so by virtue of living in a particular area and being of a particular ethnicity, they are no longer individuals, and the acts of some are automatically attributable to all of them?

who else does this work for? if there are 500 black criminals in atlanta are "blacks" in atlanta "adding to the tensions"?

Here we go...

I am giving you examples of where Jewish settlers have increased tensions. I never said all are extremists.

It seems to me you are biased in favor of Israel. Are you trying to exonerate the side of Israel for all wrong doings?

Kind of like we have a group of 500 civil rights activists in the 60s. A few of them get out of line. And the police brutalize the whole crowd...

I am not biased for or against either side in this conflict. But if there is to be peace between Israel and Palestine, all antagonistic forces should be dealt with fairly.

All WB settlers reject Palestinian sovereignty. So even if they are nice to kittens and throw darts at Meir Kahane posters, they are still part of the problem. The problem being Israeli expansion and the destruction of Palestine.

Because we all know "no Israeli has set foot there for four years"....

you said "the settlers" are creating tensions, etc. etc. i accept that you

im israeli so im probably biased in favour of israel.

im telling you that people do what they think is "right" based on the information they have. From 15000 km away, its easy to tell everyone else what they should do, but what you tell them is invariably not whats best for them, but what's best for what you want for them. but you simply aren't there. your information upon which you base your decisions and recommendations is 3rd hand unverified from other biased sources (either way). and you sit there telling everyone else what's wrong. you claim you're outside the conflict, so you're impartial. but that really just means you're ignorant as to the real goals and strategies being used. (by you, i don't mean you. i mean generally western media, academia, writers, commentators, self-declared "experts").

your opinion is worth precisely zero, unless you can either convince israelis you understand the position they are in better than they can, or you can convince palestinians of the same. in the meantime, you can fluff up your opinions with human rights language or political language or even invent legal conclusions about who owns what land or who is "colonizing" or who is a "terrorist."

Israelis know Arabs better than you do. And Arabs know Israelis better than you do. We know their goals, and they know how we'll react to ineffectual terrorism intended to strip away at israelis' confidence and simultaneously use our military's inevitable response to get the UN/Europeans and Americans to meddle, thereby:

1) keep the aid money to corrupt Palestinian leaders flowing (since the aid to Israel is not stopping in the short-term).
2) pressure Israel into concessions.

I, as an Israeli, have a vote. Palestinians have a vote too (although their votes don't seem to come around, like, ever).

that's exactly what its like, for both palestinians and israelis (incl. settlers, obv).

true. so?

lol @ this.

"destruction of palestine"

"israeli expansion"

The area called the "west bank" has been continuously populated by jews since ancient times. only for 18 years, between 1949 and 1967 was it judenrein, and only because jordan massacred or expelled every single jew.

the notion of an arab, judenrein palestine is an anomaly, the fiction of which is the basis for this whole conflict. this conflict would be over tomorrow if they said "ok, we give the jews living here equal rights and will keep them safe."

And it continues...

you were talking about gaza. why do you believe this documentary filmmaker? hes telling a dramatic story. his first lie is literally in the first minute. israel does not occupy the entire west bank. the Palestinians have full self-governance and jurisdiction in all of Area
A, which is about 60% of the population of the west bank, and 96% of the population is under palestinian civil authority.

as far as the land itself, it has been settled by all parties in the oslo accords that it will be decided by negotiations between israel and the palestinian authority.

Sorry, I believed settlements in Gaza were still going on illegally. My mistake.

The notion that there were no Palestinians in Palestine until last week is utterly incorrect. It can be traced to the fraudulent book From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. It is Israeli birtherism.

There is vast testimony from the early Zionists, 1890s on, about how Palestine was already thoroughly settled and administered. It was Arab Palestinian under the Ottomans and way, way back.

Here, for example, Jabotinsky in 1923, acknowledges the Palestinians exist, are a living people not "rubble," and must have their hope destroyed.

