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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American who is split on this issue (I find fault on both sides). None of the things you mentioned were ever uncertain to me.

If Israel is looking for more support from people like me, the question I'd like to see them answer is: how do they justify the West Bank settlements? I can't even begin to understand how Israel can claim to want peace with Palestinians while unilaterally moving into the land where 2/3 of them live. Where do they think the Palestinian state should be?

I can't even say I'm disagreeing with Israel's stance on this issue, because I honestly don't understand what theory Israel uses to justify this. Every time I read any news on this issue, there is a conspicuous lack of comment from Israeli leadership about why this is ok. It's like they don't believe it needs explaining. It's very strange to me.

Hamas is awful, but what space are Israel's policies leaving for more moderate Palestinian leadership?

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The justification for settlements is as follows: buying land, and living there, is legal. Describing this process is "unilaterally moving into land where 2/3 of them live" is false. A way to stop being split on the issue is to stop believing false factual claims.

Palestine will have moderate leadership sometime after the majority of Palestinians are decent people who will vote for decent leaders. Blaming Israel for the hatred of its extremist enemies is nasty.

Calling the majority of Palestinians as indecent people is nasty.

are you disputing facts like these?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01...

I am shocked you would actually try and make that argument about a whole country of people and still have the guts to call someone criticising the Israeli government antisemetic. What possible moral high ground do you have now?

I said the majority, I linked to something saying the majority.

Your mistake is no random accident. You should go learn positive things about Israel until you wouldn't make such a mistake again.

> I said the majority, I linked to something saying the majority.

You also implied they are not decent because of their voting preferences, completely ignoring the complex factors that may have led each to make that decision. There are so many ways you could have gotten the point across that the Palestinion public needs to make better choices in their elected officials, yet you decided to just call those people indecent.

> Your mistake is no random accident. You should go learn positive things about Israel until you wouldn't make such a mistake again.

Is your attitude regarding the people of Palestine no random accident? Should I advise you to learn more about individual Palestinions with the assumption that would change your mind?

Wow, it's well known that the settlements are illegal under international law. This is acknowledged by many academics and intellectuals such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

you think saying your position being right is "well known" and that Noam Chomsky agrees is an objective, rational argument that will persuade people who don't already agree with you...?

The position is indeed well known, and it is also well known to be poorly supported by facts or legal reasoning, and rather supported by fringe figures like the parental post mentioned.

But we will not get anywhere in this discussion: if someone's mind is closed, it is hard to deal with that.

I find your argument unconvincing, but reading more about it did lead me to this page, so at least I can now say I understand Israel's official position on the matter: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+P...

Paraphrased, their position is: we won the 1967 war, and because there was no formal country in the West Bank prior to that, we can keep the land that we won in that war legally. Since we own it, we see no reason to keep Israelis from moving there if they want to.

It still seems hard to justify, saying on one hand that the "right of return" would threaten Israel's identity as a Jewish state (I agree; this is an unrealistic demand), but simultaneously arguing that Israelis are free to continue moving to the West Bank if they so choose, as if that doesn't threaten the identity of a future Palestinian state.

That's not what that link actually says. it doesn't say Israel as a country owns the place b/c of the (defensive) war. It argues the place has a status such that there's nothing wrong with individual israelis choosing to build homes there. it also makes some important points you left out, e.g. that trying to kick all jews out of the area would be ethnic cleansing, and that whatever you think of this issue it cannot justify terrorism.

the issue with millions of hostile persons becoming israel voters is not paralleled by any similar issue with some settlements in palestine. first, isn't the population figures of the settlements more in line with the amount of arabs already in israel than with trying to take over? second, the israel settlers are not, as a whole, hostile/violent/dangerous to have in your country, so there's no reason to mind them. palestinians, while some individuals are decent folk, as a group they are dangerous, like it or not it's simply a fact: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01...

In my view there is a difference between maintaining/allowing existing settlements and constructing new ones. I agree that the issue of existing settlements has some more difficult questions, because it is, as you say, a serious thing to talk about evicting people from where they currently live.

