50+ People Dead in Israeli Air Strike on Apartment House.

not that war is bad, of course it is, but that refusing to negotiate is stupid.

No kidding, again you earn yours.




[edit on 3-8-2006 by imbalanced]

Grover,

War has failed.
War has failed in the Middle East.
War has failed the Palestinians.
War has failed the Israelis.
Still they fight.
One definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
.
.
.
For sixty years war has failed.
War has failed.
What part of that don't you understand?

The only thing that they have not seriously tried is negotiations.
Underline the word serious.
When negotiations were tried with Egypt, they worked.
When negotiations were tried with Jordan, they worked.
When it comes to negotiations with the Palestinians, neither side is willing to work from a blank slate.
The Palestinians have their non-negotiable demands.
The Israelis have their non-negotiable demands.
The Syrians have their non-negotiable demands.
Hezbollah has their non-negotiable demands.
You cannot negotiate with non-negotiable demands...they are non-negotiable and as such deal breakers.
The only thing that they, as in all sides,
as in Israel,
as in Syria,
as in the Palestinians,
as in Hezbollah,
as in all sides
have not tried is honest negotiations
without non-negotiable demands,
with everything,
the Golan heights
settlements
the wall
right of return
everything, it all, everything
on the table.
Anything less, is less than good faith.
They have nothing left to lose except more blood.
And everything,
peace,
stability,
perhaps, in the long run
good will,
to gain.

And if honest negotiations fail,
well at least they tried.
They can go back to the bleeding
and both sides
be damned.

I am not dissin' you when I say that this proves that you have no idea about the middle east, its politics and the Arab mentality.

As you said the peace treaty with ISRAEL and Joran worked as did with Israel and the Egyptians. Why did it worlk because the Egyptian decided to leave the concept of being the Arab world leader and the grand fighter for the Palestinian people and they decided to look after its own best interest. It was the Israeli right that made this peace with the Egyptians which shows that it is not beyond Israel to make peace and give up a huge chunck of land for true peace. Saadat came to Israel and offered peace while stopping hostilities between the two sides during the negotiations.
The Palestinians NEVER stopped the hostilities, their outreached arm for peace was insincere and they used every peace of land, infrastructure and weapon provided for peace to kill Jews. Gaza has turned into a terror stronghold, the West bank also but to a lesser extent, they guns provided to the Palestinian police force in short time turned on Israel and the civilians and humanitarian infrastructure became a tool to inject bombs and suicide bombers into Israel.
Grover,
You can philosophize this to death, so long as you do not identify the true problem there will be no quiet.

You cannot set two laws where the daily rocket attacks on Israel are ignored while the inadvertent killing of the families of Hizbullah militants are turned into an international trategy. Israel has over 1 million refugees and families living in bomb shelters. Israel was attacked first NOT Lebanon. This attack was not a one time occurance but a repeated occurance (40+ times). There are two dark and dictatoral regiems behind Hezbullah who are rubbing their hands with Joy over this (Iran and Syria).
How can it be that when Israel hits a house that housed the families of Hizbullah fighters when it was not known that they were there, after weeks of telling people to leave the area, when Hizbullah rocket attack Israeli residential areas from that very local - all this against international law, Israel at the end is blamed for this attack?

If anyone is to be blamed it should be Hezbullah for hiding behind 'innocent' civilians.

Another example, Hezbullah turned the Hospital by Baalbek into a command post where weapons, fighters and intelligence information was found by a commando raid. This should create an outrage. How dare they turn a hospital into a command post?

Originally posted by zappafan1

No rational discussion; facts don't matter. Bye you two......


[edit on 3-8-2006 by zappafan1]

Uh I got a question zappafun..

your signature is wrong I think.. isn't the Israeli shooting from in front of the US flag?

wouldn't that be closer to the truth of what is really going on in the middle east?

Originally posted by grover
not that war is bad, of course it is, but that refusing to negotiate is stupid.

Negotiations have been going on for the past 30 years. Look at what it's gotten Israel!! Nothing at all is what it's got them. Let me ask you, when do you think that the time for talking is over? Or do you even think there is a time that it should cease?

TheBorg

This war could go on for a long time because Hez is so diverse and it all boils down to the individual.

An individual could launch a rocket or shoot at the Israelis and then hide. And then dissapear and do it again a couple weeks/months down the road. Even though one person could be doing terrorist actions, it would still look like its being done by group...thats why its so difficult to stop terrorist that disperse into the population. And thats happening all over.

