Among other things, the article omits mention of the recent pay increases awarded Abbas and high-ranking ministers while the West Bank experiences 20 per cent unemployment.
22
If and when the PLO and Hamas want a real deal with Israel, they can get one, but they'd best not wait too much longer. The window is closing on a two-state deal. Meanwhile, Israel is right to protect itself against terrorism, as it has done with Hamas in Gaza.
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Let me understand. Do Palestinians expect Israel to finance their suicide bombers' families?
34
The Palestinians expect Israel to stop oppressing them, NOW.
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@InfraBlue
Self-defense is not oppression.
We Americans have to go through checkpoints at the airport. Does that mean that the USA is oppressing us?
Self-defense is brutal. Self-defense involves killing & wounding, fences, walls, checkpoints. Palestinians suffer, but it's not oppression because the goal is protecting Israeli lives, not causing suffering.
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The Palestinians made an egregious mistake when the ceded their claim to 78% of historic Palestine during the Oslo agreement in 1993. They were under the impression that they will establish a state in the remaining 22% within 5 years. Fanatic Jews assassinated Rabin for daring to make peace. Since then, Israel has been ravenously building settlements in the remaining 22% to the point where no independent Palestinian state is possible today. Also, the Israelis have been very stubborn when it comes to Jerusalem. At this point, the Palestinians have to abandon this "two state" farce and pursue their civil rights within one state. It won't be easy as we saw in South Africa. It took Nelson Mandela many decades of campaigning in before the indigenous Africans won their rights.
7
May the Palestinians find among themselves a leader like Nelson Mandela.
7
@Murad
Israel is unlikely to agree to a one-state deal that would forever change its makeup and purpose as a Jewish nation.
This is not so much like South Africa as you suggest. There were only Arabs not Palestinians in the area before Israel was declared a nation. Jews also lived continuously in the area for over 2000 years before Israel declared statehood.
Many Arabs willingly left Israel when it was attacked by Arab nations, who lost to Israel more than once, which is how Israel expanded land under its control. For years, Israel has promised land for peace and "Palestinians" have refused it. Hamas's charter says its goal is to drive Israel and Jews into the sea.
24
There already is a second state. It is called Jordan. Addition to trying to kill Israel, play king who saying offered PLO refuge he tried to kill him too. Maybe it is time to start indoctrinating five-year-olds It is time to learn to live together. After X number of years may be the next generation will not be aware they are supposed to hate Everybody can live happily ever after.
18
The pressure tactics by the RW Netanyahu government, shamefully supported by the Trump regime, will lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority & another Intifada.
6
The majority of the comments are from people who are obviously supporters of Israel, right or wrong. The arguments mirror Israel’s, and show a lack of recognition of historical reality. Blame the victim is the Israeli/American viewpoint, since both countries are tied at the hip. We have arrived at a new low with Trump, his Israeli/American son-in-law, Zionist advisers, and the tactics of bullying nations into submission. Palestinians will not be bullied. Period!
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@Margaret
Israel is the victim--the victim of numerous wars due to attacks by Arab states. I do not like Trump or Netanyahu, but facts are facts.
Palestinians did not exist before Israel became a nation. See my other comments here.
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@Margaret
How was life for the Jews of Palestine before the Zionists arrived?
The Jews “walked with a shuffling, cringing step that told of blows received and blows expected. No one could mistake the difference between oppressor and oppressed—“between those poor creatures and the Arabs who jostled them in these crowded alleys, …. The Arabs stride along with a spring in every step.”
There were rules: Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan. They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response. In the same way, anything that reminded the Muslim of the presence of alternative religions, any demonstration of alternative forms of worship, had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble, hidden places, and the sounds of Jewish prayer carefully muted.
22
It is always interesting to observe how totalitarian societies land the Mafiosi-like strongmen govern who govern will act in any immoral way they can just to stay in power, especially when the rest of the world calls their bluff. For example the Kim family North Korea which threatens others with nuclear holocaust when it cant feed its people, or the corrupt President Maduro who siphons money to his cronies while his people starve, or even Assad who killed half a million of his own people to stay in power. And now we have the Palestinian leadership, both in Gazxa under Hamas-Islamic Jihad and the PA headed by Abbas, who send Shtayyeh out who threatens a "hot summer" unless something is done. These rulers, who siezed power by force, threaten their own people, have no freedom of thought or the press, siphon money donated by democratic nations just for themselves or building weapons, all the while threatening the rest of the world with violence, just in order to stay in power. Anyone notice a pattern here?
