Egypt opens its border with Palestine, breaking the siege of Gaza

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13552685

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And not a moment too soon.

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now the Muslim Brotherhood doesnt have to continue to rely on tunnels to smuggle rockets into Gaza.

Note to Obama: Egypt is going over a cliff, and you encouraged it.

Egypt is going over a cliff? It looks like it's reclaiming its position as a sovereign nation free to determine its own destiny to me. And Godspeed to it.

[Liberté]

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You know, that quote could almost be a parody of a Fox News retard knowing nothing about the topic he's talking about whatsoever. I suggest you'd add another layer of ignorance in there, and you're completely there. (Maybe, I don't know, 'the Iran-sponsored Muslim Brotherhood')

A free-trader should have opposed the siege of Gaza from the beginning. Sieges, blockades, and other dubiously legal military operations designed to choke off the free flow of goods do irreparable damage to the global economy.

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my unspoken point that Hamas and the MB are in bed together

Is this similar to how Saddam and al-Qaeda were "in bed together", by any chance?

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Your sources for Hamas being armed by the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Didn't you know? Iraq's Baath Party was the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda.

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Note to Obama: Egypt is going over a cliff, and you encouraged it.

Yes, Obama should have sent the army to save Mubarak.

It absolutely galls me that some Zionists basically make the argument that the American military ought to be deployed when and where Israel needs it. And these people claim to be 'patriots' all the while making American foreign policy subservient to another national power.

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Note to Obama: Egypt is going over a cliff, and you encouraged it.

Yes, Obama should have sent the army to save Mubarak.

It absolutely galls me that some Zionists basically make the argument that the American military ought to be deployed when and where Israel needs it. And these people claim to be 'patriots' all the while making American foreign policy subservient to another national power.

dude, stop allowing your pecker to be waxed by a strawman, no one said anything about involving the US in Egypt.

That's the implication: that we can right this 'wrong' if only we reverse course, and then charge full steam ahead into either bullying the Egyptians to close the border again or doing it ourselves. And I think you'll find the American people will kick you in the ass for so much as suggesting it.

[Liberté]

Note to Obama: Egypt is going over a cliff, and you encouraged it.

Yes, Obama should have sent the army to save Mubarak.

It absolutely galls me that some Zionists basically make the argument that the American military ought to be deployed when and where Israel needs it. And these people claim to be 'patriots' all the while making American foreign policy subservient to another national power.

dude, stop allowing your pecker to be waxed by a strawman, no one said anything about involving the US in Egypt.

That's the implication: that we can right this 'wrong' if only we reverse course, and then charge full steam ahead into either bullying the Egyptians to close the border again or doing it ourselves. And I think you'll find the American people will kick you in the ass for so much as suggesting it.

oh, so it wasnt a strawman, rather was you stroking yourself.....again I never suggested we bully Egypt or get militarily involved.

If you don't like the implications, you ought to be better at picking your words. What would you have us do, then? Continue the current, ludicrous levels of aid we send Israel?

[Liberté]

Note to Obama: Egypt is going over a cliff, and you encouraged it.

Yes, Obama should have sent the army to save Mubarak.

It absolutely galls me that some Zionists basically make the argument that the American military ought to be deployed when and where Israel needs it. And these people claim to be 'patriots' all the while making American foreign policy subservient to another national power.

dude, stop allowing your pecker to be waxed by a strawman, no one said anything about involving the US in Egypt.

That's the implication: that we can right this 'wrong' if only we reverse course, and then charge full steam ahead into either bullying the Egyptians to close the border again or doing it ourselves. And I think you'll find the American people will kick you in the ass for so much as suggesting it.

oh, so it wasnt a strawman, rather was you stroking yourself.....again I never suggested we bully Egypt or get militarily involved.

