How, exactly, is Bush’s speech a “historic policy break?” I don’t see anything in there that wasn’t in the Clinton plan and Taba.

isn’t it interesting how bush, the grandson of a nazi, has the same demure as the grandson of a nazi in the photo below, re: billy joel.

Arab world sees Bush’s endorsement as deathblow to peace plan
After Bush loses the election and Sharon is in prison, sane people can work with the Geneva agreement

I love those guys!!!

The beautiful thing about 242 is that in the binding English version (the version it was written in), calls for the “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Calling them just “territories” implies that Israel doesn’t have to give them all up.

“Arab world sees Bush’s endorsement as deathblow to peace plan”???
What about suicide bombers, organized militia and spending millions of Euros on weapons on money earmarked for anything but weapons?
Give me a break! Remember when and why Israel annexed those territories? It was a matter of defense, to secure parts of Jordan and Egypt (who now refuse to take responsibility for them, let alone take them back).
We all need to take a step back and remember there is officially no Palestine, officially no Palestinians. These terms only gained credibility when Israel and the US wanted to help the unfortunate souls abandoned by their Arab brothers.

This is a historic announcement. Clinton and Barak wanted a withdrawal from practically all the West Bank. Now Bush is agreeing with Israel to keep the major settlement blocs and give up Gaza. This is a huge difference as can be seen by the pissed off Arabs. Well screw them, they had their chance to get almost all the West Bank during Barak’s term. Mo, Stop calling Bush a grandson of a Nazi, that is not true.

Poster Art : Visit Palestine
Publisher: Original printing, Tourist Association of Palestine
Original printing 1936
“Visit Palestine was originally designed by Franz Kraus and published by the Tourist Association of Palestine, a Zionist development agency. We see the vast walled city of Jerusalem: trim parks, green gardens, urban dwellings, and a central landmark, the Dome of the Rock mosque.
With this one poster pulled out of the Zionist attic, three core myths are debunked. The first myth is that Palestine had ever been a land without people. Obviously someone lived in these houses and someone tended these gardens. The second myth is that Palestine was a vast desert awaiting cultivation. The resplendent tree in the foreground suggests that the land surrounding Jerusalem was much more than barren desert. The third myth is that there never was a Palestine. Of course there was a Palestine, and here it is, called by name in a Zionist-published poster.”

If everyone really were to return to 1967 borders, wouldn’t that mean Jordan and Egypt must return to Gaza and the West Bank, respectively?
Seriously, Israel has complied with 242 every time it had withdrawn from territories like the Sinai peninsula, arrived at border agreements with Jordan, and entered into the Oslo agreement. Meanwhile, on the other end of 242 that’s routinely ignored is the part that requires “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recongnized boundaries free from threats or acts of force” (242, I, ii). At last count only two out of the five principal Arab parties involved in the Arab-Israeli wars even recognize a state of Israel. And no Egyptian or Jordanian ambassador has seen Tel Aviv for about the last three years.

Anyone remember the Arab League’s reply to 242 from its summit in Khartoum in, I believe, August of 1968? It went something like “No recognition; no negotiation; no peace.” Has the Arab League ever retracted that sentiment as formally as it issued it?
I understand and appreciate that Israel has responsibilities and obligations of its own to achieve normal relations with its neighboring states, and eventually fulfill the essential Zionist goal of reintegrating the Jewish people, with all the national integrity it deserves, into the Middle East region. But the Arab states have responsibilities and obligations as well, and the casual observer would never know that from the way Israel is made to own all the circumstances of the current situation.

Jonathan: Well said. I couldn’t agree more.
Also, Sharon’s plan includes those six settlement blocks within ‘the fence’ but states that only ‘parts’ of that area are to be annexed. Also, Bush’s statement being in such vague terms is definitely designed to leave such details open to negotiation.
Also, the issue of refugees is vital to get out of the way if negotiations are ever to get anywhere. That was an issue left to the last step of ‘final status’ negotiations in the Oslo process and look how that ended up. I think it should be obvious that Israel cannot and will not ever accept the “right of return” for Palestinians to inside Israel, thus creating two new Palestinian states and wiping Israel off the map. Hopefully if-and-when negotiations resume, this knowledge which is widely, though admittedly not universally accepted, will be explicit at the negotiating table, thanks primarily to Bush’s speech.