34
Mr. Shtayyeh is crying poverty, but it was just reported that the Palestinian senior officials gave themselves a 67% pay raise, retroactive a couple of years. Good work if you can get it.
Someone should ask Mr. Shtayyeh why there are refugee camps on the west bank 25 years after the Palestinian Authority was established. Shouldn't some of our money have been used for permanent housing?
No one expects the Palestinians to sign on to Trump's peace plan, but then again Pres. Abbas, in year 15 of his 4 year term, turned down Obama's 2014 peace plan, and Bush/Olmert's 2009 peace plan. Someone might come to the conclusion that the Palestinians don't really want a state, just more welfare money.
37
How about a quote from one of the thousands of Israelis who lost loved ones, including young mothers and babies, during the Intifadas, about how they feel about the families of the suicide bombers, who killed their loved ones, still being paid a reward by the PA all these years?
42
The Arabs identifying as Palestinian have made it perfectly clear that they cannot be trusted with independent statehood...which they’ve repeatedly rejected in any case. Is there any doubt that the Arabs...themselves the descendants of invaders, occupiers, and 20th century economic migrants to a land not their own....are STILL trying to win the war of annihilation they started 70+ years ago....and LOST?
Land for peace? Been there, done that, got over 20,000 Hamas rockets and a terrorist base camp on Israel’s southern border. Israelis will not be capitulating to these sinister factions and their cheerleaders again.
The era of Islamic supremacy and dhimmitude in this, the ancestral indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, is over and it’s not coming back. Apart from Jordan (the defacto Arab Palestinian state situated upon 80% of former ‘Palestine’) what the Arabs there shall have vis a vis Israel is ‘Limited Autonomy’...and after 70+ years of terror wars perpetrated against Israel’s population, that’s more than they deserve.
39
Peaceful Resolution to a conflict occurs when both parties have equal power in the conflict, care about each other, explore their needs and discuss ways to meet the needs of each other. In the present situation. Israel has all of the power. The only way to neutralize the power is for other countries to apply pressure on Israel to modify its' approach to resolution. Both sides are fearful - find a way to dilute the fear and perhaps you find the path to resolution.
9
@Ken Wood Your premise sounds nice, but it is not the way things work, nor is it borne out by history. A resolution of a conflict occurs when one side is unwilling or unable to continue it, i.e. is defeated. If both sides have equal power, why end the conflict? Just keep going. Israel is the victor in this conflict, buts its enemy has yet to admit this.
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@Ken Wood
"Peaceful Resolution to a conflict occurs when both parties have equal power in the conflict, care about each other, explore their needs and discuss ways to meet the needs of each other."
Bad premise. It fails to describe the end of most wars, including informal wars like Northern Ireland. Far more often peaceful resolution happens when one side runs out of money or energy
14
@Robert couldnt agree more the most stable peaceful solutions occur when one party realizes that its prosecution of the conflict is ineffectively tragic for its people and chooses instead to surrender and make peace. he Palestinians have been offered compromise solutions 6 times since Oslo and have wasted no time rejecting every one. Lately it has been reported (although I believe always has been true for the over 70 year conflict) in the media (see https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/israeli-palestinian-conflict-isnt-just-about-land/590212/) that compromises on land are insufficient, that Palestinians need Israel and others to address their "dignity" in the conflict as well. Really, it is no wonder that although all the ingredients to peace have been there, it has been so hard to attain. Never has the saying "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" been so tragically apropos.
22
Israel does not understand the resistance of the Palestinian people they have brutalized for 60 years. Israel believes if they keep tightening the screws they can destroy or force out all the Palestinians and finally claim greater Israel. Kill them, brutalize them, bulldoze their houses, control their food, water, heat, work and financial resources, surely they will submit and get on buses to somewhere else. But it goes on and on even in Israeli prisons where the money from the Palestinian government sustains the families of the prisoners. But these prisoners are seen as heroic resisters much as Jewish resisters were seen in WWII.
Supporters of Israel's policies keep trying to blame the Palestinians. Israel and American Jewish Organizations spend millions on public relations distortions to convince the world that Israel is a David fighting a Goliath. But it doesn't work anymore now that the reality of what Israel is and has done is known. Slowly, but surely, the world is realizing that the Palestinians are David, regardless of how many of them Israel puts in prison for throwing rocks.
15
@Bronwen Evans
Zionists don't want Greater Israel. Zionists want Israel to be a majority-Jewish state. Annexing land with millions of gentiles risks turning Israel into another majority-gentile state.
