PeterS

My question is why Obama's actions are making peace in the Middle East more difficult? As I see it the more Israel builds settlements in the Palestinian areas the more difficult peace in the future becomes--not the other way around. Now I understand that you cons don't like Obama but why do you think Israel should be able to build settlements where ever they want?

Rivers

Palestinian areas?????? NOT!!!! That area is not called the "Jewish Quarter' for nothing. That land was part of the 1948 accord that created Israel. Then, in the 1948 war with the Arabs, that area was taken by the Arabs. They held that area for 19 years until the 1968 Six Days War, when Israel rightly took it back...it never did belong to the Palestinians.

Remember Israel occupies less than 10% of what was originally promised them in 1948. 80% was taken away and became Jordan, then another 10% was given to the Arabs.

The ugly little truth is that the Palestinians do not, and did not ever, want peace. Arafat was granted everything he asked for from Bill Clinton, and still turned it down.

cold iron Loc: White House

It once was there land back 2000 years.. Plus the Palestinian are refugees from Jordan back 100+ years due to there attempt to overthrow Jordans government. They failed and had to flee for there lives, back then there was no Israel, just lots of desert. Even today the land Israel settlement are built on open unused land. The Palestinian do not work but live off welfare from the UN and your taxes.

jimahrens Loc: California

Do some serious reading you will answer your own question.

emarine

Hamas is a neo Nazi group who's goal is the extermination of Jews not sharing land... Israel hosts 1.2 million peaceful Arabs now... around 20% of their population... Israel is a rapidly growing country in need of space ... the only solution is to rid the terrorists groups in ME who want to exterminate the Jews & free the peaceful Arabs... then share the land

CDM Loc: Florida

jim; You are of course correct; there have been no less than 10 million words written on both sides of this subject, most of them available at the tap of a key. But therein resides the rub with PeterS and all Leftists; they do do serious reading, all of it from Collective Central in blocks of less than 300 words to accommodate their millisecond attention spans and provide them only with what they want to hear, so to speak.

reconreb Loc: America / Inglis Fla.

It seems your grasp of the Israel / Palestine conflict could be obtained from a CNN so called news report ,if not you should seek employment with CNN ,, Perfect Fit !!

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Yep, there never was a country called Palestine nor a people called Palestinians. In 135AD, after he had put down the second Jewish revolt, the Roman emperor Hadrian, because he so despised the Jews, he latinized the name of the Hebrews' mortal enemy, the Philistines, and renamed Israel/Judea "Palestine." This was the epitome of insults to the Jews. This act is sometimes referred to as "Hadrian's Curse".

There is no recorded history of a people called Palestinians, no archeological discovery has revealed a record of their existence--no artifacts of any kind, no coinage, no documents, no monuments or temples, nothing.

The Arabs who call themselves Palestinians are monopolizing on the propaganda, even found in modern Bibles, that the land was called Palestine. Moreover, the Islamofascists who call themselves Palestinians are not driven by any desire for real estate, their objective, in total, is the extermination of the Jewish people.

kenjay Loc: Arkansas

They won the war one two there are no Palestinians. They are from Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

rich boise Loc: Idaho

in truth, the "Palestinians" are occupying Israeli territory.

susanblange Loc: USA

Isaiah 14:29. "Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent". Israel will be punished and Palestine will cease to exist. A serpent is a symbol of power and a cockatrice is a deadly, venomous serpent. The Messiah will have the power to throw a lightning bolt and he will cut off his enemies and the wicked. Isaiah 30:30 "And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm..."

patrioticmind

The Beginnings of Zionist Settlement
Israel is a Zionist state—a state based on the political ideology known as Zionism. Israel was founded by Zionist Jews from Europe, who began to colonize historic Palestine (what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank) in the late 1880s. At that time, there were small Jewish communities that had long existed in the Middle East, but Jews had not been a large part of the population in Palestine for some 2,000 years. Most Jews who lived in the area in ancient times had migrated to other parts of the world following the fall of the last Jewish kingdom in Palestine to the Roman Empire, around 70 AD. By the time the Zionist movement arose in the late 1800s, there had been many centuries of Jewish migrations, persecutions, and intermarriage with other people. Most Jews lived in Europe, and they were a very diverse group which included many different nationalities as well as religious and political viewpoints.

