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Trump’s Peace Plan
For the first time, an actual proposed map has been published by a player in the Israeli-Arab negotiations. It is truly fair to both sides. And it includes this wonderful gem:
“People of every faith should be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in a manner that is fully respectful to their religion, taking into account the times of each religion’s prayers and holidays, as well as other religious factors.”
This punchline is why the Palestinians would never accept this deal. Jews are currently not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.
It is a very solid proposal. Israel could add a “stick,” if not accepted, Israel will annex the West Bank. The Palestinians would still reject it. And so Israel should annex anyway and be done with it.
Published in General
Depends on the religion.
According to Caroline Glick, many Palestinians will not be so much against Israeli governance in a Jewish state. They know they will have the same benefits as other Israelis. And for the worry about the growing Arab population, their population is dropping (in spite of tainted statistics) and the Jewish population is growing, due in great part (but not solely) to the desire to have children in the Orthodox community.
Well, not exactly. Christians believe Israel is the Holy Land because, unlike Mohammed and in addition to its Jewish history, Jesus lived and died and rose again there. It’s not that Christianity claims to replace Judaism. Christians see our religion as a continuation of God’s work of salvation history into the Messianic and Church eras. Which is why you don’t hear about Christians laying claim to Israeli land and wanting to drive Jews into the sea, but you do see Christians visiting their holy sites, including the Via Crucis, Golgotha, Jesus’s tomb, etc. We like it that Jews are sovereign in Israel and want to keep it that way. Personally, I’d like to see the entirety of Israel under Jewish sovereignty and the Arab Muslims who don’t like it invited to leave.
*If I understand correctly, the Crusades were largely a defensive measure against Islam although, undoubtedly, Jews suffered persecution by “Christians” at that time.
Yes, the population growth statistics have reversed trends and essentially evened out, perhaps even with a Jewish advantage…..but that is subject to change, and the overall numbers are too close for either security or stability, IMO-I think the end result of a truly unified land and citizenship of Israel (even if Gaza were excluded) would be somewhere between 1970’s versions of Northern Ireland and Lebanon, which would in turn make it vulnerable to invasion. And the Palestinian Authority is infamous for its corruption and ineptitude, especially among the Palestinians themselves. I don’t remember where I got this from, but I’ve read even on pro-Palestinian sites that PA corruption is listed as a higher ‘quality of life’ concern on Palestinian surveys than any byproduct of Israeli policy, and that ‘having a good family life’ is a much higher priority than national or ideological aspirations.
Thank you for finding it. It sounded like I heard it somewhere.
Some Christians, I guess, are more Christian than others.
I’m trying to think of an offensive war that was not construed as a defensive measure. Drawing a blank so far.
Yeah, we have Catholics visit our parish from Bethlehem every year. They are undoubtedly living under hardships, but these are the tragic consequence of Jews living under constant threat from their Arab Muslim neighbors. Honestly, if Muslims would give up their homicidal hatred of Jews, I firmly believe the conditions for Israel’s Christians would improve immensely.
None of this takes from my point that Christians don’t want to take the land from Jews, unlike Palestinian Muslims.
I don’t know of any basis for saying relocation has a chance of solving anything. Stalin and FDR both relocated populations back in the 1930s, and we’re still living with the ensuing problems. Go back a century and Andrew Jackson’s forced relocations didn’t solve anything, either, but created some new problems for us.
These Palestinian Catholics suffer because of the Nakba, and the Naksa, and settlements and occupation but the real source of the problems are their Muslim neighbours who suffer from these same things?
Seems like a hard circle to square.
Do your visitors really tell you this unprompted?
No, that was my inference (I’m not as well versed as you on the history). They only complain about the curfews and hindrances to movement. Zafar, the Arab Muslims in the region need to live in the reality created by the (re-)establishment of the Jewish state — for their own sakes!! Until they set aside their hatred — or, at least, become indifferent to the Jewish state — they will never prosper. It’s a colossal waste of their lives. Very sad.
Their displacement after losing Israel’s War of Independence is what happens in war. It just does. And I kind of love that we can blame it all on the UN. It’s the wages of global governance.
Perhaps worth asking them?
Do their neighbors man these roadblocks?
Everybody there lives with that reality.
Including your guests.
You’re ignoring who set up organizations like the PFLP and others like it.
Israel oppresses Palestinians – both Muslim and Christian. And Palestinians – Muslim and Christian – resist. Anybody who tells you that it’s only a Jewish-Muslim thing is just not telling you the truth.