7
Another case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Until Palestinians have a sovereign homeland the narrative will not change.
9
@W. Ogilvie If only they would make peace and take the offer of a sovereign homeland!! They've had 6 times to do it, rejecting offers each time, too concerned about their own "dignity" (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/israeli-palestinian-conflict-isnt-just-about-land/590212/)), their leaders only concerned with lining their own pockets, not concerned about their people's future.
19
Then why did the Palestinian Authority give itself a 67% pay raise in 2017?
32
Every child learns pretty soon in life that you can't always get what you want, half a loaf is better than none, you make the best of situations that you can't change and so on. Those that don't grow up as spoiled brats and become unhappy adults.
Sadly, these lessons are all lost on the PA, Hamas and their subjects. And so it goes.
45
The Palestinians find themselves being abandoned by the Arab world? The reality is that beginning in 1948 the Arab world used them as pawns and threats against Israel with no real intent of ever supporting their interests, providing meaningful economic development, incorporating any of them into their own countries, or working toward a viable two-state solution.
45
It may be time for the PA/PLO to admit they’ve lost the war. The only leverage they have is violence, chaos, and terrorism, which Israel seems to have a handle on enduring. The Palestinians are even losing the political support of other Arabs, not to mention their money.
36
Palestinians have very few channels to voice their situation. US vetoes in the UN Security Council have foreclosed any meaningful action against Israeli land theft and military occupation. The mainstream media overwhelmingly closes out Palestinians -- instead inviting "experts" and Israelis to speak for them. Politicians in the US have done everything in their power to foreclose the non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. How should a people respond to the theft of their land, the denial of their identity, and the purposeful ruin of their economy?
14
@Rosary They should respond as defeated people have responded through history. You lose a war, you sue for peace and make the best deal you can. You don't keep fighting a lost cause. You then focus your energy on rebuilding, not war. They should try that. It worked out well for Japan and Germany, to use two 20th century examples.
30
@Rosary
What theft? The majority of Arab tenant farmers/serfs didn’t ‘own’ the land they lived upon. Most landowners were absentee due to Ottoman laws regarding conscription.
Meanwhile, the Ottomans had no objection to Jewish immigrants purchasing vast tracts of land from owners...which they did at highly inflated prices.... because most of the land sold to them was swampy and malaria-infested. Only when the Jews were able to successfully drain those tracts of land (by their own hard labor), did the Arabs consider the land pasturable.
22
@Rosary
1. Israeli land is not stolen
2. Until the PLO these people referred to themselves as "Arabs" not "Falistines."
3. One cannot turn down money and then claim poverty.
17
Again, as in the past, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity as was pointed out many years ago by Aba Eban.
45
@Bob And those expressing anti-Palestinian sentiment never miss an opportunity to cite Abba Eban — whether they know how to spell his name or not. Better, they think, to quote Eban than to grapple with the reality that Israel dispossessed some 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 and has denied freedom to Palestinians for decades.
6
@Michael Brown and some 800,000 Jews from Arab lands forced to flee to Israel in the same conflict! Enough already, there are consequences to prsecuting a war. You have to account for the factg that your enemy might win!
22
@Michael Brown
Palestinians could have declared independence in 1948, but they didn't want independence. Instead, they asked for union with Jordan.
12
The PA's refusal to take the tax money because they insist that the suicide bombers' families should be paid underscores the true nature of that society.
And the prime minister's claim that "They are not respecting ’67 borders," is of course absurd. First, there never were such "borders." Second, the pre '67 demarcation lines were violated by Jordan. And third, the Israelis offered the Palestinians their own state within these lines -- more or less -- on two occasions, in 2000 and in 2008. They turned down both.
67
@Jack You write: “The Israelis offered Palestinians their own state within these lines — more or less...” Why should Palestinians accept being relegated to Bantustans by Barak or Olmert? It was unacceptable in South Africa. It should be unacceptable for Palestinians. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to return to homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948?
9
@Michael Brown: Olmert's offer was a good offer. The Palestinians were going to get almost the entire West Bank with a capital in Jerusalem. Your Bantustan and South Africa comparison is quite revealing. And your suggestion that the Palestinians go back is a pipe dream that perpetuates this conflict.
19
@Michael Brown Why shouldnt Jews be allowed to return to their homes and land they owned in Poland, Germany, and in Iraq? Why arent all the refugees from Syria now in Europe repatriated to Syria? That's what happens in a war, and it can happen to you, even when you start the war! (sarcasm intended). Stop the whining, make the peace!
27