political suicide ?

whygohome

yosi wrote:

Perhaps. The difference is that for a large percentage of American Jews Israel is a central element in their identity, and therefore a subject about which they have a vested interest in being informed. This is somewhat different from the case of Americans and America because they don't need to spend time studying the affairs of the country to feel connected to it; the feeling of connection comes from just living in America.

Okay. Well put, but those engaged are still in the minority.
And, most people are, in my opinion, oblivious.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Look at what was being negotiated at camp david in 2001 and you'll see that the parameters were exactly what Obama is talking about, namely the '67 borders with minor agreed upon land swaps.

Except that's not what Israel agreed to at Camp David, as you know.

yosi wrote:

Byrnzie, I don't expect you to change your views, but in light of the recent discussions on the train about being nicer in debates maybe you could tone it down a bit. I, for one, find the whole "Israel is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, ethnic cleansing, seal clubbing, puppy throttling, Nazi criminal state" thing to be just a little not nice, to say the least.

I simply said Israel is an aggressive Apartheid state, which it is, under the accepted definition of these terms.

Byrnzie

Mariamaniatis wrote:

Here it comes. Byrnzie to Israel thread like flies on shit. Shocker!

Funny you should say that seeing as every single one of your 79 posts on the board so far has been about Israel. But then I suppose if we count all the Israel posts you made under your previous five of six usernames then they would amount to a lot more.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Netanyahu's rejection doesn't really strike me as a rejection. True, he "rejects" a return to the '67 borders, but Obama isn't suggesting a return to the '67 borders, he's suggesting a return to the '67 borders with agreed upon land swaps. Seems to me that Netanyahu is taking a hard line as a negotiating position ahead of his Washington trip with an eye towards trying to ensure that such "agreed upon land swaps" will be as advantageous to Israel as possible.

Do you not think that considering that under international law aquisition of territory by force is illegal, then it should be Israel that makes the majority of concessions, and not the Palestinians?

You see, this isn't a case of what Israel wants, but it's more a case of what Israel is entitled to under international law.

Byrnzie

By the way, why are there two threads on this identical subject?

keeponrockin

yosi wrote:

Actually the US didn't start sending weapons to Israel until after the 1973 war. Before that Israel got most of its weapons from France.

Did not know that!

Alright, every president since 73?

yosi

Byrnzie, don't tell me what I "know." It's a sleazy way for you to imply that you are right and that I'm a liar. I know what I know, thank you very much, and one thing I know is that just because Chomsky, Finkelstein, et al say something doesn't make it true. In any event none of the people you sight were actually at camp david. All the people who actually WERE there attest that Israel offered essentially the '67 borders with modifications, which is, again, what Obama is talking about.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Byrnzie, don't tell me what I "know." It's a sleazy way for you to imply that you are right and that I'm a liar. I know what I know, thank you very much, and one thing I know is that just because Chomsky, Finkelstein, et al say something doesn't make it true. In any event none of the people you sight were actually at camp david. All the people who actually WERE there attest that Israel offered essentially the '67 borders with modifications, which is, again, what Obama is talking about.

But this just isn't true. They didn't offer 'essentially the '67 borders', and any honest person who looks at a map of what was offered can see that. The map looks like Swiss cheese. It was an offer based on the South African bantustan system, as supported by Ariel Sharon - http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/fe ... pe-1.10275

yosi

There's no map in that link. In any event I've seen the sorts of maps you're referencing, and they represent preliminary ideas put forward by the Israeli camp, NOT Israel's final offer, which was again, based on the '67 lines with minor swaps. You know this.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

There's no map in that link.

I didn't say there was.

yosi wrote:

In any event I've seen the sorts of maps you're referencing, and they represent preliminary ideas put forward by the Israeli camp, NOT Israel's final offer, which was again, based on the '67 lines with minor swaps. You know this.

No, not minor swaps. Here's the map: http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/albu ... id2000.gif

No minor swaps evident here, just series of Apartheid-style bantustans.

yosi

Ok, and here is the map presented by Dennis Ross (President Clinton's lead negotiator, who, since he was actually in the room, is in a real position to know what he's talking about):

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... smap2.html

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Ok, and here is the map presented by Dennis Ross (President Clinton's lead negotiator, who, since he was actually in the room, is in a real position to know what he's talking about):

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... smap2.html

No map was ever presented during the final negotiations, so this can be easily dismissed.

yosi

Umm, no, it can't. A map may not have been presented, but negotiations progressed well beyond the point depicted by the map you linked to. The map in my link, while not actually presented in the negotiations, is a visual representation of the final offer that was on the table at the end of the talks. The map may not have physically been presented, but the offer it represents WAS actually made.

