Because, as billmon says, talking reason is getting no where:
But I understand now that also wasn’t very realistic. The Israelis are too close to what they really want (full and total control of the land and resources between the Jordan and the sea) and the Palestinians are too far away from what they really want (for the Jews to go back where they came from) for there to be any basis for meaningful negotiations. Not without a disinterested outside party to crack skulls on both sides if and when necessary.
The problem is that all strategies for peace rest on the simple proposition that the Israelis and the Palestinians both wage war with certain policy goals in mind — and that the key to getting them to stop fighting is to make them (particularly the Palestinians) understand that they can achieve those goals more successfully through negotiations.
Whiskey Bar :: To Be or Not To Be
Comments
He’s got a point there!
even though, i have to say, that Israel main population is not at all aiming at “full and total control of the land and resources between the Jordan and the sea” as mentioned
only a very small portion of Israel population (mainly religious extremist – no wonder…)
I do see with my own eyes, and sadly believe that MOST Palestinian population wishes Israel total distraction and death
and that is a huge difference between them and us
as hard as it may seem for you, and i admire your blog and your objectivity towards the -Israel-Palestinian conflict, Israel is fighting for it’s sovereignty. Israel didn’t start all this, as you recall.
and this time Israel couldn’t over look Hezbollah aggression. we over looked it for 6 years, letting Hezbollah only gather more weapon and terrorist along Israel international border.
what could we do?
you tell me
your new admirer from Israel
Hi Moon, thanks for the time you have spent here, and I am thrilled to have people from both sides actually using this space to talk amongst themselves in order to at least see the other’s points of view without any barriers.
Moon, I do not believe that violence is the answer to situations, especially these. I believe that with a much more concerted effort, dialogue would prove that it is the only way forward. Although publicly Hamas and Hizballah categorically refuse to deal with Israel directly, I am certain that they are talking between all parties even now, in the midst of war. I hope that this is true and these talks will first and foremost at the moment produce a cease-fire. Lebanon has suffered enough, and I think – judging by what I have read from Lebanese blogs and press – they have come to realise that they have to integrate armed militias into their regular army, rather than allow them – even tacitly – to operate independently as they have done with Hizballah.
So what could you do at this moment? I would suggest express your desire for the stopping of hostilities in your blog, and to your government and urge them to exert all efforts in securing face-to-face meetings to start the dialogue to end these hostilities once and for all.
Yousef Ibrahim “Dear Brethren, the War With Israel Is Over”:
http://www.nysun.com/article/35606?page_no=1
Moon, I can appreciate your concern with the Hezbullahs’ claim of wanting Israel annihilated but I believe that to be more one of reaction to Israel’s continued provocations. (speaking of gov’ts) You want me dead, well, I want YOU dead kinda thing.
Mahmoud, that was a very good post by Billmom although I did not see any place to comment on his site. As a ME poli sci professor told us a long while ago; Israel had the better PR.
Ingrid
many countries around the world have people of different ethnic backgrounds and religions. Maybe the concept of having a country for a specific religion or race should be annihilated!
So what if there is a majority of one particular group, so long as everyone is living with respect and dignity and there are proper laws to protect all…then everyone can live together just like they do in other countries…
A country for ALL.
Mahmood could be president 🙂 Photogenic too with those green eyes 😉 *wink*
Well, the text is funny; i like it, though i don’t agree with it.
As for what moon said, i think that people in these times are indifferent for sovereignity, but want physical security. We’d rather not control the palestinians, that was why we disengaged from gaza (against my will for peace). We do want security. I actually read today what Sandmonkey wrote and started to get his point here.
BTW: Mahmood, the israeli newspapers are linking to your site all around, you’re becoming a star 🙂
Excellent article from the Observer:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1821573,00.html
mahmood, hello again
As you were saying I’m sure just like you that dialogs to end these hostilities once and for all – is being held right now, and during all these terrible days we are going through. And i believe as we all here in Israel that only an overall diplomatic agreement will eventually end the conflict!
while we are at it, Israel must put an end to Hezbollah aggression.
right now, we heard on the news, that Hezbollah refused all the negotiators from around the world who came to discuss it.
