Maybe someone will ask Arafat how it feels.

Eddie

Shoe's on the other foot now - I like it! [:D]

Totally incorrect. The Israeli Likud Party voted for this in one of their party meetings. Likud is but one of several parties in Israeli politics. It is non-binding in the Knesset (the Israeli perliament).

That would be like the Democrats voting for a resolution at a Democratic convention that officially declares the Democratic party an enemy of gun owners (which they have done in spirit, of course).

The Israeli parliament is very unlikely to vote for such a resolution.

Perhaps it's because the Palestinians have yet to demonstrate any of the qualities that would enable a people to run a country.

They should remain a tribe, just as they've always been, just as the Kurds, the Yoruba, the Hutus, the Tutsis, the Zulus, the Apaches, etc...

Not everyone gets to become a Nation.
You have to earn it, or at least show a certain degree of civilization, and ambition as a people.

Oh well.

course palastin wont reginizae israel funny how that works

sorry for bad spelling just got up after a late night gaming bing

I'm not playing down the significance of it, but I'm also making sure it's seen in the light of reality. I am totally surprised that Sharon was on the side of a Palestinian state - I would have thought he would have opposed it given his attitudes about the Israeli settlement issue. It is not an official Israeli government position. Although this also means that Sharon will not have backing for it in his own party, which means he won't be able to do anything with it.

If Likud falls from power in the next election it  will be irrelevent. If not, then Israel is in for a rough future.

Sharon 'is' very uneasy about the vote as the Likud party is his.  Benny is preparing to defeat Sharon in the next election and Benny does not want peace.
The Likud party wants the land presently occupied by the Palestinians - all the land.

Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis desire peace.

Oh, we U.S. taxpayers are going to get to pay another $200,000,000 to Israel and $15,000,000 to the Palestinians to pay for recent damages.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians can afford peace - so long as the U.S. taxpayers are willing to foot the bill.

Want peace ?  Cutoff the money.  Cut off all the money.

Hear, hear! My thoughts exactly! I guarantee that right after, they will suddenly develop diplomatic skills and start talking to each other. No more money for people like Sharon and Arafat that use their people as pawns in a personal war.



Why should they give up more land than they already have? The West Bank was part of Jordan. Of course it was taken after a war, but the fact remains.



Not true. But the number is very high, it is almost half and half.

If one day Latinos make up more of the population of the US, should the US ignore its melting-pot heritage and become Mexico II?



No other countries should have to give up to their land for the Palestinians, especially when there are 200,000-400,000 Israelis in Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands, a process which continues to this day. The Gaza strip and the West Bank must become a new Palestine if there is ever to be a lasting peace. If the Israelis are that adamant about keeping the (illegal) settlements then they need to give up a like amount of their own land.

The Palestinians absolutely will not negotiate with the Israelis.
Except when they needed to in order to free Arafat.

The Israelis absolutely will not negotiate with the Palestinians.
Except when they needed to resolve the church stand-off.

Cut-off the money and well have peace in about 15 minutes and save about $5 Billion per year for our own armed forces.

I'm a nationalist.  I believe in my country, the United States of America and some few allies such as Britain and Canada, first.

Let the Israelis kill the Palestians and let the Palestinians kill the Israelis as I do not care.  I just do not want to pay for either.

Benny is Not really as crazy for war as he seems.

Benny is playing our favorite old deturance game, pioneered by Kissinger and Nixon, It's called "The Mad Man Theory" benny has to make the Hard line Arab States belive, That He and Israel would in the event of a Arab War launched to redress the Palistinian problem, Be able to use the Israeli nuclear arsenal.

Fostering this belief in the Arab States is the Key not only to the continued survival of Israel but to a fair peace accord as well.

The Arabs are pulling the B.S. they are pulling today, because they percieve both the political leadership of Israel and the United States as weak and unable to make decisions in their own intrests.

The Arabs understand one thing and one thing only...POWER...BRUTE BLOODY WILLINGNESS TO KILL THEM IN VERY LARGE NUMBERS...and that is all they understand.

