David,

Your solution to remove the Palestinians from Gaza/WB and the Shia from Lebanon - where do you propose Israel put them? Aside from the moral repugance of such 'ethnic cleansing,' wouldn't it simply shift the Palestinian and their allies' resistance to a new base of operations?

Sganot,

Please tell me why/how this military action is likely to achieve anything more than previous military actions. Whilst I understand the Israeli action can be rationalised as provoked, won't the killing of so many civillians and the imposition of such hardship on the general Lebanese/Palestinian's (by destroying so much civil infrastructure) simply perpeturate the hatred and thus create/ increase your 'motivated' enemies numbers (ie those actually inclined to join up with HB, Hamas and/or other terrorist organisations)?

Marilyn and Strewth,

You two seem solidly aligned with the Palestinian side so I'll put my question to both of you: Even accepting your position that Israel should never have been created, after almost 60 years, what realistic practical solutions can you propose?

BOAZ_David: "you are an Israeli in Israel?" Yes.

Strewth,

- SkidMarx wrote that ~90% of Israeli land was owned by the state since Ottoman times. I understand that ~70% was state-owned, 9% owned by Jews, 3% by Arabs who became Israeli citizens, and 18% by Arabs who fled during the war. If, as you claim, Arabs own 2/7 and Jews 5/7 of private land here, Jews own less, not more, than their "fair share".

-Re Jewish land ownership in PA territories, I don’t mean settlements. They are not PA-controlled land! It a capital offense for a Palestinian to sell a Jew land in PA territory, and they’ve even tried to extend this to Jerusalem and within the Green Line. Why the offending apartheid distinction between Arab and Jew in Palestinian law?

-Most of the Negev was in the proposed Jewish state, but Beersheba wasn’t.

-Jaffa wasn't the only place where the plan changed. See Simha Flapan's "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities", p. 83.

- Israel wasn't created by "ethnically cleansing...." because it would have had a substantial Jewish majority without any Palestinian refugee flight. BTW, the "cleansing" was mutual. People on both sides fled and were expelled from the areas captured and controlled by the other. 100% of Jews living in areas of Palestine that fell under Arab rule were forced out.

-It makes no difference if the majority of Jews were or were not stateless in 1948. A very significant portion were stateless refugees from Europe, and many others lived as oppressed minorities with few or no rights. The Jewish people as a whole was stateless and its homeland occupied. Israeli independence was intended in part as an answer to this situation. BTW, it isn't clear that most Palestinians are stateless, either. More than a million are Israeli citizens; close to 3 million are Jordanian citizens; many more are citizens of other countries; and now the Palestinian Authority provides many of the functions of citizenship (though not nearly enough) for Palestinians in the territories.

continued...

Hi Kalin

"Please tell me why/how this military action is likely to achieve anything more than previous military actions. Whilst I understand the Israeli action can be rationalised as provoked, won't the killing of so many civillians and the imposition of such hardship on the general Lebanese/Palestinian's (by destroying so much civil infrastructure) simply perpeturate the hatred and thus create/ increase your 'motivated' enemies numbers (ie those actually inclined to join up with HB, Hamas and/or other terrorist organisations)?"

I thought this needed repeating.

It does seem a bit silly to embitter so many people and expect to live a peaceful life. How do we explain this? The Jews have a long and chequered history. I'm almost tempted to believe in the god who kept telling them to improve. They don't seem to learn from their history. Perhaps they want/need perpetual conflict. They are certainly going the right way about it.

Strewth (continued),

-The persecution of European Jewry was not over by 1948. For many, it continued another forty years. And where would you expect survivors of the Holocaust to live? In their destroyed towns and villages? In homes taken by neighbors who handed Jews to the Nazis or looked the other way? Yes, after the Holocaust, a few survivors did try to return to their former homes -- and some of these returnees were subsequently murdered by anti-Semitic neighbors.

It was crystal clear then, even if it isn't to you now, that most would have to be resettled on "someone else's land" -- that of native Americans, Africans, aboriginal Australians, etc. -- or in the one place on earth to which they actually have a recognized national claim, the one place that is their homeland, where they are indigenous and not temporary dwellers, guests, colonial settlers, etc. You apparently think that the very presence of Jews somehow "persecutes" Palestinians, and that it would have been better for Jews to "persecute" other people and "pollute" other lands with their presence, rather than simply going home. If you consider Jewish self-determination and independence in our homeland to be persecution, too bad. The international community disagrees, and more importantly, we disagree.

You say that if a Jewish state wasn’t in Palestine, it could be elsewhere, on someone else’s land, instead of our own. How would that be better?

Re Britain and the US: 1) Their doors were shut for most; 2) Now you are speaking in the name of all “Europeans” (presumably meaning Jews from Europe). How dare you? What do you know about their desires and preferences?

And now you can read David Grossman’s mind? David Grossman is an Israeli Jew and a Zionist, like me. His father was born in Poland, so maybe you’d expect Grossman to move there. Don’t hold your breath.

And now you claim to know who my heroes are? Did your heroes slaughter the eight killed in Haifa, the little boy and grandmother in Meron, etc?

---

Stan1, your words speak volumes about you. Get professional help.

Sganot,

As someone who is actually in the region, can you share with us what it is like to be in Israel at thist time?

How do Palestinians within Israel fair?

Stay safe.

Stan/Strewth/assorted congenital defects,

Please understand what is going on before you attempt to jump on everybody with your anti-semetic hysteria. As usual it appears that the neighbours of Israel have mistaken restraint for weakness. It appears that Hizbollah was so overconfident of Israel's inability / refusal to respond with any sting, that they offered a ceasefire within hours of the attack on the farms. There is a limit on even a democracies ability to turn away from provocation, and it has been reached and breached. Even the 'doves' are now fully behind the upcoming invasion, as they were always going to be, as they feel stupid/misled for having supported a pullout of both Gaza & Lebanon.

Hitting Haifa was probably the seminal moment in this conflict, which will now deepen, as no Israeli is likely to support leaving the terrorists in the position to shell large tracts of their country at will. Therefore it is rather irrelevant what the international community decides to do, Israel is a democracy, and as such, unless the government or opposition can promise to prevent such attacks they will not succeed at the next elections. As Hizbollah cannot be trusted, there is no option but to obliterate them.

This has only today become deadly serious.

Inshallah

2bob