Here’s another angle
Bush is (once again) a traitor to America because now he’s gone an acted in a way that is not in America’s best interest in any way.
What he’s done is take focus away from Sharon and made us into the ‘bad guy’. After all, “Sharon didn’t take the land” they can say – “Bush gave it to him”.
Beyond Israel: ripple effect of Bush’s stand
The shift in US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to harden Arab states on other issues such as Iraq.
“By signaling a major shift aligning US policy with Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush may have turned Arab and Muslim sentiment further against the US as he seeks the region’s help in Iraq.”

Solomyr wrote: “regarding your Poster, no one (who knows the history at least) denies that the land was called Palestine. It happened to be a Roman name to de-Jew the area. And educated people do not say that no one lived there.”
What about the saying “A land without a people for a people without a land”
And what about Golda Meir’s infamous “There are no Palestinians.”
Go read LGF and then tell me nobody takes these positions to their extreme.
“And there has never been a political entity called Palestine. A land yes, no nation, kingdom, independent state, or otherwise.”
“Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics – including its name in Arabic, Filastin – became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance…In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic…Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation…Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314.”
–Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
“But educated people also know, that there wasn’t much there before the Jews from Europe arrived.
“Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE…Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than imagined…Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE.”
–The Jewish Bulletin, July 31st, 1998.
Your poster is from 1936, the first wave of aliyah was in the 1880’s. When the Jews came in and drained swamps and built roads, Arabs from Egypt and the Ottoman Empire started moving back in.”
“The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was `to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.’…As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha’am wrote that the Arabs “understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at’…[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] `We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’…At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund’s request, evicted them…The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs.”
–John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”

” If Israeli Jews want to be a majority somewhere then they have to have more kids.”
“That’s how Israel was originally set up in the partition plan – a state with majority Arabs – and that was how Israel accepted it when it accepted partition.”
-Fine. Even if these highly dubious statements were true, it is simply not a political reality. And for that reason I’m not going to bother arguing on the finer points. The important part of what I’m saying is that Israel WILL NOT accept the ‘refugees.’ No Israeli government will. The Israeli people will not. In order for negotiations to get anywhere, this has to be recognized, just as the Palestinians will probably have to have parts of East Jerusalem as their capital, and relatively open trade with Israel.

Ethan wrote “Even if these highly dubious statements were true”
“Arab rejection [of partition] was…based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body – a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least…The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter.”
–Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
“it is simply not a political reality”
Not under Sharon, sure. But reasonable people can find ways to compromise. Just look at the Geneva agreement.
“The important part of what I’m saying is that Israel WILL NOT accept the ‘refugees.’ No Israeli government will. The Israeli people will not. “
The problem will never be solved if people refuse to recognize that the refugees are the root of the problem.
“Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive…Arabs began to flee in terror…Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’…The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention.”
–Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
“The first UN General Assembly resolution–Number 194- affirming the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has negated the possibility of return… [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli.”
–Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Nobody is suggesting that all those people would want to actually move back but they are to be offered a choice between moving back, or in lieu of that, being paid reparations.
===================================================================================
michael wrote: “Israel won all the wars…what other country has had to return land when they won the war?”
How soon we forget.. Iraq and Kuwait comes to mind ?
Every country since the UN charter and the Geneva conventions.
America gave back all of Western Europe which it occupied, Japan,
the Philippines, Vietnam
Nobody made Israel sign the UN charter and Geneva conventions. In fact Israel very much wanted to be in the UN. Israel wanted in so bad that it made all kinds of promises such as to honor Palestinian refugee’s right to return to their towns and homes they fled from in 1948.
Of course, Israel doesn’t have to return the land. It can continue getting its busses blown up and being a pariah if Sharon prefers. As far as I can tell from his actions, he does prefer it that way.

Iraq LOST the war…if they had won, they’d still be in Kuwait