Pulling out of Gaza

[Quahom1]

The Israelies are backing out of the disputed lands. If the bombings, suicide stuff and such continue, after the fact, then the world will have a definitive answer as to the intentions of those towards (in this case) the Israelies. This is rather a precarious situation for both Palestinians and Israelies. With "lands" to call their own, if one attacks another, that is considered war...yes?

What bothers me, is the lack of resourses, being offered to the Palestinians at this time. My question is why? Is there something we aren't being told about the Palestinian agenda? Or, are we ignoring something that has been told to us before, and now we are seeing the results?

With the major pullout from such lands, the attacks should subside...right? If they do not, then what?

This is not a time for celebration. This is a time for breath holding and hoping beyond hope.

My thoughts.

v/r

Q

[Wakiza]

[QUOTE=Quahom1]The Israelies are backing out of the disputed lands. If the bombings, suicide stuff and such continue, after the fact, then the world will have a definitive answer as to the intentions of those towards (in this case) the Israelies. This is rather a precarious situation for both Palestinians and Israelies. With "lands" to call their own, if one attacks another, that is considered war...yes?

What we all have to remember is the fact that the Gaza strip and the West Bank are Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Jewish state since 1967, and let us not forget the fact that the Jewish state did not exist since before the time of Christ and its' occupation by the Roman Empire until 1948, and that the vast majority of Jews living there are immigrants and ancestors of immigrants who have moved there or have been born there since the turn of the century. How far back in history do we take "legitimate" claims on ancestral territory? Here in Canada the First Nation Peoples have a much more recent historical claim to Canadian land than the Jewish people have on Israel. When will we stop this territorial maddness, and realize that we will destroy our planet if we don't stop this religious insanity. We cannot stubbornly contine to demand our own way just because some passage in the Torah, the Bible, or Oral Tradition demands that we are heirs to a chunk of real estate. It seems that religion is destroying the world and mankind...including the religion of Capitalism.

[human1111]

[QUOTE=Wakiza]

What we all have to remember is the fact that the Gaza strip and the West Bank are Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Jewish state since 1967, [/quote[
Minor correction, Jewish people did NOT occupy those lands, Arabs did.
Jews were finally allowed to return from their exile.

and let us not forget the fact that the Jewish state did not exist since before the time of Christ and its' occupation by the Roman Empire until 1948, and that the vast majority of Jews living there are immigrants and ancestors of immigrants who have moved there or have been born there since the turn of the century. How far back in history do we take "legitimate" claims on ancestral territory? Here in Canada the First Nation Peoples have a much more recent historical claim to Canadian land than the Jewish people have on Israel. When will we stop this territorial maddness, and realize that we will destroy our planet if we don't stop this religious insanity. We cannot stubbornly contine to demand our own way just because some passage in the Torah, the Bible, or Oral Tradition demands that we are heirs to a chunk of real estate. It seems that religion is destroying the world and mankind...including the religion of Capitalism.

As far as i am concerned Arabs have their lands, Jewish people do not. It is only fair that jewish get one small country theu deserve, ISRAEL!

Don't you dare compare Canada and US conquest of natives and what is in Israel. Jews are the chosen people and that is why they have been treated so badly throught 1000s of years. G-d judges righteous to the hearbreadth.

[Dor]

Well they have pulled out and what happens??? Exactly what the majority of the people feared yet fiqured would happen http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in798773.shtml so it does not seem like anything is going to change.

Originally Posted by Quahom1

With the major pullout from such lands, the attacks should subside...right? If they do not, then what? Q

Thats the question Q. What do the Jews and Israel have to give up next to try to appease people. Or will anything actually appease them as long as there is an independant state of Israel??

[I, Brian]

The Palestinians might not be in such a mess if:

a) They hadn't called the 2000 Interfada over Sharon's visit to Jerusalem
b) Israel hadn't destroyed the Palestinian police authority's infrastructure

Now Abbas has to try and bind disgruntled masses with tatters and rags.

[Wakiza]

Originally Posted by human1111

What we all have to remember is the fact that the Gaza strip and the West Bank are Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Jewish state since 1967, [/quote[
It is only fair that jewish get one small country theu deserve, ISRAEL!

Don't you dare compare Canada and US conquest of natives and what is in Israel. Jews are the chosen people .

