Hamas, Fatah reach agreement on ceasefire

[Scurrilous]

While gunmen continue to fire mortar shells at Abbas' office and while a third person dies in day of violence in PA, Hamas and Fatah representatives agree to halt violence following mediation of Egyptian security delegation. PM Olmert: We must carefully examine what is taking place on the other side

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3341300,00.html

<snip>

"Palestinian sources reported Sunday evening that Fatah and Hamas representatives have reached an agreement on a ceasefire and on halting the violent incidents in the Palestinian Authority, with the assistance of the Egyptian security delegation visiting the Strip.

The parties hope that the agreements will be translated into real activity in the field, and that the activists will be calmed down.

The Egyptian security delegation continues to hold talks with the parties in hopes of reaching a stable ceasefire, although reports from the Strip portray picture of a serious escalation and a real civil war.

On Sunday evening it was reported that gunmen fired another rocket at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office and that an activist was killed in the northern Strip town of Jabalya.

The activist, an officer in the Palestinian national security force, was shot to death by unknown gunmen in Jabalya. After he was shot, his body was thrown in the street. The man, Hamdi Rahma, is the brother of a senior officer in the Palestinian Preventative Security Service."

[msmcghee]

1. It's interesting that at the bottom of this . .

. . what they are fighting over is whether they should actively continue to kill Israeli civilians in an attempt to destroy the state of Israel (Hamas) - or whether they should hold off for a while and try other means (Abbas/Fatah).

[cali]

2. Do you not see at all,

that a good deal of this is caused by the Israelis? I suggest you read the posted article about the Israeli soldiers who are speaking out about the evils- yes, evils- of occupation.

[msmcghee]

3. I am trying hard to see your view of this.

I do not believe Israel wishes to occupy the West Bank. I think Israel wishes instead that the Palestinians would have done what the Israelis did in 1948 - accept the "less than what they hoped for" Partition Plan of the UN and get on with establishing their state.

Arab aggression, hatred of Israel and its people and Arab intransigence over the last sixty years has made it necessary for Israel to occupy the West Bank. Israel does not want to be there.

They can not leave without becoming vulnerable to further attack in ways they are not now. They can not leave without throwing away their only bargaining chip in inducing a new Palestinian state to accept peaceful relations with Israel.

Of course, when soldiers are forced to place their lives on the line every day in a hostile territory inhabited by people who want to kill you and your family - there will be personal animosity. I'm sure that the militias see this state of affairs ultimately as an advantage for them. It allows them to keep the hatred of Israel at a fever pitch. Palestinian leaders have always seen Intifada as a political tool for their own advantage. That's how such "wars of resistance" are waged.

The underlying reality is that it is a war that Israel does not want to wage. Israel is not France occupying Algeria. Israel is Israelis occupying Israel - and falling under attack of those who want to destroy Israel. Their presence in the West Bank is completely a defensive measure.

The Magistrate has said that Israel no longer needs the West Bank for its defense. I think Israel needs to occupy the West Bank until that peace treaty is signed if it is to exist in the future.

But, these are just guesses on my part - and yours too. Israel is the nation whose citizens have been under deadly attack for sixty years by people who have vowed to continue until Israel is no longer there. It is Israel's right to decide what defensive measures are necessary for Israel's survival, not ours.

I appreciate and share your concern for the suffering of the Palestinians under these conditions. I just can't see any way for Israel to respond otherwise that would be practical, which is the reality that the Palestinian militias have imposed on Israel.

All the hardship would be over immediately in the event of an attempt at reconciliation and an honest recognition of Israel's right to exist on the part of Palestinian leadership.

As I said in my post above - that's what this is really about. And that's all it would take to end it.

[bemildred]

4. What do you think the settlements are, if not the expression of a

wish to occupy the West Bank? Or, are the settlers not really Israeli? Or, are they not really supported and defended by the Israeli state? Do they represent some sort of clever strategy to fool the Palestinians into thinking someone wants their land? Do words mean anything at all?

[msmcghee]

6. While you were sending your post I was composing . .

. . an addition to my last post which I think better states my thoughts regarding the settlements and settlers. It seems to me that the history of the region is one of multiple religions living together.