I prey for the safety of Lebanese people, that are caught in the middle of it and are suffering hell.
Only today, a Palestinian was caught with a bag filled with bombs, he was aiming to put the bomb in Jerusalem. so far as trusting your neighbor and making peace with him
Thanks for the heads-up Jonathan, I suppose I should start to find a hiding place now! Damn me for blogging un-anonymously!
But I’m glad, as I said before, if this blog contributes to bringing both sides even by the breadth of one atom, I’ll die happy.
I have been reading more than posting and I am taking in all the different perspectives and opinions, here at “Mahmoud’s” and the sites that I see people referring to here and elsewhere. I feel really humbled that I have to admit to just not knowing how to contribute. I will say, I was pretty fired up over Israel’s escalation, but at the same time do not feel that there are totally innocent players on the other side as well. There is no convenient unified ‘enemy’ of anyone and I think the blogs and the discussions that have spun off shows a myriad of variations of particular themes , more so than assigning sole blame. So I am not going to add to that other than referring links and sites for looking at the different perspectives. So if anyone has any more links/blogs that could contribute to different viewpoints, pls let us/me know. I will commit myself to educating and thinking. Plenty of both to do..
Ingrid
ps Mahmoud..don’t say stuff like that, there can always be the self righteous nut job that will be glad to oblige…(delete delete)
Ingrid, I am afraid that it is time for all of us to grow up and to let go of the idea that any of us are “innocent.” My daughter is half-Syrian. Her aunt is married to a Palestinian (with a Jordanian passport) whose family home was lost in 1948. My current spouse is Jewish and while his parents managed to successfully flee the holocaust, many many extended family members perished. Some of his cousins live in Israel (Tel Aviv).
For years, I have had the rare opportunity to listen to both sides. Everyone that I know from both “camps” are very ordinairy decent people — who for whatever reason have been placed in a terrible and maddening (and I mean that literally) situation. And the suffering that both experience is altogether real — and I would never say anything to minimize it. However, I must say also that suffering does not grant one immunity from responsibility for both our actions — and I think as is becoming increasingly seen — the thoughts and idea which fuel our emotions.
Fear, anger and grief are inseperable to the human condition. But as human beings we have the great priviledge of having minds, which if cultivated, can allow those emotions to inform creative and imaginative solutions to the very grave problems which face all of us.
And I do believe that understanding — while it is not the “answer” is a very important first step. And that takes both an open mind (which must be consciously cultivated) and the willingness to do the hard work to inform ourselves.
I don’t know what the answer is — but if a new direction isn’t found, some version of this bloodshed will continue, as it has done for something like 60 years now. We have to believe — that somehow — a new way can be found and cultivated. I cannot say what the governments who represent the people of Israel and Lebanon should’ve/could’ve done, but I can (and will) to the best of my ability weigh in on what my government has and hasn’t done with regards to this terrible turn of events.
In the meantime, I will grieve for the loss of every man, woman and child in Lebanon, Israel and the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Baghdad continues to burn like a wildfire.
I dont know how productive this is but wandering around the blogoshere lately reminds me of a scene from one of those gangster movies where 27 guys jump up and all point there guns at each other.
BTW Mahmood, It seems you got your mojo back with a vengeance.:)
“Not without a disinterested outside party to crack skulls on both sides if and when necessary.”
The problem is that there are no disinterested parties (well, except Switzerland).
What’s needed is not the cracking of skulls. There’s been too much of that going on as it is. What is needed is for the international community – by which I really mean the USA – to tell Israel that unless it starts behaving within the law, it will face isolation and punishment. A threat from the US to withdraw funding would be more than enough to bring the air-strikes to a halt.
Of course, since the US is anything but a ‘disinterested party’, this ain’t gonna happen.
“and that the key to getting them to stop fighting is to make them (particularly the Palestinians) understand that they can achieve those goals more successfully through negotiations.”
