The Obama administration is putting Israeli settlements front and center and Israeli politicians are doing their best to spin the issue. Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely has held her conference opposing the two-state solution where Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon argued against ending the conflict with the Palestinians. Ha’aretz quotes Ya’alon as saying, “We have to disavow the commonly held perception that we should find an imminent solution.” Towards the center of Israeli politics, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seeking to bring a “compromise” on settlements to Obama when he visits Washington next week. According to the Associated Press, Barak will offer to dismantle settlement outposts in exchange for allowing Israel to continue to expand the vast majority of settlements.
Barak’s proposal, which Netanyahu supports, is clearly not a compromise at all, it is simply a demand to continue the status quo. Even the AP points out, “The wildcat outposts are a peripheral part of Israel’s West Bank settlement enterprise because only a few thousand people live there.” As a point of reference there are over 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Barak’s offer is totally inconsequential towards ending Israeli control over the West Bank, and if anything it should raise questions about his support for these very outposts. Both Ibn Ezra and Max Blumenthal has shown lately that the outposts are spreading with the active support of the Israeli military.
In the AP article, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia makes the common sense point, “what does a peace process mean when settlements are continuing on the Palestinian territories?” He has a more in depth, and interesting, interview with Akiva Eldar in Ha’aretz in preparation for Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to Washington later this week. From the interview:
Do you believe Israel would agree to evacuate Ma’aleh Adumim’s 35,000 residents?
Qureia: “[Former U.S. secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice told me she understood our position about Ariel but that Ma’aleh Adumim was a different matter. I told her, and Livni, that those residents of Ma’aleh Adumim or Ariel who would rather stay in their homes could live under Palestinian rule and law, just like the Israeli Arabs who live among you. They could hold Palestinian and Israeli nationalities. If they want it – welcome. Israeli settlements in the heart of the territories would be a recipe for problems.
This idea, while controversial among Palestinians, is an interesting way of turning Israeli intransigence on its head. If Israelis are not willing to leave the settlements then they are welcome to stay in Palestine, but only if they are willing to live in equality with Palestinians, and not from a position of dominance. So far there have not been any signs that Israel would be willing to do this.
I don't think this statement makes any sense at all: They could hold Palestinian and Israeli nationalities. If they want it – welcome. He means, they could be dual citizens. This would give them the means to defy Palestinian rule and law, since at every turn they would be claiming privileges as Israeli citizens in an otherwise Palestinian state. So Qureia is talking nonsense, and hopefully, he knows it.
I discuss a more rational approach to the settlements in my Sunday interview on Iranian PressTV.
It's now clear: Israel covets the entire West Bank, has no intention whatsoever of pursuing the two state solution, and Jewish Zionists don't believe that any other race is their equal, nor equally deserving of human rights, civil rights and the God-given fruits of the earth. Non-Jews are cattle, in their view, to be exploited, subjugated and stripped of land and dignity. How is it that America has been manipulated into a position of perpetually endorsing and subsidizing such a people and their sick notions of right and wrong? We've really got a major problem on our hands in these Jewish Zionists and their elitist Washington collaborators. These are the kind of Royalists that it took a revolution to extricate ourselves from, and it may take another to free ourselves from this set of stubborn racists and tyrants and their Statist authoritarian collaborators who are using the American people’s government to enforce Zionist notions of supremacism. The entire amalgamation is basically saying “Screw you and your Constitution” to the American people. “You’re dumb animals and you’ll do as your told.”
How can you make that argument, Rowan? We have dual citizenship here. While Jews can claim privileges as Jews — the right to assemble and lobby, for example — just as Christians do, they can't claim privileges in this country on the basis of Israeli citizenship. Neither can the Irish or the Brits. Or French. You can't defy American law because you hold a foreign passport. You can't walk into court and say because I also hold a passport from Canada or Senegal, I dont have to obey American law.
The Israeli Peace Plan: 1. No Palestinians 2. No Iran 3. All the land
Our tax dollars pay for those settlements. I say stop the payola immediately. Ditto defense contracts. We need to bring all that stuff home. Now.
Even in the USA, Jews holding dual US and Israeli citizenship do exactly that, quite regularly.
4. No Syria 5. No Lebanon 6. No Sudan 7. etc.
Your video is not available on your Web site. Just a big white square.
also, No Mars (it's an antisemetic planet)
Indeed. The plan is to extend institutionalized Jewish supremacism to America, as well. Given how many gentile collaborators are party to this, you've got to wonder if indeed a component of humanity IS comprised of dumb animals, just as the Zionists say. Only, the dumb animals are the component that is willing to collaborate with the Zionists on their own people's enslavement. Faustian bargains are never a pretty picture. Unfortunately, they're commonplace in post-Christian, post-Constitutional America. Oh, but today's elites know better than the American Founders. They're so much more "progressive." They're beliefs in Jewish supremacism are completely based in rationalism.
