Quote:
Originally Posted by tankdriver
In the original article posted, this Israeli attack was in response to attacks that killed 1 Israeli and wounded 6. You're right, it seems Hamas is not very good at rocket attacks. Israel on the other hand is extremely good. My point in bringing it up is that retaliatory justification is weak when you kill at a 200:1 ratio.
It's a slippery slope trying to define who was there first, and ultimately it is a pointless endeavor. Before the Ottomans were the Crusaders, who were preceded by Arabs who were preceded by Babylonians who were preceded by Romans, Greeks, Persians, etc..
Palestine is the name of the region, not the name of a country. It was under the control of the Ottoman Turks until WWI. Lawrence of Arabia incited the Arab majority living there to revolt. The Arabs were promised their own lands. Palestine was the territory the allies (european) were to control.
At this point, having already promised the Arabs their own lands, Britain also promised Jews a homeland.
That's when and where it gets f**ked up. There was never concrete borders decided on what country goes where. Nobody really cared because the Brits and French maintained sovereignty over everything. But it's here, not 1948, that the problems began.
One thing is for sure. The Arabs were the majority population under the Ottomans and under the Brits. Between 1919 and 1948, Jewish immigrants flooded the territory that had been not quite defined as the future Jewish country. In fact, Britain imposed immigration rules limiting Jewish immigration to the territory. So the Arabs could not invade the area because they were the ones living there.
Eventually, the Arabs grew tired of the Jewish immigration and British rule and revolted. They lost. When the Brits said they were leaving, the UN came up with a plan that created an Arab area of Palestine and a separaet Jewish state. The Arabs did not agree to the partition. The Brits left and the 48 war began. After winning it, Israel kept half of what was supposed to be (under the UN plan) the Arab Palestine.
The issue was arab control of lands that they had been living in. The issue was never a question of how much territory should be given to the creation of Israel, such that the rest be called Palestine. If part of Texas is lost, how much of Oklahoma should Olkahomans cede to a new Texas?
Israel has tried to give them bits and pieces spread around in little pockets, surrounded by Israel - and walled off. More like a prison camp than homeland.
We're still missing the forest for the trees though. If Israel had kept to what it stated in its declaration creating the state:
We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
then there would be no desire to suicide bomb. An equal society is a relatively happy one. It's hard to get happy, or at least contented, people to kill themselves with vest bombs.
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Good post, Let me take it point for point again.
Point 1 200:1 kill ratio. If HAMAS did not shoot 1888 rockets into Israel the Israelis would not have fired back. Remember that the IDF sent messages to the Gaza civilians to get away from where the rockets were being launched. Did the Gazans not believe the messages? Were they being held there by HAMAS as HUMAN SHIELDS? We will probably never know.
Point 2: about the Persians and Crusaders -- I tried to keep itin the 20th Century, but you are right this pice of land has been in contention since King Solomon.
Point 3: look at the Ottoman maps -- no where did they have a place called Palestine.
Point 4: I agree with the whole Lawrence of Arabia thing. The Brits used the local Arabs to harass the Ottomans (German Allies) and did promise them a free country as their reward -- However, being Brits, they did not mean it. LoA drank himself to death with guilt over this...
Point 5: I agree that the Brits F'ed things up in the area. The French too as they had Syria and Iraq under their thumb. However, the Jews had been settling there since the birth of Zionism in the late 19th century.
Point 6: Jewish immigration into the area. Yes the Arabs were probably in the majority in 1919 (I am not sure as the area was mostly dessert and unsettled exceptin Haifa, Jerusalem, Acre, etc). The Brits basically under pressure from Nazi Germany and being anti-semmetic hemselves took it upon themselves to limit immigration. Look up the case of the Jewish refugee ship the SS Sturma that was turned away by them.
The Arabs that invaded in 1948 were Jordanians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Syrians and Lebonese. The local Arabs did not really do much fighting, except they did massacre a jewish village near Jerusalem.
Point 7 The Arab revolt from 1936-39 was as you said. It was the beginning of a Palestininan identity. What happened was that the Jews and Arabs (who had been living together pretty peacably) became separated as an example the building of the Jewish port in Tel-Aviv and the Jewish abandonment of the Arab port of Jaffa. In 1948 as I said before, the locals did not really do much fighting It was mostly the other Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan,and Iraq) that did hte majority of fighting. Once the 1948 war was over, the parts of Palestininan land that were not controlled by Israel were occupied by either Egypt (Gaza) or Jordan (West Bank) As was said before neither of those countries gave their gains back to the Palestinians.
Point 8: Whose land was it? As I said before most of the area was undeveloped. It had been a backwater under the Ottomans and was mostly either dessert or small villages owned by landlords in Damascus.
Point 9: Israel giving them pieces of land -- that is better than no land at all. If the terrorists were not basing themselvesout of these pockets, there would be no need for a wall around them. These walls are there for the protection of Israel not to act as Berlin walls. (although the result is the same)
Point 10: The appeal by Israel. I absolutely agree that the solution would be a state where religion did not matter. Where both people could live together in harmony. If you look at the Arabs who live in Israel as Israeli citizens you can see this in action. What they need to handle are the small number of extremists on both sides. In other words the UN should never have agreed topartition the territory, but should have forced a US type of federal republic down both their throats. However, since this did not happen, the worls has been stuck with this for the past 60 years. The issue is that unless the terror attacks stop, the israelis would be suicidal to open the walls and try to integrate the Palestinians. Of course with the money that HAMAS spends on weapons they could build up a decent infrastructure in GAZA and help their subjects instead of using them as propaganda...
KEEP THE POSTS COMING!