Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumLapid's platform: No compromise over Jerusalem, no settlement freeze
http://972mag.com/lapids-platform-no-compromise-over-jerusalem-no-settlement-freeze/64847/Meet the new boss...
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)But Israel is really a liberal country.
Yeah, liberal when taking other people's lands.
Igel
(35,191 posts)To coin a word.
Take the use of the words "liberal" and "conservative" in post-Soviet Russia. "Liberal" good, right?
"Liberals" wanted more capitalism, private property, free press, freedom of association, fewer union-membership requirements. Some were downright laissez-faire. More like "classical liberalism" liberals, but that isn't a sufficient description, either. Liberals tended to like Reagan. Not always, but mostly. Conservatives were communists or their fellow travellers. They wanted to conserve what they'd built. And many conservatives were just old--they lived in fear of the changes that would make either their sacrifices or their standard of living being changed.
Context matters.
In the US, "progressive" economics and pro-Palestinian viewpoints (or anti-Zionist/Israeli, sometimes you can see the difference and sometimes you can't) are usually combined if you're politically "progressive". That doesn't need to hold in Israel.
I wish I could find the discussion online that I read a few days ago. Probably vanished from the websites I peruse from time to time.
All politics are local. However, not all politics are local to the US.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)"All politics are local. However, not all politics are local to the US."
oberliner
(58,724 posts)A peace proposal that is supported by Israeli and Palestinian progressives and liberals as well as numerous international figures including former Presidents Carter and Clinton.
A proposal I thought you had supported as well.
Edit to Add:
The Geneva Accord folks have even highlighted his position on their website:
http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/yair-lapid-only-solution-is-two-states
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)The article which is a link to Ynet is from last June and contains none of the statements made recently
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I strongly encourage you to do so.
Lapid's party platform with respect to the two-state solution is pretty much in line with the Accord - so much so, that his remarks are featured on their website.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)Try reading the article instead of rolling your eyes as to the website it is published under.
I strongly encourage you to do so.
Here's a tidbit.
"Lapid's platform: No compromise over Jerusalem, no settlement freeze."
Now let us enter the chorus of cheers: "But who says that the West Bank belongs to the Palestinians? It is as much ours as it is theirs."
Exeunt dexter.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)instead of "occupied territories"-a right-wing term that allows them to call for Palestinian territory to be incurred on and reduced as much as possible while insisting, at the same time, that all territory currently considered part of Israel is sacrosanct(in other words, that Israel is real but Palestine isn't...and that Palestine as a concept and a domain need not be treated with any respect at all). This is why we can assume, for example, that none of the land that might ever be offered as part of the mythical "agreed upon land swaps" could possibly be usable in any way.
They are working under the assumption that EVERYTHING the Israeli side wants is valid and legitimate but nothing that people on the other side wants is...and that, therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to treat anything they might give the Palestinian side as a special privilege rather than a natural right.
And they wonder why Palestinians aren't eager to negotiate with their side.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)other people live there now, and that is the hard part: holding back on total colonization of the Palestinian lands.
It's easy to let a people or group suffer when you reduce them to animals or think of them as inhuman, but the world is watching and won't tolerate it.
What I always come back to in amazement is that the same respect and human rights that the founders of Israel, and their progenitors for generations, have fought for, and rightly deserved may I add, will not be shown to the people of Palestine; mainly IMHO because the former will not tolerate the latter on any land that their descendants once lived upon.
Some here in I/P have arrogantly written that Israel is entitled to the same lands that the Palestinians now call their own. Again, IMHO, this is the blindness of empire and conquest and not the culmination of the tribes of Israel looking for some peace from wandering. The West Bank and Gaza, again IMHO, if left to time will be absorbed into Israel's borders, to be called sacrosanct-inviolate from the people of Israel, regardless of how many millions of Palestinians are driven off ancestral homes to live out their lives in misery.
The treatment of the Palestinian people, by colonial Israel, is an affront to human rights and is not justifiable under international law.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You can work for peace...OR you can work for victory...you can't work for both.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(that would still be bad, but it would be a different, slightly-less horrible bad).
But "no settlement FREEZE"?
How can any who claims to want peace NOT demand that, at a very least, the Israeli government agree that the settlements not be made any bigger than they are? That no more land be lost to Palestinians than currently has?
Why can't they at least agree that, at this point, they have ENOUGH?
And if they won't agree to that, what right does that government even have to claim to want peace?
They KNOW perfectly well that they're not going to get peace through unconditional surrender, for God's sake.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)to make it possible" approach.
Which is the current policy.
President Obama is correct and John Kerry is wrong--the US has nothing to gain com trying to broker talks and an agreement.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)as their dog in the fight, their toehold, in the mid east, and that is a recipe for disaster if Israel ever slides farther right. How will it look if America supports a country that either evicts or just kills any hope of a Palestinian homeland?
I'm sure some will really lose sleep over it.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Bibi came to Washington, slapped Obama around in public, and got a hero's welcome from Congressional Democrats.
He recognized that it's better to not even try.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)Politicians will fall all over themselves when a foreign leader comes to their country. The same politicians will also do back flips if they believe that there is any $$ for campaign donations in it for them.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)President in the back.
Fortunately, the two worst (Berkeley and Weiner) are no longer there.