Ed, where is your mention of the Christian Zionists? They are Israel's biggest monetary and social supporters in the US? Whatsamatter, Edgar, those Christian Zionists aren't part of "the rest of us"? Don't you think Christian Zionism is part of the "moderate Christian ethics" you are so sure will save us? And you didn't mention how the Zionists are the overlords of the Jewish Bolshviks. Or is it the other way around? Oh well, scratch a Commie, find a Jew, every time, and vice versa, huh?
"also, No Mars (it's an antisemetic planet)" Right you are! There's only one Zionist planet. Can you guess which one?
Earth?
Turn Israeli intransigence on its head, no Israelis outside the Green Line, and a wall around them.
I prefer the term "Judeo-Christian Zionists," because all they have ever done is emulate Old Testament Jews and Jewish Zionists. Unlike Christians, they don't really believe God's covenant with the Jews was ever replaced with a covenant with Christianity in an ever expanding circle of human rights and human dignity. So that explains their Jewish supremacist beliefs. But what I can't figure out is the basis for progressive "secular" beliefs in Jewish supremacism, as reflected in left-liberalism's ongoing financing and endorsement of Israel, going back literally decades. Is it simply that they are corrupt and bought-off, or is their easy corruptibility part and parcel of their ideology and their character? In other words, isn't the fact that they are so easily corrupted a judgment on their entire ideology, belief system and their own lack (and narcissistic rejection of) a moral base?
Israeli Consulates in the US have a lot of influence (especially when you consider that on the basis of a number of well-publicised recent cases one might describe them as dens of spies).
7. North Korea 8. etc.
And ALL Zionists to Israel: Jewish, Judeo-Christian, "secular" Judeophile, and otherwise. Let them cannibalize one another instead of feeding off of humanity.
Totally a confusing mess making all of this even messier. I tend to agree with Ed above. I had a dream Ed, yes those lovely words. In my dream, the west finally aligned itself with the Arab nations and Israel was left to dunder along on its own. Actually have to earn its own money, no more handouts. Rapidly it became a small desert full of Talmud driven Zionists and self destructed ~ imploded as you will. The clouds drew back, the sun came out, the birds sang, the media system collapsed, people found each other, and the earth slowly purged herself of poisons. Then I woke up with a sad smile.
I retract my comment for being too Israeli.
I think you are wrong, they surely believe in their Messiah and the new covenant. They think the Jews will all convert–a very old tale–at the given time, and the few that don't simply go to the Christian hell or something.
Boy, it's gonna be crowded there. What about the Palestinians? They don't matter to you much, do they?
See, see a female "stranger" with a sadist disposition. "the clouds drew back, the sun drew out" welcome to the short interval of Ed's Christian utopia. The Jewish devil has been vanquished. Then of course the people left will discover that the scapegoat they sacrificed didn't free them from their own dark doubles.
What do you mean? The Palestinians would get the entire West Bank, and be paid handsomely to man the wall. Let these Zionists know what it feels like to live under rubber bullets for awhile. They can use John Hagee for target practice. No one would ever miss.
Remember the case of 17 year old Samuel Sheinbein from Montgomery County, MD in 1997? He murdered an hispanic neighbor, dismembered him and burned the body. He escaped to Israel and Israel refused to extradite him. Israel tried him there and gave him a 24 year sentence and he'll be out on parole in 2013. That's 15 years. In this kid's case, his Israeli citizenship was a "Get Out of Jail Soon" card.
Google “dual covenant theology” and also Noahidism. You’ll find the brave new post-Christian Western religious world. Throw in “secular” Judeophile Bolshevism and the values and morals of the entrails of what Yuri Slezkine identified as “The Jewish Century,” and we’re living in a Zionist’s wet dream (and a sane person’s nightmare.)
That's nothing new, Palestinians have been saying that they will let the settlers stay if they live under Palestinian law ever since I was in diapers… but seriously, Qurie? He is as illegitimate as the clown Abbas that he serves. Lest anyone forget or not know that Qurie is responsible for the cement (he owns a cement company) that is sold to Israel to build the settlements in the first place.
