Is Israel right to trade away Gaza, and would you?

from JoeUser Forums
Question of the day: Is Israel right to trade away Gaza (and as a result, to disrupt the lives of the Israeli settlers that were living there?) and further, would you have done the same?

From the laymans perspective, Israel is blatantly trying to trade away Gaza as part of the peace process. By removing all Israeli settlers and settlements there, they are abandoning the land over to the Palestinians in the hopes of helping to buy peace.

In anycase, looking for opinions on whether this will help the peace process, have no impact, or will it blow up in Israel's face when the Palestinian terrorists resume attacks on Israel full force?
politics
3,262 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
My opinion is that they must... I wrote an article on this very thing over here this morning... I won't spam your comment block by cutting and pasting the whole bloody thing though.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
It is not really theirs, but has just been occupied since the 67 war.  If they want peace, they have to eventually quit occupying it.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
It is not really theirs, but has just been occupied since the 67 war. If they want peace, they have to eventually quit occupying it.


I agree. Same for the West Bank.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
They are not 'trading' anything! They are handing back Gaza to its rightful owners.
As an Israeli I welcome this move and hope that it will be a step towards peace...and not another sabotage to be of the Sharon administration.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
While I would like to believe that this will help the progression to peace, I think that outcome is doubtful. Israel remains the target of terrorism, despite its concessions. What efforts have been made by the Palestinians to dismantle existing terror groups? I think the pullout is the right thing... but I honestly don't see peace for this region in the near future.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
What efforts have been made by the Palestinians to dismantle existing terror groups? I think the pullout is the right thing... but I honestly don't see peace for this region in the near future.


There in are the thoughts that I pretty much have about this process.

I'd love to see these efforts help lead to a lasting peace, but the Paelstinian leadership still doesn't seem that interested in really shutting down the terrorist efforts. Instead they say one thing, yet mean or do another, and the next thing we see another suicide bomb has been set off and a new round of violence starts.

Too many innocent people have lost their lives on both sides of this fight though, and eventually the fighting must end. Hopefully it will happen sooner, rather than later, so that whole generations might be saved.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
eventually the fighting must end

Indeed... when a "peacemaker" that Israel trusts comes along... peace will follow, even if only temporary.

Ah, but I doubt this was intended to be a prophecy thread. *s*
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
Gaza is legitimate Palestinian territory. The Israeli government are absolutely right to remove Jewish settlers from there. Gaza is Palestinian.

Now, that being said, I have to add that Israel is not "giving back" Gaza. There has never been a Palestinian state Israel could possibly give anything "back" to. Israel could give Gaza back to Egypt, which annexed Gaza decades ago and from whom Israel won the territory. According to usual procedure Israel could have kept Gaza then (countries usually keep land they win in a war they did not start), but, of course, the usual procedure is not applied to Jews, and the Palestinians would have been the losers.

Legally Israel has never annexed Gaza, which means the Jewish settlers never had a right to be there. The point is that Gaza and the West Bank were meant to be the Arab part of Palestine, were then conquered by neighbouring Arab nations and eventually lost to Israel. Israel is now slowly creating the Palestinian state that should exist, and that is a good thing.

I do believe, however, that Israel could have managed this whole thing better. They could have made it more clear that they are leaving to let the Palestinian Authority take over, do something to make it clear that they are not withdrawing because of the Hamas Nazis.

And I fear that the Palestinians will eventually slaughter each other once Israel stops controlling them. The one thing the pan-Arabist masters of the terrorists cannot allow to happen is a Palestinian state.
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
"It is not really theirs, but has just been occupied since the 67 war."

I agree with this statement in some ways and disagree with it in others.

I agree that Gaza and the West Bank are not Israel's (except Jerusalem). But the '67 war has nothing to do with why these territories are not Israel's.

Growing up in Germany I regarded it as legitimate if a country that was being attacked and then war the war keeps a part of the attacking country and even expels its population. This is what happened to Prussia, Pommerania, and Silesia. I still regard it as legitimate. I believe that without a risk of losing something valuable, there is not much that could prevent one country from attacking another. The idea of losing land to another country doesn't shock me. But what did shock me was that this principle apparently did not apply to Israel.

But I don't care. I believe that Transjordan and Egypt lost the territories to Israel and that the process was legitimate.

The ONLY reason, for me, to consider an alternative outcome is the fact that the territories were meant to be Palestinian and that Egypt and Transjordan took them away from the Palestinians. And the ONLY reason, for me, to now consider these territories Palestinian is because Israel has agreed to eventually make these territories a Palestinian state.

And I support a Palestinian state for three reasons:

1. When the Ottoman Empire was divided, Palestine was eventually divided into a Jewish state (Israel) and an Arab state (Palestine). (Again, the Ottoman Empire was one of the attackers and lost territory.) Thus both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist based on the same incident. But when Israel managed to defend itself against pan-Arabist attacks, Palestine was occupied by the pan-Arabist forces.

2. I'd rather have a Palestinian people than an Arab nation. Huge nations based on a common bloodline tend to be dangerous for the rest of the world. Smaller nations tend not to be. And why should a people not have their own country?

3. The pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists have done everything they can to avoid formation of a Palestinian state. When Palestine was divided in Jewish and Arab parts, the Arabs didn't accept the division, when the Arabs controlled the territories, they did not create an independent Palestine in it, and now the terrorists try to stop the peace process and thus again avoid formation of a Palestinian state. Out of spite and following some logic it thus seems clear to me that formation of a Palestinian state should be something an enemy of pan-Arabism wants to support.
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
The pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists have done everything they can to avoid formation of a Palestinian state. When Palestine was divided in Jewish and Arab parts, the Arabs didn't accept the division, when the Arabs controlled the territories, they did not create an independent Palestine in it, and now the terrorists try to stop the peace process and thus again avoid formation of a Palestinian state. Out of spite and following some logic it thus seems clear to me that formation of a Palestinian state should be something an enemy of pan-Arabism wants to support.


Very true and quite insightful. The rest of the arab world considers Palestinians to be a lesser sort of Arab if they even concede that they are Arabs at all. The only interest that Arab nations have shown in the plight of the Palestinians is how they can exploit them to hurt Israel.
Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top

I agree that Gaza and the West Bank are not Israel's (except Jerusalem). But the '67 war has nothing to do with why these territories are not Israel's.

I did not mean to imply the 67 war had anything to do with the issue EXCEPT who has been occupying it.