Marilyn,

1) You wish to "force some sort of resolution" to the conflict. Care to share with us what resolution, and how you'd force it, except, well, with force?

2) Blowing up infrastructure is not necessarily a war crime. Customary law includes infrastructure, energy, and communications facilities among legitimate targets. The Additional Geneva Protocol I, Article 52, defines a legitimate military target as one "which by [its] nature, location, purpose, or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage". Legitimate infrastructure targets include lines and means of communication, command, and control -— railway lines, roads, bridges, tunnels, and canals —- that are of fundamental military importance.

3) You say "we sit here in our armchairs playing armchair warriors..." It appears that I am the only one here to whom this doesn't apply. Are you within range of Hizbullah missiles? Have Palestinian suicide bombers attempted to infiltrate into your city? Is your community making plans to host refugees from the war zone? Do you wonder if you'll be called upon in the next day or two to defend your country from further attack?

Dear Sganot
you are an Israeli in Israel? Good. At least we can obtain first hand experience and the case argued from an Israeli perspective.

SkidMarx has a very interesting point, regarding who 'owned' the majority of the land. I wonder if any study has been done to see just how much was technically 'owned' by Arabs, and how much was 'Caliph Land' similiar to what we call 'Crown Land' ?

While it is possible to argue from the end of the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate as a reasonable starting point, and then to argue that the displacement of some Arab communities was strategically desirable to form a viable new Nation called 'Israel', -this is in reality no different from the common concept of "Compulsory Acqusition" by government of private land for the public good.

As far as I can see, the real bone of contention among displaced Arabs, is not that they had to move, (because many people groups have been forced to move by the momentum of history) but that they had to move and their land be taken by 'Jews'. No only 'non muslims' but that pesky group of Jews who Mohammed had to obliterate from the Arabian peninsula with genocide and war.

This may well be the more crucial issue, which of course connects back to the Religious argument. Would they be fighting against fellow muslims if the Caliph said "You must move so we can settle such and such a tribe there, because they helped us in a major battle against the infidels." I doubt it.. they would say "Allah permits it".... no ?

I would think that by now, you can see that no matter how well argued you case, you will eventually end up at this point. Islam. The sooner Israelis recognize this, and draw up 'final_solution' plans, which DO include mass deportations etc, the better.

I've suggested as much to the Jerusalem Post via reader feedback.
I can safely predict that if you do not move Shia Muslims from Lebanon and Palestinians from Gaza/WB you will never solve this problem.

MARILYN

clearly you're a compassionate person, but the more I read of your posts, the clearer it becomes that if you were driving the agenda's of international relations, no problem would ever be resolved.

You never blame the real source for the suffering. Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped soldiers..... a calculated sowing. Now reaping.


You are politically naive in the extreme. No insult meant, but its clear. You see symptoms not diseases. The Middle east is historically connected to the rise of Islam and Christianity, and the ups and downs of the Jews. Here in far off meat pie land, it is unimaginable to think that such places and histories can be subject to 'international law'. It makes good PR but does not solve running sores.

Have you not noticed how the UN to which you appeal so readily is controlled by the self interest of the security council members ?

If the Russians or Chinese don't like something, they VETO it, same as with the Yanks. This is why I see no point in referring to international law. If Iran got Nukes, I'd give it one week before Israel obliterated Tehran. Ahmedinajad sees visions and dreams dreams.. has a messianic complex... you think he cares about I.L.?

The idea of 'Proportionate Response' is again extremely naive.
Militarily it is totally irresponsible. If an individual comes at you and is going to hang a king hit on you, and you stop him with a decent side kick, thats proportionate, and if he stays down, you don't do any more, but if the tries to get up, you STOMP him, and keep on stomping until he submits.

Proportionality works when there is a law to which we are all agreed to. It does NOT work in such cases as fighting Muslims who always appeal to the 'highest law'...that of Allah. (in their view)
It is a biblical concept.. "Eye for an eye" was in reality to LIMIT the response of individuals against each other, not to 'facilitate' revenge. An eye for an eye is justice, and eye plus a leg is not.

