Reciprocity, as between the thief and the person robbed.

The Palestinians refusing to recognise Israel as the Jewish National Home, despite a narrow vote in its favour, stems from the fact that nobody asked them if they wanted to give up their homes for this purpose, and that they weren't included in any vote.

The establishment of a Jewish National Home on someone else's land was never a very clever idea as it was based on nationalistic, theocratic, racist principles, which excluded the original occupants of the land from equal political and civil rights.

A two-state solution may have once been a possibility, but Israel demonstrated that they never paid more than lip service to the proposal by continuing to occupy more and more Palestinian territory and building more and more homes for settlers enticed in from overseas so long as they could show that they had a Jewish mother - no connection to the land required.

Israel has therefore assisted in bringing about a situation where a one-state solution is the only viable option. This would need an intervention from outside, possibly the United Nations, as the cat and the mouse would not be able to work it out for themselves. A resulting truly democratic state of Palestine/Israel, with equal rights for all its citizens could be a secure, vibrant, successful State.

There is no need to pursue negotiations for two states, with at least one based on racist principles. There is only the need for both parties to agree to share the land of ancient Palestine. Neither the 300,000 Israeli settlers in Palestinian Occupied Territory nor the 2.5 million Palestinians, are going to disappear.

x

I kinda agree that it's been all downhill since Day 1 when it comes to Israel and the Arabs.

With the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem going to see Adolf during WWII to offer Arab (ie now Palestinian)assistance in exterminating the Jews, I suppose it would've been a lot better if the Arabs (ie now Palestinians) had apologized for their actions and handed over the ex-Jewish land they were sitting on....as some sort of atonement. But they didn't.

And then to have the Grand Mufti's favourite nephew (Yassar Arafat.."my uncle was my inspiration") committing the same old fascist type actions against the Jews...probably soured the relationship even further.

So, what's to be done? Let the Jews have 25,000 square ks of land, (compared to the Arab 10 Million or so), or waste lots of time and effort trying to do what Adolf...the Grand mufti...the Grand mufti's nephew...Hamas..Hezbollah...etc have failed to do?

I s'pose it all comes down to how greedy for land the Arabs (ie now Palestinians ) are...and how dedicated they are to carring out a Holocaust MkII, eh?

BTW. When the Grand Mufti was recruiting his Muslim Waffen SS units (from Wiki; At war's end, he came under French protection, and went to Cairo to avoid prosecution)....was he just being a Good Palestinian Nationalist, guys? Or had he blown it for the "Palestinians" by being a slavering Nazi?

Punter57 states "I s'pose it all comes down to how greedy for land the Arabs (ie now Palestinians ) are...and how dedicated they are to carring out a Holocaust MkII, eh?".

You should have written holocaust MkIII because the Jews are doing a magnificent job of holocaust MkII on the Palestinian people as we write.

Talk about complete hypocrisy.

<<One can only shake one's head in amazement that Mr Ross actually believes this is a nationalist conflict and not a religious conflict.>>

Mr. Ross is right - this conflict IS nationalist, not religious: inventing a god for the sole purpose of placing nationalistic-propaganda claims in his mouth, does not qualify as religion, only as a tactical weapon!

Both sides have proved time and again that their respective nations come before God, that while they pay lip-service to God, they only really respect Him so long as He supports their national claims. That is not religion, that is sacrilege!

Dear Stan,

<<A resulting truly democratic state of Palestine/Israel, with equal rights for all its citizens could be a secure, vibrant, successful State.>>

"Could" is a hypothetical word. Do you seriously expect people who care not even for God, who for their national ambitions are even happy to abuse His holy name, to care for each other?

<<This would need an intervention from outside, possibly the United Nations, as the cat and the mouse would not be able to work it out for themselves.>>

Yes, but such intervention should impose two separate states, not one: "you sit in this corner and you sit in that corner". The pride of both nations must be shattered.

Before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in defiance of the will of the organised international community as it was at the UN, Zionism’s leaders met in Tel Aviv to formally adopt ‘Plan Dalet’ the plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

They did not and never would refer to the crime they authorised as ethnic cleansing. They preferred to call it “transfer”.

A briefing paper by the Institute for Middle East Understanding has demonstrated that from the earliest days of modern political Zionism its advocates grappled with the problem of creating a Jewish State where Palestinian Arabs were the overwhelming majority of the population.