The Zionists based their movement on the claim that Jews were god’s "chosen people" and that Palestine was the land god promised them. They said that Jews could never assimilate into other societies and could only deal with anti-Semitism by having their own state. Zionism did not reflect the views of many Jews who saw themselves as part of the life and struggles of the people in the countries where they lived. The Zionist movement reflected the interests of bourgeois Jews in Europe, and from the beginning it was based on allying with imperialism against the masses in the Middle East. Theodor Herzl, a founder of Zionism, wrote that a future Zionist state "would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism." (Rodinson)

The Zionists promoted the myth that Palestine, which is about the size of the state of Maryland, was a barren desert, "a land without people for a people without land." In truth, some of the first urban societies in the world originated in historic Palestine, and Palestinians had lived and farmed there for centuries. In 1947 some Palestinians could trace their land ownership back a thousand years. (Guyatt, p. 1),

patrioticmind

The Beginnings of Zionist Settlement
Israel is a Zionist state—a state based on the political ideology known as Zionism. Israel was founded by Zionist Jews from Europe, who began to colonize historic Palestine (what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank) in the late 1880s. At that time, there were small Jewish communities that had long existed in the Middle East, but Jews had not been a large part of the population in Palestine for some 2,000 years. Most Jews who lived in the area in ancient times had migrated to other parts of the world following the fall of the last Jewish kingdom in Palestine to the Roman Empire, around 70 AD. By the time the Zionist movement arose in the late 1800s, there had been many centuries of Jewish migrations, persecutions, and intermarriage with other people. Most Jews lived in Europe, and they were a very diverse group which included many different nationalities as well as religious and political viewpoints.

The Zionists based their movement on the claim that Jews were god’s "chosen people" and that Palestine was the land god promised them. They said that Jews could never assimilate into other societies and could only deal with anti-Semitism by having their own state. Zionism did not reflect the views of many Jews who saw themselves as part of the life and struggles of the people in the countries where they lived. The Zionist movement reflected the interests of bourgeois Jews in Europe, and from the beginning it was based on allying with imperialism against the masses in the Middle East. Theodor Herzl, a founder of Zionism, wrote that a future Zionist state "would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism." (Rodinson)

The Zionists promoted the myth that Palestine, which is about the size of the state of Maryland, was a barren desert, "a land without people for a people without land." In truth, some of the first urban societies in the world originated in historic Palestine, and Palestinians had lived and farmed there for centuries. In 1947 some Palestinians could trace their land ownership back a thousand years. (Guyatt, p. 1),

patrioticmind

From the start, the Zionist plan was expulsion and conquest. R. Weitz, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, a leading Zionist organization, wrote to other Zionists: "Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country... There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, to transfer all of them: Not one village, not one tribe, should be left." (Said & Hitchens, p. 239)

By 1918, there were 680,000 Palestinians living in Palestine, in contrast to 56,000 Jews, and Palestinians owned 97 percent of the land. ( Basic Facts , Quaker Newsletter) But the imperialists had plans for this region. After World War 1, various imperialist powers scrambled to scoop up the lands ruled by the defeated Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. The rivalry was intense because oil was now a precious economic and military commodity. Britain calculated that establishing a state of Zionist settlers—a settler-colonial state similar to South Africa—could help in digging its claws more deeply into the Middle East. The British also wanted to undercut Jewish support for the newly established Soviet Union, then a revolutionary socialist country. In 1917 British Foreign Secretary Balfour declared: "The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism...is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." (Sin, p. 10)

During World War 1, the British had promised independence to Palestinians and other Arabs. But Britain quickly broke those promises. In 1922, the British imperialists got the League of Nations to give them a "mandate" to rule Palestine as a colony. The British worked to "secure the establishment of the Jewish national home" by encouraging Jewish immigration, allowing the Jewish Agency to share the administration of Palestine, and by suppressing Palestinian resistance. (Said & Hitchens, p. 242, quoting British Parliamentary papers)

patrioticmind

Between 1933 and 1945, Britain, along with its U.S. imperialist ally, severely restricted Jewish immigration into their own countries. This policy, aimed at pushing Jews to immigrate to Palestine, was carried out while the Jewish people in Europe faced the Holocaust. (During World War 2, the U.S. and Britain also refused to bomb the tracks leading to the Nazi concentration camps.) Zionist leaders also cut deals with the Nazis—such as the Havara Agreement- -allowing some wealthier Jews to escape to Palestine and undercutting Jewish resistance in Nazi-controlled areas.

There was Palestinian resistance to the Zionist settlers as early as the turn of the twentieth century. In 1936 Palestinians launched an armed uprising against the British authorities and the Zionist settlers. The British brutally crushed the uprising in 1939 and passed emergency laws condemning to death any Palestinian found with a gun. ( Roots , p. 68).

Zionist leader David Ben Gurion wrote at the time: "In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us...[but] let us not ignore the truth among ourselves... Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country...." (Chomsky, pp. 90-91)