Former Minister of Agriculture (settlements portfolio) Ariel Sharon used to encourage this more than any other politician (and self respecting genocide co-ordinator) through such Israeli settlement of Palestinian land.

genocide? oh-fucking-please. in just four years, the nazis exterminated over 10,000,000. in the same amount of time -- the course of the current intifada -- no more than .08% of the palestinian population has been killed, roughly 7,000 of 9,000,000, quite a number of them being islamic militants who proudly avow their commitment to the murder of jews and the destruction of the jewish state, and who openly act in this interest, by waging war against israel. of the number of jews in europe prior to ww2, being 10,000,000, 60% -- 6,000,000 -- were killed. that is genocide. what is happening in palestine is simply the unfortunate result of a war that quite frankly the vast majority of israelis have no interest in fighting. they are more concerned with their security than the erradication of the palestinian people, which seems to be the interest of only an incredibly small minority of very vocal relgious zionists who seem to get more attention from the press than anyone else in this country. further, there is no "plan" to eradicate the palestinian people. there is no coordinated effort to obliterate them. not all, but certainly most of israel's actions are retaliatory, and if you actually lived here and followed the course of events from day to day, you would see that. therefore, calling israel's actions genocide is not only disingenuous, but serves as a provocation which is incredibly unhelpful to the situation, and contributes to a misguided understanding of the conflict that ultimately gives credibility to the fallacious positions of anti-zionist extremists.


So why has Daz Sandra, sorry, Sharon, �betrayed� the settlers in the Gaza Strip? Because the Palestinians are no longer a political entity.

no, it's because the settlers in gaza are no longer of political value to israel, and instead have become a liability. the defense of gaza settlements takes an extraordinary toll on israeli financial and military resources which could better be used within israel proper. withdrawing from gaza and certain west bank settlements also helps build a case for allowing the more established west bank settlements to remain so that israel can avoid the disaster of relocating hundreds of thousands from the large towns and small cities which have been built there.

i am troubled by your inability to see the human face of these settlers. these are people who were asked, 30 years ago, by their government, to move to incredibly dangerous, unsettled territory, to help strengthen the strategic military position of their country against its hostile neighbors. there they built homes in which they have raised their families and watched their children grow up and marry. they brought incredible farms to life in the desert sand, and they created for themselves a community which is as dear to them as your family home and childhood neighborhood is to you.

if you want to argue that they built their homes on stolen land, all i can say is, how many other countries which have annexed regions won in defensive wars are accused of stealing land? and how many of them have offered to return 95% of it?


Arafat**, now receiving treatment in France after Tel Aviv�s assent, has been vilified by successive Israeli governments for the last decade (despite continued and frequent collaboration with the Israeli security and intelligence forces). Why? Because he is the last Palestinian political figure. Any Palestinian hoping to replace him will be killed by their own militants or Israel�s state sponsored militants @ Mossad (or, as is most likely, a combination). Hannan Ashwari and Marwan Barghouti are either too female or popular to be accepted by indigenous power seekers in the Occupied Territories and the real arbiters of Palestinian power, the Israeli security apparatus.

i would like very much for you to make a case, using evidence from verifiable, as-close-to-unbiased-as-possible sources, that it is the position of the current israeli government to undermine the stability of the palestinian territories. i would also like you to prove that arafat has been colluding with the israeli government. i'm not going to say that neither of these things are possible, because i have as little faith in the israeli government as any other. but until you can demonstrate these claims conclusively, i reserve the right to question your assessments.


In a monumental moving of the goalposts, the Israeli endgame has always been to make the situation in Palestine intractable through the establishment of illegal settlements and the violent flux this creates. And necessitates for extremists on both sides. Unfortunately, Israeli extremists are anointed by international diplomacy and �the only democratic government in the Middle East�, while their Palestinian counterparts are asexual terrorist fish in a barrel that can be relied on to perpetuate their kind through the mere fact of blatant daily injustices and intimate knowledge of the Israeli police state.

you seem to believe that there is unity in the policy decisions of the israeli government, particularly regarding the conflict in the territories. i assure you, the israeli government is as fractured as the american government and is firmly split on such issues. and while these policies may have been those of likud and certain rightward-leaning members of the labor party, you can not claim that this is "the israeli endgame" anymore than you can claim that the actions of the bush administration are "the american endgame." more than 50% of americans oppose the policies of the bush administration. they simply find themselves incapable of being able to have any real effect on the situation. hence why direct action style activism is growing in popularity in the states. such a movement is growing here in israel as well.


So when George W Bush says the words �International law� as if it were some kind of blasphemous concept, he is talking to Israeli settlers and their political representatives as much as he is to nationalist patsies among the US electorate. ALL of Israel�s settlements in Palestinian territory since they invaded and occupied in 1967 are illegal under international law.

i have little faith in an institution which would appoint a former nazi ss official (kurt waldheim) to be its general director, particularly when it comes to making declarations pertaining to the activities of the jewish state. these are the people that kicked the u.s. off the human rights commission and replaced it with libya. the u.n. permits the use of its ambulances for transportation by armed militant groups in the palestinian territories and voted to declare zionism, which is a jewish movement for independence and freedom from oppression, a racist ideology. so frankly, i could give two shits what the u.n. has to say, regardless of the fact that i believe the settlements are a bad idea and cause israel more harm than good.


