Mr. Sharon, Tear Down This Wall

[Black Baron]

We will abide the jurisdiction of our court of justice, which ruled that parts of the fence (35 km) are illigal amd must be rebuild anew. The decision is right and just, and Sharon and the Army already agreed that they wil act according to the court. Mind you-at the very least 35 km's are illigal. If other palestinians will complain, our court may agree to their demands. ICJ is just a bunch of ******, that have no right in the first place to judge us.

[Oblivion437]

Besides, who attacked who when? Israel's been on the defensive... That they annex your whole country when you shoot first, or join the losing team in a fight and get your ass kicked also, is not the least bit unfair. Don't side with the aggressors in a conflict, if you end up waving the wrong dog's banner, your ass is fair game.

[Davros]

You are missing the point that both sides are the aggressors Oblivion - they just take turns at kicking the other whenevr they can.

Just how does Israel building itself a new border with this wall and making a land grab not label them as aggressors in your view? Try not to belabour your reply with the dirty and desperate acts of the Palestinians (which we all acknowledge as being beneath contempt) - just try to answer the question on its own, because I don't get any good answers when I ask it of myself.

[Black Baron]

Well, the one that started were the palestinians. They started it before our state existed, they raided our settlements and killed many people. And i do ot even wish to talk about hadj amin al huseini, that was hitlers close friend, gave him 400000+ troops, and declared that he will kill us all. Then he started to do it.


You all forget important fact-the wall is not a political one, and during future negotiations it could be dismantled.

[Oblivion437]

Originally posted by Davros: You are missing the point that both sides are the aggressors Oblivion - they just take turns at kicking the other whenevr they can. Just how does Israel building itself a new border with this wall and making a land grab not label them as aggressors in your view? Try not to belabour your reply with the dirty and desperate acts of the Palestinians (which we all acknowledge as being beneath contempt) - just try to answer the question on its own, because I don't get any good answers when I ask it of myself.

Well, consider that technically this whole thing should belong to the Israelis to begin with (whether you go back to the 1967 war or the 1940's or biblical times) and the whole concept of aggression shifts.

Yes, it is an aggressive act from one point of view, but that view has to ignore the fact that the whole West Bank was theirs once.

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Black Baron: A short time ago, you , TL agreed that we can return to them 90% of the land. The pieces that we annex are those 10%. Now, you seem to back away from your statement. Why?

Because now we are talking right/wrong and absolutes again. I never backed off on my stance regarding the law -- taking territory is illegal. I admit that 10% isn't much, and if Israel were to NEGOTIATE with the Palestinians and/or the UN to keep that amount, then it would be okay. And, I think this could be negotiated. I'm not saying something is morally right or wrong here -- I am speaking to the letter of the law. That's my job -- the law. Morally, I'm at quite a loss. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Regarding the recent posts as to the "root cause" of the conflict, that's as useless an endeavor as the tit-for-tat back and forth killing. Where the middle east is concerned, especially Israel/Palestine, there is more than enough blame to go around. Everyone is wrong to a degree, and that is the tone that should be taken as a jumping-off point for negotiations. HOW or WHY mistakes were made in the past should be just that -- in the past. Negotiating peace regarding Palestine is not possible without at least a bit of hakunah matata philosophy sprinkled in -- the past is done, and wrong, and bad.

But the present needs fixing, so the future can be less bleak.

[Timber Loftis]

Today's Update

NY Times
July 12, 2004
Sharon Reaches Out to a Rival, Peres, to Bolster Coalition
By GREG MYRE

JERUSALEM, July 12 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today invited his political rival — and longtime friend — Shimon Peres to bring his left-leaning Labor Party into the faltering government coalition. An acceptance would bolster Mr. Sharon's efforts to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Sharon, 76, Israel's most prominent hawk, and Mr. Peres, 80, the country's best-known dove, have vastly different approaches to the conflict with the Palestinians. They lead parties that have little in common, yet appear to share enough short-term interests to arrange a politically convenient marriage.