You tell me "don't dare compare" British and US "conquest" of First Nations People in Canada to the Israeli situation...but I do compare it...the First Nations People here in Canada have a much more recent "ownership" of the continent of North America, than the Jewish people have of "Israel" Since you are being blunt, I suppose that allows me to reciprocate in kind. My references were in regards to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in relation to relatively recent history. In reality the whole of "Israel" for over 2000 years was part of the Roman Empire and then ruled mainly by the Muslims until 1948. The main point I am trying to make here is this....if we apply ownership to a people based on who was there first, even though it was thousands of years ago, then we open up a Pandora's box of "entitlement" that knows no end....and by virtue of that type of philosopy or ideology, being applied worldwide, then whole nations of people who have been born generation after generation and have lived for centuries in their "homelands" will have to be displaced and become homeless due to that fact. Granted...there were small pockets of Jews still living in the area of Palestine, and were tolerated and accepted by the Muslims throughout the centuries....just as First Nations People are "tolerated" here in Canada...and you think there is no comparisson?....do you think that Canada and the US should just relinquish their nationhood on the same basis as the Palistinians have been expected to relinquish theirs? If we applied this "rule" to the world at large...then complete chaos would reign and quickly on its' heels would come the fall of civilization as we know it. No race or people can claim a chunk of real estate as their rightfull property just because their anscestors owned it or controled it over two thousand years ago....without causing a war between themselves and the present occupiers...ie Palestinians pre 20th century. Too much time has passed to lay legitimate claim. To simply state that the Jews are "The Chosen People" smacks of fundamentalist religious thinking....ie "God gave it to us and therefore it is ours no matter who has lived there or controlled it for the past two millennia". I think a bit of historical perspective, and a modicum of objectivity...is needed here...see the following brief history of the area under discussion.

The Beginning

It all started a couple of thousand years ago, with a small unimportant Jebusite town by the not very original name of Jebus. The reason it was small and unimportant was that the ground was not really fit for agriculture, there was not much water around, and the only trade route in the near vicinity was a minor one. The Israelites came by and started fighting the local peoples. Eventually they settled down as a somewhat uneasy federation of tribal territories, that later became a kingdom.

Good Times

David, the second king of the Kingdom of Israel, was a great military leader and expanded his kingdom substantially, so that it almost became a local power. He also conquered Jebus around 1000 BC and made it his capital. There were various religious reasons for choosing the place, but the main reason was that the town sat on the border between two tribal territories, so there was not one specific tribe that got all the power.

David's son, King Solomon, was wise enough to marry into practically every important royal family around in order to avoid wars. The Kingdom of Israel became rich and powerful - maybe the taxes were a bit high, but all-in-all Solomon was a good king, and he did not have any problems. During his reign Jerusalem grew bigger, and the first Temple was built in it - big and shiny and spreading the smell of roasting meat all over town. Three times a year pilgrims from all over the country came to the Temple, and so Jerusalem became not only a political and religious centre but a commercial one as well. Everything was good and everybody was happy, for a while.

Bad Times

When Solomon died, internal fights followed, and Israel was divided into two small rival kingdoms - the Kingdom of Israel that had its capital in Samaria and the smaller Kingdom of Judea that had its capital in Jerusalem. Invasions of neighbouring kingdoms were the natural consequence of this, and as early as five years into his rule King Rehoboam (Solomon's son) had to pay the Egyptian king Shishak with the gold treasure of the Temple to prevent him from conquering Jerusalem. Eventually, after years of fighting each other and everybody else, the both Israel and Judea were conquered by the Assyrians. Jerusalem was not conquered though the Assyrians laid siege on it. This might be attributed to the foresight of King Hezekiah, who dug a tunnel from the Spring of Gihon, the city's only water source then, to a pool within the city called the Siloam Pool.

When the Babylonians came they conquered the entire area, turning it into a protectorate-kingdom. After the king of Jerusalem tried to rebel against them, the Babylonians got angry, sent in forces and put Jerusalem under siege again. They broke in, ruined the Temple and deported most of the Jews to Babylon.

Jerusalem was left desolate for a while, but then the Persians took over the Babylonian Empire, and King Cyrus the Great let the Jews return to settle in their land and rebuild their Temple. They did so, slowly reconstructing what used to be a big city, but Jerusalem remained mainly a religious centre and not much more than that.