If you don't like the implications, you ought to be better at picking your words. What would you have us do, then? Continue the current, ludicrous levels of aid we send Israel?

dude, I never came anywhere close to saying that we should involve ourselves in Egypt or along the Gaza-Egyptian boarder...nor do I believe we should.  It was all just a fig newton of your imagination.

and if we'd would stop arming and aiding Israel's enemies

I'm not sure if you knew this, but Gaddafi was "Israel's enemy", not the rebels now fighting against him (presumably that's what you're referring to; it's very difficult for me to follow whatever line of 'reason' you're using). Frankly, I think we could get a better deal selling a few tanks to the Palestinians to even up the score. I'm not saying we should, but it beats sticking our necks out for a country that only exists because of the United Nations.

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1) google the armed forces of the countries of the ME.  see all those American planes and tanks in the hands of the Muslims?  that's what I was referring to when I said we should stop arming Israel's enemies, then maybe we wouldnt need to aid Israel at all.

So every Arab-majority country in the Middle East is an enemy of Israel? And we shouldn't make business deals advantageous to our interests with them because of that? We should distort the market, harm international trade, and all for Israel.

Okay then...

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Lets just hope the Gazans have grown up in the last couple of years.  They only fired 127 rockets randomly at civilians last year, (killing 1) with the blockade in full effect which is the lowest year for random Gaza rocket attacks on civilians since 2002.

I wouldn't expect them to, given the conditions they were forced to live in for four years. And I'm not lionizing the Palestinians, but their anger is certainly understandable. And, no, I don't at all believe they brought it all on themselves.

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Lets just hope the Gazans have grown up in the last couple of years.  They only fired 127 rockets randomly at civilians last year, (killing 1) with the blockade in full effect which is the lowest year for random Gaza rocket attacks on civilians since 2002.

I wouldn't expect them to, given the conditions they were forced to live in for four years. And I'm not lionizing the Palestinians, but their anger is certainly understandable. And, no, I don't at all believe they brought it all on themselves.

So you're saying we should expect more terrorism because of this move?

I'm saying it's certainly a natural reaction to having an entire population cut off from access to the international market. I'm not a liberal; I won't deny it. What I will deny, and adamantly, and constantly, is that it's much of a concern for the United States, or that it's wholly unwarranted. I'd probably take up a rocket launcher myself if I were in the same situation, no matter how morally repugnant that may seem to those of us not in it.

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maybe they should have thought about that when both Abbas and Arafat have rejected deals that shared Jerusalem and gave Israel only three percent of the West Bank in return of recognition of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish entity.

And maybe they should have though about that when in 1967 they were not satisified with the '67 lines.  

And maybe they should have though about that when in 1948 they were not satisified with the '48 lines.

You say "they". Who are "they"? The Palestinian people in the conglomerate? No such thing exists. The individuals, the youth of Palestine, who are going out and fighting and dying were not present at Camp David, nor there at the partitioning. I refuse to morally condemn an individual for something their ancestors or their 'representatives' did.

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I do not understand what this sentence is intended to convey.

[Liberté]

Lets just hope the Gazans have grown up in the last couple of years.  They only fired 127 rockets randomly at civilians last year, (killing 1) with the blockade in full effect which is the lowest year for random Gaza rocket attacks on civilians since 2002.

I wouldn't expect them to, given the conditions they were forced to live in for four years. And I'm not lionizing the Palestinians, but their anger is certainly understandable. And, no, I don't at all believe they brought it all on themselves.

So you're saying we should expect more terrorism because of this move?

I'm saying it's certainly a natural reaction to having an entire population cut off from access to the international market. I'm not a liberal; I won't deny it. What I will deny, and adamantly, and constantly, is that it's much of a concern for the United States, or that it's wholly unwarranted. I'd probably take up a rocket launcher myself if I were in the same situation, no matter how morally repugnant that may seem to those of us not in it.

Aint nothing wrong with picking up a rocket launcher to "fight the good fight", but there is a lot wrong with firing that rocket from a civilian area and in the direction of other civilians.  I know some of you just hate the ....errrr...."Israel" so much that terrorism against them doesn't seem like such a bad idea, but it is a bad idea.  Especially if you want peace in the area some day.

