Does Israel or Hamas want peace

[DeusTrismegistus]

HI

on the subject of whether Israel wants peace I found this article by Avi Slaim, former ISraeli army, currently professor of International relations at Oxford...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

The whole article is devastating, it mentions ISraels complicity in the fostering of Hamas (despite Chris's attempts at painting this as paranoia), and reaches a conclusion similar to the one I proposed in the first post....

So what is wrong with territorial expansionism?


(playing devils advocate here don't take it personally)

[Michael]

Michael. The old school thinkers are the ones who hold power. The people they groom, are the people who follow their mind set.
Hence the perpetuation of old ideologies.

We, as a world and as various civilizations are in a transitional state as far as generational thinking goes.
Eventually the old guard way of thinking will die and a new way will become the way.

This means that the current generation of old seated power must die off before it can be filled with new thought.
There are far too many WW2 era people in charge, or cold war heroes etc etc who came from a time when the masses were ignorant and only had them as a source of information and inspiration.

Now, there is more opportunity for people to decide for themselves what is veritas. It is taking the foundation out from under the old establishment.
I think that the release of the internet to the world and technological leaps was a clever move by the US military to get that ball rolling.

Very interesting perspective and I'm sure there's a lot of truth to it, but I think a lot of the new thinking, or better thinking, is an unintentional consequence. Still, it's progress. Kind of a race, though, to see what's going to happen between opposing viewpoints.

[yusuf]

terratorial expansion ...oh you mean like this
...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

Lebensraum (help·info) (German for "habitat" or literally "living space") served as a major motivation for Nazi Germany's territorial aggression. In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum (for a Grossdeutschland, land, and raw materials), and that it should be taken in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, Germanize or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations, and to repopulate the land with reinrassig Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"
-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

"I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.

Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, speaking to Amos Oz, editor of Davar, on Dec. 17, 1982

I think the parallels are well established. The original victims gain power and tke out centuries of persecution on some other group.... that is why i try and point out the obvious..

[Michael]

"What's wrong with territorial expansion"?

Territorial expansion during the past couple of thousand years or more almost always came at the expense of someone else, usually embedded upon your spearpoint. There aren't very many cases where territorial expansion does not mean a war of aggression, which is illegal. Of course it's pretty tough to have two groups engage in a mutually self-defensive war, kind of like two taiji masters fighting in the John Wang universe.

[DeusTrismegistus]

What about, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny .

Your point seems to be that territorial expansion is wrong because it harms people. You are relying on an absolutist assumption that causing harm to others is always wrong. I would ask why is it always wrong, especially in the context of territorial expansion.

[qiphlow]

put yourself in the shoes of the one being expanded upon, and you'll see the downside to manifest destiny.

[Chris McKinley]

More typical comments by one of those oh-so-peaceloving average Palestinians out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnShFt5g1NY

[Darth Rock&Roll]

individual views will always be emptionally charged and somewhat biased.
If we can look at just the facts and what is going on without all the individuals calling for this or that, I think the issue would be a lot easier to deal with.

Hamas' (and groups like them) principles are immoral, unethical and downright wrong as they are written.

Israel needs to maintain their cool, but do indeed have the right to defend themselves from the constant attacks by hamas militants in lebanon or in gaza or any attacks from any of the arab nations or groups that threaten their existance. It was with the growth of Hamas in Lebanon that brought about the war last summer. It is very clear that Hamas is teh problem here and they should disarm immediately and change their principles if they wish to live in peace.

As Israel is by far the smaller nation and the smallest portion of democratic peoples in the region, they, in my opinion are the most deserving of the support.
They will err. Everyone errs. It is easier to not err when you aren't surrounded by enemies who want your destruction.

It's not about one for one, or kill one take two, it's about ending it and frankly the arab world needs to wise up considerably and come into the modern world. There is support for Israel from Muslim communities as their is support for the Palestinians from Jewish communities.

In the end, it's about resisting the urge to be hateful and to get violent. Hamas is NOT an example of that at all and never has been. Nor are any of the hate groups in the arab world who's primary goal is the destruction of israel.

[Chris Fleming]

"In the end, it's about resisting the urge to be hateful and to get violent. Hamas is NOT an example of that at all and never has been. Nor are any of the hate groups in the arab world who's primary goal is the destruction of israel."

And there lies the point. Hamas as a whole or any other Islamic terrorist group will never accept peace because their purpose of being is to do two things:

1. Destroy Israel/Kill all Jews in the region

and

2. Set up a fundamentalist Islamic state (in which to exercise utmost control over THEIR OWN people)

Until those two goals are accomplished, there will be no peace. Why would there be? The whole point of their existence is to do those two things so any attempt at peace will always be futile and any offering of peace from their side will always be a lie.