over the cars. Of course, they could have got out by reversing, but . . . they decided they had to turn around, they drove over four cars with the tank, they just went up, they turned around, and took off the whole entrance to the house with the back of the tank. They took down half a house, like with the tank, and left. And say, also that . . . I got there and they’d detained people, like there were, we’d round people up and all the men had to come to . . . before we’d break into the Mukata’a, [the administrative offices of the Palestinian Authority] the commercial area, they’d announce that all the men had to go somewhere where they’d all be checked, and then we went into the Mukata’a, and then they were allowed back. And when they got all those men, they just . . . they’d make them undress to . . . undress down to nothing. Anyone who hesitated a bit, they’d start beating him, pushing him, hitting him, shooting in the air . . . things like that. And then they released them. These are people who came, who were told they had to come and they came of their own volition. And by the way, when we went into that Mukata’a, it was supposed to be, the way the Shimshon commander had characterized the mission in the briefing, he said, “Some of you won’t come back,” just like that. “Some won’t come back, there’s going to be some insane fighting.” When we went in they didn’t fire at us once, but those Shimshon guys were firing all over the place in fear. With the . . . acting like they were in their APCs.
breakingthesilence
pfffft.
they know.
“May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them. It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones.” - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 2001 Passover sermon.- Haaretz, April 12, 2001
oh i KNOW - little boys with rocks and impotent canisters means you have to drop white phosphorus and break little bones.
poor little Dimona.
..................
Looking Back at Past Peace Process Futility
Until the late 1980s, the US and Israel were content to ignore regional and other calls for peaceful diplomacy, but that began to change with the outbreak of the first intifada mass uprising in 1987 when oppressed Palestinians fought back and caught the media’s attention. The region exploded again when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, and the Gulf war followed in 1991. When it ended, the US and Soviet Union jointly sponsored the watershed Madrid peace conference at which Israel negotiated face-to-face with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians for the first time. They continued after its conclusion on two parallel tracks to resolve past conflicts and sign bilateral peace treaties along with multilateral negotiations on issues affecting the whole region.
Madrid promised hope and was the catalyst for the Oslo Accords and their Declaration of Principles that were signed on the White House lawn in September, 1993. They began secretly with a post-Gulf war weakened PLO and delivered betrayal. They established a vaguely-defined negotiating process, specified no outcome, and let Israel delay, refuse to make concessions, and continue colonizing the Occupied Territories. In return, Palestinians got nothing for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and leaving major unresolved issues for indefinite later final status talks. They included an independent Palestinian state, the right of return, the future of Israeli settlements, borders, water rights, and status of Jerusalem as sovereign Palestinian territory and future home of its capital.
Israel got more as well – the right to establish a new Palestinian Authority (PA) to police a restive indigenous population. Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders were in exile in Tunis following the 1982 Lebanon war. They got to come home, take control of their people, and be rewarded for being Israel’s enforcer.
Oslo I led to Oslo II that was signed in Taba, Egypt in September, 1995, countersigned in Washington four days later, and made things even worse with its complex document. It called for further Israeli troop redeployments beyond Gaza and major West Bank population centers and later from all rural areas except for Israeli settlements and designated military zones. The process divided the West Bank into three parts with each having distinctive borders, administration and security control rules – Areas A, B and C plus a fourth area for Greater Jerusalem. A complicated system was devised as follows:
– Area A under Palestinian control for internal security, public order and civil affairs;
– Area B under Palestinian civil control for 450 West Bank towns and villages with Israel having overriding authority to safeguard its settlers’ security; and
– Area C with its water resources under Israeli control and its settlements on the West Bank’s most valuable land with them all connected by special by-pass roads for Jews only.
Israel has total control of the Territories and occupies most of the West Bank with its expanding settlements, by-pass roads, separation wall, military areas and no-go zones overall that are off limits to Palestinians in their own land.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum came next and was signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on September 4, 1999. Its purpose was to implement Oslo II and all other agreements since Oslo I in 1993 that included the following:
– a 1994 Protocol on Economic Relations;
– a Cairo Agreement on Gaza and the Jericho Area the same year;
– the 1994 Washington Declaration and Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities between the two parties; and
– the 1995 Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities. Both sides agreed to resume “permanent status” talks and discuss other elements of a peace plan relating to Israeli troops redeployments, land transfers, safe passage openings between Gaza and the West Bank, a Gaza seaport, prisoner releases and other issues related to security, normal civilian life activities, international donor community aid, and a timetable for final status talks on the toughest issues.