I disagree. They key to getting the two sides to stop fighting is for public pressure on both sides to become strong enough to force a peaceful negotiation through. The majority of public opnion in both Israel and the Occupied Territories is for a two-state solution, and is for a negotiated peace settlement.
Unfortunately, the opinions of Israeli leaders are far to the right of the majority of public opinion, and have been for a quite some time. That is why Israel has never offered the Palestinians a serious peace proposal.
So, until we get an Israeli leadership that is willing to make a sensible deal, I’m afraid the truth is that the Palestinians *can* achieve their goals more easily with violence. The first 20 years or so of the occupation passed relatively quietly, and what happened? The Israelis ignored them, and started building the network of illegal settlements. Since they have started using violence, the Palestinian situation has undoubtedly improved. When a settlement does come, the Palestinians now are in a far stronger negotiating position that they were 30 years ago, precisely because of the violence.
(Nice site, by the way)
Another view of the matter:
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By Caroline Glick, summering in northern Israel.
Steve
Jaime;
Since they have started using violence, the Palestinian situation has undoubtedly improved. When a settlement does come, the Palestinians now are in a far stronger negotiating position that they were 30 years ago, precisely because of the violence
That doesn’t seem to be the case at all. The terrorism has driven away business and has resulted in the Israelis putting up fences and roadblocks which further thwart the Palestinians. Unemployment in the West Bank is over 50% and more than half the population is living on UN aid. Violence hasn’t improved the Palestinian situation at all – they have become poorer and their economy is a shambles. The intifada just got them more misery, not less.
Meanwhile, back in Iran:
“Tehran – Iran’s Hebollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and US interests worldwide.
“We have 2 000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hezbollah’s spokesperson Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.
“They have been trained and they can become fully armed.
“We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America’s interests.
“We are only waiting.
“If America wants to ignite World War Three … we welcome it,” he said.
America is going to have to fight these Khomeini Crazy bastards sooner or later. We might as well do it now before they produce nukes. The first step is to take down what little gasoline production facilities Iran has and block their oil exports. We should stop letting them make war by proxy and terror and take Iran’s war to Iran. Iran has been at war with the US since 1979. We’ve just ignored it. It’s time we started fighting back.
Steve
Oh . My . God !
Thank goodness the world is not ruled by Steve (though Bush seems to be doing pretty well there, especially as he confirmed his intellectual capacity in that “open mic” thing)
Steve, this is simply talk. Do you honestly believe that these jokers can do any damage, be allowed to move, or even fart without the go ahead of pretty high-up figures in the Iranian government? All this talk is simply blustering and hot air and posturing. Don’t put any weight into what you have read.
“That doesn’t seem to be the case at all.”
I think so – if the Palestinians had not employed violence, would Israel be even thinking about a peace settlement? And a peace settlement that will give the Palestinians most of the West Bank and Gaza, no less?
Of course not. And when the settlement does finally come, the Palestinians are now in a much stronger negotiating position, since unfortunately the Israelis governments care much more about rocket and suicide attacks on Israel than on obeying international law.
Jaime;
if the Palestinians had not employed violence, would Israel be even thinking about a peace settlement?
If they had not employed violence, they would have been seen as much more sympathetic characters by the international community and their grievances would have been addressed long ago. By strapping bombs to their youth, they’ve caused the Americans to dismiss them as lunatics whose problems are not worth paying attention to. So Israel continued to build settlements and grab more of their land, land which they’ll probably never get back. Violence just put them further behind.
Mahmood;
That “open mic” word is in pretty common use in the US. I don’t even think it’s considered a bad word anymore!
I know Aliandra, and I use it judiciously too. I wasn’t referring to the word itself per say, but the audacity of the thought and the situation.
Ed: Someone entered the following in a comment which I thought would be more appropriate to this topic, so let me represent it here:
Dobbs: Not so smart when it comes to the Middle East
By Lou Dobbs
CNN
Wednesday, July 19, 2006; Posted: 9:53 a.m. EDT (13:53 GMT)
As the Israel-Lebanon conflict rages, Iraqis continue to die in large numbers.