In Comes Western Civilization

Greeks

Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, and Jerusalem with it. Jerusalem became a Hellenic city, with gymnasiums, theatres, temples and all the other conveniences required for a civilized life back then. It was the new temples that eventually upset the Jews, and caused the great Maccabee Rebellion. The rebellion was surprisingly successful and drove the Hellenes away. Jerusalem became the capital of the newly-founded Hasmonean Kingdom.

Romans

Before long, the Hasmonean royal family started fighting each other, as royal families so often do. Some members of the royal family were stupid enough to call in the Romans for help. The Romans took advantage the opportunity, conquered the land, and made it a protectorate-kingdom under the rule of King Herod. Jerusalem developed magnificently, and the second Temple that was built by the returning exiles was renovated, making it much bigger and shinier than the first Temple. Herod's family occupied themselves by trying to assassinate each other, which was quite usual in the Roman Empire. At some point, the Romans decided they had enough and simply turned the whole area into a Roman province, called Provincia Judea.

However, like the Hellenes, the Romans had some troubles controlling the natives. A big revolt broke out in 66 AD, led by several radical groups. Jerusalem was regained, and maintained as an independent Jewish city for three years. Then the Romans sent in some military reinforcements, and put the city under siege. The various radical groups trapped inside did not fare very well - internal disagreements became internal fights, and one of the more fanatical groups burned down the city's food stocks. Finally, the Romans broke into the city, wrecked it and burnt down the Temple. Later, they crushed the last groups of insane fanatics, the most famous of which took cover in the stronghold of Masada in the Judea desert, and committed mass suicide to avoid surrendering to the Romans. Jerusalem was once again left desolate for some time, and then it was rebuilt under the name 'Aelia Capitolina'.

Byzantines

The land was quiet for a while, but not for long. The Roman Empire was divided into an Eastern Empire and a Western Empire. Provincia Judea was in the eastern section, under the rule of the Byzantines. They had problems keeping invaders away, but they still managed to remain a strong empire for quite a long time. Being very religious Christians, they had great interest in Jerusalem. They built churches where the old Roman temples used to stand, new relics were found every other day, and The Temple Mount was left desolate. No Jews were allowed in the city, except for one day a year when they could come and weep over their ruined Temple.

Muslims Take Over

In the 7th Century AD, a new force rose in the Middle East. The Muslim forces, led by the second caliph, Omar Ibn al-Khattab, swept out of the Arab peninsula and caught the Byzantines by surprise. They too had an interest in Jerusalem because of religious reasons (it is the third holiest city in Islam, and so the great Dome of the Rock was built on Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was rediscovered under a huge dump by the Jews that were now allowed back in the city. As the capital of the Arab Empire moved from the Arab peninsula to Damascus and later to Baghdad, Jerusalem became less important, at least from a political aspect, and nothing interesting happened there for a while.

Religious Wars, Phase One

The Crusaders arrived right at the end of the 11th Century AD, slaughtering every heathen they happened to run into, and not paying much attention to the fact that the heathen empire they were raiding was much more enlightened than Europe at the time. They conquered Jerusalem in 1099, slaughtering as many Jews and Muslims as they possibly could, and King Baldwin I became the first ruler of the Crusaders' Kingdom, called the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Religious Wars, Phase Two

It did not last long. The Muslims re-captured the land, and then the Crusaders re-captured it. Then there were various fights, agreements and breaking of agreements. Finally the Muslims drove the Crusaders away once and for all, residing there quietly until they began having the inevitable internal disagreements. The Arab Empire was divided into smaller kingdoms, which took over the area alternately. The Egyptians had Jerusalem for a while, and then the area was invaded by the Mameluks, who built some nice things around, but did not really do anything worth mentioning.

Temporary Stability

The Ottoman Empire came along in the beginning of the 16th Century, and they held the area for a relatively long period - about 400 years. Under the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent Jerusalem was great again, but as the years went by the Ottoman Empire became more and more corrupt and progressively weaker. The European Powers took advantage of that and grabbed all they could; they encouraged construction within Jerusalem as much as possible, often under the purpose of religion, acquiring land by building a church there and so on. The crumbling remains of the Ottoman Empire were defeated in The Great War of 1914-1918. General Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917, and the Sykes-Picot agreement that was drawn up a little later left the territory of Palestine under a British mandate.

