No you are the one missing the point, just because you say something is right, does not make it so. Rock throwing had nothing to do with it, we are talking about the present, you then throw in the past, to aid you to cling on to your arrgument. Tbph I'm not interested in what happened a year ago, a decade ago or a century ago, if we want to get fooking silly like that, shall we do what that idiot of an ex president wanted to do, and talk about carpet bombing Dresden or shall we add in America dropping the atomic bomb, not once but twice on Japan. Keep rocks out of it, I know you have some sort of fetish rocks, but honestly mate they really can't feel a thing when you throw them. Arsenal fans use to beat up their rivals in the 70's, so shall we call every Arsenal fan a terrorist because of the past?
It’s not me saying though is it. That’s the all encompassing Israeli definition of terrorism. That’s the point that you are failing to grasp. Trying to explain nuance to you is like talking to one of those rocks
BBC had to release a statement yesterday defending their position for completely the opposite reason. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67083432
Yeah that’s the BBC though. I agree with Jon Simpson btw. It’s up to reporters to report the facts, not make their own moral judgements about it.
Australia in a referendum on Saturday overwhelmingly voted to reject a proposal to recognise Indigenous people (aborigines) in their constitution. I don't know enough about it, so there may be a reasonable explanation other than the fact aussies are a bunch of fcking massive ****s.
If you think for a moment Iran and Saudi Arabia won't clash (either directly or through via their proxies) over control of Al Quds and Al Aqsa the moment Israel ceases to exist, you are either ignorant of most of Muslim history, or you think that the Saudis are cool because they like football now. Historically, Saudi Arabia was one of the biggest obstacles to lasting peace in the region. On two occasions, Arafat was on the brink of historic deals, once with Shimon Peres the other with Ehud Barak, when in the 11th hour he received phone calls from King Abdullah forbidding him from signing under threat of immediate cessation of funding. The deals collapsed. More recently, Iran has become a greater obstacle to peace as it uses its proxies to establish a 'Persian Crescent' from the Mediterranean to the Indian Gulf and thereby undermine Sunni hegemony. Of course the problems won't be the same, but they will be just as serious and potentially more deadly.
So what's the alternative? Are you suggesting this is a reason not to have a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians for their own state? Not that it looks likely for the foreseeable future.
Btw I thought the deal at Camp David broke down bcos Arafat became entrenched about Jerusalem. I think he said something along the lines of, he couldn't go back to his people and tell them he'd sold them out on Jerusalem.
Arafat's involvement at Camp David and the reasons for its collapse are complex and both Clinton and senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Amir blamed Arafat directly for the aftermath. But Saudi fingerprints were all over the Jerusalem issue. Famously the only prominent Saudi to take up a different position was their ambassador to the USA, Prince Bandar, who held deeply anti-Palestinian views in general and was basically sent to the USA mission because he was too 'embarrassingly Western' to be left at home. Although I've personally long believed that one of the main reasons Camp David failed is Clinton's ego: coming toward the finale of his presidency, he wanted to go out as a man who made history and succeeded where so many others had failed. But to do this, he had to make the summit 'all or nothing', an ethos that means we either agree on all of the issues on the table together, or we abandon the whole thing. So the man had an ageing Arafat and a beleaguered Barak trying to reach final, binding agreements on issues as complex as Jerusalem, right of return, financial compensation, geographical contingency with Gaza, Israeli settlements and border security...all at the same time! Had Clinton taken a dose of reality, he would have remembered that Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is peace, and they would have negotiated each issue separately and independent of each other, reaching agreement gradually on one (or some) of the issues, and leaving the rest to future administrations to take the glory for.
I'm not discounting those complexities, but the immediate problem for Palestine is Israel. Not Saudi Arabia or Iran We're not talking about Israel ceasing to exist either. Would it not be the better course of action for peace in the area if Israel recognised Palestine's right to self determination, and worked back towards the 'road map' We can speculate about what the wider Arab world would do in the absence of Israel, but nobody is suggesting that should be an outcome.
