Now my view is different - I think it's now only a matter of time before the International Community demands some redress ... but we'll agree to differ.
well they haven't in the intervening 45 years but the surge in both "legal" and illegal settlements may lead to them being reigned in a bit but i doubt it in the case of the "legal" ones
You can't have a legal settlement in a foreign territory (not at least without the express permission of the government of that territory) ... I've certainly not seen any UN confirmation that any Jewish settlement in the West Bank complies with International Law? ... perhaps you have? ... article below suggests not... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjerjzxlpvdo.amp
If only he’d listened to Western wet wipes the Jews could have done the right thing and just rolled over and died. Pesky, pesky Jews daring to live next door to terrorists obsessed with wiping them off the face of the Earth.
[QUOTE="FosseFilberto, post: 17854688, member: 1009946" ... well until now - but the tides are changing ...[/QUOTE] No tide is changing. The only regime to blame for all this mess is Iran, yet they rarely get a mention. The very regime that oppresses its own people.... When Hamas launched its blitzkrieg from Gaza on Oct. 7, it did not mark the onset of yet another Arab-Israeli war. Nor was it a war of Palestinians against Israel. Instead, the barbaric onslaught marked the beginning of an Iranian war against Israel, carried out by Tehran’s terrorist proxies. The war’s future course and duration are murky, but the ayatollahs’ underlying strategy is clear: close their long-envisioned “ring of fire” around Israel, permanently weakening or even paralyzing the Jewish State. https://thehill.com/opinion/interna...ack-in-irans-ring-of-fire-war-against-israel/ Yes, Iran has been accused of oppressing its people in many ways, including: Executions Iran has been using the death penalty as a tool of political oppression. In 2023, Iran executed six men in connection with the 2022 uprising, and one man in connection with the 2019 protests. At least seven more people are at risk of execution in connection with the 2022 uprising. Torture Iran has been accused of using torture to extract confessions from prisoners. Pretrial detention Iran has been accused of arbitrarily detaining prisoners for long periods of time, especially in cases involving alleged violations of national security law. Persecution of religious minorities The Baha'i community is the largest unrecognized religious minority in Iran and has been the target of severe persecution by Iranian authorities. Restrictions on freedom of speech and the press Iran has been accused of restricting freedom of speech and the press, including imprisoning journalists. Discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities The government's crackdown on protesters since 2022 has disproportionately impacted ethnic and religious minorities, particularly the Kurd and Baluch minorities.
Spot on. And this is the division between Hamas and Hezbollah that so few people have an inch of understanding of. While I decry Hamas as genocidal, abhorrent and absolutely counter-productive to peace, the cause they fight for (in the wrong way) is in many ways justified. Most of the Hamas leadership were born in refugee camps, are ethnic Palestinians, and their overarching cause is the establishment of a Palestinian State. Slightly inconvenient that they advocate the total destruction of Israel to get there, but ho hum. Hamas, whose roots are closer to Sunni and Wahhabist Islam, only started gravitating closer to Shi'ite Iran after the civil war with Fatah. It drew closer still in the wake of the Abraham Accords which signalled the beginning of the end for Sunni Islamist states' willingness to tolerate a movement seeking the total destruction of Israel. Not so Hezbollah, which was set up specifically by Shi'te clerics aligned directly with Iran. None of its founders or leaders are ethnic Palestinian. Most are Lebanese, some Syrian, one or two Iraqi. Unlike Hamas, it has zero territorial claims over Israel outside of the Shebaa farm region and a few towns on the Northern border. Yet its manifesto calls for the total annihilation of Israel. It is clearly and obviously Iran's political and military wing in the region, hence its involvement in the Syrian Civil War to help Assad gas and mustard bomb thousands of his own people. And there is no coincidence that one of the people injured by the exploding pagers was Iran's official ambassador to Lebanon. Hezbollah = Iran. It's a simple truth very few seem able or willing to comprehend.
