The Zionist Organization of America's position is, "Say No to a Two-State Solution: Say Yes to Israel." Well, here are two liberal New York congressmen on the ZOA endorsement page, embracing the ZOA. Quotes provided by the ZOA. Do these congressmen's liberal constituents believe in a two-state solution? If they do, why are they taking this from these liberals? And if they don't, what is the solution-- democracy or apartheid or ethnic cleansing?
Cong. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY):
Settlements illegal? – “they’re not as far as I’m concerned…There’s no immediate prospect of a (peace) settlement that can be enforced.”…Lawfare – “distorting international laws” – making it impossible to defend themselves – Israel & US “We must put a stop to it…a historical monstrosity” – Goldstone…“Iran is an existential threat to Israel and a terrible threat to the United States…What would stop them from giving a nuclear bomb to Al-Quada…We must avoid that at all costs” – a nuclear Iran…“We have to insist…that the moment the Palestinian refugees (compensation comes up) the American administration must insist that in the same way the 850,000 refugees…must also be compensated.”
Cong. Anthony Weiner (D- NY) :
“Aid to Palestinians until the Palestinians return to the negotiating table, we should not give them another dollar, another shekel…A lot we need to do & ZOA is doing it…We are patriotic Americans when we stand up for Eretz Israel.”
I prefer the two state solution, but there are many other options than those listed by Phil. For example, the West Bank will be a self-governing unincorporated territory of Israel. Nothing illegal about that. In fact, that is exactly the status of Puerto Rico.
“For example, the West Bank will be a self-governing unincorporated territory of Israel. Nothing illegal about that. In fact, that is exactly the status of Puerto Rico.”
You’re a shameless bullshit artist. First you state that withdrawing from the NPT carries reprisals without citing any such condition in the NPT agreement. Now you’re making sweeping statements about what is legal under international law, without citing any judgement that supports this claim.
ThwcWest Bank is not recognized as Israeli territory, so how can it possibly be legal?
For once, I agree with eee. His suggestion that the Occupied Territories should be given the same status as Puerto Rico vis-a-vis the USA, sounds, on the face of it, to be quite sensible, and, so far as I know, a new proposal.
The Palestinians will never be given their own state, or full equality in a one-state solution. But there are a lot of details to hammer out. For one thing Puerto Rico is an island, and has well-defined natural borders; the West Bank doesn’t.
Mind you, I don’t know how Puerto Ricans feel about it (the last I heard was ‘I Wanna Be in America!’ from West Side Story.
“The Palestinians will never be given their own state”
I don’t share your pessimism.
In other words, Palestine as a bantustan (a la Gaza), or rather the plural: bantustans.
Well they’re not liberals with respect to Israel. Kinda gets back to the dual loyalty/conflict of interest debate. They, are inconsistent politicians who vote for what’s popular here and do another thing for Israel, I assume appeals to their political donors and their beliefs in Eretz Israel. People say politicians always act toward their directed audience, but it’s corrupt to support illegal settlements and you nab Nadler right in his quote above.
He even plays dumb about it – “they’re not as far as I’m concerned…There’s no immediate prospect of a (peace) settlement that can be enforced.”
Most crimminals will say the crimes they commited are not crimes as far as they are concerned, however the law says otherwise. See how assinine this staement is? Have I mentioned how much I despise these people today?
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Let’s look at Max Blumenthal’s latest video and then at Nadler, Weiner and Schumer. What do they have in common?
Apparently US politicians from NY seem to feel they have to pander to the most extreme Jewish xenophobia in order to be elected.
“For example, the West Bank will be a self-governing unincorporated territory of Israel. Nothing illegal about that. In fact, that is exactly the status of Puerto Rico.”
eee, you have just made a rational proposal, one that I think would be supported by most of the Arab and muslim world. If you gave the occupied territories the same status as we have given Puerto Rico, all persons born in those territories would become Israeli citizen. They could move freely throughout all of Israeli, drive on any road with no need to worry about bothersome checkpoints. They would have the same color auto plates as you. They could even marry any other citizen of Israeli, even your sisters. They could do this with a civil ceremony if the religious authorities refused to perform the rite. (It is true that residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in federal elections. However, a Puerto Rican who establishes residency in one of the states becomes a resident of that state and has the same voting rights as the other residents of that state. For example, I am a U. S. citizen living in Virginia where I vote in local, state, and federal elections. If I where to move to Puerto Rico, I could vote in local and Commonwealth elections, but not in federal elections. )
Essentially, eee, what you are proposing is the one state solution. Go for it!
Nice.
The Palestinians have been paying taxes and getting nothing but pain and misery in return. The Israeli government has suspended and delayed on several occasions the transfer of taxes it collected from Palestinians back to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians are NOT getting anything from Israel.
This moron is diluting himself into thinking that the Palestinians get aid from Israel much in the same way his darling parasite of a state, Israel, gets aid from the US.
More evidence that the two state solution has gone to join the choir invisible.
The two state solution is as dead as a doornail, and there’s no point in keeping on flogging it. Israel, by creating ‘facts on the ground’ in its usual underhand manner, has effectively fully ruled and colonised the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza) for more than 40 years, and is extremely reluctant to give up any of it.
If, as eee and Charles Turpin suggest, the OT could be given the same status as Puerto Rico (with essentially the same rights as US citizens, but no right to vote in federal elections) that would seem to be a sensible solution, giving Eretz Israel from the river to the sea, but no OT votes for the Knesset.