Strategically, it's not any different from the doctrine of total war the United States has adopted in every major conflict it fought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - you target the 'productive' sectors of the enemy's economy in the hopes to shatter both their morale and their capacity to produce matériel. In the case of Israel, since every able-bodied civilian is drafted, I find the firebombing of Dresden about equivalent to a mortar attack against a civilian marketplace.

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wow

It might be 'morally repugnant', but it's about the closest to the real moral truth of the situation as anyone is going to admit. I'm not advocating terrorist attacks; but it's not as if we haven't engaged in them before. If you need help digesting it, picture a suicide bomber as a Stratofortress and the little shops in the market as the great porcelain factories of Dresden.

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who do you think Arafat was afraid of at Camp David:  Clinton, the Israeli PM, or the Muslim street back in the ME?  Arafat wasnt stupid, he knew that if he accepted Israel's right to exist that he would be killed by Muslims.  Which is why Abbas will not publically accept Israel's right to exist.  He'd be signing his own death warrant.

who, exactly, do you think you're fooling?

If Arafat were under danger then of being killed by his own people, the PLO would have been completely purged now that it's been revealed to be a corrupt, self-serving interest group within the Palestinian social structure. But it hasn't. There's a lot of popular outrage against it, but the individual politicians are perfectly safe. You want to paint a picture of the Palestinians as murder-driven brutes which, quite simply, has no correlation to reality.

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A.Dresden wasn't as bad as our history books made it out to be. (a better example would be the firebombing of Tokyo.....I'm just glad you didn't use the droppings of the atomic bombs as your example)

Dresden was actually probably worse than our history books make it out to be. I believe the German count has twenty or thirty thousand more casualties than those made by the Army Air Force during the Second World War.

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So will the Palestinians one day. I don't see any reason right now why they ought to convert to enlightened Western post-liberalism. The conditions do not exist for it and will not exist as long as Israel can count on the United States to save the day through handouts. Nations, like people, grow dependent.

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who do you think Arafat was afraid of at Camp David:  Clinton, the Israeli PM, or the Muslim street back in the ME?  Arafat wasnt stupid, he knew that if he accepted Israel's right to exist that he would be killed by Muslims.  Which is why Abbas will not publically accept Israel's right to exist.  He'd be signing his own death warrant.

who, exactly, do you think you're fooling?

If Arafat were under danger then of being killed by his own people, the PLO would have been completely purged now that it's been revealed to be a corrupt, self-serving interest group within the Palestinian social structure. But it hasn't. There's a lot of popular outrage against it, but the individual politicians are perfectly safe. You want to paint a picture of the Palestinians as murder-driven brutes which, quite simply, has no correlation to reality.

well, if Abbas isnt afraid of the Muslim street, then why doesnt he put out a statement in Arabic stating Israel's right to exist as a Jewish entity?

Why would he? He's gotten fat manipulating the passions and prejudices of both sides, just as Arafat did. These are political leaders, after all. Just as the GOP has never ended legalized abortion (and almost certainly never will as long as it remains a verified vote-getter), there's no incentive for him or the PLO or any member of the Palestinian establishment to recognize Israel as long as they can use it to their own advantage. And if your retort is "well, the Palestinians ought to get better leaders", then good luck, as that does nothing to remove the institutional pressure not to recognize Israel for one's own gain.

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so why would Israel negotiate with either the PA or the Palestinian street when neither will recognize Israel's right to exist?!

sorry to introduce you to reality

Oh, I'm certain a vast majority of Palestinians don't believe that Israel has a right to exist (and I absolutely agree with them insofar as no state has a 'right' to exist). I don't think, however, that if they were privy to the political machinations behind the scenes, that they'd want to commit genocide against the Israelis, or anything of the sort. In fact, if both sides were privy to how their leaders manipulate them and stir their passions only to later stall out, I'm pretty sure they'd both work together to eliminate their political classes and then work out their problems later. But that's an idealistic pipe dream.