Only a leader like Benny, Who is percieved by the arab World as being willing to go to war, has any chance of getting any long term settlement with the Arabs. Is this stratigy risky? You bet it is, but it's also the only stratigy with a ghost of a chance of allowing Israel to see the year 2010.

Why is it necessary for the Palestinians or Israelis to see the year 2010 ??  How does the existence of either further the aims of my country, the United States ?

By your logic..."why would it be neccicary for the United States to see the Year 2010?"

How does a multi billion dollar  attack submarine advance the intrests of of Your country by your Narrow Minded Isolationist definition of "WHATS GOOD FOR AMERICA"

Yeah, really. though our armed forces have had their budget increased dramatically since 9/11 and the Clinton neutering process. That $5 billion could be spent on much more needed areas, like food for Afghanistan and building up a national Afghan army so our troops don't have to be there.

We could restore aid to the Israelis and Palestinians but not before a full peace deal and not anywhere near at the level it was at before ($5 billion for Israel every year!). If they want guns, they we can SELL it to them not GIVE it to them.

More accurately, the Palestinian terrorist groups want to see Israel destroyed as they always have. Though after the incursions (and especially the Jenin fiasco) they have found a great deal of support from the local populace. What a mess! Glad I don't live there.


True, but if the Israelis want peace they need to drop the occupation and resolve the issue. The US and the European allies occupied Germany and Japan after World War II only for a few years before they let them go, and their crimes were far worse. Germany was punished so severely after WWI by Europe after World War I, that caused so much hatred against them, which caused World War II. The situation is no different in Israel/Palestine.

A nationalist is not necessarily an isolationist.

I didn't catch any reason why the continued existence of either Israel or Palestine advances the United States ?

I like this idea, too bad Arafat ruined this when he tried to take over Jordan and got expelled...... laugh.  I love it when a bad idea comes back to bite someone in the ass.

Good, they should give them a big cage not their own state because they are nothing but animals.

You can bet that if German and Japanese terrorists had been blowing up GIs in postwar Germany and Japan, the occupation would have lasted a lot longer. The Germans and Japanese behaved like they wanted to rejoin the human race, so we went easy on them. The Palestinians are acting like animals, and therefore they're being treated like animals. It's not that hard to understand. If they behave, Israel will ease up on them.

BTW, it's only an occupation if Israel intends to give the land back someday. She has every right to [b]keep[/b] those lands.

Only you can tell you why or whether you should care about Afghanistan.

Not occupied lands any more? Wow, so that means all those Israeli soldiers, tanks and airplanes in the West Bank are there just for, what, training exercises? The fact that all Palestinian has to get a "pass" from Israel ever time they move to and from the West Bank and Gaza strip. That they couldn't even move out of their houses during the recent West Bank seige due to a total curfew. That's not occupation?


The last war was over 30 years ago. The Palestinian areas have been subject to various levels of military occupation, economic occupation, and back to full military occupation. Hey, we won the war with Germany and Japan, doesn't that mean Germany and Japan belong to us? If it was as simple as you claim they would have had peace long ago.


Although I believe that only hawks can forge a lasting peace, it has become clear that peace will never be achieved with Arafat and Sharon in power.


I can't speak of hatred of Jews due to religious grounds but I can tell you that all reasons I've heard of why the world dislikes the Jews is because of their incrediby selfish politics and control over various mass media and wealth, not because Jesus was a Jew or some other religious gobbeldygook. These are all valid reasons that are often dismissed by the Jews themselves as "anti-Semetic".


I see. And you condemn *them* when they cheer after *our* people are killed?


Under NO circumstances is Israel's enemy *automatically* our enemy. Iraq was not our enemy before the Gulf War. Egypt was our enemy merely because they supported socialism. Jordan was never our enemy. Iran was our enemy only after the Shah was ousted even though they hated the Jews long before.

I could go on and on. The goals and agendas of the United States and Israel are more often incompatible than not.

