Middle East News 2

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The irony is just painful, wouldn't you say?
 
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V7 said:
...and started a war with Lebanon
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Not that I'm a big fan of Sharon, but it seems I remember that it is Olmert who started the war against Lebanon (after, it's true, an attack from the Hezbollah and the kidnapping of two soldiers).
 
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Pladio said:
I have another video of off facebook, let me see if the link works

EDIT: Doesn't. Let me try

EDIT: Try this : http://facebook-video-9.vo.llnwd.net/video-ll-sf2p/v1182/76/105/51330023923_46878.mp4

PJ what do you think about him saying that when they retreated from Gaza that they left and also opened the borders ?
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I'm think that he has a very peculiar definition of "opened." Not a whole lot of aid is getting in, and not a whole lot of Gazans are getting out. Opening the borders in a meaningful way would mean that Gazans get to go to work en masse in Israel. Anything less than that is window-dressing; it won't make any significant difference to the daily life of people living there. Visiting relatives in the West Bank (after massive waits and massive formalities) is comparable to supervised prison visits -- i.e., easier conditions of incarceration, rather than anything resembling freedom.

Other than that, it's tired vanilla hasbara -- I'd have expected more of him.
 
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Pladio said:
He was talking about when Sharon dismantles the settlements, not now.
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So was I. Those borders were never really open, not since the separation wall went up (the second time) in 2000-2001. They did allow 5000 people to cross, when the Erez crossing was open -- but given that the population of Gaza is 1.4 million, that's purely symbolic too.
 
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Fairly tough line on Israel from Hillary so far, not as tough as it should be but a big departure from the blind support of late.
 
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I gather Mordechai Vanunu has asked to be withdrawn from the nobel peace prize nomination list because Peres is on it. Can't say I blame him, he was responsible for his abduction and 18 years in israeli prison.

Convicted of treason and espionage at a closed trial, Vanunu was jailed for 18 years. The first eleven and a half were spent in solitary confinement. There was fear for his mental health as he grew increasingly despairing. For the first part of his sentence, the light in his cell was kept on all the time.
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Puts guantanamo bay into perspective.
 
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Roger Cohen had a very good piece in NY Times today: "Middle East Reality Check."

Essentially, he's arguing that the US and the UK must recognize Hezbollah and Hamas as legitimate political movements and open dialog with them. The current carrots-and-sticks approach will only lead to a dead end.

He also has a few thoughts on the Gaza war. (By the way, I hear the daily rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza have already resumed. So fat lot of good *that* did.)
 
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*sigh*

And what do the Hamas expect from sending rockets on Gaza? That Israel get pissed off again and but this time, start being genocidal so that the international community step up and do something?
 
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More or less, minus the genocide bit -- that's hardly on the cards, and things won't even need to go that far. It'll be enough if Israel creates enough facts on the ground to make the two-state solution an obvious impossibility, then institutes an official apartheid regime, and then gets the same treatment and ends up the same way as South Africa did. It'll work, too, unless something really surprising happens.
 
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Yeah, I know well your theory. The big difference, however, is that South Africa couldnt exist witout its black population. They were a part of the south-african society. It's quite different in Israel where the jew population could well live on its own with the worldwide jewish support and its still steady birth/immigration-rate. The arab population lives mostly in its towns and villages and doesnt mingle that much with the jewish population. For example, Tel Aviv muslim population is only around 4%. The israeli-arab population could not, through peaceful protesting, prevent the society from working and if they take the path or violence, well, the Gaza open air prison and the west bank might well receive new citizens.

So expecting the south-african scenario, at least at this time, seems premature to me. For such scenario to happen, it would have to come from the inside...
 
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Sure sure, Israeli Jews could *survive* -- but that's not enough. Most of 'em are people just like us -- middle-class, secularized, materialistic, educated people who just want to keep up with the Joneses and get ahead in life. An authoritarian, non-democratic state that's diplomatically isolated and economically sanctioned isn't good for that sort of thing. If the Palestinians can push Israel into creating that state, it will create the conditions for the authoritarian apartheid system to collapse, and a post-Apartheid South African style one-state solution to emerge. (Or post-colonial Zimbabwe style state, if they're less lucky.) I see no reason why this shouldn't work. Not overnight, of course, but eventually.
 
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the international community has stood by while a genocide goes on in Darfur.
and they are standing by now when a fundamentalist state is busily working on getting an atomic bomb (hooray fallout 4 might come out early and it's not gonna be made by bethseda).
what makes you think they'll do anything here?
and anyway a right wing government means that if Hamas keeps shooting rockets gaza will just get reoccupied .
 
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