The 20th Century

Great Britain

The British, like so many others before them, had trouble with the natives. The Jews liked them for a while, until the Great Arab Uprising in 1936 turned the British government pro-Arab. Several guerrilla organisations started working against the British and for an independent Israeli state. By 1947 the British government decided they just did not care anymore and took off, leaving the natives to fight amongst themselves.

Israel

The UN Partition Plan in 1947 left the Jerusalem area as an enclave under UN control. However this was not accepted by the Arabs and a war broke out, after which Israel had a somewhat bigger area than what they were originally supposed to have. Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan (with a wide strip of no-man's-land in the middle, because the separation line was drawn on the cease-fire maps with a pencil). After the six-day war in 1967 the Eastern City was conquered, and the Israelis looked with pride on their re-united capital, and then failed to provide any municipal services to the eastern neighbourhoods, a situation that remains to this day.

When the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations commenced, the issue of Jerusalem was one of the 'big issues' left for later discussions. Both sides regard the city as a symbol; the Palestinians demand a part of it, including Temple Mount, the Israelis refuse to re-divide the city and are worried about security issues. Different solutions have been suggested, but none have seemed to do the trick, so the problem remains.

The future is still uncertain. www.bbc.co

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Dor

Well they have pulled out and what happens??? Exactly what the majority of the people feared yet fiqured would happen http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in798773.shtml so it does not seem like anything is going to change.


Thats the question Q. What do the Jews and Israel have to give up next to try to appease people. Or will anything actually appease them as long as there is an independant state of Israel??

Brian has good points. However the Bible spoke of this long ago...it does not matter what people think, it was foretold that Israel would once again be. In 1948 that happened. How can one beat that prophecy?

v/r

Q

[bananabrain]

Originally Posted by wakiza

You tell me "don't dare compare" British and US "conquest" of First Nations People in Canada to the Israeli situation...but I do compare it...

if the comparison is instructive, fair enough, but if the purpose is to make the israelis the baddie "imperialist invaders" and the palestinians the goodie "indigenous peoples" you do both sides a disservice by oversimplification. one might even bring up the babylonian roman, greek, persian, turkish, crusader and arab claims to sovereignty in the holy land - perhaps the israelis are the "indigenous peoples" there, or perhaps even the canaanites if you want to really beat up on the legitimacy of israel. either way, your case rests on the fact that so far there is no evidence that the "first nations" in canada did not dispossess an even "firster" people. you seem to be suggesting that the more prior the claim, the better - and then here:

the First Nations People here in Canada have a much more recent "ownership" of the continent of North America, than the Jewish people have of "Israel"

arbitrarily deciding that actually, it's recent ownership that counts! in which case, how long do we have to wait before recent jewish posession of the land israel becomes, by a sort of international squatter's rights, a moral legitimacy?

In reality the whole of "Israel" for over 2000 years was part of the Roman Empire and then ruled mainly by the Muslims until 1948.

what a tendentious statement. if you want to get historical, the roman empire proper ruled the area, first as the protectorate (from about the C1st BCE) and then the province of judea, then renaming it as "palestina" after the philistines, if you please, after their ethnic cleansing (if you want to get technical) of the jews after the bar kokhba revolt in the C1st and the sack of jerusalem, which was renamed "aelia capitolina". so, at that point, about 150 years have passed. by the time the roman empire goes christian and splits it is about the 5th century. palestine, as it is then, passes into byzantine control and is populated by a varied population. no arabs so far - they don't arrive until about the C7th with the armies of islam. so we have approximately 650 years of roman and semi-roman rule, not "over 2000". the various caliphates then rule, uninterrupted until the first crusade in the C11th - then it changes hands over and over until the ottoman turks arrive in the C16th, who then hold onto it until the british take it off them during WW1.