The Arab nations hate the West for being West, but they also hate us for supporting Israel. And we DO give insane levels of support to Israel, even when they are wrong.



Again, you need to learn the lessons of two World Wars and why the second one happened the way it did - you don't DO things that way and expect the occupied/oppressed people to lie down and accept it.

Yeah, why should you care about the starving civillian population of Afghanistan who had nothing to do with the terrorists or the Taliban or the many wars that have consumed Afghanistan? These people are as much victims as the New Yorkers in and around the World Trade Center.


Hello! Would you rather spend MORE money keeping our troops there and subject to casualties or would you rather spend far less for *their* troops to do the same thing?


I wasn't aware that Japan fought in World War I. Please re-read what I wrote.

Why would Israel ever feel it was necessary to make peace with those mean ole Arabs?  After all, they have each and every American to give them a significant portion of their weekly paychecks.  That way they can enjoy their high standard of living and keep those ole Palestinians boys in the "re-settlement" camps.  When those boys get a little out of hand ever once in a while they can use their tanks and helicopter and jet airplanes to bomb them back into the re-settlement camps.  It is great to have the 7th largest economy in the world AND a sugar daddy to make sure your war effort doesn't cause you to drop to Number 8 or 9 or 10.  I'm sure glad that Americans love Israel so much we are willing to work for them so they don't have to do without too much.  No need to make peace with those rambunctious people from the re-settlement camps.  Yes sir, no need at all.

There you go - writing it off as Anti-Semitism. I know there are people who hate Jews just because they are Jews and no other reason (Muslims for one), I'm not arguing that. But when an intelligent person says he or she hate the Jews or the Israelis and explains *why*, it has *nothing* to do with religion, it has to do with politics and ideology. Jews care about Jews and nobody else, not even people who would like them. There are exceptions of course but that's the general consensus. Have you never spent a little effort to see *why* people feel the way they do?


And they will keep failing as long as they vote for old, out of touch men with hate in their souls and one foot in the grave.


Not necessarily. We may be *their* enemy, but unless they threaten us directly, they are irrelevant to the US population. The "axis of evil" may hate us, they may threaten our *allies*, but not us, at least not at this time. If we move against them it is because we are helping our allies.


I am NOT advocating that we turn our back on Israel, but the level of support we are giving them is inappropriate for the actions and the situation in the Middle East. I for one do not support a friend's position when they are in the wrong. And Israel is a friend to the US only out of necessity. We send them $5 billion dollars a year, mostly in military aid. There's nothing, not even another Arab-Israeli war, that justifies that excessive level of money especially when it is far more important to spend elsewhere. The Israeli "Defense" Forces is by far the most powerful military in the Middle East (and 4th strongest in the world). They aren't even a US proxy army - Israel will not fight for the US. I'm all for selling them billions in weapons but they need to pay for it with *their* money.

The problem is that the Bush administration is rubber stamping anything Israel wants almost without question. Even Clinton didn't do that. If Sharon wanted to permanently reoccupy the West Bank and Gaza, then declare a perpetual curfew on all Palestinians, we would get a peep from Colin Powell, maybe one from Bush but then a week later they would find some way to justify it, even it's totally morally wrong. It's called the Jewish Lobby, the power of which would make the NRA shudder.

This is an evident evidence of how you don't know anything at all about Israelis.

Israelis not wanting peace? It's a heresy.
There are for sure SOME Israelis that don't want peace. Majority wants to be a normal country, not a sieged one.

The fact that the Likud voted against a Palestinian state is because Bibi has a big influence still inside his party. But as Democrats are not USA public opinions (and voters) Likud is neither the Knesset nor the Israeli public opinion.

In recent opinion polls, still the 56% of Israelis are pro-palestinian statehood to achieve peace...

Well the peace-loving Israelis can have peace and in about 15 minutes.
Cut-off the U.S. taxpayer money.
Hundreds of Israeli lives saved.
Thousands of Patestinian lives saved.
Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars saved.