• 5 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 12th, 2024

help-circle


  • the tentacles of the persian state…

    As a supporter of the Iranian opposition, I’d like to correct you about this description. The Islamic Republic have nothing to do with Persian ethnicity or Iranian nationality. Only 50%-60% of Iranians are Persian, it’s a very ethnically and culturally diverse nation. The Islamic Republic is a theocracy that oppresses the people of Iran. They destroy secularism and minority cultures in favor of Shia-style Islamization.









  • They did not wish for sovereignty over themselves within a nation-state framework in the Middle East.

    That’s true for most of Jewish history, but the author from Haaretz (Sand) is not explaining it in this article. I’m surprised he doesn’t mention Jerusalem even once in his opinion piece. The city of Jerusalem is mentioned in so many Jewish prayers and practices, only maybe surpassed by the story of the exodus from Egypt.
    The original article (from ajc.org) does provide the main (religious) reason for the fact that only small groups of Jews immigrated to the land of Israel before the 19th century.

    Traditional Jewish religious thought stated that the Jews had been exiled from their homeland as a punishment from God. They could only return in Messianic times. This belief kept most Jews from thinking about a return to living in Israel.

    Also, when you’re a persecuted and an oppressed minority for 2000 years, it’s very difficult for you to believe that you could take your fate into your own hands. Think about the profound ideological persuasion you need to have in order to think you can fight against the British empire or the Ottoman empire, and establish a safe homeland for your people.
    Only after the horrors of the holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, there were mass immigration of Jews to the land.



  • Israel never withdrew from the Oslo Accords.

    For more than two decades, Benjamin Netanyahu has played a central role in the failure of the US-sponsored Oslo negotiations process and the two-state solution that it’s predicated on. As he boasted to a group of Israeli settlers in a candid moment caught on video in 2001 following his first term as prime minister (1996-1999): "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.” https://imeu.org/article/netanyahu-putting-an-end-to-the-oslo-accords-the-two-state-solution

    First of all I’ll say that it doesn’t matter what Netanyahu said he did, what matters is what he actually did. As all politicians lie, and of course both Israelis and Palestinians.

    I might misunderstood you. When you claimed that Israel withdrew from the Oslo Accords, it seemed like you meant that Israel retracted all of the agreements related to said accords, similar to what Abbas did in 2020. So that didn’t happen. If you meant that Israel canceled all further negotiations, then I would point out that the last time negotiations took place was in 2013-14 (under Netanyahu’s government), and it seems to me that both sides made some questionable things that jeopardized the success of these talks. And as I showed in my previous comment, it is a fact that some agreements were signed after 1996.
    This comment also answers your last point, when you linked a source that also references the 1997 agreement.

    Obviously the two entities weren’t equal in the sense of military power, economical development, moral values, state institutions, foreign relations. But in what sense was it unfair?

    You answered your own question…

    If these are you’re definitions of fair and equal, then those are just facts about the situation. It’s reasonable to have two unequal entities having negotiations, and of course they both have to compromise in some way. So this information is irrelevant, we can ignore it.

    The same argument can be made about the debates concerning the ‘two-states solution’ that was offered in Oslo. This offer should be seen for what it is: partition under a different wording.

    What’s wrong with that?

    What’s wrong is that it’s not an actual two state solution because

    Israel would not only decide how much territory it was going to concede but also what would happen in the territory it left behind.”

    It would not be a free and independent Palestinian state if the Israelis are still in control…

    I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the Israeli negotiators for not committing to a full-blown Palestinian state, especially having their own army. Jews know the implications of underestimating their enemies. They have a long history of being defenseless, being subjected to foreign rule, not being able to control their own fate.
    Without the IDF’s crackdown on terrorism in the West Bank, it could very quickly pose an even grater security threat than the Gaza strip under Hamas. As you might know, Hamas was always against the peace talks. In the '90s they sent suicide bombers to blow up buses, restaurants etc, in order to stop negotiations. The peace camp in Israel lost almost all of its political power because of the Palestinian violence.
    The truth is for the the Palestinians to have a full-blown free and independent state alongside Israel, if you really want that, the dominant entities in Palestinian society should be truly peaceful. In this day and age, that’s the only thing Israelis are willing to except. These entities can’t be terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Not Fatah, not Hamas, not Islamic Jihad, not the PFLP etc.



  • The Palestinians were prepared to accept a less-than-ideal agreement, but Israel withdrew from it.

    Israel never withdrew from the Oslo Accords. In fact, in 2020 Mahmoud Abbas withdrew from said agreements | sources: 1 2, but later that year he retracted his earlier statements | sources: 1 2.

    “We should acknowledge that the Oslo process was not a fair and equal pursuit of peace…”

    How was it fair and equal? Obviously the two entities weren’t equal in the sense of military power, economical development, moral values, state institutions, foreign relations. But in what sense was it unfair?

    The same argument can be made about the debates concerning the ‘two-states solution’ that was offered in Oslo. This offer should be seen for what it is: partition under a different wording.

    What’s wrong with that? The two most popular peaceful approaches are either a two-states solution (with clear and safe borders) or a one-state solution (with equal rights).

    However, when Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli prime minister for the first time in 1996, he opposed the Oslo Accords, and the process was stopped.

    That’s completely false. Netanyahu’s government signed 2 more agreements with Araft in 1997 and 1998.

    I didn’t read the book by Ilan Pappe that this article references, but it is clear that Mohammed (the article’s author) is injecting their own false anti-Israel opinions alongside quotations from Pappe.