Israeli Settlements In Occupied Territories

[KrustyKidd]

As a right leaning type, I have always felt that Israel made sense, given the way the cards had fallen. However, when stepping back and reflecting, building settlements, giving some back and keeping others does not make any sense towards any kind of peace process.

What strategic security is involved here when it only ensures that you will forever be guarding these 'outposts' from attack?

Educate me please all.

[playfullfellow]

To me and probably a few others, it looks like it is a provocation of the Palestinians. As long as the settlements and troops are there, the Palestinians will keep attacking Isrealis. Thus Isreal can keep yelling the protecting their citizens angle. I am not a fan of what the Palestinians are doing. Bombing innocent people is just wrong. In all reality, both sides are wrong. The leaders like the chaos on both sides, they can then justify the use of force to try and force each other out. In one way or another, this battle has been going on for thousands of years in the ME, why is it going to stop now? We like to call ourselves more civilized than our ancestors but we aren't really. Our ancestors killed for more land, religion, better hunting grounds and wealth just to mention a few. Nothing has changed aside from the fact that instead of looking into your enemies eyes when you killed him or were being killed, we can now kill from hundreds of miles away. We speak out against one atrocity but turn a blind eye to others. That is just human nature, right or wrong, we chose what seems to be important to us rahter than what is right.

[August1991]

Nothing has changed aside from the fact that instead of looking into your enemies eyes when you killed him or were being killed, we can now kill from hundreds of miles away.

I cannot disagree more strenuously with this statement. By inventing mathematics and prices, we have made property rights tradeable. It is now easier to buy rather than to steal.

However, when stepping back and reflecting, building settlements, giving some back and keeping others does not make any sense towards any kind of peace process.

I think the Palestinians in Gaza will be happy. The Security wall may be a land grab but it will work.

IMHO, there is a tremedous frustration among young Muslim Arabs (men as much as women) and this frustration is great among quick-thinking Palestinians. They blame America but they know the problem is theirs - and as individuals, they simply don't know what to do to solve them. The frustration concerns social class, jobs, money, the variance between official truth and real truth and the sexual rules Muslim society has fallen into. Meanwhile, Kurds, Maronites and other Christians, Israelis, even Turks stand around and watch.

As much as I dislike the UN, here is its report on the Arab world.

BBC article on UN Arab Report

The European Catholic Church went through something vaguely similar some 600 years ago, or about 1400 years after the inception of Christianity. (On the Internet, look up the life of Savonarola and Florence.)

Some 1400 years after the life of the Prophet, Islam faces something similar. Bin Laden is a modern Savonorola. Maybe Muslims should be left alone to deal with this problem. It's their problem; not ours.

[playfullfellow]

I cannot disagree more strenuously with this statement. By inventing mathematics and prices, we have made property rights tradeable. It is now easier to buy rather than to steal.

I agree that mathematics and prices have made property rights tradeable. But if this was the case in the middle east, then one faction could just pay off the other faction and get them to leave. This can not work in the middle east because the fundamental disagreement is about religion and it has been this way for thousands of years. 2 + 2 = 4 does not mean squat when you feel someone else has wrongfully displaced you from your property. How do you propose to come up with a mathematical equation that will end thousands of years of hatred? If you could do it, I would very gladly bow humbly and buy you the best dinner money could buy. It is almost impossible to change peoples feelings about things they have been taught right from birth. The Palestinians will not give up this fight until all jews are gone from the middle east and the jews refuse to give up what they call their homeland. They will just keep killing each other whether we agree or not.

For a very basic peace process to start, a couple of thigs have to happen. 1st Isreal has to get out of the occupied territoryand then stick to their word when they give it. 2nd, the palestinians have to get organized under one leader who actually wishes to see the killing stop. 3rd, the US has to stay the hell out of the whole process because they seem to be able to screw up everything in the middle east because they know nothing (or care) about the history of the middle east.