Same like Iraq. Civilain looking insurgents mount attacks and then run away & hide in the gen-pop because if they stand and fight, they will get wiped out.

And war has been going on for 60 years and what has it gotten Israel...Nothing.

I reiterate no sides has attempted to negotiate without non-negotiable demands and with everything on the table. As soon as you put non-negotiable demands on the table, negotiations become moot.

I honestly believe that until you attempt to see the world through the eyes of your enemy and try to comprehend what motivates them beyond the cliches, there can be no real understanding. Its not easy, and it doesn't always work, but its always worth the effort.

Judah can you put aside your Jewishness and see the world through the eyes of a Palestinian refugee? Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I doubt you would even try.

Originally posted by TheBorg

Originally posted by grover
not that war is bad, of course it is, but that refusing to negotiate is stupid.

Negotiations have been going on for the past 30 years. Look at what it's gotten Israel!! Nothing at all is what it's got them. Let me ask you, when do you think that the time for talking is over? Or do you even think there is a time that it should cease?

TheBorg

No.

Israel has time and time again, said WHAT they want and if it doesn't happen they do not change their stance. It's not a negotiation but rather them dictating. It's the same as whenever there is a meeting with the Middle Eastern Nation's. Half the time Israel doesn't turn up but still sets the agenda thanks to the fact, they're the ones with the Nuclear Weapons.

Israel, needs to understand it is a process of give and take. However, giving scraps of land which are worthless won't help to solve the issue. Many people from the region have grown up with Israel playing the bully, with a fear that the IDF or Mossad will call a raid on their village because there is ONE or TWO terrorists there. People who they can't force to leave and many can't afford to leave themselves.

That is EXACTLY what I am trying to tell y'all
I AM SEEING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE PALESTINIANS.
If I needed to negotiate with myself then that would be easy. We need to negotiate with the Palestinian leadership - The refugee has no say.
The refugee is a tool in the hands of the Arab world who established and turned his refugee status into a permanent status (MY ASSUMPTION IS YOU WILL NEED AN EXPLANATION FOR THAT STATEMENT - If so ask).
The refugee has been incited against by the Palestinian leadership to the point of extreme hatred where they have voted in HAMAS.
So now if you want me to look through the eyes of the Palestinian refugees, I can look through the eyes of their leadership and what they want is all of Israel. They want right to return, they want Jerusalem, they want the Israeli nation to become a Palestinian nation.
Israel tried to negotiate and offered plenty - In my view what was offered was more than what the nation was willing to give. The Palestinian leadership wanted clauses that meant the de-facto obliteration of the Jewish nation.
That is unacceptable.
Israel made peace with Egypt and Jordan because there were no clauses that endangered the Jewish state in the Agreements.
With the Palestinians the story is different.

Regarding Lebanon - There will be no negotiations since that will turn you into a recurrent victim. Israel negotiated once for the release of illegally captured soldiers and civilians. Hezbullah since found a new modus operandi that they thought functions marvelously. This time the rules of engagement is going to be rewritten. Cross border attacks will mean WAR.

Originally posted by Odium
Israel, needs to understand it is a process of give and take. However, giving scraps of land which are worthless won't help to solve the issue. Many people from the region have grown up with Israel playing the bully, with a fear that the IDF or Mossad will call a raid on their village because there is ONE or TWO terrorists there. People who they can't force to leave and many can't afford to leave themselves.

- I agree that it IS a process of give and take. However, what does one do when they are attacked? Should they try and make peace while the attack is going on, or defend themselves until they stop the threat, and THEN resume peace talks?

- The scraps of land given back were the ones that the Palastinians wanted. Israel left Gaza and all of Southern Lebanon, out of the desire to make peace, and yet more attacks followed. How is this Israel's fault?

- You say that the people cannot make terrorists leave their community. Since when? What happened to being free? If I knew that my nextdoor neighbor was planning to attack one of our more powerful neighbors from my neighborhood, I'd tell him to either leave or die. I sure as heck wouldn't put up with someone doing that in my neighborhood. Why do people just accept being pacified? I don't understand this paradigm shift in human behavior. It's quite disturbing, to be totally honest.

TheBorg

TheBorg, you again take a rather simple view of the situation.

How can they force the terrorists to leave? What can they make them leave with? Or here, I'll kill one of them and watch as 30 others kill me? Even the BBC has reported that they can't speak to people on the streets in Lebonnon openly, due to the peoples fear someone from Hez will over hear them and kill them. Furthermore, the way they do it is they take control of the zone - many of these people have no guns so couldn't fight back, have children or older relatives to worry about also - so can't force them away.