Mr. Sharon's coalition, led by his right-wing Likud Party, has lost several members recently and now controls just 59 of the 120 seats in parliament, making it vulnerable to collapse.

In addition, Mr. Sharon's main political initiative, the Gaza withdrawal plan, faces significant opposition within his own Likud Party.

Mr. Peres and Labor can help on both counts. They would bring 21 seats to the coalition, giving Mr. Sharon a comfortable majority in parliament. And Labor lawmakers tend to be more enthusiastic about Mr. Sharon's Gaza withdrawal than those in his own party.

While this may be enough to bring the two sides together, any union is likely to involve weeks of negotiations between Israel's two largest political parties.

Mr. Sharon issued the invitation to Mr. Peres during a morning meeting between the two veteran politicians, both members of Israel's founding generation.

Despite the cordial meeting between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Peres, the Labor Party raised a no-confidence vote against the government during a parliamentary session this afternoon.

When in session, parliament regularly holds no-confidence votes on Mondays. Mr. Sharon's government survived three such votes today, including the one raised by Labor.

In the afternoon, each leader tried to persuade his party that the arrangement could work, though there are skeptics in both camps.

"If you don't want this or that, we can go to elections. That's the way it is," Mr. Sharon told Likud lawmakers. "I am saying this in the clearest possible way: this situation cannot continue."

However, some Likud hardliners oppose joining with Labor, saying the party is soft on security issues and would try to make additional concessions to the Palestinians.

In speaking to Labor lawmakers, Mr. Peres said he had already told Mr. Sharon that his party would attempt to change government policies.

While Labor supports the Gaza pullout, party leaders believe it should be done in coordination with the Palestinians, and not through the unilateral approach Mr. Sharon is pursuing.

"We will not be joining an existing government, we won't be bound by existing guidelines," Mr. Peres said.

Mr. Sharon's withdrawal plan also calls for the evacuation of four small settlements in the West Bank, while many Labor leaders favor a much broader evacuation.

There are also sharp disagreements on economic policy. The current finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has encouraged a more market-oriented economy. He has reduced taxes, privatized state-owned companies, and made widespread cuts to social programs.

The Labor Party argues that the country's economic safety net has become frayed and poverty has increased.

Labor is also likely to demand key cabinet portfolios. That could put Mr. Sharon in the difficult position of having to dismiss his Likud allies from their current cabinet posts, thus risking rebellion within his party.

Mr. Sharon's government faces no imminent threat of collapse, and parliament will be on recess in August and September. With no particular deadline looming, the coalition talks could drag on for weeks.

When Mr. Sharon was first elected in March 2001, he joined forces with the Labor Party, and Mr. Peres served as foreign minister. The two men say they have always maintained a friendship despite their political differences.

That coalition lasted until the end of 2002, when Labor pulled out of the government, citing opposition to Mr. Sharon's strong support for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

After Likud won a landslide victory in January 2003, Mr. Sharon cobbled together a new coalition dominated by right-wing parties.

The Palestinians generally refrain from commenting on internal Israeli politics, and did not comment on today's developments.

However, Labor has consistently advocated maintaining some sort of dialogue with the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon says the Palestinian leadership has encouraged violence against Israel, and his government has had only minimal contact with senior Palestinians over the past year.

In incidents of violence today, Palestinians said that a wheelchair-bound man in his 70's was crushed to death when Israeli soldiers destroyed his home, one of more than 20 that were torn down in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

An Israeli military official said the buildings were believed to be uninhabited and had been used only by gunmen who were firing frequently on military positions and on Jewish settlers in nearby Gush Katif.

Muna Khalafalah, 30, said the Israeli raid began around 3 a.m., and that she and her mother ran out of their home. She said she tried to tell soldiers that her ailing father, Ibrahim, remained inside and needed help getting out, but that the soldiers went ahead with the demolition.