You're playing games, claiming that what Israel offered at the beginning of the negotiations WAS ALL THAT THEY OFFERED, when, in fact, negotiations progressed well beyond that point. But of course you wouldn't want to admit that Israel actually made a viable offer based on the '67 lines, because that would put quite a dent in your fantasy that Israel is a war-mongering, blood-thirsty, vampire state.

Byrnzie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_ ... #Territory
In 2006, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated on Democracy Now! that "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem" referring to his 2001 book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

UBut of course you wouldn't want to admit that Israel actually made a viable offer based on the '67 lines, because that would put quite a dent in your fantasy that Israel is a war-mongering, blood-thirsty, vampire state.

There was no viable offer. It was an attempt to carve up the West bank into three separate cantons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_ ... #Territory
The Palestinians wanted the immediate withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and only subsequently the Palestinian authority would dismantle the Palestinian terror organizations. The Israeli response as stated by Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel's Minister of Foreign Relations who participated in the talks, was "we can't accept the demand for a return to the borders of June 1967 as a pre-condition for the negotiation."

yosi

What exactly does that quote mean? It's in the wiki article without any context. It could have nothing to do with the borders Israel was offering, and just relate to some other issue that was being negotiated.

In any event Israel made another peace offer in '09 under Olmert. The map of what was offered in that much more recent package can be found here:

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/ ... ertmap.pdf

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

What exactly does that quote mean? It's in the wiki article without any context. It could have nothing to do with the borders Israel was offering, and just relate to some other issue that was being negotiated.

It's in a Wiki article entitled '2000 Camp David Summit'. [Inappropriate comment removed by Admin]



http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/f ... shlomo_ben

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: My concern is let’s look at the diplomatic record, the factual record. What were the offers being made on each side of the Camp David talks and in the Taba talks? And the standard interpretation, which comes— which is—you can call it the Dennis Ross interpretation, which, I think, unfortunately Dr. Ben-Ami echoes, is that Israel made huge concessions at Camp David and Taba; Palestinians refused to make any concessions, because of what Dr. Ben-Ami repeatedly calls Arafat’s unyielding positions; and that Arafat missed a huge opportunity. Now, it is correct to say that if you frame everything in terms of what Israel wanted, it made huge concessions. However, if you frame things in terms of what Israel was legally entitled to under international law, then Israel made precisely and exactly zero concessions. All the concessions were made by the Palestinians.

Briefly, because we don’t have time, there were four key issues at Camp David and at Taba. Number one, settlements. Number two, borders. Number three, Jerusalem. Number four, refugees. Let’s start with settlements. Under international law, there is no dispute, no controversy. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it’s illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. No dispute. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal. The Palestinians were willing to concede 50%—50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was a monumental concession, going well beyond anything that was demanded of them under international law.

Borders. The principle is clear. I don’t want to get into it now, because I was very glad to see that Dr. Ben-Ami quoted it three times in his book. It is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Under international law, Israel had to withdraw from all of the West Bank and all of Gaza. As the World Court put it in July 2004, those are, quote, "occupied Palestinian territories." Now, however you want to argue over percentages, there is no question, and I know Dr. Ben-Ami won’t dispute it, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions on the borders. What percentage? There’s differences. But there is no question they were willing to make concessions.

Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an interesting case, because if you read Dr. Ben-Ami or the standard mainstream accounts in the United States, everyone talks about the huge concessions that Barak was willing to make on Jerusalem. But under international law Israel has not one atom of sovereignty over any of Jerusalem. Read the World Court decision. The World Court decision said Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. Now, the Palestinians were willing, the exact lines I’m not going to get into now – they are complicated, but I’m sure Dr. Ben-Ami will not dispute they were willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half, the Jewish side to Israel, the Arab side to the Palestinians.