It's easy to turn around and say: Burden falls on the people. However, it is like gang problems within Inner Cities. People don't want them on their estate, however local Law Enforcement is paid off half the time and the other half too scared and the gangs are too highly armed for the population to fight. If what you suggested worked, there would be no Gang related problems in America or the United Kingdom. The public would just scare them away but in reality it doesn't work like that.

Judah, you also push a half decent arguement through. However it fails on many grounds. The Palestinian people never went to war with Israel. It was outside forces. Irgun didn't disarm in 1947 [before the first war] and the U.N. was never able to take control of Jerusalum [which was set down in 181] and the people of the land were forced off because of the actions of their neighbours. The land was unfairly taken from them, when they were meant to be protected by the United Nation's [something which happens not just in the Middle East]. It wouldn't be hard for Israel to allow the United Nation's to run a council consisting of Christian, Jew and Muslim who oversee the running of it. It wouldn't be hard for them to allow the Palestinian people to have their Government in the city. However, they are so pig headed they refuse to see the best way to resolve the conflict is not through their use of force.

Furthermore, have you even seen the statistics for this bout of conflicts?

Lebanon
Civilians: 900 dead, 3,200 wounded.
Military: 27 dead, 70 wounded

Israel:
Civilian: 20 dead, 418 wounded.
Miltary: 37 dead, 136 wounded.

Hezbollah
Military: 80 dead (43 died during the clashes on the border).

Which group has lost the largest amount of people? Which group has lost more military than civilians? So which group is the one killing the majority of innocents? If you don't notice the trend, go look up some more of the statistics from the Middle East. Israel always kills ten-fold what any terrorist group does and the vast majority are always civilians. This only allows the bloodshed to keep on repeating.

Israel has time and time again, said WHAT they want and if it doesn't happen they do not change their stance.

WRONG!!!
Israel returned the entire Sinai, dismantled settlements, high-tech military installations and paid Egypt for the use of the oil reserves in Sinai for the peace agreement with Egypt.
Egypt also was awarded a huge sum of international aid and became a serious military power in th Middle East. Egypt was calling the shots and Israel obliged all for the sake of peace regardless of their Nuclear weapons.

Israel, needs to understand it is a process of give and take. However, giving scraps of land which are worthless won't help to solve the issue. Many people from the region have grown up with Israel playing the bully, with a fear that the IDF or Mossad will call a raid on their village because there is ONE or TWO terrorists there. People who they can't force to leave and many can't afford to leave themselves.

Do you actually believe the crap you write?
Israel has always been forced to react and did not initate agression. If you take a wholehearted look at history yuo will see that the aggressor were the Arabs and the Israelis were forced to respond.
So yes, if you live in a village and your neighbor wips out a grad rocket launcher and fires it at Israel, I suggest you leave your village for afew days or confront your neighbor. People who want peace do not initiate acts of war against their neighbors.

Regarding the 'scraps of land'. This just shows how little can be expected from Palestinians and their sympathizers. Whatever land that was given was used to attack Israel instead of using it for peace. or in Palestinian words:

by Ziyad Abu'Ein of Fatah during an interview on Alam TV July 4, 2006: "The Oslo Accords were not what the Palestinian people dreamt of. The dream of the Palestinian people is the return, self-determination, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and the liberation of its land. However, there would have been no resistance in Palestine if not for Oslo. It was Oslo that strongly embraced the Palestinian resistance. All the occupied territories - and I was one of the activists in the first and second Intifadas, and I was arrested by Israel several times... If not for Oslo, there would have been no resistance. Throughout the occupied territories, we could not move a single pistol from one place to another. If not for Oslo, the weapons we got through Oslo, and if not for the "A" areas of the Palestinian Authority, if not for the training, the camps, the protection provided by Oslo, and if not for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners through Oslo - this Palestinian resistance could not have carried out this great Palestinian Intifada, with which we confronted the Israeli occupation."

source

I got to this thread a little late. I have one simple question. Are the Palestinians still putting anti-aircraft gun and missile sites on the roofs of apartment buildings? They sure as hell were when I was there in 1983. More than once the helicopter I was in took fire from these sites, including some SA-7 SAMS. When we looked for the source of the fire we could see the people who lived in the buildings lined up by the windows making sure that we could see them. At the time we did nothing because the State Department didn't want the bad publicity like Israel is getting now.

