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The SakerA bird's eye view of the vineyard
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
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A Statement To The Palestinian People international |
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 Saturday August 21, 2010 21:03 by pat c
 Mustafa Barghouti MP writes about the pressure that once again is being imposed on the palestinian people to enter into so called Peace Talks. Dr Barghouti believes that such talks without a clear agenda, timetable or without a binding mechanism for implementation will result in a betrayal of the Palestinian People. Full article at link. The terms of reference should be based on international law and UN resolutions and to include a predetermined timetable to reach a final status agreement. The agreement will necessarily include ending the Israeli occupation of all territories occupied in 1967 and enabling the Palestinians to exercise the Right of Return, right to self-determination, and the right to an independent and sovereign state in the territory occupied in 1967 - with Jerusalem as its capital. |
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Comments (24 of 24)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24..off the whole effort. No sign of Washington pulling on Tel Aviv's long leash. Obama could bring them to heel, or, even if outflanked by a shekel-stuffed congress, he could show some of that leadership for change he trumpeted.
No prior conditions just means business as usual and more facts on the ground while the black man proves he can do the forked-tongue as good as the pale-face.Bufallo soldier?
Obama is doing some net-mending before the congressionals, and trying to restore his dwindling and disappointed constituency for possible second term attempt to 'leave his legacy'. I may well be wrong, but I think its a long-shot gamble that is wearing thin, and may well let the republicans straight back in, and leave the Democrats carrying the blame-can for the Bush fuck-ups. Thats increasingly the hymn of the neo-con machine, and they seem to be outplaying him all round, if he has not in fact defected into their ranks in resignation at the totalitarian media control of the right.
Next chapter? The flotillas are raising the temperature and endangering the peace process?I hope I'm wrong.
It is mildly funny to read the PA think they are being pressured to talk to Israel given that Devil's Work is implicitly calling for US pressure on Israel - which they did quite heavily to BN when he was elected - but memories are short.
The US has paid half and UK or €U a quarter to a third UNWRA costs since 1950 which is what has enabled the PLO and co to wage war without worrying about the costs to their civil "infrastructure and economy".
Mirabile dictu no Arab government paid a brass farthing to UNWRA pre- 1967 and precious few single figures since which indicates the Arab world would not really care if the Palestine Arabs of whatever sub group fell through the political floor tonight.
Between the two above paragraphs we could all have a nice Christmas present if Obama has the guts to tell both parties to sign a peace of two states with present inhabitants staying put, or lose their subs & aid w.i.e. if they fail. Palestine could then - if it had sense (?) sign free trade agreements with both Jordan and Israel and get on with a glorious future, Irish style without a defence budget burden.
....and you might get a better overview than your recidivist iterations of confusing Arab regimes with the region's populations and even realise that 'both populations' are not 'staying put'. Never know, it might even curb your anserine fatuity.
The settlements and demolitions continue, as you are well aware, and the pretense at a ban will be lifted officially next month. Palestinian farmland is being burned by settlers and there is no sign or indication that Bibi's coalition has any interst other than the continuation and extension of the cleansing of the native Palestinians from their land. Thanks to AIPAC, there is little prospect of the Palestinian case getting past the hasbara of 'Obama the Muslim' and registering on the US public's radar.
'....without a defence budget burden...' translates from your e-brew into defenseless to Israeli manipulation as a source of cheap labour.
It was called a bantustan when I lived in SA. Somehow, despite my pigmentation, I was never convinced by it's apologists.
It's quite astounding to hear of someone complaining that the Palestinians are being "pressured" to make peace. One assumes peace is a good thing.
But I would be interested to know what the Palestinians are offering to bring to the table, what concessions they will make for peace. Because the terms of the 'agreement' mentioned above are certainly not for peace, but for victory.
What are they offering, other than a generous gesture to stop suicide-bombing civilians?
It depends whose peace, and at whom's expense.
The terms of peace Israel offers is a string of impoverished reservations to confine them like the Cherokee nations, with no acknoledgement of their equal human rights.
Its hard to resist the attractions of peace when you are looking up from under the jackboot of any victorious army, let alone the indoctrinated and highly polished boot of the IDF in all its plundering guises.
Maybe you should ask them to offer their forgiveness.
Maybe you should cross enemy lines and look back at yourself.
Do it for Yom Kippur.
And Wounded Knee.
The problem is bigger than Israel and Palestine, but the scapegoating of the civilian population of Palestine, particularly Gaza, is as sour on the conscience of anyone who listens to the contorted distortions of hasbara polyspeak, particuarly since the cynical and brutal blitzkreig of Obama's entre, which terminated the bombardment,( as though to a conductor's baton), as the gloating pleasures of an arms dealer's philanthropy.
i suppose they could steal their own bread back and bring it to the table would that be a gift suffice for a member of israeli government??