Zionism was based on a colonial enterprise which used an immoral basis for the establishment and continues to use for the continued existence of Israel.

In the 1990’s an article for The American Zionist, Mordechai Nisan of the Truman Research Centre of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem expressed his concern about the failure to understand the major significance of terrorism in the struggle for Jewish sovereignty. He wrote: “Without terror it is unlikely that Jewish independence would have been achieved when it was.”

After the Zionist state declared itself to be in existence, its government set up an unofficial body known as the “Transfer Committee”. Its job was to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages and/or their repopulation with Jews.

Singer and his supporters fail to recognise this history in their argument or conversation, thereby making any rational context to the problem and their purported solution that more shameful.

Hey Geoff of Perth (3.41pm). See the problem?

The Jews went through the whole shebang; really being gassed and thrown in ovens by the truck-load etc...whilst a million and a half "Palestinians" are very content to be Israeli Citizens and STAY IN ISRAEL, right this minute. With you asserting they face Holocaust MkII!

This may seem incredibly clever down at the local basket-weavers collective, but really...as Julia would say "It looks like Hyper-Bowl" to me!

I've explained why things went bad from the very beginning. Once you've been hunted, and seen all your family murdered...with the assistance of Yassar Arafat's Uncle...it's sorta, ummm, kinda...hard to shake hands with 'em and say "These things happen old fruit".

You still refuse to answer why the 10,000,000 sq ks the Arabs already have is TOO LITTLE. Could you maybe try?

Hey Punter,

"You still refuse to answer why the 10,000,000 sq ks the Arabs already have is TOO LITTLE. Could you maybe try?".

Perhaps the establishment of an ersatz country, based on an ersatz religion based on an ersatz faith, counter to the tribal arab life they had all been living may have had something to do with it.

Your entire moral, social, religious, faith doctrine fails you fully.

Ask the Arabs in 1922 who agreed to the establishment of Israel and you won't find a single instance where they agreed to it.

Hitler offered Madagascar to the Jews and they declined the offer, had they taken the offer, I am sure the people of Madagascar would be facing the same fate as the Arabs today. Touche.

#To Geoff of Perth

You overlook these pertinent facts:

1. Palestine was 0.001% of the Ottoman Empire captured in World War 1 that was set aside for the Jews. The other 99.999% was set aside for the Arabs.

Why are you so hatefully opposed to Jews having their own state alongside 21 Arab Islamic states and another 36 Islamic states?

2. The Jews were subjected to murder,injury and destruction of their property during the Arab riots in 1920, 1929 and during 1936-1939 from a less than hospitable Arab population. They were denied to opportunity to escape the Holocaust and come to Palestine because the Arabs pressured the British to restrict Jewish immigration in 1939.

3 Separation of Jews and Arabs was recognized as the only solution - as the Peel Commission recommended in 1937.

4. Transfers of population against their will were undertaken in post-Ottoman Turkey and Greece and in India and Pakistan. Do you bash the Greeks, the Turks, the Indians and the Pakistanis, the Christians,the Moslems and the Hindus for pursuing these policies as you seem to delight in bashing the Jews?

5. The UN Partition Plan (33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions)was rejected by the Arabs and justified the Jews declaring independence the day before Britain withdrew from Palestine.

6. Six Arab armies invaded the newly declared State of Israel with the intention of driving the Jews into the sea.

7. The League of Nations unanimously endorsed the right of the Jews to reconstitute their national home in Palestine and closely settle the land without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities living there. This right was enshrined in Article 80 of the UN Charter.

8. Mentioning Plan Dalet in isolation whilst plagiarising Alan Hart an avowed Jew-hater without acknowledgement (for obvious reasons)- and then claiming your remarks to be "history" - presents an entirely biased and prejudiced view. That is your right to do so if you wish - as is my right to point out to readers that all is not what you would like people to believe.

David "Why are you so hatefully opposed to Jews having their own state alongside 21 Arab Islamic states and another 36 Islamic states"?

I am not, and I don't hate anyone. What I hate is the immoral way in which Israel was established, the Zionistic plan and execution of the displacement and continued social and economic strangulation of the arab people which ensures that Israel continues to grow and grow and further displace the arab peoples who have just as much right, if not more right, to live in all the lands of Israel on an even humanitarian basis.