8. No North Korea 9. No Venezuela 10. No Bolivia 11. No peace, only apartheid.
How quickly certain “secular” Statists rally around Jewish Zionists in any contest with Christianity and/or the Christian-inspired anti-authoritarian, Free Will libertarianism of America’s Founders. I fear Statist liberals have entered into their own Faustian bargain. It’s not hard to see how the Palestinians have been thrown under the bus by the “secular” liberal Establishment on behalf of the Zionists time and again.
No, it's there, but it seems to work only in Internet Explorer. Firefox shows it as a white rectangle with an icon you can click on to download an appropriate plugin, but when you click on that, it can't find an appropriate plugin. It looks like the video is in a format that only Windows Media Player 11 can decode.
Those Christian end-timers are insane; I don't understand how they can see what the Palestinians have and are under going as a simple means to a just end. Anybody know where the Christian Zionists actually address the plight of the Palestinians?
Actually, this is a very elegant solution to the situation. The 1967 borders are restored, and if illegal Israeli settlements happen to fall inside the state of Palestine, the settlers can become Palestinian citizens. Then there's no need for the IDF to go through the motions of pretending to "evacuate" the illegal outposts. It would be the mirror image of the 20% of the Israeli opulation that is made up of indigenous Arabs. Beautiful.
The proposal to allow settlers to stay, but as Palestinian citizens removes a very large obstacle from the two-state solution and at the green line. It is the most rational approach, IF the goal is actually two-states for two-peoples, which should be Israel's and Palestine's goal.
Er, Barbara actually said "the sun came out." Is it possible, LeaNder22, to consider that Jews have no lock on the scapegoat theory? Maybe the Palestinians have been the scape goats in living fact for what the Germans did to the Jews? Maybe Germany should also start paying reparations to the Palestinians therefore?
9. Quite definitely no Pakistan or Afghanistan — just Pipelineistan.
Well at least there is one evangelical christian who questions the end-timers gigantic dissing of the Palestinian people, including the Christian Palestinians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sizer#Sizer....
"the sun came out" btw, if anyone is a scapegoat, it's the Pals–this is not 1938 Germany. Both the Germans and the Israelis should be paying reparations to the Pals.
Good point, Mooser. Well, there's at least one evangelical christian who is not a nut case: stephen sizer
Try this URL: http://www.presstv.ir/Programs/player/?id=95997 .
Are you seriously playing the antisemitism card? How does a Jew criticize Israel honestly and not as a tactic (controlled opposition) without rejecting part of his/her own identity? And I am not implying this is inherent, it's socialized through Jewish tribalism. I do not know anything about Judaism (religion) but the Jewish community is obviously ethnocentric and has a hive-mind complex going on. So a Jew has to disassociate from Jewish tribalism. Hence, 'self-hating' Jew. Yea, they may just hate the corrupt social networking within the Jewish community but just because that's how it is – does not mean that's how it should be. So these Jews may be trying to redefine their identity. They are humanists.
Thanks for pointing it out. I read the Arabo-Christian alliance against the Joos as wishful thinking for a battle alignment. The last battle, except that the enemy is so kind to implode so no battle has to be fought. The act of aggression is censured. The enemy blows himself up. And when it over the clouds draw back, the sun comes out and the birds will sing: A world without Jews, a paradise an utopia.
No, silly. It's Uranus, of course.
Man, this site is like a circle jerk of anti-Israeli idiots. Ed, et al, you are scum.
It seems to me, political Judaism has put average Jews into a nearly impossible situation in terms of trying to maintain their Jewish identity and their humanity at the same time. Political Judaism is probably the originator of the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality. It’s really no surprise that Judeo-Christian Zionist GW Bush adopted that mindset. A lot of Judeo-Christians seem to suffer from that mindset, and suffer from a common mindset of money-fixated greed as well. So do a lot of “secular” Judeophile liberal Establishment types. The selfish Jewish Tribalist mentality seems to be virulent.
LeaNider22, it is sort of precious, tho. I mean, the Zionists are all the time whining about Anti-Zionism being anti-Semitism, and right here at Mondoweiss we have our very own anti-Zionist anti-Semite! I love that: "Unlike Christians, they (the Jews ). don't really believe God's covenant with the Jews was ever replaced with a covenant with Christianity in an ever expanding circle of human rights and human dignity." Cause we all know that's what the Christians were all about, human dignity and rights! Sure, Ed. Oh BTW Ed, I see your "reverence for the cross" hero, Mel Gibson, managed to get his adulteroyus girlfriend pregnant well before his divorce from his wife. Now, that's what I call "reverence for the cross" Ed, are you so sadly mis-informed and mal-educated that you don't know you are simply repeating anti-Semitic nonsense? But you are, Ed, over and over.