The West Bank is not currently part of any state nor was it during Jordan's occupation of it. It is territory that was offered to Arabs as the state of Palestine in 1947 which they refused. Through several wars Israel has ended up occupying it temporarily until the state of Palestine is finally established under a treaty that would guarantee Israel's right to exist.

Why should Israel deny those very religious Israelis who feel a strong connection to the religious significance of the land (or anyone else) the right to settle there in currently uninhabited areas? Those settlers know the risks that they may be kicked off that land as terms of a possible treaty.

I'd agree that you could make the argument that Israel was foolish to allow the settlements. But I don't see how they can be seen as an act of aggression or an affront against Palestinian Arabs.

Please understand that I am explaining my view while respecting yours and cali's. I don't mean to belittle your opinions in any way. I'm just trying to understand it and welcome your help.

[bemildred]

8. It is not the absence of a state that annoys them.

It is the occupation and theft of their land. Your premise that the land is or was empty is wrong. The land has been continuously occupied and worked for thousands of years, some of it by Jews no less; all of it belongs to someone or some village or some tribe. The notion that people can move in and squat on it, thereby gaining legal and binding ownership rights, and that the previous owners ought not to object, is fatuous.

[msmcghee]

9. I'll admit I'm not really clear on this.

It's my impression that there are a variety of ways that the settlers acquire rights to the land.

I thought that some is purchased from Arabs and that some is on land for which there is no clear title - or is state land available for settlement by anyone - or there is a claimed Arab title that is not in the records and that the land is uninhabited.

Do you know of instances where settlers have actually kicked existing Arabs out of their homes and taken over the ownership of them, especially where the IDF has supported that?

[bemildred]

10. Report: Jewish Settlements Built on Palestinian Property

JERUSALEM, Nov. 21-- An Israeli advocacy group has found that 39 percent of the land used by Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property, and contends that construction there violates international and Israeli law guaranteeing the protection of property rights in the occupied territories.

In a critical report released here Tuesday, the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now also disclosed that much of the land that Israeli officials have said would remain part of the Jewish state under any final peace agreement is private Palestinian property.

That includes some of the large settlement blocs inside the barrier that Israel is building to separate Israelis from the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The report states that 86 percent of Maale Adumim on Jerusalem's eastern edge sits on private Palestinian land. A little more than 35 percent of the settlement of Ariel, which cuts deep into the northern West Bank, is also on private property.

Israel's government has long maintained that the settlements, developed in large part with public money, sit on untitled property known as "state land" or on property of unclear legal status. Israeli courts have also ruled that unauthorized outposts erected on private Palestinian property must be razed, although those orders are rarely carried out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=155986

Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land

JERUSALEM, Nov. 20 — An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

About 86 percent of Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement, sits on privately held Palestinian property, according to government data.

Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and only takes land there legally or, for security reasons, temporarily.
If big sections of those settlements are indeed privately held Palestinian land, that is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and further complicate the already distant prospect of a negotiated peace. The data indicate that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private.

The new claims regarding Palestinian property are said to come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel’s presence in the West Bank. Peace Now, an Israeli group that advocates Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, plans to publish the information on Tuesday. An advance copy was made available to The New York Times.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=155802

[msmcghee]

13. Thanks for that . .

. . but I read that report when it came out and was posted here. I didn't ignore it.

By the next day there was what seemed like a credible rebuttal. After that the report kind of died as an issue.

***************************

http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=1240

Conclusion

The bottom line is that, as indicated in CAMERA’s earlier article on the Peace Now report, the group’s interpretation of the map data is wrong and tendentious. The leaked map says nothing about rights to the land in question, only about claims to such rights. And many of these claims, such as the Jahalin claims on Ma’ale Adumim, were debunked long ago.

In its rush to judgement, and its eagerness to reap a “media whirlwind” of publicity, to use Peace Now’s own words, the group failed to do even elementary checks, such as asking the Civil Administration what the map was meant to show. If Peace Now wants to have any credibility in the future, it should publicly admit its errors and withdraw its faulty, misleading report. And it should ensure that the media whirlwind it created is followed by a whirlwind of corrections, including at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, NPR, and the BBC.

*******************************

After that it kind of disappeared from the news.

I just went to the PeaceNow website and find no rebuttal to the Camera article - the main contention of which was that the leaked map was of Palestinian claims of ownership. It was not a map of land that Israel believed actually belonged to Palestinians, as PeaceNow asserted.

