Israel moves tanks to Gaza border

[MODU]

"Israel threatens action over kidnapped soldier"

I've posted the link to the article, but I'm more interested in what you all think.  Will Israel cross the border?  Will they stop after rescuing the soldier?  Should they reclaim Gaza from the Palestinians?  So on and so forth...

[Tory]

The best course of action  for Israel is to invade and go back to their old First Intifada policy: anyone caught doing anything to impede the IDF gets their arms broken with rocks. They shouldn't reclaim Gaza, they need to focus on the hostage. Afterwords they need to tell Hamas that they have one more chance and if rocket attacks on Sderot and other cities launched from Gaza don't stop and if they won't get their act together, there will be hell to pay. Israel left Gaza; you think these psychopaths would appreciate it instead of trying to coerce the Israelis into coming back.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Israeli troops have moved over the border...

[kashifsakhan]

The best course of action  for Israel is to invade and go back to their old First Intifada policy: anyone caught doing anything to impede the IDF gets their arms broken with rocks. They shouldn't reclaim Gaza, they need to focus on the hostage. Afterwords they need to tell Hamas that they have one more chance and if rocket attacks on Sderot and other cities launched from Gaza don't stop and if they won't get their act together, there will be hell to pay. Israel left Gaza; you think these psychopaths would appreciate it instead of trying to coerce the Israelis into coming back.

The israeli's launched some rockets on a Gaza beach before Hamas responded. It was the israeli's that coerced the Palestinians, not the other way around.

[ag]

The objective of Hamas attack was precisely Israeli reoccupation of Gaza - this is going to take the pressure of them to accept the two-state solution. I guess, predictability of Israeli response means that they will succeed. Unfortunately, given the creation mythology of the Israeli state, they indeed struck into such a spot that no Israeli government could have any choice as to what to do.

[ag]

The best course of action  for Israel is to invade and go back to their old First Intifada policy: anyone caught doing anything to impede the IDF gets their arms broken with rocks.

This would represent a substantial softening of what has been Israeli policy ever since: the current policy is to kill any such person, as well as anybody who happens to be nearby.

[Tory]

The best course of action  for Israel is to invade and go back to their old First Intifada policy: anyone caught doing anything to impede the IDF gets their arms broken with rocks. They shouldn't reclaim Gaza, they need to focus on the hostage. Afterwords they need to tell Hamas that they have one more chance and if rocket attacks on Sderot and other cities launched from Gaza don't stop and if they won't get their act together, there will be hell to pay. Israel left Gaza; you think these psychopaths would appreciate it instead of trying to coerce the Israelis into coming back.

The israeli's launched some rockets on a Gaza beach before Hamas responded. It was the israeli's that coerced the Palestinians, not the other way around.

And before that there was a major suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. This is typical Arab propaganda. When Israel responds it's made out that they're the one who starts the problem.

[MODU]

I think that once they regain control of Gaza, the Israeli's should "deport" all Hamas/Fatah fighters to the West Bank and offer the innocent Palestinians citizenship (after proper screening) to Israel.  That would send a clear signal across the Palestinian's bow that they are living on Israeli land, and they have the right to take it back if the Palestinian state does no police themselves properly.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I think that once they regain control of Gaza, the Israeli's should "deport" all Hamas/Fatah fighters to the West Bank and offer the innocent Palestinians citizenship (after proper screening) to Israel.  That would send a clear signal across the Palestinian's bow that they are living on Israeli land, and they have the right to take it back if the Palestinian state does no police themselves properly.

Except that:

1-They are not living on Israeli land, a position that no country in the world disputes, including Israel and the US (In fact, Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt in the 80s)
2-Most Palestineans, including the ones not involved in terrorism, don't want Israeli citizenship.

[Tory]

Giving them citizenship would be a TERRIBLE idea. Firstly, they shouldn't have the right to vote in Israeli elections, and secondly they would be able to freely move within the country, leading them to all sorts of offers from terrorist groups. The point of the withdrawal was to maintain a strong Jewish majority, and doing that by taking as much land that doesn't have Arabs living on it as possible. Giving them citizenship is regressive

[Tory]

Now a terrorist group in the West Bank has kidnapped a Jewish settler and is threatening to kill him unless Israel stops it's current operation in Gaza

[??????????]

