Israel

Answer 1

Israel already has its own land, so this question sounds strange.

The State of Israel is situated on the historically Jewish land that formed The Kingdom of Israel and The Kingdom of Judah, and the capital of Israel is that same city that was its capital 3,000 years ago: Jerusalem.

Answer 2

Since Israel is an extant country, there is no justifiable reason to deprive it of the land it lawfully occupies. India controls several disputed territories like Arunchal Pradesh and Kashmir, but nobody makes the absurd statement that India should cease to control land at all because there are disputed territories.

The reason why people find it is legitimate to ask these questions of Israel is because Jews did not make up the majority of people in Mandatory Palestine prior to mass immigrations. (Note that this does not legitimize these views, but explains why people have them.) Therefore, Jews have had to defend why their state was legitimate. There is the implicit question as to whether a Jewish State is something that should exist. There is the second implicit question as to whether the geographical location chosen for this Jewish State is proper for its mission. Both questions should be answered in the affirmative for the following reasons.

1) Why a Jewish State: Herzl explained quite well that the European concept of a nation-state was dependent on the idea that all of the people in any particular nation were of the same ethnic stock and heritage. Jews were branded by this system to be "the Other" and were regarded at best as possible equals and at worse as traitors, spies, thieves, and fifth columns. When the Dreyfus Affair turned out marches in Paris that said "Death to the Jews" on account of a kangaroo court against a particular guiltless Jew, it became clear that the Jew could not be integrated into Europe. After the Holocaust, the strongest proof that the Jew and the European Nation-State were irreconcilable, this view persists. In Europe, it is now directed at the Muslims since the Jews are not large enough of a threat to the European System. Unlike Muslims, though, which can return to their countries of origin if the discrimination becomes intolerable, the Jews did not have such a place. This is why the Jewish State is necessary. Since it came into existence it has accepted Jewish political refugees from over 50 nations and flown missions at its own expense to rescue Jews from at least 10 nations.

2) Why Palestine: Ahad Ha'am explains that the Jewish Soul is intrinsically connected to his history and in the same way that a German-American can never be as properly German as a German in Germany, the People of Israel can never be as properly Jewish if they are not in the Land of Israel. The relics in that land speak to a Jewish sensibility and character. There are also religious reasons as expounded by Rav Avraham Kook which posit that the development of a Jewish State in Israel hastens the arrival of the Messiah. There are additional political reasons why Palestine and not Europe. As explained above, the European Culture is strongly anti-Other and making a Jewish State there would have fostered much more contempt and alienation (ironically).

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This is a question asking for opinion, and so naturally, there will be dissenting opinions. This is my view on the matter.

Answer

The US should have a key role in moderating the discussion between Israelis and Palestinians. As the largest financial beneficiary of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the US has a unique ability to leverage both countries and has the military power to back any tenuous solution with peacekeepers. However, the US should not impose a solution on the two countries, but rather help facilitate developing the tools, providing the spaces, and leading the initiatives that allow Israelis and Palestinians to find a solution. The US should also use its diplomatic clout to dislodge states that have adopted attitudes strongly favoring one side at the expense of the other, such as the Arab States, from this position.

Some of these moderating thoughts that the US should advocate in its relationships with both Israel and Palestine include:

1) Mutual Recognition: Israel would need to recognize a completely independent and sovereign Palestinian Government that would fully control a certain amount of the former British Mandate of Palestine (most likely Gaza and the West Bank). Israel would also have to confer on this state the unambiguous nature of being correct and necessary for Israel. Conversely, Palestine would have to recognize the Right for Israel to Exist as a Jewish State occupying the remaining amount of the British Mandate of Palestine (most likely 1949-Israel). Both sides would have to recognize the historical and emotional value that the land also has to the other.

2) Israeli Reparation Payments: Israel dispossessed many Palestinians of their property, either by malicious activities that took place during the Arab-Israeli Wars or by Ben-Gurion refusing to let Palestinians who left return after the 1948-9 War. Israel needs to pay the Palestinian government reparations for the land that was taken in this way.

3) Israeli Withdrawal from the Settlements: Israel must withdraw from the Settlements to provide Palestine with a viable infrastructure and complete sovereignty. The Settlers must return to Israeli territory. The buildings, however, should be left as partial payment of the above-mentioned reparations.

4) Palestinians Concession of the Right of Return:Recognizing the State of Israel as a Jewish State is meaningless if Palestinians en masse are allowed to Return to Israel. Therefore, Palestinians (and their backers) must abandon the notion that they can ever return to Israeli territory. Palestinians should leave the refugee camps and become proper citizens in this new country of Palestine.

5) Internationalization or Sharing of Jerusalem:Palestine and Israel both want Jerusalem and the only way to solve this is either divide the city East/West respectively and divide the Old City or Internationalize the City or some combination of Internationalization and division. Neither side will rest until it can assure its followers that its holy sites will be protected.

6) Liberal Thought: Just in general, people have to be willing to compromise and live with that compromise.

Answer 1

The premise about partitioning Israel is that the Israelis are on occupied land. Given that Israel's neighbors have been trying to wipe her off the map ever since the country was born, why would the country agree to giving up its territory?