I sort of filed this provisionally in the same folder where I keep the report of the IDF firing missiles through the roof of the two Red Crescent ambulances.

But, I'm open to further proof or signs of ongoing suits by aggrieved Palestinians to world bodies - or to some rebuttal of Camera's claims by PeaceNow, none of which I have found so far.

[bemildred]

14. I'm not attempting to adjudicate the dispute.

I'm pointing out why it upsets the Palestinians, they think it's their land. The fact that the ownership is disputed by the people squatting on it now is to be expected. I'm pointing out that it is the "Palestinian claims of ownership" that are WHY it upsets them to have their land stolen.

[breakaleg]

11. 40 % of the land used in the occupied territories is privately owned by Palestinians.

There has been much discussion of this recently released bit of news in this forum over the last little while. I'm surprised you haven't come across it.

[msmcghee]

5. I should add that one area . .

. . of this that I find confusing is the question of the settlements.

You and others maintain that Israel has made a grave mistake in allowing Israelis to establish settlements on the West Bank - in that it enrages the Palestinians who see their chance of establishing a state there less likely.

I have trouble understanding this. There are many Arabs living in Israel mostly in Arab communities within Israel who enjoy full rights of citizenship. Why would not the same conditions prevail for Jews who wish to remain in the West Bank when and if the West Bank becomes Palestine?

[cali]

12. You don't understand how provocative

builcing settlements is? It is not the Israelis land. The government of Israel has no right to build settlements on that land, to disposess Palestinians of their land, to build roads in the WB that only Israelis are allowed to use. It is wrong. Yes, Israel has Arab citizent, but comparing the Arab Palestinian citizens to the settlers is mind boggling.

[msmcghee]

15. Here are the problems I have with your reply.

cali: "You don't understand how provocative building settlements is? It is not the Israelis land. The government of Israel has no right to build settlements on that land, to dispossess Palestinians of their land, to build roads in the WB that only Israelis are allowed to use.

Me: Legally and morally, Israel has a better claim to the land of the West bank than anyone else. Israel occupied the land in a defensive war. The previous state that claimed control of the land was Jordan. Jordan refused to take back control of the land when Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty. Prior to that it was under British Mandate to prepare the area for an eventual Jewish homeland. Prior to that it was the Ottoman Turks who controlled it. The land would legally belong to the state of Palestine right now if the Palestinians had not previously refused to accept it when it was offered to them in 1947.

Provocation has nothing to do with ownership. I'm sure that anything Israel does on the West Bank (except leave) will be seen as provocative by Palestinians. I take that back. Leaving Gaza was seen as provocative enough that the Gazans felt it necessary to fire hundreds of rockets over several months into Israel with the intent of killing Israeli citizens. I feel fairly certain that some West Bank Palestinians would feel the same way if Israel left.

cali: Yes, Israel has Arab citizens, but comparing the Arab Palestinian citizens to the settlers is mind boggling.

Why should that be? Many of the settlers are Israelis that were kicked off their land by Arabs in 1948.

[cali]

17. Got any links that demonstrate

that many of the settlers were kicked off of Arab lands in 1948? And even were that true, why should they, in turn, appropriate Palestinian land. As for your claim that legally and morally, Israelis have a greater right to the WB, than Palestinians, that's patently untrue.

[msmcghee]

18. In reply . .

Here is a list of Jewish towns and communities that were in Gaza, the West bank and Israel proper - that were completely evacuated during the 1948 War of Independence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_villages_depopulated_during_the_1948_Arab-Israeli_war#Jewish_villages

State of Israel

* Mishmar HaYarden
* Har Tuv

West Bank

* Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem (Jewish Quarter, Nahalat Shimon)
* Atarot (now part of Jerusalem)
* Beit Ha'arava
* Ein Tzurim
* Kalya
* Kfar Etzion
* Masuot Yitzhak
* Neve Yaakov (now part of Jerusalem)
* Revadim

Gaza Strip

* Kfar Darom

[msmcghee]

19. The term "Palestinian land" is itself misleading.

Palestinian Arabs consider not only Gaza and the West Bank, but all of Israel to be "Palestinian Land".

I listed the several reasons why Israel has a greater legal and moral claim to the West Bank than "anyone else".