I wonder how many Palestinians are going to end up under tank treads in the name of "freeing" a hostage or two.

[Tory]

The 18 year old settler boy who was kidnapped has been executed by his captors, a sub-group of Hamas. The usual Palestinian manner of solving their problems: killing innocent people for no reason

[Tory]

I wonder how many Palestinians are going to end up under tank treads in the name of "freeing" a hostage or two.

Maybe they shouldn't have taken the hostages in the first place dickweed

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Seems like Isreal wants that Palestinian vote on whether Isreal has a right to exist to fail.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

BTW, a few days ago I saw a whole bunch of people waving Isreali and Palestinian flags together.

[??????????]

I wonder how many Palestinians are going to end up under tank treads in the name of "freeing" a hostage or two.

Maybe they shouldn't have taken the hostages in the first place dickweed

Dickweed? That's about as constructive as me calling you a "damn limey". Comeon, you can do better then that.

[MODU]

Seems like they have the bulk of Southern Gaza secured this morning and are now conducting searches through the few towns down there.

[MODU]

I think that once they regain control of Gaza, the Israeli's should "deport" all Hamas/Fatah fighters to the West Bank and offer the innocent Palestinians citizenship (after proper screening) to Israel.  That would send a clear signal across the Palestinian's bow that they are living on Israeli land, and they have the right to take it back if the Palestinian state does no police themselves properly.

Except that:

1-They are not living on Israeli land, a position that no country in the world disputes, including Israel and the US (In fact, Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt in the 80s)
2-Most Palestineans, including the ones not involved in terrorism, don't want Israeli citizenship.

That's why I said offer, not grant, citizenship.  I'm sure there are many Palestinians today have remained for the same reason their ancestors did . . . to earn a living.  For the longest time, the area which is now Israel contained many swamps and unusuable land.  The Jews were able to convert these areas into useful land, which created a lot of jobs in the area.  Palestinians remained behind and took up jobs in Israel since the neighboring lands were not doing so well.  Offering their decendents the chance of being legal citizens (after proper screening) might go a long way to remove the suffering of innocent Palestinians caught in the war.  It will also make it easier in identifying the Palestinians who are bent on destablizing the region.

[kashifsakhan]

Offering their decendents the chance of being legal citizens (after proper screening) might go a long way to remove the suffering of innocent Palestinians caught in the war.  It will also make it easier in identifying the Palestinians who are bent on destablizing the region.
[/quote]

That might help out a little, but what are u going to do about the people that dont want israeli citizenship, even though they're innocent people just trying to make a simple living? the whole idea is very impractile, and probably wont work at all.

[ag]

Israel will never give Palestinians citizenship for one very simple reason: it would then expose the internal contradiction in what it claims to be: "a Democratic Jewish State". If the citizenship were granted, it would have to choose: either it is Democratic, or it is Jewish, since it would be impossible to form a government supported just by the Zionist Jewish parties (or else, all Jewish parties will have to always support each other). This is why Israeli citizenship has never been an option that Israelis were willing to entertain.

This is the "Original Sin" of Zionism: failure to see that the land was not empty and that they could not create a Democratic Jewish state without addressing the issue of the Arab population. They observed the Arabs, but they never really "saw" them, and this is the cause of the war (at least, the Zionist cause - you could argue that the Arabs refused to see the Jews as well, but, then, unlike the Jewish migrants they were not really driven by a self-concious ideology of "not seeing").  Of course, holding on to the territories captured in 1967 meant that the two-state solution was increasingly becoming impossible, which meant that Israel was facing an insurmountable ideological problem. They still haven't faced it properly: they'd have to evacuate a lot more than a few isolated settlements to really solve it (unless, of course, they are willing to resort to Nazi-style crimes).