I've got a soft spot for Jabotinsky, he from the day when Zionists were honest.

Uh, why are there Israeli soldiers in that documentary in the West Bank? Because that is in direct contradiction of what you just said (i.e. Israeli govt. will not respect the sovereignty of the Palestinian authority when it does not want to).

There may have been some truth to this for several decades, but today Israel considerably hurts US interests at controlling access to oil because of the considerable resentment it brews against them. The tactical move - if securing oil was the only goal - would be to force Israel into peace with Palestine and stop supporting them unilaterally.

Instead, I think it is more correct to say that through time of history Israel has become understood as an american interest in and of itself - just listen to the politicians speak of it - that sits along side other interests (like oil or whatever).

Israeli is continuing the violence on Gaza with their blockade of goods and economic sanctions. Thanks to the international outrage this eased in 2010 so they can finally get paper and medical goods but its still disgusting how you can try and claim Israel has not continued the cycle of violence whilst actively crushing many economic industries.

There is a reason everyone backs the 2 state solution, not the 1 and a quarter state solution.

Unmitigated success with the exception of one whopper of an unsuccessful issue.

I think this is what is so sad about the current situation. Israel certainly is, in a nontrivial number of ways, a successful society. However, the palestine issue ******s progress and should that be solved almost certainly Israel would continue its successes even further and, perhaps, export some of those successes to its neighbours. There is an enormous opportunity costs here.

US support for Israel has alienated Arabs since May 1948. Israel still fulfills its fundamental role of just being there. Attempts by outsiders or insiders to wrench control of oil risk war with Israel and its backers.

Why the US tolerates the extremes of Israeli policy? I think it's a combination of:

*doesn't care enough to get really nasty with Israel, which is what it would take since Israel is no puppet.

*Arab resentment doesn't matter so much because American ties to the Saudis and the various emirates is based on weapons. US provides protection in exchange for bases and oil access. They can be mad about support for Israel all they want, but can't do anything about it. The fundamental equation remains.

*Israeli lobby in past 20 years really has created space for the worst excesses.

*US does not necessarily want a Palestine. During Cold War US opposed it on grounds it would be Soviet aligned. Today, it might be seen as too inspirational. But I'm speculating here.

*US might prefer that Israel return to green line, but clearly does not care very much.

If Israel was really becoming a threat to US interests, there would be a near-overnight change. Awhile back we saw a hint of how that would look. Petraus, IIRC, was the one who said Israel was stirring up threats to US soldiers. There would be a tsunami of that sort of thing if the Washington really decided Israel was a burden. The tail wags the dog only until the dog wakes up. The most stupendous power in history is not going to let a cruddy little apartheid regime dictate what it does, that just isn't the way the world works.

what kind of ridiculous, israel-hating logic equates border control with "continuing the violence on gaza"?

Thanks to the international outrage this eased in 2010 so they can finally get paper and medical goods but its still disgusting how you can try and claim Israel has not continued the cycle of violence whilst actively crushing many economic industries.
There is a reason everyone backs the 2 state solution, not the 1 and a quarter state solution.[/QUOTE]

this entire post is demonstrably false.

Read up. Way more than "paper and medical goods" are getting in, and exports are getting out.

It's nothing but propaganda and lies, repeated in anti-israel op-eds and screeds, and you happily buy it.

really? tell me about the opportunity costs. about the thousands of dead israelis, the 3 years of military service, the internal strife, the reserve duty, the political dialogue. surely, israelis love war and are doing all they can to avoid a solution that could apparently, in your world, have been reached decades ago.

if you want to know whos prolonging this, look to the people that have nothing to lose.

netanyahu is subject to the whims of an electorate that is used to going to the polls every 3-4 years. he's stuck, and if he doesnt do what the people want, he's out the door.

abbas hasn't faced an election in a decade. his income comes from corruption, aid money, and he faces a ton of questions if/when the palestinian electorate turns their attention away from israel and towards their leaders. hamas runs a theocracy in gaza that provides a complete totalitarian lifestyle.

this is absolutely disgusting and you really ought to be banned immediately.

