(Vanity) Explain to me why it's "OK" for Israel to have settlements on The West Bank?

My Mind ^ | June 25th, 2002 | Johnny Shear

[Johnny Shear]

This is an honest question, no offense towards anyone is intended...

I won't try to claim I'm any kind of scholar on the subject of Isreal Settlements but I have done a bit of research on the subject. Yet, one question still remains...

I can't justify the Isreal Settlements in The West Bank and Gaza...In my own mind, anyway...

As far as I can tell, Isreal officially justifies these settlements based on the fact that they lay claim to Gaza and the West Bank due to defeating Arab aggressors in the 1967 war. And, Isreal is still technically at war with some Arab states so they can continue occupying these areas...

What I don't understand is how they justify the settlements. Occupation is one thing (Based on protecting themselves against an aggressor) but settlements are something completely different (In my opinion, anyway).

If anyone can educate me, I know Freepers can. And as a bonus, if anyone can supply information or sources on how the Palestinians "See Things", that would be great. (In the spirit of "Two sides to every story").

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The Suicide-Worshipers attacked Israel, got their butts kicked, lost the West Bank and promptly began whining for its return.

Q. If the Suicide-Worshippers had won territory in their attack instead of losing it, would they have given it back?

[SteamshipTime]

Conservative U.S. Christians have decided that we have a stake in this millenia-old dispute among various Semitic tribes. Otherwise, it would no more merit our consideration than, say, the tribal dispute between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

[Soliton]

All of the above answers are good but they are wrong. The number one deal breaker in peace negotiations is the palestinian right of return to Israel. The Israelis are building bargaining chips in the desert. They will trade the settler's homes for the right of return when the time comes. They did it with Egypt over Sinai. Ariel Sharon was instrumental in that decision too.

[duckln]

The U.S. won Texas

Everyone should know that Texas won Texas

[MoscowMike]

Howdy

The arab world engaged in an unprovoked aggressive war of annihliation against the population of Israel. They lost militarily, but the state of war has never ended.

Under these circumstances, the land is Israeli territory under international law. The most arab friendly connotation one can ascribe is that the land is "disputer territory."

The "palistinean" people have no claim to these lands, there is no "palistinean" ethnicity, no "palistinean" nation has ever existed, the closest one can come to that is that the Romans named the province Palistine after defeating Isreal in another war of annhiliation in antiquity. They did so as an insult to the Israeli nation, deriving the name from the Philistines, the Israelis bitterest local adversaries.

So the "occupied territories" are nothing of the kind, they are Israeli territory, and the "palistinean" people are the victims of their own duplicity in leaving their homes in 1967 to march back at the head of a conquering Arab army and conduct genocide against innocent civilians. They are Saudi Egyptian, Lebonese, Iranian, arafat himself is Egyptian, only united in infamy as turncoats who attempted to abandon their neighbors and assist in their mass murder. Arabs to remained in Isreal when the "palistineans" ingnored Israeli pleas that they stay and defend their homes are living today in Israel in peace and prosperity, the only Arabs in the world with democratically elected representation.

Isreal, having been repeatedly invaded through these lands, has chosen to construct settlements in strategic areas in order to provide security to their civilian population by obstructing future armies of murderers from their genocidal goals.

The miasma of propaganda surrounding the arab Israeli conflict make such simple distinctions exceedingly difficult to apprehend, and the cause of millions of enslaved people suffering under palistinean authority bondage is valid, but the terriroty they wish to claim is not their land, it never was.

[marshmallow]

Israel has done at the national level what THIS GUY has done at a personal level.

The only difference is, Mr. Yisrael is going to jail.

[onedoug]

Good point...if it wasn't for islamism, which seethes for Israel's eventual destruction.

Best.

[SteamshipTime]

All well and good. Let the Israelis and Palestinians settle it. They don't need my tax dollars to do it.

[MoscowMike]

Howdy

And yet we send bazillions to both sides...

[foolish-one]

Israel did not cede the West Bank to the Palestinians. They negotiated a settlement that would have ceded it back if the Palestinian Authority had fulfilled their end of the contract. That was conditional. The Palestinian Authority never upheld their end, so no deal was comsumated. Disagree? Explain, please.

[kazatzkeh]

The borders of Israel on June 4 1967 are the same as the cease-fire line of 1949.

[Alouette]

Israel never stopped the expansion of settlements

Please explain to me how Jews building homes for their families down the road from Palestinians is an "atrocity" on the same level as blowing up people at a bus stop or a pizza parlor. The mind boggles that there are people who think these things are "equivalent."

There are 1.2 million Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Why can't there be 200,000 Jews citizens of Palestine?

[AdA$tra]

Try this answer: There is no such people as the so-called Palestinians and no such country as Palestine. These people are just Arabs without a proper country of their own, and Palestine is just a name the Romans gave to Judea.

[greydog]

It's spelled Israel, not Isreal

[onedoug]

Terrific thread, by the way. Thanks for starting this particular "land-grab".

[lavaroise]

Who develops and buys the land owns the land. Period. And what is wrong with Jews helping other native Jews maintain their independence from Euro-arab colonial autocracy in the region occupying Jews?

And are those really settlements? Why worship that word and definition that may be wrong? Those territories are disputed territories at worse, or rightfuly Israel's given the democratic manner in which they were acquired given it was a democracy acquiring them in war in due process and balanced manner. Even if they were settlements, what is wrong with immigration there if it is not wrong for arabs to migrate accross the world?

People have to remember that Jews are in Israel not to displace people, but not to displace people of other nations as diaspora, for Jews are to worship G_d and demonstrate their love by confining themselves with G_d (Rabbis mention it as an interlocking marriage with the Jewish people as the bride) in Jerusalem. Jews moderate their consumptions and separate themselves thus from consumerist animals by producing blessings of quality (while Christians focus on blessings of simplicity as mode of restraint).

Again, Jerusalem and settlements are not about taking land, but about giving diaspora land back to rightful owners, restricting hence consumption to Jerusalem. Jews live in sin when not in Israel and have to constantly atone for it. Arabs by the way never took care of this region as it was wasteland before the Jews paid with sweat and blood to develop it.

[demsux]

Given the territory and the lay of the land and defense and security considerations ... I believe Israel should simply state that those areas are now part of Israel by virtue of their taking it in a defensive war against total agression. Israel should administer it all as a part of its own territory.

By this reasoning, we should be in control of Japan

[Johnny Shear]

The borders of Israel on June 4 1967 are the same as the cease-fire line of 1949.

I won't argue with you because I (Obviously) don't have the facts on my side, but I'll ask some questions based on what I "Think"...

I've seen maps of a "Growing Isreal". At first, the 1948 Mandate, Isreal was 3 or 4 small areas all broken-up. then after one of the wars, it got a little bigger...Then bigger again...And now, it's what we see on all the maps. Pretty much all one peice of land with the West Bank bulging on it's Eastern Border. And Gaza down on the Southwestern Border.

I guess, what confuses me is why the West Bank is NOT shown as part of Isreal if they "Won it in the 1967 war"??? And, why these other parts that were won in other wars are not contested???