Qureia's plan isn't going to have much support. Even 'moderate' Zionists who support two states think of removing the settlers as ethnic cleansing, but they also won't trust the Palestine govt. to keep Jews safe as a minority. They don't even trust the PA to do what it does anyway like arresting Hamas members. Polls indicate the non-religious settlers would move back to Israel with compensation, but what if they don't get it? Will Israel continue to subsidize the former settlers' livlihood? Will they still have privileged entry into Israel while the Palestinians have to sneak in? Even if this attempt to liberalize a very illiberal situation got off the ground, it would probably just be a subterfuge for continuing Israeli rule over the West Bank or even an excuse to re-occupy. There's also no guarantee the PA would dismantle the basic features of the occupation like roadblocks. The Zimbabwe govt. not only failed to redistribute land for two decades after formal decolonization, it even chased off squatters. This could be a repeat. The Authority is more worried about living up to its name than decolonization.
(cont'd from last post) Another obvious elephant in the room is the fanatics who might even start their own paramilitaries with all the IDF hardware they can steal. I believe a two state solution could transition into one state, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to demand all settlers are recalled to Israel apriori. But rather than leaving Ma'ale Adumin intact, I think a better idea is to have Jews who are serious live in Palestinian villages and likewise allow Arabs to live in what should be former settlements. It makes even less sense to just let the Jews stay in their own space and pretend this is now part of sovereign Palestine.
God, I hate to contradict you, but Ed is not anti-Israel, just anti-Semitic. But BTW, God, if you don't mind me asking, what's wrong with being anti-Israel? You certainly are! I mean God, if you're so goddam pro-Israel, why did You allow the Diaspora in the first place. The Romans weren't too much for you, were they? As I remember, You felt the Jews had not adhered to Your Commandments, and you pretty much 86'ed us from the Holy Land. Did something happen to make You change Your mind? Please don't tell me it was the Holocaust, God. If that's the case, I think You gave us a raw deal, You should forgive me for saying so. And look here, God, I don't know how things go up there in Heaven, but down here on earth people are allowed to be anti any country they please. I don't remember You protesting when everyone was so anti-Russian, or anti-German, or anti-Japanese. That's just the way it goes, God. After all You were the One who sentenced us to Diaspora, baby, er, sorry, I meant God, sir.
About what kind of person, let alone Jew, would sign himself "God" I will say nothing. I've been told that Zionism was supposed to make real men out of us Jews. Maybe they've gone even further. In Israel, every Jewish man is a God!
It is quite rational, I agree. Except that I think there should be reciprocity. If you can have israeli palestinians why not palestinians israelis? ie, if 0.5 M israelis get palestinian citizenship why shouldn't a proportionate number of palestinians get Israeli citizenship? basically, form their own settlements in israel, just as the israelis do in Palestine. This way, hostilities may just come to an end – you know – they'll each have a dog in the other's fight. Plus it goes some ways towards justice.
God how come you treated your chosen ones like you do? Why did you have Moses make a left and not a right turn after he exited from Egypt? GPS wasn't invented yet, you say. Just think, the ancient Jews would have ended up in what is now Saudi Arabia with all that oil, black gold. But no, you had them go to Palestine with little natural resources. What gives with that? How can you give the Jews such a little piece of land? Say what? Ah, you want them to have a small piece of land to help reduce their BIG ego. You are so wise!
Mooser, it was clear that I was referring to the Judeo-Christians (aka Christian Zionists) not really believing the covenant was replaced, not the Jews. Hence they subscribe to duel covenant theology. Your failure to comprehend is consistent with your general misapprehension of my perspective. Something is not connecting. The synapses seem to go into overload every time you see the word Christianity. You need to take a deep breathe and actually read what I write, not what you want to see in order to maintain the false consciousness of your Jewish-programmed world view. I don't get defensive when you talk trash about Christianity, do I?
Ed, from my recollection of Roman Catholic teaching, doesn't the Christian covenant require one believe in the Christian God in order to be included in that "circle of human rights and human dignity"? Who is outside the circle?
RE: "Our tax dollars pay for those settlements." *TAKE ACTION TO END THE OCCUPATION Send a personalized letter (E-mail) to the Members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee. Let these Members of Congress know that you oppose the President's FY2010 budget request for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel. *TO SEND YOUR LETTER (E-mail) – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/t/2439/c...