Originally posted by JudahMaccabbi
Israel has always been forced to react and did not initate agression.

Wrong.

You can place your heads in the sand. You can sit there and pretend, Irgun did disarm in 1947 and didn't break 181. You can sit there and pretend in the Great Uprising that 10% of the male population wasn't killed by the British and the Jewish. However, doesn't change the facts so you can keep on placing your head right on in the sand.

"Arabs bad, bad arabs."

No you do not try to see things through the eyes of the Palestinians, you use their leadership as an excuse not to.

Israel and the U.S. propped up the deeply corrupt Fatwa party and the people got fed up and voted them out....why did Hamas win? Simple they provide services to the people that Fatwa failed to do.

I have said before, if the Israeli leadership had invited the leadership of Lebanon to join them, as in a joint offensive, in ridding their country of further Syrian influnce instead of just attacking, my money is on the Lebanonese government jumping at the possiblity. Instead you have made new enemies.

No despite your protestions to the contrary you cannot see through the eyes of a fed up youth in Gaza or the west bank and you have no sympthy for either the Palestinians or the Lebanonese. Your posts on a salute to israel prove it.

Odium,
Let me correct yur inaccuracies.

1-Irgun was disarmed and absorbed into Israel's army in 1948 upon the creation of the Jewish state
source
2-Yes there was a plan for the UN to administer Jerusalem but the Arab states declared war on Israel and at the end of the fighting Jerusalem was split into two cities. One under Israeli and the other under Jordanian control. The Wailing wall was under Jordanian control and Jewish access to it was forbidden. It was not in Israel's hand to give the UN control over the city since the city was not in their control. The old city was under Jordanian control.
3- The statistics you provided are VERY inaacurate.
A- About 400 Hezbullah fighters have been killed, Israel has their names and are reading them off on Arab speaking radio channels.
B- The Israeli wounded exceed 1000.
C- The Lebanese body counts are inaccurate in that they add Hezbullah fighters to the civilian body count and because there is an exaggeration of civilian casualties for the obvious reasons.

Originally posted by JudahMaccabbi
Odium,
Let me correct yur inaccuracies.

1-Irgun was disarmed and absorbed into Israel's army in 1948 upon the creation of the Jewish state
source

Where did I say they didn't disarm? It still doesn't change the fact, the agreement said they would prior to the British leaving. They in fact never did. OPERATION KILSHON ring a bell? Invasion of Irgun into Arab areas to take control ring a bell? 5 days prior to the first war.

Keep on changing history, only makes me laugh at you. :-)

Originally posted by JudahMaccabbi
3- The statistics you provided are VERY inaacurate.
A- About 400 Hezbullah fighters have been killed, Israel has their names and are reading them off on Arab speaking radio channels.
B- The Israeli wounded exceed 1000.
C- The Lebanese body counts are inaccurate in that they add Hezbullah fighters to the civilian body count and because there is an exaggeration of civilian casualties for the obvious reasons.

So...my statistics are inaccurate how? Ohh...an Israeli Site says so? Exactly why should we believe your source? Russian and British Media place the numbers I gave. However, I'll just link you to wikipedia with its over 100 sources:
en.wikipedia.org...

However, Israeli won't admit if they've killed a vast majority of civilians. It is just odd that the BBC, Russian Media, U.N. etc would all have such different numbers to them.

How very odd...

Heres a link to a site that has IDF footage of Hez launching rockets from residential areas and then hiding them in an apartment complex.

www.ifilm.com...

Originally posted by Zenem
Heres a link to a site that has IDF footage of Hez launching rockets from residential areas and then hiding them in an apartment complex.

www.ifilm.com...

And? So this makes it fine to kill them? CAn you imagine this in a hostage raid? Ohh...well get them, do massive economic damage and kill lots of civilians if we blow the building up. However, we'll get the "bad guys".

Or let's look at this the other way. Camp Anatot, Israeli Military base is less than 30 meters from houses in Anata. So as long as they missiles they fire are intended to kill them, so what if a few innocent people die?

However, Israeli won't admit if they've killed a vast majority of civilians. It is just odd that the BBC, Russian Media, U.N. etc would all have such different numbers to them.

*cough* The ones supporting the arab agenda *cough*

How many of these "civillians" have ties to Hezbollah? Had they any common sense they would have evacuated long ago. Oh but wait, what kind of terrorists fight on an open battlefield...obviously something is lacking...oh why the civillian umbrella of course!