More deeply, the problem with Zionism is that it is an ideology behind its time. It arose from the 19th-century Romanticism, the same pool that gave rise to all sorts of nationalist movements (starting, perhaps, with Greek liberation) and that culminated in (and was terminated by the failure of) the German Nazism (isn't the common ideological foundation of the Zionists and the Nazis ironic?). It could not come to fruition before WWII, and when it did get its chance it was inextricably, in part, a barbaric anachronism.  A state, that attempts to be at the same time a somewhat sociallist democracy; a nationalist romantic refuge, protected by an uber-race of National Hero-Fighters; and an ancient theocracy, where the strangely-dressed clerics monitor the sexual transgressions of a two-thousand-year vintage, is inescapably schizophrenic. It would have been not such a big problem, if all it did is damage the brains of its own citizens (hey, they are Jewish - and we all are somewhat nuts ), but, unfortunately, it has also been impacting on others.

[MODU]

That's a bit of a stretch, ag.  76% of the population are Jewish, 16% Muslim, 2% Christian, and a few other small sects.  They can still structure their nation off of Jewish principals and remain a democracy without 100% of the nation being Jewish. 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another problem with Zionism is even if one accepts the rather ridiculous idea that someone has the right to a land because their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago, this still doesn't apply to a good amount if not sizable majority of Jews as they are not actually mostly descended from the ancient Twelve Tribes of Israel, but rather the Kazhars, a Caucasian kingdom that converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Most of the original Jews remaining were assimilated and many Palestineans probably have just as much ancestry, and of course there has been so much mixing back then you could probably find some Mexican peasant with as much Jewish ancestry as a Jewish Brooklyn accountant.

Of course we just can't get rid of Israel now and some sort of peace two state agreement needs to be reached, but the fantaticism of hardcore Zionist nationalists and fundie Zionist loons (who basically take the position that if Israel were to nuke Berlin tommorow as some sort of retroactive retribution for the Holocaust it would be perfectly justifable and nothing Israel does can ever be opposed, I remember jmfcst actually basically saying that to me.) doesn't even make sense genetically (of course, neither did many Nazi beliefs).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That's a bit of a stretch, ag.  76% of the population are Jewish, 16% Muslim, 2% Christian, and a few other small sects.  They can still structure their nation off of Jewish principals and remain a democracy without 100% of the nation being Jewish. 

Give the people in the Occupied Territories citizenship and the percentage of Jews would drop quite a bit. Considering that Palestinean birth rates are much higher than ethnic Jews, you'd have a Jewish minority in about a generation.

[ag]

That's a bit of a stretch, ag.  76% of the population are Jewish, 16% Muslim, 2% Christian, and a few other small sects.  They can still structure their nation off of Jewish principals and remain a democracy without 100% of the nation being Jewish. 

Not unless they get out of the territories.  Your numbers only include Israeli citizens - they exclude a lot of the Arabs and others living under Israeli control, not only in the West Bank, but also in Jerusalem, including a lot of the lands Israel is not planning to give back. Within the next few years Jews will be a minority between the Jordan and the sea (they would have long been a minority, had Israelis not expelled a lot of the people over the last 6 decades). Of course, Gaza shouldn't, probably, count any more - unless they reoccupy it. The demographic situation is why Israel has never offered citizenship to those in the territories, and why it will never do it - and that is what I wrote about.

But, the fact is, that Israeli democratic character would be severely undermined even if the Jewish proportion falls to around 2/3 of the citizenry. The reason, of course, is that the implicit political requirement that an Israeli government must have a "Zionist majority" of 61 seat in the Knesset would imply a near-necessity of a grand coalition. If the Jews were to constitute only 2/3 of the population, the "Zionist parties" would struggle to get even 90 seats (some Arabs - a lot fewer of them recently, though - of course, vote for the major parties, of course, which I take into account, but also some Jews vote for the non-Zionist Communists). If you have to get 61 seat out of 90 to be able to form a government, forming a meaningfully democratic goverment becomes very difficult. In particular, the Israeli polity would be even more dependent on the ultra-religious haredi party-sects like Shas, NRP and the rest of the crowd (and, due to the higher fertility of the haredim, it won't be long before those take over 30 seats, meaning that no secular Israeli Jewish government would be possible even in theory).

To sum up, even if Israel gets out of the territories and never gives citizenship to another Arab, it will not take long before the non-haredi Jews are a minority in Israel. And if they really permanently annex any part of the West Bank (or even just the East Jerusalem) and have to extend the citizenship to those resident there (and it is hard to see how a truly democratic state can permanently avoid doing it), this will happen even sooner.