The military official said that soldiers checked most of the structures to see if people were inside but, fearing some were booby-trapped, did not enter all of them.

The official acknowledged that the Palestinians requested an ambulance after the buildings were torn down, but said the soldiers were not aware of anyone inside during the operation.

In another development, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei, said Palestinian municipal elections that were to begin in August had been delayed until November. Mr. Qurei said the local balloting was being postponed until lawmakers could amend and clarify election procedures, Reuters reported.

The Palestinians held their only general election in 1996. Their leaders say another ballot will not be possible until Israeli troops withdraw from Palestinian areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Qurei also met today with two United States envoys, Elliott Abrams and Stephen Hadley, for discussions on the proposed Gaza withdrawal.

[aleph_null1]

Originally posted by Oblivion437: Yes, it is an aggressive act from one point of view, but that view has to ignore the fact that the whole West Bank was theirs once.

"No nation occupies a foot of land that was not stolen." ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator

[Davros]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Regarding the recent posts as to the "root cause" of the conflict, that's as useless an endeavor as the tit-for-tat back and forth killing. Where the middle east is concerned, especially Israel/Palestine, there is more than enough blame to go around. Everyone is wrong to a degree, and that is the tone that should be taken as a jumping-off point for negotiations. HOW or WHY mistakes were made in the past should be just that -- in the past. Negotiating peace regarding Palestine is not possible without at least a bit of hakunah matata philosophy sprinkled in -- the past is done, and wrong, and bad. But the present needs fixing, so the future can be less bleak.

Exactly - and well said. I was just checking the updates to the thread, and reading how when I said they were both at fault there were two people that chimed in with the age old argument of "well they started it". I was starting to formulate a reply in my mind about the blame game then I found that TL put it ever more eloquestly than I could have.

Well said TL - I so agree with the quote above. No-one in that whole area has a hope of a betterlife until they recognise the need to move forward. They have become too accustomed to an eye for an eye.

[Timber Loftis]

ECONOMIST
Israel’s illegal but unstoppable barrier
July 12th 2004

TO MOST Israelis, the 630km (390-mile) barrier their government is constructing in the West Bank, consisting of concrete walls, barbed-wire fences, trenches and patrol roads, is a legitimate defence against Palestinian suicide-bombers. The Israeli government insists that the barrier—of which 185km is already completed—is only a temporary security measure and has no political significance. To Palestinians, who see the barrier carving out chunks of their farmland and cutting off their villages, it looks like a land grab, designed to stop them ever having a viable Palestinian state by slicing their territory into shrinking and tenuously connected enclaves. Some estimates put the barrier’s eventual cost at $1 billion, adding to Palestinians’ scepticism of Israeli claims that it is not intended to stay up forever.

Last December, the United Nations General Assembly voted to ask the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the barrier. On Friday July 9th, the court published its ruling, declaring the barrier illegal under international law, demanding the dismantlement of those parts that already encroach on the West Bank and calling for compensation for the many Palestinians whose rights have been “gravely” infringed by it.

While recognising Israel’s right to defend itself, the ICJ said it was not convinced that the route chosen for the barrier was justified. It called on the UN to consider taking further action. Palestinian leaders are calling for sanctions against Israel, though America and other veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council will probably reject this. Israel has already said it will not accept the ICJ’s findings—which are non-binding—arguing that the stalled Middle East peace process will not be helped by taking it piecemeal to the courts.

When first proposed, the barrier met with much resistance from Israelis themselves. Left-wingers said such high-handed action would ruin the chances of a negotiated peace. Many right-wingers, including Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, initially opposed the barrier, since it was originally intended to run close to Israel’s border before it captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and other territories, in a 1967 war—and would thus exclude many Jewish settlements built since then. However, the plans have since been modified to take in several large settlements. More importantly, suicide attacks by Palestinian militants in the past year have convinced many Israelis that the barrier is needed.

