Yes, and so it has been for half a century. And yet the middle east is not a smoldering radioactive crater. I think this speaks to which side can be trusted to show restraint when necessary, and which side does anything within its power to claw the other to death as bloodily and publicly as possible.
Eh... I trust Israel to not throw nukes around, but when I think of Israel, I don't really think of 'restraint'. I'm not anti-Israel, but if a cease-fire were ever to be worked out, I don't think Israel would be able to stop themselves from being provoked into opening fire again.
You know, I think I could get behind this "leader of the country is held physically accountable for nation's official actions" thing.
I'm pretty sure we already did that with Saddam Hussein. Went on trial, found guilty of crimes against humanity, put to death.
Yeah, but we need it for lesser things too. Not just war crimes. Like DA suggested... a sock in the jaw on TV for breaking a treaty.
And 535 of them just for being a member of Congress.
take from this what you will. Backs up my argument pretty well from what I can tell.
Yes, the people presently in charge are extremists and terrorists. But that is still ignoring the root causes. Hamas came to power in 2006 I think, do you think whatever happened earlier is of no importance? The settlements were a problem before that, undermining Yasser Arafat's authority was important, shortage of water, medicine etc was probably important, hell, they started to build the West Bank Wall well before Hamas governed (2000)! If Hamas has gained more and more influence because all of these things, it's not unreasonable to think that they will lose some of it if Israel compromises on some of those things Hamas will lose some support.
As far as I'm concerned, when Palestine walked out of that arrangement without so much as even a counteroffer, when it gave them everything they wanted, simply because it removed their cassus belli and forced them to accept that israel would exist, they abdicated all legitimacy and claims to possible nationhood. Palestine no longer exists other than by the sufferance of the conscience of Israel and its allies, and they poke at that hard and often.
Seriously? What other country has ever been treated like this. We didn't treat any of the Axis powers this way regardless of how bad they fucked up (ok we DID nuke japan). People make mistakes, and you don't blame the populace for the sins of its leaders.
This is basically my opinion. Palestine is a failed state at this point for it's complete unwillingness to engage in political process.
A quick google tells me it has several.
Israel has already proven that it can do whatever the hell it wants back during the Six Day War. If Egypt (it's neighbor and one of the strongest militaries in the region) couldn't do shit to them and was in fact curb stomped, do you really think anyone else will fare better? Not to mention that it's an open secret that Israel has nukes and is prepared to level the entire region if it looks like they might cease to exist. So no... they won't do ANYTHING to Israel.
Tell that to the millions living there. Sure the borders were arbitrary and made up (as are Israels), but people live there and they have views.
And yet now here you are saying that they should just except the nonexistence of Palestine? Do you not see the irony there? Neither are realistic solutions.
Boy you're doing a real good job making the Israelis look like the good guys here.
The difference is Israel has the wherewithal to make it happen. Like I said, there is only a Palestine right now because Israel thinks it'd be less of a hassle for them to try a little appeasement. Obviously their patience is wearing thin. One must wonder how long before a complete change in opinion, and there no longer is any Palestinian land at all. Who would stop it? Unless Russia decided to get involved, there's practically nobody willing to repeat Egypt's mistake, especially since it'll definitely drag the US in.
Oh, Palestinian leadership has done a lot worse a lot more recently. The treaty Ash and I were talking about that Arafat walked away from was in 2000. It's been a rising scale of terrorism and media manipulation ever since.
I wouldn't call Israel self sustaining. We give more money and military aid to them than any other country in the world. They exist as a remora on the US military industrial complex. This isn't to say that they wouldn't be able to self sustain from here on, I think they would in some form, but they get like half their military budget directly from us, not to mention the favorable arms deals we have with them.