Plenty of people wish for Israel to cease existing, whether by political or violent means. There are plenty on this very thread. Not saying you're one of them. Just saying the ease with which so many people default to that as an answer is alarming. Israel does recognise the Palestinian right to self determination and has done since it accepted the UN Partition Plan in 1947. Of course, the precise borders of where that Palestinian state will form are and have been subject to intense debate and fluctuate depending on the Israeli govt in power. So for example whereas the more centre-left govt of Ehud Olmert was open to that state being 98% of the amount requested, the current Netanyahu govt is unlikely to agree to anything not much smaller in any final agreement. It's also worth remembering that the PLO/Farah only recognised Israel as a sovereign state at Oslo in 1993, while Hamas' Charter still calls for Israel's total destruction. So yes, the immediate problem for Palestine is Israel. The immediate problem is also the fact that there are currently de facto and de jure two Palestines under two leaderships whose political and regional views and allegiances are radically different. The only thing they have in common once family ties and religion is taken out the picture, is their common animosity toward Israel. The other immediate problem is that two other regional powers, Saudi and Iran, see the weaker regional nations as pawns to be used and abused to advance their own macro ambitions. For Iran, this means destabilising Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq in order to surround the Arabian Gulf with proxy governments. For the Saudis, this means stopping Iran at all costs. It is currently selling its soul to the West in order to help it with this goal. And yes, football plays a vital role in their wider strategy of moving closer into the Western sphere. The fact that Israel is inching closer to an historic peace deal with Saudi Arabia could well have caused Iran to press the Hamas trigger. I have nothing but pity for the people of Gaza. They are hostages of Hamas who themselves are puppets of Iran. And on the other side of the fence they have an Israeli government that couldn't really care less about them either. It's an impossible situation.
You speak to ten different ppl involved in those talks and you'll get ten different versions all blaming one or the other side. History is littered with these so-called truths since. Barak says one thing, Arafat another. In the end all that matters is it was a failure. And it means nothing now, or for the future.
People who call for Israel to cease to exist are living in a world that doesn't reflect reality The partition deal was always problematic for Palestinians, as I understand it, because it took away strategic sea ports, agricultural land and critical infrastructure. And since then, they have seen their ancestral lands systematically taken away, to the point where they now have an occupied West Bank and a Gaza strip that is being battered into submission. So even as somebody who I presume has Israeli citizenship, I also presume that you can see why that animosity exists ? The fractured nature of Palestinian govt is problematic for their cohesion and any future negotiation with Israel. And whilst Hamas' ideology doesn't fit with a two state solution, did they not reach an agreement with Fatah to work with Israel, which the Israeli's kicked into touch, because they wouldn't negotiate with 'Terrorists' ? The wider complexities with Iran and the Saudis and their proxies, would surely be best dealt with, by an equitable peace deal between Israel and Palestine ? As I see it, that needs huge compromise on Israel's behalf. Because for all of the political chess manouevering, the material effect on the ground is that Israel is illegally occupying Palestine, and this is the very nub of the issue.
Tbh I think the arabs (and I'm talking the population not their puppet masters) are sick of us saving them from themselves. We must save the palestinians from the saudi's and iranians, we must save the iraqi's bcos we know best, we must save the libyans, the syrians, we must save the afghans when we feel like it, then dump them in the ****ter when we feel like it. Our hubris and self interest goes hand in hand with our incompetence and double standards when it all goes tits up. Give people their rights under international law. That's all we should do if we have any integrity. Let them make of it what they will and if they go to hell in a handcart it will be on their own terms not someone else's dictated to them. Who knows, maybe just maybe, if we let them get on with it, they might come out the other side, however long that may take, with something resembling a peaceful and prosperous middle east.
The Arabs who I speak too, still living in Jordan etc, seem to be more focused on their ****ing dreadful wages, **** governments and the slow encroachment of Chinese firms using them for cheap labour tbh. The US are just as much a "boogeyman" to them as China is for us. They're just the lads I play games with, the funniest of which is a Saudi lad who gets me laughing so hard there's tears
I aint got no problem with China bro, whatever goes on in China is their business, much like we shouldn't have got involved in this shhitefest, couldn't we just mind our own business for a change.
