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Posted on 04/11/2005 3:19:03 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
During a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush on Monday evening [Israel time], Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated Israel's understanding that major Israeli population centers in the West Bank would remain in Israel's hands even after final status negotiations.
In his prepared statement, Bush reiterated that any final status agreement would have to take into account realities on the ground and that it was unrealistic to expect a return to the 1949 armistice lines. Bush also repeated the US understanding that one of Israel's obligations under the road map was to cease all expansion of settlements.
Bush and Sharon met before the press conference for a working meeting at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Sharon also clarified his comments from earlier in the day in which he seemed to be saying that Israel was on the verge of civil war. During the press conference, he said that he had meant the atmosphere was very tense in Israel but that he was confident the disengagement would be accomplished peacefully.
Regarding terror, Sharon urged all parties to adopt a commitment not to be satisfied with partial measures against terror, but instead work to eradicate it fully.
The prime minister once again pledged to remove illegal outposts and said more cities would be transferred to Palestinian control as the security situation permitted.
In response to a question as to the US role, Bush said he felt the best role for the US right now was to remind both sides of their obligations under the road map. He twice called Sharon's disengagement plan "courageous" and attributed the difficulties in reaching a peace agreement to a "lack of trust" between the sides.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
When the US decides to actually obey the treaties that it signed with hundreds of Indian tribes over the course of the 1800's, then Israel should take W seriously. Until then, FUHGEDDABOWDIT!
I hate PC terms. Population centers sounds ridiculous, but I've heard ABC/FOX news radio repeat the term today.
Which means what exactly? Israel gets to keep Maalei Adumim but can't build any more homes or allow any more Jews to move there or have any more children.
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Where exactly in the "treaties" does it state the tribes could sell booze tax free and exactly where is the provisions for casino gambling?
You analogy doesn't work, anyway.
The analogy DOES work, but for the sake of argument let's agree that it doesn't. Here's another one: Israel should stop expanding settlements right after the US stops allowing the settlement of territory taken from Mexico. In fact, the US has even less right to those territories than Israel has to the "West Bank," since none of the Caucasians that took and/or settled in the "occupied" Mexican territories had or have an ancestral claim to said land.
Face it, the US demand is hypocritical given our own history. We hardly come to the table with clean hands.
The US actually paid for that territory (I believe the sum was ten million dollars) and transferred all land grants to title deeds, so no Mexican lost property.
If you're suggesting that Israeli "settlers" with clear title to their land get to stay, you're going to be very unpopular with both GWB and Sharon, as well as the Aztlan movement who wouldn't recognize your "deeds" any more than Arabs do. :>)
Nope, and I'm unpopular with a lot of people.
Analogies are like nitroglycerin, you have to be careful how you handle them.
My point was that just because a nation is accused of stealing territory doesn't make it true, as a grinning SJackson reveals.
As far as the Aztlan crowd, I would simply stamp "you lost" in the base of the bullets during mass production.
One of my assorted taglines
Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything, Andre Malraux
As far as the Aztlan crowd, I would simply stamp "you lost" in the base of the bullets during mass production.
Here's hoping it never comes to that.
If I understand it correctly, according to the Bible, God gave that chunk of property to the Jews...But Sharon is intent on giving it to the Arabs...
If I was God, I wouldn't like that...I am not God and I still don't like that...
God reiterates His support for Jewish control of the whole Land of Israel.
Though I don't like it either. And I say Bush is just plain wrong here.
"The US actually paid for that territory (I believe the sum was ten million dollars) and transferred all land grants to title deeds, so no Mexican lost property."
Come on, Navy Patriot, let's look at this without rose-colored glasses. The US Army, Navy and Marines ("From the Halls of Montezuma...") just finished kicking Mexican ass all over the west and in what is now Mexico, we controlled the key port of Vera Cruz and had troops in Mexico City, and they were one decision away from becoming a colony of the US (not that we wanted that, but the Mexicans didn't know this). Then the US comes along and says, "Hey, we'll leave you with about half of your territory and pay you $15 million + $3 million in damages (when that was REAL money), but only IF you sign on this dotted line." What would ANYONE say or do? Somehow or other, I just don't see the Mexicans saying, "Gee, we're too proud to accept your filthy money to keep half of our country and go on lining our pockets with the labor of many millions of near-slaves. All or nothing, Gringos!"
Face it, President Polk made them an offer that they couldn't refuse.
BTW, a good site for a quick summary of the war is: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/mexican_war.htm
Thank you for that opening, maybe:
"I have not yet begun to fight"
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead"
"Nuts"
"I don't want you to die for your country, make jerry die for his"
"You can't do it, we won't let you"
or what the defenders of the Alamo said.
Polk generously gave the Mexicans an opportunity to act with honor and dignity, again they failed to incorporate those principles into their culture, instead falling back on deception and ambush, faking a peace to try to stab America in the back when future opportunity allowed.
No wonder most of the citizens of Mexico want to leave that cesspool.
As I have posted before: Had the United States done what it was entitled to do, the Panama Canal would be in Texas.
You miss the point, perhaps on purpose. The point is that the territory taken from Mexico, while technically paid for, was taken in a war of conquest. The payment that resulted from the treaty-at-gunpoint that Mexico signed was a mere fig leaf, one required by the international relations mindset of the mid-1800's.
BTW, I am no apologist for Mexico or its culture. They have many, many problems, almost entirely of their own doing. They have a rich base of natural resources and have done little with it. Compare and contrast to Israel, Japan or Switzerland, all countries that have little in the way of natural resources, yet which have made themselves very prosperous and safe places to live, as a result of them using their brains and applying some morality to their laws and business practices.
No, I don't.
"Technically paid for" was a generous chance to leave alive and with some honor. The US owed them nothing, not even their lives.
Both the "education" and the money were generous gifts the Mexicans squandered, given after a dishonorable plot to steal the wealth of Texicans and murder them.
The only "fair" part was the US invasion of Mexico and the "gunpoint" part.
The whole point that I have been trying to make is that the US has no right whatsoever to demand that Israel stop settlements in the territories that it seized in a war of self-defense from Egypt, Jordan or Syria (but most specifically Jordan) in the 1960's, any more than Israel would have the right to demand that the US stop settling people in TX, NM, AZ, CA, etc., which were taken in a war of self-defense against Mexico in the 1840's. To do so, in light of US history is an act of immense hypocricy.
I think that both the US and Israel are very properly in possession of the territories that they control now, both from a legal and a moral perspective. In both cases, the former holders of the land in question used it to wage aggressive war and/or to engage in otherwise illegal hostile acts against both the US and Israel, so they lost the right to possess such land. That being said, to deny the right of one to do with its territory as it sees fit is to deny the right of the other.
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