Apologies.
That 'hasbara polyspeak' up above there, should have read ' hasbara Polly-speak'.
As in Norwegian Blue.
And is an acknoledgement (sic) of the Palestinians' desire to have their own state separate from Israel not a recognition of their "equal human rights"?
What would be?
See, the problem faced by those who pretend to care is that the situation is a little more complex than they can handle: once Palestine becomes a separate state, the conflict becomes INTERnational, and so when the rockets start again and Israel targets the shooters, Big Brother Iran steps in as an 'ally' of Palestine.
So, the rockets have to stop. For peace. And the suicide bombings, and Hamas has to recognise Israel's right to exist.
Requires no discrimination on colour, creed or ethnic grounds.
And '..an acknoledgement of a desire...'?
Grand.
Equal rights?
So...
How would you feel if Hamas were to akkknollege '..Israel's desire for it to recognise Israel's right to exist.'
Equal rights?
Great, so can we have two peaceful mutually-recognising states side by side now please?
The people to put that to are too far under the IDF jackboot to be heard at this distance. Take the boot off their supply lines, comply with the basic UN requirements for humanitarian subsistence, and stop the demolitions, bulldozings, mission creep settlement expansions and general ethnic 'hygiene' measures and they might be able to gasp out an answer.
Oh, and try listening to them when they say what is required, instead of broadcasting lies that justify the vicious policies of Tel Aviv to no-one but the lockstepped ultras and your own propaganda-terrified and over-indoctrinated Israeli population.
not snide at all, a serious suggestion. And you have nothing - nothing - to say to the other side of the conflict? There's a conflict, and you've picked the bad guy and that's that. You can't think of ONE thing the Palestinian side has done wrong? ever?
That's my point. myopia may be a terrible thing, but it sure makes faux outrage look like concern.
"That's my point. myopia may be a terrible thing,"
Indeed it may be Tim. just look at the death figures for gazans vs israelis. kinda disproportionate don't you think? Look at the facts about the outdoor prision that is gaza. Also look at the systematic erosion of palestinian lands over the past 30 odd years. It's more striking in animated form as you see the relentless pattern better.
Typical hasbara. You are trying to frame the discussion in a distorted fashion by getting people to view a conflict between david and goliath (after goliath stole all david's lunch money) as a fair and equal fight. It clearly isn't to anyone with eyes and ears and two working brain cells not owned by the MSM
get a real job. There are still some real jobs in tel aviv these days aren't there? Expensive Arms imports from the US is a thriving industry there I hear.
Since early on. But still a semblance of sight. Outrage I dont have time for(I'm to long in the tooth and and I'm lucky enough to have been raised in a no-war zone, so I take my limited opinions with a grain of salt).
The Israeli plantation started the conflict. Its now a fait accompli. The trick is to stop pouring petrol on the flames and act like we have emerged from the dark ages. My observations indicate Israeli(partially historically justifiable) paranoia maintains the conflict, and parasitical elements on all sides prey on the results, not least the puppeteer in Washington, minding and strenghtening its stranglehold on the oil of the region in order to keep up its disproportional consumption of the wealth of the planet.
Israel is just a blinkered tool in the great game and the Israeli people are victims as much as the Palestinian, but whereas any Palestinian I have met sees this, no Zionist defender will admit it. I have altready said I'm quite sure the Palestinian and Arabs have the same number of arseholes per square village as Paddy or any other nationality. It is the Israeli/Zionist culture of racial superiority(mirror of the aryan mythological fantasy) that projects the image of a surrounding 'sea' of natural hostility. I have travelled in Islamic countries and know this to be false. They are civilised and sophisticated peoples, though often poor and 'under-developed' by material standards(often a result of centiuries of colonial interference and imposition of corrupt stooges). And yes, there are fascistic elements in arab nationalism,but this is a fact of life pertaining to ALL nationalisms pushed to extreme. Not all the levers pushing Israel to its extreme reactionary behaviour are external.
A cursory glance over any days reportage through the israeli media confirms this for anyone ATTEMPTING to be objective. Some dont make the attempt.
And there are none so blind as those who dont want to look at the mess they have created, but must frame some innocent for their crimes, and dress their brutality in the self-exculpatory excuses of 'self defence'. Have you so little knowledge of Irish history as not to recognise the patterns?