And number four, refugees. On the question of refugees, it’s not a dispute under international law. Remarkably, even fairly conservative human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, they issued statements on the question of the right of return. And they stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels, 1% of Israel, which Israel is about—which Israel would swap, return to their homes or the environs of their homes in Israel. That’s the law. Now, Dr. Ben-Ami will surely agree that the Palestinians were not demanding and never demanded the full return of six million refugees. He gives a figure of 4-800,000. In fact – I’m not going to get into the numbers, because it’s very hard to pin it down—other authors have given figures of the tens of thousands to 200,000 refugees returning. That’s well short of six million.

On every single issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is, everyone, including Dr. Ben-Ami in his book—he begins with what Israel wants and how much of its wants it’s willing to give up. But that’s not the relevant framework. The only relevant framework is under international law what you are entitled to, and when you use that framework it’s a very, very different picture.

yosi

Finkelstein isn't a legal scholar. If he was maybe he could actually get the legal status of the occupied territories right. From Dr. Meir Rosenne, AN ACTUAL LEGAL SCHOLAR AND EXPERT IN INTERNATIONAL LAW:

The Acquisition of Territory Captured in a War of Self-Defense is Different from a War of Aggression

There is a further cardinal point regarding the question of whether the acquisition of captured territory from 1967 by Israel can be regarded as illegal. The great authority in international law, Elihu Lauterpacht, has drawn the distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor and lawful territorial change in response to an aggressor. In drafting its preamble, the architects of Resolution 242 were referring to known international legal principles that precluded territorial modifications as a result of aggression. The preamble talks about "acquisition of territory by war."

The case of a war of self-defense in response to aggression is a very different matter. This distinction was further made by Stephen Schwebel, who would later become the legal advisor of the U.S. Department of State and then serve as President of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The preamble of Resolution 242 was a compromise that took into account the other drafts that were before the Security Council, even though it did not really apply to Israel's case. And by keeping it in the preamble and not in the operative parts of the resolution, the architects of Resolution 242 avoided creating any legal obligations for Israel that could be construed as precluding the resolution's call for new "secure and recognized boundaries" beyond the earlier 1967 lines.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Finkelstein isn't a legal scholar. If he was maybe he could actually get the legal status of the occupied territories right. From Dr. Meir Rosenne, AN ACTUAL LEGAL SCHOLAR AND EXPERT IN INTERNATIONAL LAW:

The Acquisition of Territory Captured in a War of Self-Defense is Different from a War of Aggression

There is a further cardinal point regarding the question of whether the acquisition of captured territory from 1967 by Israel can be regarded as illegal. The great authority in international law, Elihu Lauterpacht, has drawn the distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor and lawful territorial change in response to an aggressor. In drafting its preamble, the architects of Resolution 242 were referring to known international legal principles that precluded territorial modifications as a result of aggression. The preamble talks about "acquisition of territory by war."

The case of a war of self-defense in response to aggression is a very different matter. This distinction was further made by Stephen Schwebel, who would later become the legal advisor of the U.S. Department of State and then serve as President of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The preamble of Resolution 242 was a compromise that took into account the other drafts that were before the Security Council, even though it did not really apply to Israel's case. And by keeping it in the preamble and not in the operative parts of the resolution, the architects of Resolution 242 avoided creating any legal obligations for Israel that could be construed as precluding the resolution's call for new "secure and recognized boundaries" beyond the earlier 1967 lines.

The 1967 war wasn't a war of self defence. Israel attacked first.

Not that your quotation gives any detail whatsoever in explaining how it would be different.

yosi

Of course you would say that '67 was an offensive war on Israel's part. You would need to recognize that all-so-terrible thing "NUANCE" to understand otherwise. Yes, Israel fired the first actual shots in the six day war, but the war is considered to have been defensive on Israel's part because of the pre-existence of legitimate casus belli. From wiki:

A casus belli played a prominent role during the Six-Day War of 1967. The Israeli government had a short list of casī bellorum, acts that it would consider provocations justifying armed retaliation. The most important was a blockade of the Straits of Tiran leading into Eilat, Israel's only port to the Red Sea, through which Israel received much of its oil. After several border incidents between Israel and Egypt's allies Syria and Jordan, Egypt expelled UNEF peacekeepers from the Sinai Peninsula, established a military presence at Sharm el-Sheikh, and announced a blockade of the straits, prompting Israel to cite its casus belli in opening hostilities against Egypt.