Israeli strike in Lebanon kills senior Hezbollah commander and numerous associates. Ultimately, the word has done bugger all for decades while Lebanon has slowly ceased to exist as an independent sovereign state. It is a hostage of Hezbollah in all but title, flag and anthem.
Hence the "" round legal . The "legal" settlements are those approved / licensed by the Israeli authorities and then there are those which are illegal even in Israeli law .
Sort your quoting out .. I'll not do it again for you ... ... and the tide is certainly changing - there is growing dissatisfaction in Israel with Netanyahus government ... and the US stance has changed quite markedly since the tanks first rolled into Gaza ...
So if the Palestinians were to invade part of Israel and declare it legal under Palestinian Law, that would be fine then? ...
They’re welcome to try. Sandra in Guildford will have her polyester keffiyeh on ready to scream how unfair it is when they get pushed back as is now tradition.
Japan had to have two major cities nuked before they realised they could not hold out any longer let alone win, only after they had surrendered did the full extent of their atrocities become clear Germany had to be bombed into the Stone Age before they had nothing left to fight with and only as they were being defeated did the full extent of their atrocities become clear Russia were on our side by default but only after the end of the war were the atrocities they committed against Poland and Jews slowly uncovered America got itself in a war it should not have entered and realised too late they were fighting the wrong side and ending up committing atrocities because they could not always determine who the enemy were Russias illegal invasion of Ukraine has resulted in more civilians that soldiers being killed Every single war since the latter part of the 19th century has resulted in more and more civilians including women and children being the victims of war that was no longer confined to the battlefields War is a horror that can only be avoided by neither side thinking that a quick and decisive victory is possible to achieve and History proves time and time again Hamas knew exactly what they were doing and what the result would be when Israel retaliated, the blood in on their hands and we neutrals can only watch in horror as it all unfolds but it is not for us to decide what is right or wrong because of the paragraphs above
Yes I said this at the time. Hamas pulled this stunt with the most right-wing Israeli government in living memory in power. They opened the gates of hell on their own people.
There is such a thing as the court of public opinion. But it's opinion counts for almost nothing. This is the point I was trying to make when addressing the doctrine of Proportionality in IHL. When you actually delve into its legal implications, especially when weighing up the CDE (collateral damage estimation) + NCV (non-combatant casualty value) equation, you realise how it is utterly beyond the grasp of the overwhelming majority of thr general public, most of whom face no harder decisions on a daily basis than how many caramel shots to have in their pumpkin spice latte in the morning. These are scenarios and decisions of which the Average Joe has so little knowledge, let alone experience, of what value is his opinion? Until Average Joe has sat in a control center with his finger over a launch button, his supervising commander standing by his side on the phone to intel, who advised that Osama bin Laden is in between hideaways and can be got before he disappears for another year, the 'only' issue being that there are 35 civilians in the room with him and NCV guidelines suggest a maximum of 30. Or maybe there are only 29, but they are all children. Do you pull the trigger? That is serious, serious **** to carry on your shoulders. A weight that the "court of public opinion" couldn't possibly fathom. Which is why, if you scan the posts on this thread, you will see certain posters who decry the high levels of civilian casualties, but will also decry Israel for evacuating civilians en masse from to-be combat zones. This is totally illogical and self-contradictory, but I will stop at calling it hypocritical or worse, because I believe what I am looking at is an Average Joe desperately grasping at straws he doesn't understand to make sense of a situation he hasn't ever come close to experiencing, the end result of that thought process being the emergence of two beliefs that are entirely mutually exclusive. The "court of public opinion" is wholly irrelevant and certainly should not have the right to put anyone or anything "in the dock" as you've claimed.
Ukraine hit another huge ammo dump. They given Putin a couple of bloody noses over the last month or so, first Kursk, now this. We seem to have finally learned that telling the Russians what the plan is via the media in advance, wasn't a good idea.