Problems:
1) Borders – see above. Obviously, the ‘Security Wall’ would have to come down, but that could happen as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell, and with similar consequences. All the Area A, B, C divisions would have to go, as well. And the IDF would no longer have sole jurisdiction over the OT.
2) Settlers – their colonies will stay (as they will do under any realistic view of the 1 or 2 state solution) but the native residents of the OT would have the right to call in the IDF or Border Police to protect them from local settler mobs (and vice versa)
Palestinians would have the right to stay, or obtain a building permit, in any part of Eretz Israel, on an equal basis with current Israeli citizens. No more ‘settlers only’ roads. Security checkpoints all over Eretz Israel, and not just purely obstructive ones in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians buying houses in Tel Aviv.
3) Israel has no rights to grant this status; nor did the US regarding Puerto Rico, the Philippines, or Hawai’i until it was declared a state.
4) Palestinian Diaspora – roughly 4.5 to 5.5 million Palestinians, descendants of the 750,000 people expelled by the Israelis, live outside Palestine (Eretz Israel). Many of those don’t want to go back to Palestine (Eretz Israel), but many yearn for it, especially the still-existing camp refugees of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, who otherwise have nothing to hope for, because they mostly don’t have rights in their country of refuge.
This is the most difficult problem, but not too difficult.
Richard, one of the points I was trying to make is that people who reside in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, not Puerto Rico citizens. They are U.S. citizens who are residents of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. They are just as free to move and live anywhere in the United States and its possessions as any other U.S. citizen residing anywhere else in the U.S. Whether their grandparents were Hispanics who lived in Puerto Rico when the U.S. acquired it, or are WASPs who moved there afterward is of no consequence. If a resident of Puerto Rico moves to New York, he or she becomes a resident of New York and can vote in New York local and state elections and federal elections but can no longer vote in Puerto Rico elections.
If the occupied territories were given this status, Jews would be free live anywhere they wanted to in the OT provided they had a legal title to the property. Of course this would also be true for the Palestinians who could live anywhere they wanted to in greater Israel. Under this status, terms such as Jew, Palestinian, Arab, or Druze would have no legal meaning just as such terms have no legal meaning in the U.S.
My real point in my previous post is the eee really did not understand the implications of his suggested solution. Still, the more I think about it, I think that this is one of the more intelligent solutions that I have seen.
I totally agree with you, Charles, that the ideal would be to give all ‘Eretz Israel’ citizens the same rights as Puerto-Rican born US citizens have, but there is bound to be a lot of resistance to that, and a lot of legal finagling, which will carry on for years.
Puerto Rican US citizenship was granted in 1917, but there were a lot of obstacles on the way to the current situation, where PR has a median household income of $17,741 (2007) vs $36,338 for Mississippi, the poorest US state.
Not many poor Puerto Ricans are the slightest bit concerned that they couldn’t vote for Obama. Not many Palestinians will have the slightest concern that they couldn’t vote for Likud, or Netanyahu.
This idea doesn’t conflict with the two great colliding objectives, the 2 state or the 1 state ‘solution’ but is nearer the latter, which is where we are getting anyway. It gives the religious nutters their Eretz Israel’ from the river to the sea’ and the people born there their chance to join in.
All that needs is to take the blinkers off the Israeli and American negotiators, and change direction. Veer a little, and Israelis can have their Eretz Israel (although they will have to take responsibility for the OT peoples as well, which they haven’t shown very much willingness to do, so far). Israel does not give any financial support to the Palestinians; in fact it does its best to rob them of what they’ve raised themselves.
“Not many Palestinians will have the slightest concern that they couldn’t vote for Likud, or Netanyahu.”
What makes you say this? I think you’re underestimating the Palestinians quite a bit.
Charles,
Of course I understood the implications of what I presented as an option, and not something I proposed. This was meant just to make people understand that there are many more options than one, two or apartheid.
By the way, the Puerto Rico option has been on the table since the original Camp David accords. It was called Autonomy then. It is nothing really new.
“Of course I understood the implications of what I presented as an option, and not something I proposed. This was meant just to make people understand that there are many more options than one, two or apartheid.
eee, my point is being missed. You wrote that there are many other options than those listed by Phil and then threw out the Puerto Rico option. My point is this: call it autonomy or whatever else you wish, but adopting of the Puerto Rico option is adopting the one state solution. It is not another option. Under this option any Palestinian in the now OT could freely move across the green line into Israel proper and have the right to vote in Knesset elections. Like the Palestinians , Jews who continue to live in the OT or who move there could not vote in Knesset elections. Effectively, the OT becomes a part of israel with both Palestinians and Jews having equal status as Israeli citizens. The only rights of citizen affected is the loss of voting as a result of the accident of location, a loss that any individual can remedy simply by moving to a different location.
Of course it is not adopting the one state solution. Very few Palestinians in the West Bank have the resources to buy or rent housing inside the green line. Furthermore, the Puerto Rico solution has evolved throughout American history. There are many versions of it.
eee, if there is a different version of the Puerto Rico solution, perhaps you will educate on what is is, or what you think it is. Trying to hold a conversation with you is like playing whack-a-mole.
Opps-educate us.
By the way, eee, Bibi says there is an economic miracle going on in the West Bank, so why do you differ? If the Palestinian have no resources, how in the hell is this miracle happening?
CT, You are learning fast. Welcome to the magical world of eee-logic, have a nice ride!
“Mole” is an appropriate word – just don’t whack him too hard, we need our e-bot in good working order.
Settlements illegal? – “they’re not as far as I’m concerned…”
These are the kind of brilliant and courageous souls who will guide us to a glorious future! Where’s my checkbook?