Sganot: Where were we?
1)"93% refers to land controlled by the state...on which both Jews and Arabs live, work, farm". Really? 93% of Green Line Israel is under the control of the Israel Lands Authority/JNF. 7% is privately owned, with Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel owning probably as little as 2%. The incorporation of the JNF's Constitution & Articles of Association, containing the offending apartheid distinction between Jews and non-Jews, into a number of Israeli laws ensures that 93% of Israel is off limits for non-Jews. Not a bad state of affairs for an immigrant community that owned only around 6% of Palestine in 1947-48.
2)"Legalizing Jewish land ownership throughout PA territories": alleged "ownership" of occupied land by civilians (Israeli colonists) belonging to the occupying power (Israel) is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. Surely you're not advocating that the PA follow Israel's example in violating the Geneva Conventions?
3) Bedouins "can migrate across the border" & so would "have no political impact on the [alleged] Jewish majority": The UNSCOP report points out that these potential citizens of the proposed Jewish state were "cultivators and stock owners who seek grazing further afield in dry seasons (in the Neqeb or Beersheba sub-district)." Both the Neqeb & Beersheba are in the proposed Jewish state.
4)My figure for the pre-war population of Jaffa is 70,000. Explain yours.
5)"Israel was founded not only for its current residents in 1948, but also to end the statelessness, persecution and oppression suffered by millions of Jews abroad." There are several problems with this: a) Israel's foundation was achieved by ethnically cleansing the indigenous Palestinian Arab population in 1948; b) The majority of the world's Jews were not "stateless" in 48 (while the majority pf Palestinians now are and have been for decades); c) The "persecution" of European Jewry was well and truly over by 1948, with most Jewish DP's preferring resettlement elsewhere than in Palestine; d) Solving the problem of European anti-Semitic persecution of Jews by persecuting a non-European people such as the Palestinian Arabs in turn is nothing short of an obscenity.
To be continued:

Sganot:
6) Re al-Khalidi, no one would dispute Judaism's spiritual attachment to Palestine. The POLITICAL ambitions of political Zionism, however, were/are a different matter. Even if you pretend that the two are the same, the founder of political Zionism, Herzl, knew what al-Khalidi was on about, ie that political Zionism constituted an existential threat to the Palestinian people, and assured him that "We will search and, believe me, we will find elsewhere what we need." And if political Zionism had taken up the British offer to set up a Jewish state in Uganda, the Ugandans would today be paying the price. Again, re the fate of France's Jews at the hands of the Nazis, the need for a refuge at the time does not logically mean that it has to be at the expense of another people or that it has to be Palestine. Indeed, Britain or the US would have been the preferred destinations of ALL Europeans who felt threatened by the Nazis.

I recently read David Grossman's Maariv editorial (11/6). You're exactly the kind of person he had in mind when he wrote it: "The view of the girl from the Gaza beach, whose life was torn to pieces in front of our eyes, must wake us up from a years-long hypnotic slumber. Instead of worrying about 'the damage to Israel's image', instead of immediately starting to formulate the automatic, cliche counter-arguments, we should take a good look at our handiwork. It is long overdue for us to notice the slippery slope down which we are sliding and to start asking which deep abyss lies ahead." How relevant now that your heroes are slaughtering not only defenceless Palestinians, but now defenceless Lebanese.

Strewth

The killing of defenceless people is appalling. But defenceless Jews are also being killed. You seem to imply that all of the Arab people being killed are defenceless. What are the bombs and rockets being fired on Israel?? Are those firing them really defenceless?

The question we should be asking is how can we get an end to the carnage? And don´t require the Jews to go. Complete generations of Israeli born Jews are there. There is no precedent for asking such people to leave. Look at Ireland, Fiji, Taiwan, Australia, Egypt (originally Copts), Canada, USA, Wales, ancient Britania, France (both originally Celts) in short almost the whole world. Get a life and move on like everyone else.