Israel occupied the land in a defensive war. The previous state that claimed control of the land was Jordan. Jordan refused to take back control of the land when Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty. Prior to that it was under British Mandate to prepare the area for an eventual Jewish homeland. Prior to that it was the Ottoman Turks who controlled it. The land would legally belong to the state of Palestine right now if the Palestinians had not previously refused to accept it when it was offered to them in 1947.

We have to be careful not to confuse land ownership questions with state sovereignty. There's a difference between a Palestinian Arab in Israel who owns his land - and a claim that a whole state is recognized as Palestine or Israel.

There is no state of Palestine. There is a territory (Gaza and the West Bank) which no recognized state claims as its own.

My statement was that Israel had a greater legal and moral claim to the West Bank than "anyone else". By that I meant any other state. I also should have added " . . should they wish to exercise that claim - which they don't". I should have been clearer.

As for any claims by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank for statehood on that land - they have had a standing offer by the UN to establish a state there since 1947. All that would be necessary is for them to recognize the state of Israel. They have refused for 60 years to do that. In a series of attempts to over-run Israel militarily their original suggested borders have been repeatedly adjusted to provide Israel better protection from attack (and for other reasons) and those borders now remain in dispute - to be settled as part of a lasting peace treaty with the state of Israel - if the Palestinians ever decide to accept the existence of Israel.

In the meantime Israel will remain the administrator of the West Bank until its security can be guaranteed.

What state do you think has a better claim than Israel to the land of the West Bank and even Gaza? Note that I am just stating my opinion on this. I'm interested in yours. I consider neither of our opinions as either right or wrong. The land and borders have been in dispute for 60 years and I'm sure we're not going to settle it here.

[cali]

20. The audacity it takes

to speak for Palestians or Palestinian Arabs, as you like to refer to them, is breathtaking.

[msmcghee]

21. I don't understand why my post offends you.

I do not pretend to speak for "Palestinians" or "Palestinian Arabs". I am using their own words expressed numerous times over the last 60 years in every possible way. If I got it wrong please correct me and I'll try to be more accurate in the future.

I use the term "Palestinian Arabs" because there are many Jews living in the territories, because there are many Arabs who formerly lived in the territories who now live on places like Jordan or Egypt - and because I try to be precise.

[cali]

22. It does offend me.

You presumed to speak for Palestinians. There are plenty of polls that show that the majority of Palestinians- and that's how virtually everyone refers to them, even in the Israeli press- support two states co-existing. You make them out to be all bloodthirsty bigots who would like to drive all Israeli out. Yes, there are extremists on both sides, but you depict Palestinians in a way that I consider unjust and ugly.

You may have noticed I don't much care for people who are rabid about one side or the other.

[msmcghee]

23. You are technically correct according to this . .

. . recent poll.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12493

A slight majority, 52.4% said they preferred a two state solution. However, that number alone will lead to a misconception.

First, even if 90% said they preferred a two-state solution, but 10% were violently opposed to recognizing the existence of Israel, unless the Palestinians (I'll start using that term) had a strong government willing and able to enforce the will of the 90%, then it makes little difference what the average Palestinian wants.

The Palestinians don't have that government.

I do not believe that all Palestinians are bloodthirsty bigots. I do believe that there are bloodthirsty bigots among them. I also believe there are bloodthirsty bigots among the Israelis.

The difference is - in Israel the bloodthirsty bigots are marginalized and have little to no political power. Those who act out their bigotry are jailed.

In Palestine the bloodthirsty bigots are elected to run the place and speak for all Palestinians and it is the bloodthirsty bigots who unfortunately establish the political reality.

It is that political reality (in the form of Kassams and suicide bombers) that Israel is forced to deal with.

Democratic rule by majority requires a charitable willingness to give up power to the will of the majority and to play by the rules and to eschew violence. I think the problem of wars and death and suffering in the world is generally caused by those who, for selfish and cultural reasons, refuse to accept that level of enlightenment.

I think we both honestly wish for peace and an end to the suffering of innocents throughout the world. I believe the only way to do that is to demand that people everywhere honor that basic rule to give up violence as a solution and to be harshly unforgiving of those who refuse. I believe that apologizing and making excuses for them has the opposite effect and will lead to vastly greater death and suffering in the long run.

I think that's where our differences lie - not in our goals.