But at least you acknowledge, Mr.V, that there might BE a proportionate response. And quite a few Gazans are dying at the hand of Hamas, too, you may have noticed. The MSM is hardly doing a good job defending Israel, is it? But the idea that it is helps the so-called 'independent' media feel morally superior in the side they have chosen.
Suggest I and others are in the pay of Tel Aviv? no problem. Suggest - in jest - that others are the servants of Tehran? Nope, not allowed. The illusion of the hopelessly biased media is an excuse to keep rational opinion at bay. I have not framed the argument as you say, but have simply asked what can be expected from the Palestinian side in the effort for peace.
Nobody is saying that the conflict is not bad, that heavy-handedness is not involved; half of Israel is up in arms about it. What is lacking is any placement of blame on the other side of the conflict.
And, no, the "Israeli plantation" did NOT start the conflict: stop reading Irish history into an entirely different scenario. Israel was founded by the same UN (ok not quite the same, but that's another story) that the Left is so fond of these days. The 1948 war was the beginning - and should have been the end - of the conflict.
OD, what a ridiculous and demonstrably false assertion you make. Let me get this right, Islamic cultures are poor and underdeveloped because of "centuries" of colonial interference?
What about Islamic colonialism? the East African slave trade? Al-andalus?
That aside, can you see no other reason that a poverty-inducing religion might cause its adherents to remain poor and underdeveloped, as was Europe in the medieval period? Or that such a culture encourages despotic rulers by its suppression of dissent and critical thought?
Why do you think of them as mere passive victims of history? Is there no connection at all between a belief system and its real-world consequences? Why not hold adherents to those beliefs responsible for them - a courtesy we extend to each other?
But you repetitively attribute beliefs to me that I have not voiced, as you project your own bigotry and simplifications onto all who do not kiss your rod of victory.
Those rods were known as fasces in Rome, hence fascism, the emperor-worship of Mussolini and his admirers.
And the plantation/settlement program continues.
All your drones and all your hasbara regurgitation will not bring peace to either Israel, Palestine or the region.
But then the agenda is, as ever, not peace but disrupt, contain, extract.
Disrupt the target society.(includes bargain de-humanise your opponent as 'rebel', 'terrorist', 'savage red-skin', 'Jew vermin', etc. package)
Contain the natural reaction.
Extract the resources, starting with a claim on the land.
A.k.a., The lie of the land(being ours by right).
Q.E.D. We dictate the terms of the 'peace' from a position of maximal dominance while our major sponsor acts as 'impartial' broker.
As we say in Dublin: 'Teach your granny to suck eggs'.
And the plantation of Palestine brewed a century in Zionist minds in parallel with the Aryan idiocy before the stealth 'facts on the ground' began being instigated, by multiple means, not least the old reliable wedge of wonga.
Shalom.
"you repetitively attribute beliefs to me that I have not voiced"
Where? when?
I've asked you simple questions, based on your own claims, that you have not answered. Which you have no obligation to do, of course, but then don't make accusations at me. Your delusional and paranoid view of the world will not bring peace to Palestine.
And while we're talking logic, under British Law, racism is defined as bigotry towards
"any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin."
want to rethink that boycott?
At last Devils Work has said something straight all round that there are none so blind as those who will not see. He and his plaster cast friends should try it by checking out the 1947 press files. The apple cart was upset in 1947 by Arab refusal to accept the UN two state policy and further messed up by Arab refusals to shut down the dispute.
The proof is in the silly take up of how some Arabs - and Iran - reference the Israeli governmment as Tel Aviv instead of Jerusalem.
Then there is the silly neo-or rather pseudo Marxism all over as if the only villains are the US [economic] domination and the Arab parties owe themselves no questions for self-mismanagement and mis-judgement of others.
And alleging "Aryan" exclusivity in Zionism excuses prefabricated thinking and defamation.
Between the Romans and the rise of Maritime Europe (Spain Britain Holland Portugal & France) the imperialists were the Arabs and Moslem World in general and their modern tragedy is to think they can just walk back into their medieval supremacism.
Currently neither of the parties can give satisfaction to their opposite and forcing them to the table instead of turning down the heat will only set up the next clash sooner than need be - but of course elections in powers off East as much as West demand, "foreign policy successes," to divert the electorates.
The biggest stumbling block is that the Arabs want "The Return" and the Israelis are not going to commit suicide, neither personally nor politically, by accepting that - no more than the Irish are returning to the UK. Everything else is fudging the issue that matters. That was the situation in 1949 - 67 when the Arabs of Gaza, Nablus and Hebron Districts put up as well as any other Arab population with its Arab rulers rather than create their own state; and it is still the Arab contention in defiance of the UN two state policy that there be an Israeli Jewish majority state because nobody else wants those Jewish millions including the poor ones - least of all Ireland.
