THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Even Jewish people see the settlers as enemies of peace. Some see this as a good thing, many don’t.

Netanyahu is a terrible politician at any rate. It seems like every state facing an even somewhat plausible existential threat can’t resist trying out hard-line leadership periodically. I guess Bibi and his ilk present the situation in a seductively simple way (much like Bush and the War on Terror framing). Voters get tired of nuance and invisible progress, so they go for the guy who says he knows who the enemy is and how to confront it. Never works. Never will work. But human nature is such that we’ll keep trying it ad infinitum.

Netanyahu’s been at the center of every disaster in Israel for 15 years.  For whatever reason, American politicians used to listen to him.  It seems like those days are over…

"NO WE CAN’T!”

Unfortunatly for the majority a small group of extremists (on both sides) can quite easily sabotage the peace-process with violent means espesially since they are often willing to risk or even sacrifice life and limp in the belief that they are doing “gods work”.

At this point I firmely belive that there is not much hope left of solving the Israel-Palestine issue internaly. We/they will simply have to wait it out for wider progress to take place in the entire region.

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/06/16/1005916/obama-positive-movement-in-netanyahu-speech

Obama made a tepid response.  I loved that he pointed out that Netanyahu’s speech had alot of conditions, contrary to Netanyahu’s claim that he would negotiate without prior conditions.

I almost get the feeling that Netanyahu met “prior conditions” as in “without being constrained by the prior peace agreements, so that I can create new conditions going forward”.

Anyway, Obama seems so far to be a capable mediator.  It will be interested to see the response from Abbas, and Obama’s take on that.

From the day the settlements started, it was understood in some circles that they were nothing but the creation of a bargaining chip, something that Israel (which doesn’t exactly have a lot of land to trade) could trade in a fair peace agreement.  Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences stepped in, and they became something far more (and given that real people lived their lives there, you could understand that, even if, in the end, they had no right to where they were living). 

As to the comment on hardliners taking over, Israel did that with Sharon, but Sharon took a “Nixon goes to China” view and actually pushed the peace process forward.  I’m afraid that Bibi is the anti-Sharon in that regard.

I am a settler in Israel and we are not anti-peace.  The only thing that we’re trying to say is that all the concessions that have been made have never worked.  Israel is our country and the Arabs should have a right to live freely in it.  The one thing we tried already is making concessions and that seems to never solve the conflict.  There has to be something else. 

I’m for annexing all the territory and giving the Arabs citizenship.  Everything else has zero chance of solving the Arab-Israel conflict.  We should be able to tell that giving away territory doesn’t solve anything because we’ve already tried that and has failed every time whether it was Begin, Rabin or Bibi. 

BTW, Tangotiger if a nation went around blowing innocent people up would you want them to have a military force?

Ari: I’m not taking a position either way in this thread. I am solely discussing Netanyahu’s speeech.

What nation is required by another nation to not have any armed forces as a postcondition to negotiations?  Even countries at war don’t do that, do they?

Focusing solely on Netanyahu’s speech, what is it that you like about it, and you hate about it, in terms of negotiation tactics?

Well, it seems pretty hard to deny that the Israeli military and police force kill innocent people; if that is the standard, why isn’t mutual demilitarization on the table?

Ari:
“Israel is our country and the Arabs should have a right to live freely in it.  “

Netanyahu:
“For it is clear to all that the demand to settle the Palestinian refugees inside of Israel, contradicts the continued existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish People.”

***

As far as Netanyahu is concerned, the Jewish people would have to make up the majority of Israel. 

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We had a similar brouhaha in Quebec/Canada.  In Quebec, it was all about cultural identity of the french people.  Fine.  The former Prime Minister of Canada (Trudeau) reasoned that if the english population exceeded that of the french in Quebec, then that cultural identity would be attacked, and therefore, the law in Quebec, to protect that identity would force english people out (or something to that effect).

Seems that this ideology exists around the world, and I suspect it will hit some southern states soon enough as spanish becomes the primary language.

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Quebec no more belongs to French people than California belongs to English people than Israel belongs to Jewish people.

Each part of the land belongs to whichever single person rightfully claims that land.  And in no way can the majority based on some cultural identity then make a claim to the entirety of the land.

That is, Quebec belongs to the 8 million inhabitants, regardless of how well or poorly they speak French.  There are not two classes of people, one more deserving than the other.

But, in Quebec, in fact the French language is offered protected status, thereby creating a second class.  The joke however is on the French people, as English people, forced to learn two languages, now reap its benefits as adults.

Tango, take a look at the Iraqi constitution is you want to see special rights for all kinds of folks.

As to Ari’s comments, my girlfriend and I were discussing how (as Jews) we know so few Jews, particularly our age, who don’t see Netanyahu as an extremist.  There seems to be general agreement on end to settlements and a two-state solution (if anything, there are a bunch Chomskyites out there who argue unconvincingly for a “secular bi-national state”, however that would work in the current century.)

And, of course, we have many examples of negotiations (some may call them concessions) that have worked.  Camp David eliminated the Egyptians as a military threat.  You didn’t get a casino in Jericho because the 1993 accords were a complete and utter failure.  And withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Gaza to the international boundary have given Israel more moral authority to respond to attacks inside its own territory.

Unfortunately, any progress towards peace can so easily be derailed by a handful of extremists from either side.  Netanyahu has used this to bring him electoral success.

Perhaps the more fundamental problem is with the premise that any group of individuals is better off living in states that are defined by (and give privilege to) ethnicity or religion.

If only right wing Israelis realized that a one state solution dooms Jewish democratic Israel in the long run due to population growth rates.

For the main topic that I’m putting forward, no one has yet defended the content of Netanyahu’s speech as being anything close to positive.

This was my point here.