There are a few inconsistencies about the entire theory. In no other country in the world does a foreign dissident group claim territory. The "Palestinians" of the region are simply Arabs, many of which are provable foreign nationals having citizenship in the surrounding countries. In your country, since when does an illegal immigrant claim rights to your land, complete with the demand for a separate government? Did this immigrant ever apply for citizenship? Did this immigrant participate in building the wealth? Or did this immigrant take part in war, hide his wealth, terrorize his neighbors, then demand that he be given his own country simply because he happens to be on it?

The fact is that the territory that the Palestinians are claiming is NOT part of a pre-existing country. When the land was partitioned by the Balfour Declaration, there WERE no Palestinians. Palestine is a legal fiction. The name Palestinian was pretty much invented for illegal immigrants in the late 1960s by the group headed by Arafat. The group, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was formed in 1964, just before the Six-Day War, to promote the "rights" of those who fled to other countries at the demand of their leaders in 1947. Since that war, the people who lost...the ones who were trying to conquer Israel...have been trying to demand another piece of this little country as a "solution" to the very real fact that they couldn't do it with military might.

Notice that the surrounding countries, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq, were the original combatants. They mounted an attack on the nascent state in 1948. In 1967, Egypt and Syria planned to end Israel and gathered troops prepared to eliminate Israel. Even so, despite overwhelming odds, Israel won against ALL the agressors in the Six-Day War, gained territory, and made peace with some of the defeated countries. Since direct confrontation did not have the desired effect of wiping Israel off the map, the group PLO was born.

Forty years have elapsed since the Six Day war. Israel has not EVER tried to gain more territory, has even given Egypt back some of the territory gained, yet is pressured to partition off about a quarter of it's land to this legal fiction whose charter plainly states it's purpose is to annihilate the country.

The 1967 "borders" which the Palestinians claim are ceasefire lines...NOT borders. If Israel agreed to those borders, there would be less than 10 miles between the sea and the inland border at it's narrowest point. This is clearly indefensible, and a ridiculous demand on a very small country. The carving out of two divisible regions with Israel having territory between them is also another land grab. In time, this "country" would claim the land between the two areas as "defensible territory", thus further carving up what land Israel has.

In no other place in the world does there exist a legal refugee problem like the Palestinian one. This fiction has gone on for over 60 years and is fueled by the refusal of the host countries to give citizenship to the people born on it's soil. Those Arabs who fled Israel at the demands of their leaders are still considered refugees of a fictitious country that never existed."Palestine" in the Ottoman empire was not a country, it was a land region. The modern countries of Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan were also regions, but were created by the League of Nations Mandate System. Note on a map how straight the border lines are?

The Partition Plan is simply another attempt to justify the long, ongoing plan to wipe Israel off the map. Since the Arabs cannot do it militarily, they are attempting to do it with fictions. A wise man once said that if you tell a lie loud enough and long enough, people will believe it. The Arabs who say that they are Palestinians have been doing this for 40 years. People are believing it.

If they were actually looking for a political solution, it would have happened 30 years ago when Arafat was offered EXACTLY what is being petitioned in the UN today. He refused, then mounted a planned campaign of terror in Israel. The terror attacks continue today, from both regions where the (now splintered PLO) political parties maintain control.

Frankly, why would Israel give way when the history of the controversy shows that the Palestinians are not negotiating in good faith, there is no indication that they will honor their treaties, or even that they will honor the boundaries they themselves set up? The expulsion from Gush Katif of the Israeli farmers show starkly that giving up land for peace is a losing proposition. Gush Katif was an agricultural region in the Gaza strip that was evacuated 6 years ago as a peace attempt. They left behind working greenhouses, complete INTACT villages...a billion dollar industry with a market in Europe. The Palestinians had been employed in that industry so they knew how to run the business. When the Palestinians got the territory? They destroyed the greenhouses, set fire to the empty villages...and set up bombing stations to fire over the current border into Israel. An agricultural business destroyed.

So the partition plan is simply a political attempt to do what the combined might of many countries could not do...defeat Israel.

Answer 2

The question as posed is a little confusing. There is Israel, the current country which operates a civil law government in 78% of the former British Mandate of Palestine and uses legal military occupation over 13% or so of the remaining 22% of the former British Mandate of Palestine which is considered to be the State of Palestine by the United Nations. As opposed to Answer 1, the lands of the State of Palestine are not a legal part of Israel and therefore could not be subject to any partition of Israel.

Any partition of Israel is wholly unnecessary. The country of Israel has a number of political groups with different agendas, but there is no real pull for separatism or division. Even the Israeli Muslim Arab minority, as much as they believe that the Israeli regime needs to reform in certain ways, does not believe in secession or separation and actively contributes to the Israeli economy.

There are also several other issues with Answer 1. First, while the name "Palestinian" was created post-hoc, the people did exist. When the British took a census at the beginning of the Mandate Period there were over five times as many Muslims as Jews and the majority of them were Arabs. That these Muslim Arabs did not use the term Palestinian to refer to themselves, does not deny their connection to the land. On a similar note, prior to Israeli independence, the Jewish population in the British Mandate of Palestine was called Palestinian Jews or the Yishuv, not Israelis, but this does not illegitimize the Israeli Jewish State. Once it is clear that Palestinians exist and that they have a historic and legal claim to parts of the former British Mandate of Palestine, one can support their claims to parts of their historic homeland without requiring anything burdensome from Israel.