“Permanent status” talks followed in July, 2000 at Camp David where Bill Clinton hosted Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak.
Betrayal was again planned and delivered, but the major media called Barak’s offer “generous” and “unprecedented” with Arafat spurning peace for conflict. Barak insisted Arafat sign a “final agreement,” declare an “end of conflict,” and give up any legal basis for additional land in the Territories. There was no Israeli offer in writing, and no documents or maps were presented.
All Barak offered was from a May, 2000 West Bank map dividing the area into four isolated cantons under Palestinian administration surrounded by expanding Israeli settlements and other Israeli-controlled land. They had no direct links to each other or to Jordan. The cantons consisted of: Jericho, the southern canton to Abu Dis, a northern one including Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm, and a central one including Ramallah. Gaza was left in limbo as a fifth canton that was resolved when Israel disengaged from the Territory in August and September, 2005 but kept total control over it and right to reenter any time. The Barak deal was so duplicitous that if Arafat accepted it any hope for real peace would be dashed. He didn’t and was unfairly blamed.
The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) analyzed the deal as follows:
– Israel only proposed relinquishing control of from 77.5 – 81% of the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem and likely intended to keep the Jordan Valley;
– Israel claimed sovereignty over all West Jerusalem, one-third of occupied East Jerusalem, and as later developments proved wants all Greater Jerusalem exclusively for Jews;
– Israel wanted control of the Temple Mount that Palestianians call al-Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary and is the site of the sacred Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.
Barak’s Camp David deal was all take and no give with no chance for reconciliation or resolution of the conflict’s most intractable issues. It was all pretense by design, but when Ariel Sharon took over in February, 2001 he ended all further peace negotiations.
It stood that way until George Bush unveiled the Quartet’s fake “road map” for peace in a June 24, 2002 speech. In it, he called for an independent Palestinian state along side Israel in peace by 2005 with good faith efforts on both sides to achieve it. The process was to be in three phases, but its prospects were doomed from the start. After the plan’s launch, the region was beset by violence, Israel increased its land seizures and targeted assassinations, Palestinians responded in kind, and the humanitarian situation in the Territories became so dire it was impossible convincing either side that the road map was credible. It wasn’t, and it failed like all previous efforts before it.
That’s where things stood until Condoleezza Rice restarted the current Annapolis round to salvage a warmaking administration, reinvent it as a peacemaker, and manage to manipulate a fake outcome to prove it. The scheme is this, and George Bush spelled it out on November 21 when he spoke to Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to lay the groundwork for Annapolis:
– forty-nine countries were invited;
– who’s coming isn’t sure, but Iran wasn’t invited;
– Saudi Arabia accepted with reservations; and
– Syria was a maybe but AP reported November 25 it will now send its deputy foreign minister unlike other attendees sending foreign ministers; Syria will come because the occupied Golan is on the agenda, even though, like the Saudis, it has no formal relations with Israel.
Others listed are members of the Quartet, G-8, Arab League, permanent members of the Security Council along with Israel and the Palestinian Abbas quisling government with its legitimate one excluded that renders the process a sham.
Rice is pathetic saying “very clear signs” are evident, and “everybody’s goal is the creation of a Palestinian state” with both sides on board for it. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is just as bad claiming “Annapolis will be the jumping-off point for continued serious and in-depth negotiations (that won’t) avoid any issue or ignore any division (in) our relations with the Palestinian people for many years.” Nearly sixty to be exact and over 40 under occupation with no serious effort ever for resolution.
Snags still remain in the window dressing surrounding the conference with both sides so far unable to reach an acceptable joint statement to be presented in Maryland. If they’re still apart when it starts, the conference will end with Rice’s statement and not a joint Israeli-PA one. Either way matters little as once again fanciful language will substitute for substantive results. With Gaza under siege, Hamas uninvited, and an illegitimate government in its place, peace and any progress toward resolution can’t happen. That’s how it’s always been and won’t change until Israel begins negotiating in good faith. But that won’t happen until the world community accepts nothing less because world public opinion and people of conscience demand it.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
- See more at: Israeli-Palestinian Middle East “Peace Process”: Tragedy and Travesty at Annapolis | Global Research
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