NEW YORK (CNN) — We Americans like to think we’re a pretty smart people, even when evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. And nowhere is that evidence more overwhelming than in the Middle East. History in the Middle East is everything, and we Americans seem to learn nothing from it.
President Harry Truman took about 20 minutes to recognize the state of Israel when it declared independence in 1948. Since then, more than 58 years of war, terrorism and blood-letting have led to the events of the past week.
Even now, as Katyusha rockets rain down on northern Israel and Israeli fighter jets blast Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, we simultaneously decry radical Islamist terrorism and Israel’s lack of restraint in defending itself.
And the U.S. government, which wants no part of a cease-fire until Israel is given every opportunity to rescue its kidnapped soldiers and destroy as many Hezbollah and Hezbollah armaments as possible, urges caution in the interest of preserving a nascent and fragile democratic government in Lebanon. Could we be more conflicted?
While the United States provides about $2.5 billion in military and economic aid to Israel each year , U.S. aid to Lebanon amounts to no more than $40 million. This despite the fact that the per capita GDP of Israel is among the highest in the world at $24,600, nearly four times as high as Lebanon’s GDP per capita of $6,200.
Lebanon’s lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians — three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the vast majority of our giving in the region flows to Israel. This kind of geopolitical inconsistency and shortsightedness has contributed to the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Western world seems content to allow to perpetuate endlessly.
After a week of escalating violence, around two dozen Israelis and roughly 200 Lebanese have died. That has been sufficient bloodshed for United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to join in the call for an international security force, ignoring the fact that a U.N. force is already in Southern Lebanon, having failed to secure the border against Hezbollah’s incursions and attacks and the murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
As our airwaves fill with images and sounds of exploding Hezbollah rockets and Israeli bombs, this seven-day conflict has completely displaced from our view another war in which 10 Americans and more than 300 Iraqis have died during the same week. And it is a conflict now of more than three years duration that has claimed almost 15,000 lives so far this year alone.
An estimated 50,000 Iraqis and more than 2,500 American troops have been killed since the insurgency began in March of 2003, which by some estimates is more than the number of dead on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past 58 years of wars and intifadas.
Yet we have seen no rescue ships moving up the Euphrates for Iraqis who are dying in their streets, markets and mosques each day. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has not leaped to Baghdad as he did Beirut. And there are no meetings of the Arab League, and no U.S. diplomacy with Egypt, Syria and Jordan directed at ending the Iraqi conflict.
In the Middle East, where is our sense of proportion? Where is our sense of perspective? Where is our sense of decency? And, finally, just how smart are we?
___________________________
i say History did not start 9 days ago. and the conflict surely was well before the recent conflict. Let the occupier leaves the occupied countries, let the 9 million Palestinians return to their homeland, and give them what you stole from them, money homes farms lands. then come and start speaking about peace.
for the time being, as Lebanon lost its infra-structure, it has nothing more to loose, has it! I doubt if the solders will return in this way now.
Well, there’s a body count of about 200,000 in Darfur and everyone seems even less concerned about that.
So the deaths in Lebanon and Iraq are excusable because their numbers are small by comparison? That’s rather flippant if that’s what you mean.
No, I didn’t mean that. I was pointing out the ironic attitude of the international community. The deaths of innocents should not be brushed off, no matter who’s doing the dying, or who’s making the most noise.
I understand now. Very true.
“If they had not employed violence, they would have been seen as much more sympathetic characters by the international community and their grievances would have been addressed long ago.”
Yes, it’s true that ordinary Americans would find it much easier to sympathise with the Palestinians if they didn’t use terorrism. If they even heard about them. But the Palestinians stayed relatively violance free for *20 years*, and all that happened in that time was that Israel built its illegal settlements.
Mahmood on Hezbollah’s threats to attack America: “All this talk is simply blustering and hot air and posturing. Don’t put any weight into what you have read.”
Hezbollah is already in America, working away, as documented by the Counterterrorism Blog in “Hizballah Activity in North America“.
Steve