[The Magistrate]

24. Several Points, Ms. McGhee

Israel has no legitimate claim whatever to the lands over-run in '67, save the fact that it is has the right to exercise military occupation over them and their populace, until such time as some treaty approximating the general settlement envisoned in Resolution 242 is concluded. It has no right to annex any portion of that land, nor does it have the right to settle any portion of its population upon it. These are not debateable items: obviously, people may express opinions and desires in the matter, but as matters of law, there is no room remaining for debate.

The Balfour language in the League of Nations mandate certainly conveys no hint of a claim, legal, moral, or otherwise, to any of the lands over-run in '67. Mr. Churchill, the acknowledged driver of English policy in the question in the years after the Great War, said at the time the Mandate being finalized that anyone who thought Palestine was in consequence to become as Jewish as Manchester was English badly misread the policy and intent of His Majesty's government. Indeed, the wording "national home" was employed precisely to avoid commitment to developement of a Jewish state, and the Balfour language also includes direction that rights of other communities in the territory not be diminished by that endeavor. While the Zionist leadership may well have envisioned a Jewish state comprising the whole of the Mandatory territory, no one ever officially promised them anything remotely like that. More-over, anything one might accept as a claim rooted in the Mandate's incorporation of the Balfour language lapsed with the Partition by which the United Nations terminated the Mandate in 1947. This sought to riddle out the whole of the Balfour language and the history and geography of the region into a simple bifurcation of Zones, the map of which owes obviously much to a proposal by the Peel Commission shortly before the Second World War, and which Mr. Ben-Gurion had indicated a willingness to accept. That Israel wound up in possession of a good deal of land the Partitionn allocated to the Arab Zone owes nothing to legal or moral claims derived from the Mandate or any other similar source, but solely to the success of Israeli arms, and the still current but fast fading acceptance in the political world of the ancient right of conquest.

While it is true that a small number of Jews were forced to flee homes in the Arab Zone in the course of the fighting after the Partition, it is nonesense to pretend the settlements in the areas over-run in '67 today owe anything to the return of these people, or their heirs, to their former homes. The number of people involved dwarfs the fugure put to flight, and many settlers are immigrants to Israel, or children of immigrants to Israel, arriving after the Partition, in many instances several decades and more afterwards. If any question of "return" is to be invoked, it would be better to be clear what is involved. The initial act of the post '67 settlement campaign was the establishment by a small clique of radical ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious types of an outpost at Hebron. That city was the site of murderous mob attacks in 1929 against its Jewish residents, mostly a long established Orthodox community, and this driving out of Jews from Hebron had long been a point of pride in Nationalist Arab Palestinian circles. The site was chosen deliberately for its provocative character, and because it would make politically difficult any Israeli government action against the radicals who undertook it.

The fact is that the settlement movement remains the expression of an ideological commitment to a "Greater Israel" in certain circles of Israeli society, and reflects a desire still present in a number of people to extend Israeli rule "from the River to the Sea", as the Hamas slogan puts it. Whether this comes from religious or nationalist ardor, or from feelings of religious or ethnic supremacism, seperately or in any conceiveable combination in the driving individuals, does not matter: the activity is not legal under relevant international law, and so long as it continues, it is impossible to argue with a straight face to an Arab Palestinian who says the Israelis mean to subjugate us entirely or even drive us away completely that either thing is not so.

[Fredda Weinberg]

7. The evening news gave a different version

According to my local ABC station, Fatah has agreed to a ceasefire - Hamas has not yet issued a statement.

[Eugene]

16. Ceasefire but same political deadlock, no talks.

Fragile ceasefire takes hold in Gaza
17 Dec 2006 23:41:53 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, Dec 18 (Reuters) - A ceasefire took tentative hold on Monday
between Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah after days of heavy
fighting pushed the Gaza Strip to the brink of civil war.

It was unclear whether the fragile deal would last as groups of
heavily armed gunmen from both sides continued to roam the tense
streets.

-snip-

The ceasefire agreement calls for the rival factions to pull back
their fighters and release men abducted by each side. It also calls
for Abbas's security forces to end a day-long siege of two Hamas-led
government ministries.

Fatah said the agreement does not call for a resumption of stalled
unity government talks, as asserted by Hamas, which took control
of the Palestinian Authority in March after their parliamentary
election victory.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17883029.htm

If the two sides won't settle their dispute with a war,
there's some small progress.