That said, the construction of new settlements seems like a totally unnecessary provocation that undermines the prospect of a future Palestinian state. It very much gives me the impression that Israel is not serious about a two-state solution (in contrast with the withdrawal from Gaza, which very strongly had given me the opposite impression). I don't think it's appropriate to say what Palestinians should or should not "mind" having around; a major element of (future) sovereignty is a people being able to make their own decisions about immigration, as Israel does now. And while Israeli settlers may not be violent "as a whole," there is certainly a noticeable incidence of Israeli settler violence that targets Palestinians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settler_violence

I agree that empirically, a lot of violence is waged on Israelis by Palestinians. However I think it's wrong to frame them as an inherently violent people. You might have said the same thing about Jordanians in 1967, but now Israel and Jordan are allies. Likewise the PLO, which called for the destruction of Israel in its founding charter, has since recognized Israel's right to exist and rejected violence and terrorism. I'm not denying current Palestinian violence, which is awful.

The problem is that the West Bank isn't exactly sovereign territory of anyone. If it was, settlements would be a non-issue--some Israelis want to move into Palestine, it's up to the Palestinian immigration authorities, just like if some Egyptians wanted to move into Israel today. But there are no Palestinian immigration authorities, just the Israeli government, and since that government is democratic that puts them in a bit of a pickle.

If Israel is serious about holding the West Bank as a future homeland for Palestinians, they should be more restrictive about building new settlements and gently push for closing existing settlements. It's hard to do that when the settlers are your own people and they vote, though.

I mostly agree with your comment except for the first sentence.

The problem is that while Arafat officially recognized Israel in 1993, Israel never reciprocated. Would it still be war if Israel recognized the right for a Palestinian State to exist, and how this Palestinian demand for a right to have a state can be denied by people who asked for the exact same thing and obtained it (leading to the existence of Israel) a few decades before ?

There isn't really a de facto Palestinian state to recognize, unfortunately. In the dying days of the Clinton administration Barak offered Arafat a recognized Palestinian state, but Arafat didn't agree to the terms. Maybe the terms were unreasonable, but most sources agree that Arafat didn't even bother with a counteroffer. Sharon made enough concessions to the Palestinians to alienate his own party. Even Netanyahu acknowledged the right of Palestinians to their own state in May, though I'm not optimistic on the chances of him successfully negotiating terms. Still, the two-state solution is agreed in principle. It would be a positive development for Israel to officially commit to that, though.

The offer Barak made to Arafat apparently carved the West Bank up into little Palestinian enclaves that could not function as a whole due to the settlements and settlers only roads that went through it.

By now it's pretty established that this is just wrong. Here's two maps that Dennis Ross published in his book 'The Missing Piece' that illustrate the issue:

http://cl.ly/image/10350b3Q052P

So what ?

Why would Palestinian Authorities accept any borders except the ones from 1967, which is already very generous ?

So false facts shouldn't be claimed, and that should be enough to not respond with snark. If there's another point to make, by all means, but be civil about it.

As for accepting borders - there are many reasons, but first and foremost pragmatism. Some Israeli cities in the West Bank will never be moved, and insisting on their evacuation is just an excuse to not make peace. These large inhabited areas are practically suburbs of large Israeli cities which are not in the West Bank, and wouldn't inhibit Palestinian life in any way. A land swap is the reasonable thing to do.

For comparison, up until the 40s the Israeli government (to be) accepted pretty much any proposal that would just let them get on with it and build a state (Peel Comission 1930s, UN Partition Plan 1940s). They too had endless justifications for why they should get more than they were offered, and how unjust it would be to settle for less, but ultimately they chose the future over the past.

Palestinians can cling to their version of a just solution for another hundred years and go nowhere, or accept the perfectly reasonable framework that was already put on the table by Clinton in 2000 and accepted by Israel:

* Over 95% of 1967 territory, with the rest made up for in land swaps * Full control over East Jerusalem * Billions of dollars in aid to resettle all refugees in Palestine

Many countries have defensible grievances over which pieces of territory should or should not be under their control, but still get on with their lives and live peacefully with their neighbours. Palestinians don't, and we should ask ourselves why.

Interesting thanks, shame the map as drawn was never presented at the talks...

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