The government notes that such attacks have dropped sharply as its construction has progressed—though this is also due to Israel’s equally controversial policy of assassinating senior militants. A recent poll found that 78% of Israelis now support building the barrier. On Sunday, a bomb at a bus stop in Tel Aviv—the first terrorist bombing in Israel since March—killed an Israeli soldier. Afterwards, Mr Sharon suggested that the ICJ ruling had encouraged the bombers. He insisted that construction of the barrier would continue.

The barrier has undoubtedly added to the hardship that Palestinians suffer from Israeli security measures. Many have been cut off from workplaces, land, schools, hospitals, holy sites and relatives. Thousands, whose villages have been encompassed by the barrier, are stuck in a no-man’s-land, unable to travel west into Israel proper nor east into the West Bank. In some Palestinian towns, young people have been forced by lack of work to leave—encouraging suspicions that this was exactly Israel’s intention. Israelis retort that Palestinians, who have been conducting a violent intifada (uprising) against the occupation since 2000, have only themselves to blame.

Another awkward ruling

The ICJ’s judgment follows a ruling by Israel’s own High Court, on June 30th, that three-quarters of a 40km stretch of the barrier, to the north-west of Jerusalem (see map), must be rerouted because of its “severe” effects on the 35,000-odd Palestinians living in its path. Mr Sharon said he would abide by this ruling, largely because the court also upheld his argument that the barrier’s main and legitimate purpose is for security.

Nevertheless, Palestinians hope the Israeli court’s decision will set a precedent. Last month Israel began to build a barrier around Ariel, a large Jewish settlement 20km inside the West Bank, which will eventually be linked up to the rest. The government says that the High Court’s decision is unlikely to affect the route around Ariel and three other nearby settlements because they are “home to 50,000 Israelis and just one Palestinian family”. Palestinians argue that some 11,000 of their number have already had land requisitioned to make room for the Ariel barrier. Another, bigger test will be East Jerusalem, the Arab-populated part of the ancient city that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. If the barrier follows the defence ministry’s latest maps, it will seriously constrain the lives of some 200,000 Palestinians.

Many governments worldwide agree with the ICJ that the barrier is illegal. Most countries also regard Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza as “occupation” and thus the Jewish settlements there as illegal—even America’s State Department has long held this view. Israel counters that the territories are not occupied but “disputed”. Many Israelis regard “Judea and Samaria”, as they call the West Bank, as part of the Promised Land that God gave the Jews.

Theological debate aside, Mr Sharon will try to ignore the rulings of both the ICJ and the Israeli court, and push on with building the barrier, while simultaneously pursuing his plan for unilateral “disengagement” from the Palestinians. The first step of this is to withdraw Israeli security forces and settlers from Gaza and a small part of the northern West Bank. Hardliners in Mr Sharon’s Likud party and in extreme right-wing parties in his ruling coalition are fiercely opposed, regarding any withdrawal as rewarding Palestinian terrorism.

Though he has survived several confidence votes in the Knesset, Mr Sharon is struggling to stay in government. On Monday, he met Shimon Peres, the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, to discuss forming a national-unity government. There was no immediate decision, though the two veteran leaders agreed to co-operate to push through the Gaza pull-out plan. Meanwhile the violence in Gaza continued: a 70-year-old Palestinian man was crushed to death on Monday, as Israeli bulldozers demolished buildings suspected of harbouring militants.

Palestinians’ hopes of gaining the moral high ground as a result of the two court rulings are undermined by the criticisms of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, made recently by the world powers mediating the peace process. They have become exasperated at Mr Arafat’s steadfast refusal to allow the Palestinian Authority’s various, rival security forces to be merged and reformed. Their continued failure to rein in militant groups only strengthens Israel's case for continuing to wave aside world opinion, pressing on with building the barrier and “disengaging” in the manner it sees fit.