Would you say that to the Armenians wrt their experience with the Turks?
Really?
Actually you can’t. The UN isn’t paying for it, the US is. That’s what makes it possible for this to continue, and that’s what assigns some of the moral responsibility for the occupation and its oppression to you.
And please note: this is not a ‘Western Chauvinist’ you. It’s a US you. And similarly, choosing ignorance because it’s more comfortable is a national disgrace, not a personal one. Please take my comments with that caveat.
See, I don’t think this is an accurate read. The Christians are living under oppressive conditions because the Muslims won’t accept Jewish sovereignty under any circumstances. Muslims, while having a presence in the region, never had a state. Whereas the Jews were given (or made for themselves for you unbelievers) the Promised Land after conquering the Canaanites. They made (were promised) one (holy) nation (both a people and a place). It is literally their Holy Land — where all the action took place — and not just some afterthought of territorial expansion.
For this reason, you’re going to have trouble convincing me the Jews are occupiers. They’ve (rightly) laid claim to territories after defeating Muslim aggression time and again. Muslim intransigence makes me believe Israel should have sovereignty over the whole of the Land and Muslims should relocate (voluntarily, preferably) and give up their claims — for their own good.
This cheapens the Armenian genocide. You believe Israel is committing genocide against Arab Muslims (and Christians) in the region?
I meant the UN voting for partition being the start of the conflict. Do you dispute that?
The US supports Israel, yes. I think that’s the right thing to do. It’s the Jews’ state. It’s time for the Muslims to #MoveOn.
Which forces Israel to oppress Arab Christians, and therefore it’s really the Muslims’ fault.
Would you accept this kind of reasoning from your children when you pull them up for doing the wrong thing?
It’s not about a State (which frankly looks less and less likely and even desirable), it’s about land, and now legal equality.
No, but I believe Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing, and that this remains their objective in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
My point was: it’s easy to tell other people to #MoveOn. Arguably Armenians might be ‘better off’ making their peace with Turkey and ‘moving on’. An apology from Turkey isn’t going to bring back the dead while good relations with Turkey would be a big economic plus for Armenia.
But that is not really what’s at stake for Armenians on this issue, is it? (Or for Turkey, though it would be convenient for them if it was.)
When other people involve themselves (let’s say as ‘honest brokers’) and then insist that the issue is just about economics and anything else is a waste of time it’s: (1) dismissive of Armenian concerns, (2) pandering to Turkey [also perhaps a domestic audience – let’s call it Virtue Signalling] and for both these reasons (3) almost designed to fail on the ground.
The group that Israel (or the Irgun or Stern Gang, which were the precursors of the IDF) ethnically cleansed (or removed, or kept from returning to their homes after fleeing war, if you prefer) is Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. It didn’t just happen to Muslims, and it isn’t just resented and resisted by Muslims.
Stop ignoring Palestinian Christians.
I do understand, truly, that including them makes a neat, consistent division of groups aligning with the assumptions underlying the war of civilisations (roughly speaking: Jews and Christians are on the same side [forget relatively recent history] and Muslims are on the other side and also at fault and responsible for this war) difficult.
That’s a nice, cozy way to think about things. Leaving Palestinian Christians out is clearly tempting! (And perhaps unconscious?) But can you see that leaving them out reduces credibility, especially with them?
Zafar is factually challenged here. The core of the IDF began with self defense (against guess who) militias such as Hashomer before WWI. Jews who served in the British Army’s so-called Jewish Legion and/or various militia groups were the initial members of Haganah, (literally The Defense,) after WWI. After 1929 it was under the Jewish Agency. Haganah maintained policies of self-restraint even in the face of Arab atrocities and somewhat conflicted policies* on the part of the British Mandatory authorities.
The Irgun broke off of Haganah in the early 1930s and was mostly under the Revisionist Zionists (followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky) rather than Labor as was the main Haganah organization. As the noose was tightening around the necks of European Jewry, the Arabs rose in revolt in 1936, with many atrocities committed, in some cases British collusion made things worse. The British under Chamberlain responded the uprising by drastically limiting Jewish immigration (The White Paper) to placate the Arabs, who by then were led by Amin al-Husseini… who had been put in the Grand Mufti’s seat by the Brits in the 1920s despite having led a pogrom in Jerusalem.