RE: " It’s really no surprise that Judeo-Christian Zionist GW Bush adopted that mindset." SEE: ”Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War – Bush, God, Iraq and Gog” – By Clive Hamilton, 05/22/09 (EXCERPT) ”…In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated…” ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/hamilton05222009.html
RE: God how come you treated your chosen ones like you do? Why did you have Moses make a left and not a right turn after he exited from Egypt? SEE THE ARTICLE: “Moses was stoned when he set Ten Commandments, researcher claims” – the “Guardian” (U.K.), 03/05/08 (EXCERPT) "An Israeli researcher is claiming in a study published this week the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone. According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times. Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared…. …..Moses was probably also on mind-altering drugs when he saw the "burning bush", suggested Shanon…." ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/05/relig...
This is just putting the cart before the horse here. It's still rather undecided whether these settlers would choose to stay as most would rather be compensated and return back to Eretz Israel. Secondly, to insinuate that dual citizenship is something that can would unqualify Jews for it is quite insidious and perhaps even quite anti-Semitic in a very limited sense here. Thirdly, it remains quite undetermined how much "influence" these Israelis could really have in a Palestinian state that recognised that they were a usurping identity and one that had sixty plus years of what their "influence" means first-hand.
Let's fix the problem of the current situatino of the Palestinian Israelis FIRST. Wouldn't it be the height of irony that a settler who defied international law for forty-plus years stole land, were given citizenship in the country that they were trying to prevent from being founded, and had more rights in said new country than the indigenous people who were uprooted from their homeland and treated as second-class citizens in the land that attempts to prevent their culture and identity from surviving. Quite rational, we all agree.
The question is not one of "equality" vs. "dominance." In either case, there will be hegemony and sovereignty of one state over the land. Palestinian sovereignty over Jewish communities is no guarantee of equality. For all the talk of "illegal" settlements, the parties agreed back in Oslo that the final borders would be negotiated (and incidentally, the Oslo Accords do not contain any prohibition on settlements). As a practical matter, any solution that is viable will have to include the evacuation of settlements, especially those not contiguous with the prior armistice lines. But nothing in international law, or the parties agreements, says that land is automatically "Palestinian land" simply because the Jordanian army seized it and expelled Jews from it in Israel's War of Independence. Particularly since, after the war of independence, the Arab nations very, very clearly stated that they did not consider the armistice line to be a border. The claim that anything east of the green line is inherently "Palestinian" is not only legally incorrect, but racist. Final boundaries are to be negotiated, and those final boundaries may very well incorporate some settlements into Israel. They certainly will if common sense, fairness, and pragmatism are to carry the day over empty sloganeering. As for those settled areas that fall on the Palestinian side, I think it would be great if the new Palestinian government offered those Jewish communities the opportunity to live as Palestinian citizens. As a practical matter it may not work, but certainly its a fair idea.
Joshua, International law does not rest on what Arabs or Israelis are saying, and their disagreement does not change international law any more than my fight with my neighbour does not alter the law of the land. Regardless of negotiations, International law does specify the legal borders of Israel with Occupied Palestinian Territories. So these do not need to be negotiated for the two state solution. The minor modifications can be left till later, if the parties can agree to land swaps.
Art. 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention: The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. This alone makes the settlements illegal under int'l law.
I believe that Qureia is on to something, but he needs to articulate it better, both for his own people and for the world. There are two good reasons to welcome Israeli settlers with Palestinian citizenship: one is practical in that the settlements aren't going to vanish quickly or painlessly; the other is that doing so seeks the higher moral ground. Israeli intransigence is based on the belief that Jews can only be safe if wrapped up in a state that they totally dominate. The more places Jews are welcome, the more that rule is disproved, and the weaker the case is for a Zionist state. If done credibly, it would argue that in a two-state scenario at least one state would be founded on the principle that the state represents and respects all of its citizens. That would be a powerful implicit critique of Israel, and hopefully a model for improvement. However, the key to all of this is credibility. Qureia's position isn't new. It was at least a minority position going back before the fouding of Israel. I'm not saying that anyone who held the position was insincere, but it's always been a tough sell — to the Zionists, naturally, and also to rejectionists and nationalists among the Palestinians. And even if you do agree to offer citizenship, the current settlers aren't exactly your first choice for new citizens. They tend to be right-wing, exceptionally nationalist and racist, and they come wrapped up in segregated enclaves, and pretty well armed. A better idea would be to open up immigration to Jews who want to come and who are willing to integrate, and build your credibility around that seed. Meanwhile the settlements could be handled like Hong Kong or the Panama Canal Zone, where a deal was struck with a fairly long term (20-30 years) to allow everyone to adjust. (I sort of recall Abbas pushing something like that, maybe as a leaseback.)
IF is the operative word.