june gloom on 12/1/2009 at 17:48
Subjective Effect and I agreeing on something in CommChat.
Will wonders never cease.
DDL on 12/1/2009 at 18:44
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Wrong. 90% of the time it is terrorist rockets/mortars/suicide attacks. Even the Pro-Palestine BBC news recognises and reports this.
If you want to take the short-term view, yes. But I was thinking more along the lines of "what was it that made them fire rockets/mortars/etc", which comes down to anger at their treatment by Israel, which in turn is at least partially down to Israel's anger at being rocketed, which in turn is because of mistreatment by Israel, and so on and so forth back through history. It's not like every morning a new palestinian wakes up and decides to fire off a rocket for no reason at all.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
There is no land-grabbing. Israel pulled out of Gaza completely. They had to forcibly remover their own people and they had the balls to do it.
But there has been, in the past. Long view, here. If I forcibly occupied your garden, only to later go "oh all right then, have it back", would you then be 100% a-ok with that, and not in any sense seek some form of revenge? Remember, these are people we're talking about here. People are dumb, and horribly short-sighted, yet with incredibly long memories when it suits them.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Hamas are ridiculous. If they really wanted peace they just have to stop any further attacks. There would be no Israeli retaliation. The Israelis don't want to fight with anyone, but 100s of rockets a year gets old real quick. Hamas have never tried this. They get unhappy about something and instead of saying "Let's talk about this, because it's not working for us." they fire rockets.
Except..they kinda have. And as far as I can tell, it's usually because Israel's idea of a peaceful solution is much closer to "we'll take all the good stuff and you can fuck off and farm rocks" than Hamas are prepared to accept. The situation isn't just about violence, it's far far more complicated than that.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
If you don't believe me why not compare the Gaza strip with another Palestinian controlled piece of land - The West Bank. When was the last rocket/mortar/suicide attack from there and when was the last Israeli attack? And I'm talking military, not fanatical settlers (who, btw, should all be removed in a total pull out just like the way it was done in Gaza).
Like I said, I'm not saying Hamas AREN'T utter dicks, but it takes two to get to the utter clusterfuck we have today. What Israel seems to be attempting
is a way of solving the problem, but it's just a very very bad one.
Jason Moyer on 13/1/2009 at 00:29
The situation in the west bank is probably a little bit easier to deal with, considering the Palestinians there are living in close proximity to the only nation in the world where they make up a majority of the population.
demagogue on 13/1/2009 at 00:41
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
The situation in the west bank is probably a little bit easier to deal with, considering the Palestinians there are living in close proximity to the only nation in the world where they make up a majority of the population.
You mean the majority of Palestinian-decent in Jordan.
They talked about that in the paper today, how actually threatening that is to Jordan. If the Palestine-state idea is undermined, the alternative is effectively pushing the West Bank to be Jordan's responsibility... and Jordan is really nervous about that for that reason. Because of the connection, people get particularly inflamed about the issue in Jordan and destabilize things, and there's bad history there (when Pal exiles fled into Jordan and Jordan dealt harshly with them). But if the WB fell into Jordan's responsibility, Palestinians would riot because they lose their independence; but Jordan loses its identity and would be rocked with instability. So they have a lot at stake keeping the 2 state solution alive.
To the extent it might make the WB "easier" to deal with, it might be in the brinkmanship sense of greater potential disaster pushing people to have cooler heads. Of course the WB is also easier to deal with just because Fatah/the PA is in control, which relatively speaking is on the more moderate end of the spectrum.
Jason Moyer on 13/1/2009 at 00:52
Quote Posted by demagogue
You mean the majority of Palestinian-decent in Jordan.
What I meant is that the majority of the population of Jordan are Palestinian Arabs.
demagogue on 13/1/2009 at 03:11
Yes, that's what I meant, too.
Edit: I inadvertently left out the "is" in that sentence, though; sorry it confused things!
It should be "You mean the majority is of Palestinian-decent in Jordan".
It wasn't really a question, it was like one of those rhetorical things where you repeat what the other guy said just to confirm that we're really talking about the same thing, and that I understood you right.
Koki on 13/1/2009 at 08:08
I just want to know how the "accuracy of a sniper rifle, power of an M16" Tavors are doing.
Jason Moyer on 13/1/2009 at 12:30
Quote Posted by demagogue
Edit: I inadvertently left out the "is" in that sentence, though; sorry it confused things!
It should be "You mean the majority is of Palestinian-decent in Jordan".
Yeah that makes more sense, I honestly didn't know what the hell you meant originally. :D
Papy on 13/1/2009 at 16:30
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
A difficult question, but the "right" thing to do would be to try to arrest the terrorists and come to a peaceful solution with the reasonable people, rather than just killing 10+ civilians for every one of mine that was killed.
You want Israel to arrest a democratically elected government? You think this could solve the problem?
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I very, very strongly disagree with the idea of
any country that has a religion as its basis.
I agree (because of personal value), but this is, more or less, what both are for now. You can't criticize one side when the other is exactly the same. Anyway, there is also a lot of cultural differences between an Israeli and a Palestinian and, as a consequence, both could never create a functioning country.
Having said that, you also seem to forget that Hamas is about radical Islam. I don't know about you, but if a party who believe in radical Islam were to be elected where I live, I would pretty much do whatever it takes to remove them from power. At first I would just try to participate in protests and stuff like that, but if nothing peaceful works, I would enter resistance. Fuck democracy. There is simply no way I will accept to live in an radical Islamic country.
(BTW, before someone says this is just racism against Muslims, I'd like to point out that I try to boycott Intel and choose AMD whenever posible. I'll let people guess why.)
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
If said government is willing to act like a government and negotate, rather than acting like terrorists, then they deserve the right to be recognised as a legitimate power to negotation
with.
Considering (most probably) the majority of Hamas members completely refuse to negotiate (it's in their charter), I don't think the hypothesis is relevant.
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Also, the main thing that the Palestinians want from any peace treaty is the right for those Palestinians who were displaced and forced to leave their homes to have the right to return to their lands - something which Israel refuses to consider.
Even if you leave aside that this "right" to return, as demanded by Palestinians, would simply destroy the idea of Israel (as in Israel would just become another Arabic country), it is simply unfeasible.
(BTW, Israel was willing to consider it in a limited form)
Quote Posted by Nicker
Oh right. Israel's strategy of bombing them back to the stone age has worked wondrously well in the past. That's why they need to do it again. And again. And again.
Israel is still there, so I guess we could say it does work.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
My point is - these are people who were previously high functioning individuals who have chosen to be racist murderers.
Some of them were functioning and rational individuals, not all of them. Most Palestinians are now kids and young adults who grew up near one of the numerous Hamas charity organization.
As a side note, this is something I find "funny" :
"Police in Waukesha, Wisconsin report that two brothers got into an argument on Sunday over whose turn it was on an unrevealed PlayStation 2 game. The brothers allegedly got into a fist fight, which lead to one brother strangling the other. The one being choked pulled a knife and cut at his assailant's hands, after which the knife changed hands and one stabbed the other in the chest."Quote Posted by DDL
I was thinking more along the lines of "what was it that made them fire rockets/mortars/etc", which comes down to anger at their treatment by Israel
Actually,
we did the first act of war when
we decided to create Israel.
Kolya on 13/1/2009 at 16:36
Who's "we"? Britain?