A little tinkering at the extremist edges in Gaza is clearly part of a wider goal; namely the continued economic suffocation of the impoverished Palestinians of Gaza, with the possible side order of collaboration with opportunist Egyptian extremists and all-out war between Israel and an Arab neighbour to ensure that sides are taken, diplomacy is humiliated as some neutered UN talking shop (which it probably would be � 37 years of resolutions have not displaced any Israeli settlements of consequence) and the regional nuclear superpower regains its place at the head of a distinctly rickety but �internationally respected� table.

do you really think that israel wants to invite such a war upon itself? i think the likudniks are idiots, no doubt. but do you really think they want to invite massive casualties upon the country's incredibly flimsy population which is already struggling to maintain its numbers? they would have to be entirely daft.


The Ramallah prisoner has been dying for years, but this time it looks like no ordinary drugs-grab and his number might really be up. When he�s dead the Israelis will have a whale of a time rejecting proposed successors despite having claimed that they couldn�t negotiate with Arafat because, although under house arrest/tanks smashing down houses around his �compound� and members of the Israeli cabinet openly discussing, on national radio, the pros and cons of assassinating Arafat, he couldn�t control the Palestinians.

oh no, how could poor yassir arafat, who has been robbing and oppressing the palestinian people for 30 years, who preaches out of both sides of his mouth depending on which media outlet he's speaking to, whose fatah organization is responsible for countless attacks on israeli civillians, and which doles out cash to the families of and names streets after suicide bombers, possibly have eased the situation in the territories? the love you show this tyrant is appalling.

"Arafat created the divisions as he played one security organ against another to avoid concentrating power in any hands but his own. He refused local and international demands to unify the security forces and delegate control. That refusal led to the resignation of his first prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, and the threatened resignation of the current one, Ahmed Qureia."


On the wider Palestine-Israel fairness conference, it has been beautiful to see the tried and tested media compliance formula in recent weeks. Sharon is now �mellowing with age�, according to the spectacularly banal but bellicose Mark Urban on Newsnight, with his efforts to displace settlers in the Gaza strip. It really is that simple, isn�t it?

omg, they're not referring to the democratically elected leader of the only nation in the middle east which doesn't publically behead its political opposition as a genocidial maniac! hold the presses! fuckin' a, i'll be the first to admit, ariel sharon is no saint, and i totally disagree with his politics. but he's certainly no polpot either and isn't the monster he's portrayed as in the foreign press, particularly in the UK.


By seeking to move Israeli settlers he has clearly changed his mind and it should now be apparent to all those with a fair mind that Sharon has let the love in (as long as there is no right to return for Palestinians ousted over the decades) and will personally operate on Arafat�s cancerous stomach, in a terrific mercy bid. Again, the evidence past and present is there for more comprehensive coverage of Sharon and the long term objective motivating the vote on Gaza�s fundamentalist settlers but, as ever, balanced analysis is hard to come by.

look, israel's fucked up, and the situation in the territories sucks and i wish the problem could solved. part of working towards that solution is the elimination of settlements in the territories which, thanks to the rhetoric people like you are spewing, are serving as provocation towards palestinian nationalists.

that the grand architect of the settlement movement is starting to reverse his policies -- even if it isn't for the right reasons -- is a step in the right direction and one we shouldn't hold our noses up at, but rather embrace and use to our advantage.

the rejection of withdrawl, however, has little to do with some fanatic belief in ethnic cleansing. i speak to israelis about this every day. their two primary concerns: 1. forcing people to leave the homes in which they've resided for decades. and 2. seemingly appeasing terrorists by caving to their demands. it gives the impression that yes, if the palestinians kill enough jews, they'll get everything they want. for any sensible person who supports the right of israelis and jewish people to live freely and securely, this is inadmissable, because it encourages more terror. and that's why, more than anything else, the settlers, and those that support them within israel proper, reject the withdrawl. the fundies are a fringe minority, and like i said, they just get a disproportionate amount of press which skews outside understanding of the situation.

so, uh, when you're presenting your entirely one-sided, conspiratorial positions about israeli genocide and talk about a lack of "balanced analysis", you should look in the mirror and see yourself for the hypocrite for you are.

the difference between peace activists like myself and pro-palestinian activists like yourself is that i want to foster peace and coexistence between israelis and palestinians and work towards a future in which we live not only side-by-side, but together in harmony. you guys seem to want the palestinians "win" and israel destroyed.

but lemme ask you... if you're opposed to oppressive regimes, fascism, nationalism, etc. -- what do you think a palestinian state will look like under the islamo-fascist thugs that are running the show there now?

Mobius, top one for a thorough contribution, as ever. This is the view of one Culler: Firstly, a two-state solution is still the most viable one � despite the diffuse nature of the Occupied Territories. Second, we have rarely sought to garner praise on Yasser Arafat, who died on November 11 (and to deny that Sharon is a mass murderer is absurd). Now there is a much better chance of a mainstream leadership emerging.
The reason why we militate towards an overtly pro-Palestinian position is that the coverage of the crisis, certainly in the UK, is still generally slanted towards Tel Aviv and the all-encompassing need for �security� (which you say basically justifies illegal settlements � the development of which breeds Israeli extremism). This is aided by virulent tirades on terror by the likes of the Mail�s Melanie Phillips. Only enthusiastic surfers will be as aware and as mined as many sources as you. And because we are sick of the failure of middle-way roadmap initiatives from people like UK PM Blair, or the silence on the issue in Bush�s first term. We don�t see a great deal of power in Geneva group left-leaning, well-meaning movements too. Highlighting the reality of the single biggest breeder of Islamo-facism/�clash of the civilisations� portents of doom is a justifiable tactic�
Ultimately, Palestinians will get a state because they have an inalienable right to one, like the Jewish people. We have to stop thinking of this as rewarding terrorism.

bleeding "smart quotes"....