Current Israeli politics and military doctrine ensures there will never be a two state solution. Unfortunately the fanatical zionistic mantra purports to put one race of people above another.

You can pontificate about your version of history on the validity of the creationa and continued existence of Israel, however I am of the belief most of what you write is complete biased and in no way helps to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Geoff

When Singer advocates inducing the Arab population to move from Area C to Areas A and B - the only possible reason I can imagine for suggesting this is so as to allow Israel to take over that area unimpeded by people living there. His idea of reciprocity seems to be something like "if you don't object to us taking over half of your land, then we won't take over all of it.

Someone asked "why the 10,000,000 sq ks the Arabs already have is TOO LITTLE". Answer - the Arabs who come from land that is now part of or occupied by Israel don't have land anywhere else. Arabs from other places have land in those other places. So what?

Singer says "Transfers of population against their will were undertaken in post-Ottoman Turkey and Greece and in India and Pakistan. Do you bash the Greeks, the Turks, the Indians and the Pakistanis, the Christians,the Moslems and the Hindus for pursuing these policies ..."?
I know nothing about post-Ottoman Turkey and Greece but in fact in India and Pakistan the transfers of population were due to communal violence, not Government action. And I absolutely condemn the violence that made Hindus and Muslims find moving necessary. As, I would hope, any decent person would.
And to address his question more precisely, I would find any forced transfer of population anywhere quite odious.

Geoff of Perth

It's the Arabs who don't want peace and who want a One State solution. Haven't you seen the maps of the State of Palestine?
1.02 on this video is one example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbzZ7fIFoaE&list=FLRjSAgzAZGBNafbhc-zzs2g&index=2

I think the average Arab wants peace but the leaders don't. I also know that the Arabs in Judea and Samaria say that the separation barrier was the best thing to happen to them as it has given them stability and their businesses etc are booming.

Mashaal on the 25th Anniversary of Hamas
"""We are not giving up any inch of Palestine. It will remain Islamic and Arab for us and nobody else. Jihad and armed resistance is the only way," Mashaal said, referring to holy war. "We cannot recognize Israel's legitimacy.""""

Abbas has said repeatedly that Palestine will be a Jew free State

DAvid, the jews are not the natural citizens of Palestine, not even the jews of Israel are as rancid and ignorant as you.

The country is Palestine, it was not deleted by the illegal vote to give jews 56% of the land that was not theirs to give away to anyone.

Will the shills for Israel get it through their thick skulls that the land belongs to the Palestinians.

Oops, I just discovered that my home, which I inherited from my grand-grandparents, expanded and renovated, where I lived all my life, with all the trees I planted, along with all my entire familiar surroundings, is owned by Marilyn Shepherd, so now I'm going to quit my job, take my kids out of kindi and schools and my old folks out of their nursing-home, cancel my daughter's coming wedding, say goodbye to all my friends, pack a couple of suitcases and sail off with my family on a one-way ticket to some land I've never been to, where they speak some language I do not understand, where the people don't want us and call us "queue-jumpers" and "dole bludgers".

Bzzzz....

Thank God for the alarm clock!

Will the racist bigot Marilyn S with her thick skull, get it into her head that there are no such people as Palestinians

I would strongly suggest you do some research into the matter, so as you don't make yourself look more stupid than you already do. Do you?

"This name was was created by the Soviet disinformation masters in 1964 when they created the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The term "Palestinian People" as a description of Arabs in Palestine appeared for the first time in the preamble of the 1964 PLO Charter, drafted in Moscow. The Charter was affirmed by the first 422 members of the Palestinian National Council, handpicked by the KGB. This term was formally used by newspapers around the world after 1967"

Walid Shoebat said:

“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”

Part 1
My very word Marilyn, the Jews ARE the natural citizens of the region of Palestine. Even to someone as rancid and ignorant as you.
If nothing else, centuries of archaeology will tell you that little tit bit. Ever read the Bible? A book written over 3,000 years ago, all about the Jews.