Dont think so. Its not based on british 'justice'. Its about a militarist oppression of a civilian population and illegal collective punishment married to constant harassment and repeated demonstrations of contempt for international law, except when it can be invoked for self-promotion.
Its about human rights, not flag-worship.
Apple cart?
Upset by Arab refusal to roll over and kiss your tank tracks?
Dont make me return your insults.
To the intelligence of any schoolchild that might be reading.
The Arabs of the territories Israel occupied but did not annnex in 1967 are not entitled by any opinion or legality to civil rights in Israel as the intention of all concerned is that they will eventually return to Arab rule by Jordan & Egypt, or themselves - when the Palestine Arabs can face their constituency and historical errors of aggression rejecting UN recommendations in 181 in 1947 and several attempts to close down the war since - including mutual satisfactions with Jordan and Egypt.
Ever since 1967 Israeli forces and officials in the Districts of Gaza, Hebron and Nablus ("West Bank"means you believe in returning them to Jordan) have been accountable to the Israeli Supreme Court. That is an Israeli human rights exception to be proud of. When is Syria following?
The human rights of the Arabs of Gaza, Hebron and Nablus, and military operations disturbing them are not a solely Israeli responsibility. There is also a responsibility on any occupied population to be civil, and at least some political common sense in negotiating as soon as possible a peace agreement. If an occupied population indulges themselves "resistance" that amounts to military violence then there are military consequences, which in the nature of these things can be painful. The accompanying press hue, cry and hypocrisies are political froth on top since wars and politics have existed; but as somebody said of Arafat - he prolonged the Six Day War into six years - pity it is now 43 and still infringing Israeli human rights since 1948 - not least by inflicting suspicion on Israeli Arab citizens.
Of 'seperate development', the latterly euphemism of the verkrampte for apartheid when the word became an expletive.
of course, the crime of Apartheid depended on only one side wanting to be "apart" from the other, the other being not entirely satisfied with said apartness. In Israel we have a different situation, where both parties are content to be apart from one another, free if you like, which puts a different angle on things.
and you say 'we' in Israel.
If you are an Israeli you know full well this is a gross simplification.
In the nineteenth century when complimentary sets of German Aryan and Zionist historians were inventing their pure race fantasies, 'both' were agreed to a seperation of their 'races' as the logical solution to Germany's growing pains.
I will presume you have an idea where that brought us, so far.
Keep charging up the cul-de-sac, Tim, but stop trying to drag everyone else into another holocaust. Because that is the logic of this pure race delusion, whatever its immediate surface manifestations. As with the North, disagreeable and uncomfortable as it may be, we gotta learn to accomodate each other. Denial of the violent origins of the Israeli state at the expense of the idiginous population must be gotten past.
Ultimately Israelis and Palestinians and other neighbouring populations are going to have to emerge from their trenches and realise that the current course is a recipe for disasters we have no right to inflict on further generations.
I'm sure you are familiar with the nuclear MAD deadlock.Mutually Assured Destruction. It can be achieved by the proverbial thousand cuts, as well as by nuclear short-circuit.
America is practising such a suicidal policy still; its current wars have holed it below the financial waterline. The imperial war cycles are not appropriate for a species that has mastered the means to exterminate itself. Unless you like bunkers and melodrama.
There were cases of a warship torpedoing itself with its own accoustic torpedo because they turned the wrong way after launching and entered their own missile's hydrophone cone. So Opus Diabolos . The Palestine Arabs also wish to be separate or they would not be campaigning for their own state as per Mr Barghouti and his cousins repeated statements?
Regardless of the Germans and others' racial bents in 19th century nationalism, Jews have never needed separateness lessons or theories in Christian and Moslem countries. The long standing snigger about all the Zionist founding fathers was that they were disapppointed assimilationists - to the point that Nordau and the poet Tchernikovsky had gentile wives. How much further can any minority go than intermarriage in wanting to be, "all in this together," as fellow French, Germans or Irish ? Except that enough of the host communities to make life difficult if not dangerous, did not want them.
" As I was going up the stairs
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh how I wish he'd go away!"
That is still the Arab attitude and not only to Israel but to Jews if you look at their visa regs and residency and naturalisation conditions whence the stink when Saudi did not want any US military who happened to be Jewish to enter and were told that within the US military the secular constitution applied. Funny that nobody in this thread or elsewhere has raised a hue and cry when "President Abbas" suggested this fortnight that any NATO peace peacekeepers to watch over Palestine borders will have to be judenfrei. Rather blows out of the water all the waffle - for Western media only - about a democratic secular Palestine ???