now, i'm not an archaeologist, but assuming for the sake of argument (and i am not interested in entering into one, because nobody's going to change their mind) that the ancient israelites arrived in canaan by the latest in approximately 1300 BCE, the late bronze age, Divinely entitled or not - and that they had sovereignty in one form or another until the destruction of the first Temple by the babylonians in 586 BCE. there you have approximately 900 years of jewish "claim". how long does it take for this to lapse, just so i know? as there has been a continuous jewish presence (albeit a very, very small one at some times, sovereignty or not) at what point did this claim lapse? i just ask so i can understand your PoV. anyway, the jews stay in babylon for 70 years, returning in approximately 500 BCE and then remain sovereign (bar a few episodes of greek dominance under alexander and the seleucids in the C3rd BCE) until the romans arrive in the C1st BCE. you're talking about roughly 500 more years of sovereignty there, during which the second Temple is built, the Oral Law written down and the foundations laid for the "classical" period of rabbinic judaism.

so, to recap, our cumulative score here, regardless of our biblical "title deeds", as it were, if you go back to the late bronze age is:

modern israelis: 60 years
british: 30 years
turks: 510 years
crusaders: 100 years (and i'm being generous there)
arabs: 500 years (albeit a bit episodic at the end)
romans, byzantines and western empire: 650 years (and i'm lumping them together)
greeks: say 50 years (if i'm being *really* generous)
second Temple judaism: 500 years
babylonians: 70 years
first Temple and biblical israel: 900 years

soooo... add up all the jewish periods and you get about 1400 years. add up all the rest and you get about 1900. (NB: at no point is there a sovereign arab state called palestine) and, even if you discount the first Temple period, the "first peoples" are still the jews, unless you can tell me where the canaanites are nowadays, because it beats the hell out of me. now, i will freely admit that modern zionism made a spectacularly catastrophic mistake in failing to take into account in the late C19th that there were actually people living where they wanted to settle, but despite the more egregiously stupid and chauvinistic slogans ("a land without a people for a people without a land" - duh!) actually the jews and arabs got on pretty well until the 1930s, when the situation went tits-up, due mainly to the mufti of jerusalem, haj-amin el-husseini - and his friends in nazi germany. furthermore, lest we forget, the territory now generally agreed to be the future palestinian state was originally part of egypt (gaza) and the kingdom of jordan (the west bank). so, to be fair, palestinian nationalism is actually a recent creation, one that dates back to the six-day war in 1967. two generations have now grown up that see themselves as palestinians, not egyptians, jordanians or ottomans and it is they that are entitled to national self-determination.

but i digress - the point that i intended to make was that regardless of whether you see the bible as constituting an eternal claim to this territory despite our lack of continual sovereignty, it is not remotely credible to compare it to the relatively simple dispossession of the first nations in what is now north america. what is more, the israelis are considering a two-state solution, which i don't believe anyone is considering for the native americans. and, just to be clear, the israelis have not sought to convert the palestinians to judaism or to wipe them out with disease and alcohol, or by outlawing their cultural practices. nor are the americans and canadians surrounded by heavily armed, numerically superior, belligerent and fanatical apaches, lakotahs, inuit and tlingit, so do us all a favour and spare us the romantic comparisons.

so, to sum up; either it's first possession - in which case it's jews, or it's recent possession - in which case it's also jews, as israelis - or it's "facts on the ground", (israelis again), or it's international law (the united nations voted to support the partition of mandatory palestine into a jewish and an arab part) or it's moral rights, in which case it's both of us. and if the arabs had not launched the 1948 war this situation would not even have arisen until the inhabitants of gaza and the west bank had sought independence from the jordanians and egyptians - if they had even done so! either way this genie cannot be put back in its bottle - we jews are as entitled to national self-determination as any ethnic group on the planet. are israelis expected to return to poland? to russia? to germany? what about the sizeable part of the israeli population that came from egypt, iraq, iran, morocco, syria, yemen, the balkans? how exactly do you propose we should take this situation forward? how exactly do you propose to reverse the last 2000 years of diaspora, in which three times a day, we pray to return to zion and jerusalem? regardless of whether you recognise the legitimacy of the biblical claim or not, we've never given this up. we never will give this up. it is to the credit of the israeli government, even of such a hawk as ariel sharon, that they have recognised the eventual necessity of a palestinian state. however, a systematic denial of our claim to the land is in no way helpful. all it does is pander to the real haters.

b'shalom

bananabrain

btw: don't get me started on that sodding sykes-picot treaty; it was the british and the french who are responsible for the bloody mess that the middle east is in to this very day!

[juantoo3]

Thank you, BB, for the first comprehensive overview I have ever seen on this issue.