Israel

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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.

No, not all of them. There are many anti-zionist Jews (such as the Naturei Carta, Hasidic Jews) who believe the modern state of Israel is a blasphemous entity and some of them hold rallies & run campaigns in support of Palestine. There are many Jewish groups even in Israel who speak out against the violence which is carried out by the zionist state (Such as ICAHD & Jewish Voice for Justice). American comedian Roseanne Barr who's Jewish, has also in recent times spoken out against Israel's treatment of Palestinians. UK Jewish celebrities such as Zoe Wanamaker & Steven Fry have in recent times signed a petition distancing themselves from Israel's activities.

Answer 2

What about the thousands of Israelis that have been killed by Palestinian terrorists? What about the fact that Palestinians walk in Jewish neighborhoods without fear, while no Israeli dares enter many Palestinian areas, for fear of car-theft and lynching? What about the fact that in forming the State of Israel as permitted by the U.N., the nascent State was attacked by seven foreign armies and survived only by the grace of God? Was Israel fighting a one-sided war? How did the Middle Eastern terrorists justify blowing up public buses, schoolchildren, restaurants, etc., tens if not hundreds of times in recent decades? Israel holds itself to a higher standard. Every Israeli soldier is taught again and again about the Rules of Engagement. Israel targets a few MILITARY objectives after tens of missiles deliberately hit CIVILIAN houses in Israel, and much of the international media twist the story into the opposite. Israel does the minimum for survival, contorting itself in its efforts to avoid killing non-combatants, but is viciously denounced when there are collateral deaths.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It is understandable that Israel, being of holy significance to 3 major religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and being one of the most fought-over and conquered pieces of land in the history of mankind, will spark a monsoon of debate, as to who owns what. But, the fact remains that the capital of Israel was proclaimed by the Israeli government in 1950 and this capital is Jerusalem. The issue is that in 1950, Israel did not have sovereignty over East Jerusalem because it was occupied by the Jordanian military as a result of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

The issue that a lot of international groups have with the Israeli Declaration that Jerusalem is its capital is that the city defined by the Israelis as Jerusalem contains both de jure Israeli territory (West Jerusalem) and the de jure non-Israeli territory (East Jerusalem) which is owed, theoretically, to a Palestinian State under the current interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242. UNSC Resolution 478 crystallized the international stance on this issue. If Israel, like East Germany, claimed that half of a city was its operating capital (i.e. West Jerusalem - but East Berlin in the German case), many international observers would have fewer objections to recognizing it as the capital of Israel. However, as the official Israeli capital contains territory that is not technically Israeli, many organizations and countries prefer to treat Tel Aviv, a city that is unequivocally Israeli and the site of David Ben Gurion's Declaration of Independence, as the working capital. Therefore, all embassies in Israel are in Tel Aviv.

A:

According to the Bible, Israel became a divided nation approximately 921 BCE, when Israel broke away from its Judahite oppressors. However, modern scholars see the history of Israel and Judah differently, and say they may never have been divided, because they were never united. Finkelstein and Silberman (The Bible Unearthed) believe that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were always separate, with different life styles, different pottery, different myths and legends, and even speaking different dialects of Hebrew.

Whether or not the biblical account of a previously united Israel has any historical basis, there is no doubt that Israel was economically and militarily more powerful than Judah. It had a larger territory, more fertile soil and higher rainfall. As a result, Israel had a much larger population than did Judah. In fact, archaeologists have determined that the Hebrew settlement of Judah was rather late, and that Hebrews did not really spread south into the poorer area of Judah until Israel was relatively well settled. Because Judah was more mountainous than Israel, it had a defensive advantage in that Jerusalem was more easily defended than Samaria and other cities in Israel.

Israel was a rich prize and more easily conquered than Judah, and so was overrun and destroyed in 722 BCE by the Assyrian army.

Do you mean EST? If so then it would be 07:15:00 in Israeli time. If this is wrong you can check for yourself at http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

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