Politics Gaza

In 1994, Israel offered what amounted to 95% of the West Bank (including dismantling all but a handful of settlements) and all of Gaza and Arafat walked away from the deal.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally dismantled all settlements in Gaza and Hamas response to continuously fire missiles into Israel.

What more can Israel do without a wiling partner?

 

if israel starts dismantling settlements in the west bank then maybe there's the possibility for a serious dialogue.

anything short of that is bullshit.

it's pretty obvious that the right wants to use the situation it created in gaza as a pretext to continue expanding settlements in east jerusalem and the west bank.

 

They dismantled every settlement in Gaza in 2005 and the response was missiles aimed at Israeli civilians.

You know I am opposed to the new settlements, but why should Israel act unilaterally again?
--- merged: Dec 9, 2012 5:39 AM ---


IDF forcefully removing settlements from Gaza in 2005.

You dont remember this?

 

what does israel have to lose by doing it?
of course that'd require taking on the ultra right. but maybe it's time.
things are at a difficult point. my sense--and this is sitting on my couch in massachusetts you understand---is that what's happened to now is all out the window. i'm not joking above in my assessments of american policy and its complicity with the unfortunate reality that the israeli right has created, the duplicity of it, the double game, the absurd positions that it's adopted in response to palestinians not taking them seriously given that double game.

we are likely agreed that we would both prefer a two-state solution. we diverge in our assessments of this peace process business. but let's assume that the fact of this divergence in itself indicates a basic problem. what's the next move?

it seems to me that not only stopping the expansion of the settlements but starting the complex process of dismantling them is the only coherent way forward. no-one believes either the israeli right or the united states at this point---no-one. so things devolve back onto the regional military super-power, the colonial occupier. and there's no point in pretending that israel is somehow giving something up by dismantling the settlements--they should not have existed in the first place. so this is a way to get back to a rational starting point. nothing short of that will work.

 

Where I think we disagree is in only removing the Israeli ultra right is the road to peace.

Would you have walked away from the Oslo deal that gave the Palestinians 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza?

I believe that Palestinian ultra right must also be removed.

 

well, without rehearsing the entire history of the past few years in detail, suffice it to say that at the same time israel worked to pulverize the pa and funded hamas and then acted all horrified when hamas was elected and imposed a siege on gaza in order to prevent it from being able to govern. the pattern is obvious: there is a segment of the israeli political class that sees this situation as beneficial to them. so they say one thing and do another, and what they do functions to continue the creation of conditions that result in violent reactions because the disparity between what is said and what is done operates to delegitimate everything but the militarized status quo. and there's alot of money being made through that.

oslo did not result in a coherent palestine. look at the map. so stop talking about oslo as if it were some awesome achievement. it was a workaround that assumed much about the settlements. and since then, the political situation has deteriorated through this cycle that i argue is the responsibility of the israeli right and american backing. oslo was the best outcome from a process that is in itself problematic. that's the point.

 

It still takes two to tango and while I see many on the left in Israel willing to do so, I see no one among the Palestinians ready to dance. w/o a bomb strapped around their waist.

Abbas gave it his best shot and failed as much as a result of internal Palestinian politics as anything else and now he is on his way out.

So who's out there that I dont know about that is committed to a two-state solution?

edit: Oslo was a commitment and a starting point with mutually agreed upon additonal negotiations, but there will never be a contiguous Palestinian state of the West Bank and Gaza.

 

do you know anyone there? i do. they're tired. they're regular people like anyone else who would much rather focus on the sort of aspirations anyone else has and be able to assume a normal life that unfolds in a normal way. if you actually know people on the israeli left, then you know about all the co-operative projects that have been undertaken which are a continuous demonstration that an entirely different set of possibilities exist once you exclude the profiteering of the idiot political classes. people want regular lives. palestinians are just as human as israelis. the idf doesnt want to be holding off the fascist asshole settlers and trying to manage the palestinians who are subjugated by the whole apparatus that's grown up around the settlements. everyone in this situation is a human being, just like you are, just like i am. no-one wants this shit. but israelis are the colonizer and palestinians are the colonized. the problem is political: the israeli right and the united states. they are the problem. neither can plausibly pretend to want anything other than what is. both profit from what is. the problem for both is that the legitimacy of what was the case is being undermined. so the game is shifted. neither has caught up because they profit from what is. meanwhile people die. not that regular people make any fucking difference. you know. stereotypes replace them. and so it continues.

the only people i have no sympathy for are the settlers. as human beings, their situation is unfortunate. but they should not have been there at all. the settlements never should have happened. the settlements have to come down. if anyone really wants peace. but people with power don't really want peace. money is what they want. you know. war economies and all that.