Netanyahu is notorious for playing games. He just played one in Congress today, and it worked for him. Arafat and Abbas both play games. And by 'games', I mean they preserve the illusion of progress or revanchism while carefully managing events to remain tense - and unmoving.

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so, the conflict doesnt represent the true feelings of the citizens on either side?!

The political process is not a mirror reflection of the public will even in the most liberal of Western democracies, let alone illiberal and undemocratic states like the PLO and Israel.

In the United States, for example, the two main parties get a sense of the direction the public winds are blowing, figure out how to best satisfy the desires of their corporate and ideological sponsors, and call the result of the two 'ideology'. In the Palestinian-Israel conflict, the leaders (acting semi-independently, mind; I'm not suggesting a conspiracy) treat minor victories or defeats as major advances or setbacks in order to rile up the populace, only then to break the bad news that that isn't the end of the conflict and that both sides have to entrench even more deeply. That's the way politics works in all societies today, both 'modern' and 'semi-modern'. Public sentiment is only a base upon which an entire superstructure of political interests are built, wrapped up in political ritual.

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Yep....a lot fewer of them would die if the violent minority stopped committing terrorist acts.

The problem is that they have no reason to believe they would be anything but second-class citizens if they didn't commit terrorist attacks. Recall that they themselves were the victims of such assaults before 1948, and were treated as second-class citizens in the peace that followed. They're in the 'moral' wrong for engaging in such behavior, but you can't say they don't have damned good reason to do it.

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I think I covered this topic already in the last day or two:

Do you at least understand that those of us who do not believe that Yahweh ever made that promise - those of us who do not believe that Yahweh ever existed - are not inclined to accept that perspective when approaching a foreign policy question rising before us twenty centuries and three millenia after those passages were respectively written?

Also, to play on your terms, I'll note that Yahweh punished Israel constantly in the New Testament. Why should we assume they haven't merited His wrath, should He exist?

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the question was regarding why I dont favor Palestinian Christians over Israel in the land dispute....so I explained that I believe those Christians are on the wrong side of scripture in this dispute...but, with you, I've been making a secular argument for the support of Israel...so let's not you and I mingle the two arguments

I know that's what you were responding you. I posted my response to it because it seems to be part and parcel of your Zionism: that Israel is a Jewish homeland, ordained by God, from the day of His Covenant with Abraham until now. That seems, to me, to underlie your entire position on the issue; it likewise seems - and I fully admit the possibility I'm wrong - that geostrategic concerns are wholly secondary, and that you'd support Israel regardless of where it was located. If that's so, I was simply asking if you see why those of us who don't believe in the Biblical narrative have such widely differing views on the matter.

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When I was a boy, about six or seven, I attended a Southern Baptist Church with my grandparents every Sunday. I was enrolled in their Sunday School and attended every day it was held. I read the Bible constantly and consistently, and was in their junior program for early training to become a preacher until the age of twelve.

That's largely why I no longer believe, though I've certainly self-educated myself on the subject more since then.

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I'm not sure if you knew this, but Gaddafi was "Israel's enemy", not the rebels now fighting against him (presumably that's what you're referring to; it's very difficult for me to follow whatever line of 'reason' you're using). Frankly, I think we could get a better deal selling a few tanks to the Palestinians to even up the score. I'm not saying we should, but it beats sticking our necks out for a country that only exists because of the United Nations.

I know I'm bumping something from a couple of pages ago but I was reading through this thread and I laughed when I got to this point because it's just so far from the truth. Israel exists because it won a war for its independence, not because of any UN resolution that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Without the Mandate, Britain would have stomped you flat, and there were elements in the British political establishment that were already inclined to do that even with it.

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Again, I ask:

Also, to play on your terms, I'll note that Yahweh punished Israel constantly in the Old Testament. Why should we assume they haven't merited His wrath, should He exist?