There never was a country called Palestine. It was a name given to Judea, Samaria and Canaan by the Romans in 67 CE to rid the area of its Jewish history. Even you surely can do a search for it.
Never mind I’ve done it and so you can’t come up with some excuse that I picked a Jewish site and somehow that is biased, I picked a non-Jewish one for you. Seeing as you hate them so much.
Origin of the Name Palestine

The name Palestine encompasses the ancient Holy Land and the modern nation of Israel. But it is not the original name for that country. The Romans assigned this name about the second century A.D.
To appreciate the pressure brought upon the Jews in Judea and Jerusalem during this time, some background is necessary.
A Jewish revolt occurred just before A.D. 70, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem after a bitter siege. The revolt was caused by ongoing provocations by the Roman occupation forces. Roman officials continually stole valuables from Jewish priests, demanding ransom for their return. They plundered the temple and looted the priests’ ornamental garments—along with other sacred treasures. This surpassed the breaking point, and the inevitable revolt began (Wars of the Jews, Josephus, bk. 2, ch. 14-16).
Distorted historical accounts and Hollywood portray the Romans as cool-headed, rational, military types. However, this was hardly the case.

Part 2
The survivors of the A.D. 70 revolt were subjected to similar provocations that led to another revolt in A.D. 132. The Romans prevailed again, and the revolt ended in A.D. 135. The Roman Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus) punished the surviving Jews.
He renamed Jerusalem after himself and the god Jupiter Capitolinus—Aelia Capitolina. He then imposed the death penalty on any Jew who would enter the city.
Some historians feel that this period was most likely the time that the Romans renamed Judea as Palestina (or Palestine). Others believe the change occurred about a century or so later, after Constantine established the eastern (Byzantine) part of the Roman Empire. Notice: “Till the period of the Roman occupation it [the Mid-East area later designated as “Palestine”] was subdivided into independent provinces or kingdoms…but never united under one collective designation. The extension of the name of Palestine beyond the limits of Philistia proper is not older than the Byzantine Period” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. 20, p. 601).
So, the Roman term “Palestine” came into existence well after Scripture had been written and canonized. The term “Aelia Capitolina” did not last for Jerusalem, but “Palestine” became a more permanent name for the region including and surrounding Judea. Understandably, the Jews who have lived there since then have rejected that name.

Part 3
The Roman Emperor Hadrian punished the Jews by renaming Jerusalem after himself He then imposed the death penalty on any Jew who would enter the city.
Some historians feel that A.D. 70 revolt was most likely the time that the Romans renamed Judea as Palestina (or Palestine). Others believe the change occurred about a century or so later, after Constantine established the eastern (Byzantine) part of the Roman Empire. So, the Roman term “Palestine” came into existence well after Scripture had been written and became a more permanent name for the region including and surrounding Judea. Understandably, the Jews who have lived there since then have rejected that name.
Holy Land Never Called Palestine in Scripture
Some believe that Israel today was once called Palestine millennia ago. The word Palestine does not occur in the original Hebrew or Greek Bible texts. The Hebrew term Pelesheth, which refers to the land of the ancient Philistines—Philistia—is erroneously translated in the King James Version as “Palestina” in Exodus 15:14 and in Isaiah 14:29 and 31, and as “Palestine” in Joel 3:4. The New King James Version correctly reads “Philistia”—the land of the Philistines—in every case noted above.
The Bible does not use the term “Palestine” or “Palestinians” to designate any geographic location or people. Nor does the historian Josephus ever use these terms in his major works, Antiquities of the Jews and Wars of the Jews. These relatively recent terms cannot change history—much less Scripture.
In the New Testament, other terms denote the territories of that region. For example, in Luke 1:5, Herod (the Great) is King of Judea. In Luke 3:1, we find other references: Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea; Herod (Antipas), Tetrarch of Galilee; Philip, Tetrarch of Ituraea (northeast of Judea); and Lysancas, Tetrarch of Abilene (near Ituraea). Notice that there is no “king,” “governor” or “tetrarch” of Palestine found anywhere in Scripture—more proof that “Palestine” was not an ancient term.
Secular History Finds “Palestine” Without Merit

Dear Sam,

Who cares what this or that Roman emperor said or did? Both the Jewish and Palestinian narratives only complicate life - the people of Israel need not be burdened by either, be they true or fake (or anything in between as is likely the case): they live where they are, the vast majority born there, so they should be allowed to have a decent and peaceful life.

If Jewish and Palestinian ideologues wish to fight, then let them do so on the moon where no real people live.