Gamblor is it possible for anybody to say ANYTHING critical of Israeli policy without you firing off knee jerk accusations that are only slightly shy of painting all critics as Jew hating anti-Semites?

hold on, what? I don't think I made any comments about blame or anything at all like the bolded...this kind of reads like you just assumed some big anti-israel bias that was not at all present in my post and launched into a standard israel vs palestine bit you have probably typed out many times before. My point was, and remains, limited to the (slight) expansion of your post that despite the vibrancy of israeli society, they still suffer a distinct opportunity cost as a result of israel/palestine conflict.

The hyperpartisanship of your response to a fundamentally non-partisan post is indicative of a larger problem here.

Actually the buses don't run on Saturday, lol. I was just there. It made getting to the airport more expensive than I expected

(Taxis and shuttles do though)

I didn't see any places to get pork and shrimp, but it's definitely not illegal.

Care to bet on whether other countries have been called worse without a ban?

Blockades and economic sanctions are not border control.

Yes, Israel relaxed their blockade and sanctions due to international pressure. They should relax them even further.

Of course.

If you're simply wrong, you're simply wrong. (israel is "occupying" gaza/wb, settlements are illegal). I'll simply argue the point using fact, legal concepts, definitions and/or logic.

If you're deliberately and selectively misrepresenting facts and manipulating language and logic to encourage negative sentiment towards israel and jews in general (i.e. the "israel lobby", holding israel to different standards than other countries in similar positions i.e. Turkey, blindly taking palestinian arguments as fact and blindly dismissing israeli views as propaganda and lies, deliberately misapplying negative labels such as "apartheid" or its elected - in legitimate, competitive elections - government a "regime" to try to create some equivalence between the israeli government and despotic, dictatorial murderers such as assad, ahmadinejad, et al), you're an antisemite or rather just a jew-hater - or at least unaware that you're a jew-hater. You think you're being fair, when you're really just parroting arab nationalist views.

in both cases, i'll simply point out those facts and call you for what you are.

then there's legitimate of, say, the international community's processes, or even the United States government policy. say, "the united states should not permit lobbying on behalf of foreign interests" or other such statements. I may disagree, and will argue based on logic and reason and fact, but that's at least universally applicable.

then there's legitimate criticism of israel. for example, "building that new towns will make it harder to negotiate a peace agreement". That, we can argue legitimately until we're blue in the face, and i'll at least support my arguments why settlements in fact make it more likely peace will come.

let's take the UN resolution issue.

a legitimate criticism is that "israel ignores UN resolutions and that disrupts international politics". make no mistake, i will defend the decision to ignore the resolutions because I see them as meaningless, political (not moral or impartial), they place many israeli lives in immediate danger, and the belligerents in the conflict are either not bound by any resolutions or simply ignore them in the same way.

when that turns into israel is evil, israel is an international pariah, etc. etc., you're suggesting israel is somehow worse than all the other states (i.e. every single one of them in a conflict). you're just a jew-hater. or at least, a jewish self-determination hater.

yes, blockades are the definition of border control, and sanctions are non-violent confict. you said it was violence.

in any event, you're painting an equivalence between a blockade and random rocket fire directed at schoolchildren. that's only fair if you value an israeli life as equal to a block of cement or a pound of fertilizer.

the hamas are not stupid. they're not trying to kill israelis because they think they can kill all 8 million of us. they're provoking a response to encourage world condemnation, trying desperately to remain relevant in the news, anything to avoid actually making peace. world pressure on israel shifts the goalposts in their favour for negotiations. that's all it is.

no, they didn't. you have no idea why it was relaxed. it could just as easily have been because there had been a relative lull in rocket attacks after the gaza war and israel wanted to ease the suffering of those who were paying for the terrorist groups' activities.

of course, you're much happier with israel being evil, so you'll dismiss that reasoning out of hand.