When WWII broke out; Irgun and Haganah both ceased anti-British activities; Ben Gurion famously said to “support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war;” Irgun agreed. Jabotinsky died early in the war, and Menachem Begin took over Irgun. But militants (mostly in Irgun) led by Avraham Stern refused to end hostilities against the British. His followers, Lehi (an acronym for the Hebrew name, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) were self-described terrorists and were called the “Stern Gang” by their detractors. Like their Arab counterparts, Lehi made overtures to the Nazis and the Fascists. Their idea was that if they fought against Britain, the Nazis–in Lehi’s minds the lesser of two evils in 1940–would transfer European Jewry to Palestine; Lehi planned a “totalitarian Hebrew republic” following “National Bolshevik” principles. Irgun actively fought against Lehi; Begin had a more sane view of the Nazis.
The post WWII history is at least as complex, but Haganah provided most of the initial IDF, with Irgun and some Lehi fighters joining as well.
* After both Hashemites and Sauds rose up in the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans during WWI, the Sauds ran the Hashemites out of Mecca and the Hijaz, which the Hashemites had controlled for about 10 centuries. The only readily available territory under postwar control was the Mandate for Palestine, which the Brits promptly violated: They put Judea and Samaria, earmarked for the Jews under the Mandate, under Hashemite rule. There is only one Mecca, but the Temple Mount (and the victory mosque built on it) was under British rule, so…
Thank you for clarifying the history.
Thank you for that information, but it doesn’t address the issue of whether Christian Palestinians were displaced, are refugees, are occupied – and if so why is that always ignored?
Maybe because they’re not threatening enough? Unlike the Arab Muslims who want to displace and exterminate Jews.
Not sure about that, based on facts rather than curated news. (Even this.)
From an interesting article on a Palestinian Archbishop:
More cozy, see?
That article was more biased than anything I’ve seen from the left wing hyper-ventilating sphere.. I don’t know about the facts of the case, but that article is worth less than the price of the electrons it’s printed with. You can’t possibly take that as fact.
Hit character and time limit. Further discussion as time permits. Some questions:
Did absentee landlords have legal authority to transfer Ottoman ruled land to Jews?
Having beaten the Ottomans, did Brits have authority under League of Nations to rule Mandate? did LoN have authority to create it? Did Ottoman authorities have moral justification for extracting jizya and enforcing dhimmi status on Jews and Christians? if you oppose “colonialism,” please compare/contrast Euro, Arab, Turkish versions and describe your favored way out.
There was massive Arab influx into “Palestine” after the European Zionists began improving economic conditions. Is this immigration good but Jewish immigration bad? In recent times, is displacement of Christian Palestinians who joined or acquiesced to attempted genocides of 1948 etc. bad but displacement of Christian Palestinians from historic homes in Nazareth under PA good?
Well, so long as it’s an opinion based on knowledge.
None of them pertinent to the issue of why the suffering of Christian Palestinians during the Nakba, the Naksa, as refugees and under Israeli Occupation is routinely ignored by Christians on the West with Israel-Palestine being articulated as a Jewish-Muslim conflict.
Why is this?
Why do Western Christians who normally have a lot of empathy for fellow believers who are suffering have so little for Palestinian Christians that they actually find it easier to not mention them at all, or even listen to what they actually say, when it comes to this?
Does this not strike you as a very odd blind spot?
I can’t speak for others. I have empathy for them. I just don’t know what to do about it. They are caught between two larger groups who are fighting it out. To my knowledge I have not seen the Israeli government target the indigenous Christians.
They’re part of one if these groups. They were and are affected by the Nakba, the Naksa, being made refugees and by the occupation.
The blind spot is refusing to recognise this.
To my knowledge, Christians in the area do not blow up buses or anything for that matter, go around randomly stabbing Israelis, or fire rockets at anyone. The Palestinians who do so have created their own group and have forfeited any moral standing. Christians are not part of that group, though perhaps they may have similar interests. To my knowledge, and I may be wrong here, Christians are not looking to set up their own homeland but would be satisfied with integrating into Israeli society. Also to my knowledge, I don’t think that the Jewish mainstream would have a problem with integrating Christians in.
Again:
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1707366,00.html
So why are those Christian Palestinian refugees still barred from returning to Haifa or Lydda?
The emperor has no clothes.
Ok, so there are some. The Christian population is less than 3%, so they are hardly a problem.
If they joined the general Palestinian exodus of 1948, then they got what they deserved. I wouldn’t side with the Christians just because they’re Christian. Right is right.
No clue what you’re referring to. I am wearing a couple of layers of clothing.
And wrong is wrong. Right?