 

And sadly, I believe it will continue until there is an effective agent of change among the Palestinians who is committed to a two-state solution.

Changing only one set of players wont make a difference.

And there lies the difference between us.

 

I suspect the idea is that the fact that the folks in charge in the US and in Israel benefit from Palestinian extremism makes it unlikely that they will cultivate the kind of relationship with the Palestinians that would foster the rise of a credible moderate Palestinian voice.

 

One of the important lessons I learned from a political mentor was that when confronting a complex or controversial political issue with a adversary of the extreme opposite perspective, pragmatism will more often result in an acceptable result than ideology.

I get the colonialists and the war profiteers, the right wing extremist, and the benefiting from Palestinian extremism, but I am trying to understand how a radical undemocratic Islamic militant group dedicated to the destruction of Israel is not a significant impediment to peace.

What makes you think Hamas would ever cultivate a relationship with moderate Israelis when it goes against everything it stands for?

 

There are those within Hamas who are willing. If the claim by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin can be believed
one of the apparent willing, Ahmed Jabari, was killed by a targeted Israeli air strike hours after he received the details of a truce agreement. I have a difficult time believing that agreements of this nature are drafted and exchanged in the absence of a show of willingness and cooperation leading up to them.

 

Ahmed Jabari...among the most extremist elements and responsible for strapping more suicide bombs on Palestinians teens than anyone in Hamas?

Really?

 

Israel had a large hand in creating the conditions that allowed Hamas to come to power. What makes you think they'd respond to a more moderate Palestinian authority with anythimg novel?

 

The examples cited previously, in which the Palestinians walked away from the table.

Beyond that, the issue with Hamas is the fact that it has an extremist fundamentalist religious agenda that it puts above its political agenda.

 

Nevertheless, there appears to be willing parties within Hamas. I wasn't aware that the criteria for pointing out who they might be was so reliant upon their past behaviors.

How to explain Yassar Arafat, if compromise with a terrorist is impossible?

 

The question is can those willing parties influence the more extremists higher up in the hierarchy.

 

Obviously the current Israeli government is not influenced.

 

Neither is Mashaal based on his ideological rant about all of Israel needing to "become Islamic and Arab for the Palestinians and nobody else."

 

practically speaking, jibari was responsible for holding the cease fire in place with israel until israel murdered the guy.
so of course the problem has to be hamas.

previously--under sharon---israel decided it suited their interests to pulverize the p.a.. which they proceeded to do. its political legitimacy had been worn away by the combination of participating in the charade of the peace process and their own machine politics. for israel, the idea was the process couldn't meaningfully continue if the pa were not a partner to negociate with. so they took care of that. which opened the space for hamas to come to power in gaza.
so the problem has to be hamas.
the radicalization that hamas represents has to be the fault of those snippy ungrateful palestinians.

there's a consensus out there in the world that, had israel not decided to lay siege to gaza because hamas was elected, that hamas would have likely shifted to a more pragmatic posture in order to govern.
but that was apparently far more a danger than hamas barricaded up and maintaining its more intransigent rhetoric.

the sad reality is that the israeli right needs hamas to be that way for its own domestic political purposes, and hamas benefits from the israeli right being that way as well.
the other reality is that israel has managed to almost negate its military superiority because of its brutality.

demonstration: the un recognition of palestine as an observer state---which was a direct consequence of israel's actions, applauded by the united states, against gaza. an aspect of how bibi managed to create defeat from a context of overwhelming military superiority by strengthening hamas to the point that some bone had to be thrown to the pa. but bibi, that hero of peace negociations, responded by announcing the 3000 new settlements in easy jerusalem.

this appears to be one of those situations in which pragmatism is simple capitulation. like i said, the united states has no credibility left as a mediator. israel has no interest in negociating via the quartet, say, because in that context the settlements in the west bank are actually on the table. this state of affairs is not the fault of the palestinians.

on the other hand, it's true that bibi's announcement about the settlement expansion was not welcomed by the obama administration, which heroically said they are "not helpful" before returning to the usual policy of approving anything and everything except initiatives that might result in actual peace and not merely in the circulation of the word peace.

not helpful.