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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
WOTF please don't put words in my mouth. I said: "Israel has to compromise". Everything else is your invention. Please do not invent positions for me thank you. You are entitled to interpret what "compromise" means to you. You are not entitled to attribute your interpretations to me. Please don't.

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ORIGINAL: WantsOfTheFlesh

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
WOTF please don't put words in my mouth. I said: "Israel has to compromise". Everything else is your invention. Please do not invent positions for me thank you. You are entitled to interpret what "compromise" means to you. You are not entitled to attribute your interpretations to me. Please don't.

K so Tweak didn't say Israel has to take in all the UNRWA refugees which destroys Jewish self-determination and completely return to vulnerable armistice borders, which are overlooked by the Golan Heights! [8|]

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

I don't know what reality you inhabit Prominent, but this is the one I inhabit.

After North Korea, Israel is the world's most loathed State. It has worked hard to achieve this status - 40+ years of brutal military occupation, sabotaging peace talks, barbarity in Gaza numerous atrocities and war crimes , ... it's a long long list. You can agree or disagree but that is the way Israel is seen outside of the US and Israel itself.

Israel has one sole friend in the world - the US. Obama's impatience with Netanyahu is just one of the many signs that US support for Israel is fading. In Sept, the UN will admit Palestine as a full member. That will mean the Palestinians have sole inalienable legal right to the West Bank Gaza and Ease Jerusalem. That means the Palestinians are not going to go away. Ever. To date, time has worked in Israel's favour. That reverses in Sept. Forever.

There are 3 possible outcomes :
(i) a one-State solution. Almost no one wants this;
(ii) a two-State solution. Every one in the world wants this bar Israel
(iii) continuation of the status quo. No one wants this.

Israel has chosen theft of the West Bank over peace. Everyone in the world knows this. This is a very poor option.

Israel's sole viable long term survival strategy is a just lasting peace with Palestine, mutual prosperity and economic inter-dependence. That requires urgent compromises far more "painful" than Netanyahu is currently prepared to consider. Israel cannot survive on its own in the long term - whatever the current situation.

Survival means peace. No peace is a slow suicide option for Israel. I hope Israel chooses peace but I have no confidence that Netanyahu is prepared to pay the necessary price. If you are concerned about Israel's long term survival, I invite you to think the all the options through. There is only one viable option. The sooner Israel realises this, the better for all of us.

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Prominent
I do agree with the second part of your post. Israel will need to reach a compromise in regards to east Jerusalem, give up many of the settlements in the West Bank and exchange land with the Palestinians, for the main settlment block, near Israel's border.

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However, the line goes at the right of return, even in your grasp of reality, you must understand that an isolated Israel> non- existing Israel, right? even if your doom's day scenarios were dead accurate, for Israel it would still be better to deal with global isolation, than ceasing to exist, by taking in millions of hostile citizens. what's the best Israel could hope for in such a scenario? a bloody civil war? no thanks.

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And what now? the Palestinians have a unity government with Hamas in it, which refuses to even acknowledge Israel's existence, let alone negotiate peace with it. how do you deal with such a situation?

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
You attributed all the following as my position:
" Israel must dismantle every settlement, returns to very vulnerable borders, allow all the refugees and their descendants (according to iffy UNRWA definitions) in, thereby loosing its Jewish majority."
I did not state any of the above. It is all your invention. Please withdraw the entire sentence thank you.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
The right to return to one's home (or ancestral home) is a right. It is a right that underpins the existence of Israel ... Rights are not subject to a statute of limitations. (Otherwise those 'returned' Jews would have lost their right to return centuries ago)

Rights are the same for all people - Israeli Palestinian you and me. Palestinian refugee rights cannot be 'swapped' for the rights of Jews said to be expelled from Arab countries. ... Just as you and I have a right to inhabit our homelands independently of all other factors, inalienably.

To me it seems impossible to form opinions such as those advanced above if one values the rights of all people equally. To form such views, one must place a lesser value on Palestinian rights than one places on the rights of others. ...

So, we are left with a seriously flawed proposal to extinguish Palestinian rights to the benefit of a nation populated to a significant extent through the exercise of the exact same rights denied to Palestinians .......

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Every single country in the world (and almost all the people) agrees that a two-State solution based on the 1967 borders with security and recognition for all is the solution - except Israel. Israelis themselves appear to be split about 50-50 on this proposal. It's sad that neither side can throw up a leader with the vision and stature to deliver this peace.

I firmly believe that if people on both sides got the chance to vote on this proposal it would be accepted.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
The UN is going to recognise Palestine existing within the 1967 borders in September. And that will be the end of the territorial dispute unless otherwise agreed between the Palestinians and the Israelis.... Israel has no legal right to any of it....

Israel has no legal basis for being there.

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. In Sept, the UN will admit Palestine as a full member. That will mean the Palestinians have sole inalienable legal right to the West Bank Gaza and Ease Jerusalem.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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So in your mind Israel cannot exist

Please find a direct quote to that effect... otherwise stop building strawmen.. it makes you look like an ass

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
I stopped believing Israel's doomsday claims years ago. Most Palestinians have indicated that they would prefer compensation to exercising the right of return. Olmert apparently accepted a PA proposal to limit the right of return to 100,000 (I've only heard this asserted by Zionists. I don't know it to be true myself). So this is nothing that sincere negotiations by both parties cannot work out.

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I suppose Israel could learn from the PA how to deal with this. After all the PA has to deal with Likud, whose Constitution "flatly rejects"* a Palestinian State. Like for like hey? [:D]

* http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm

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ORIGINAL: SternSkipper

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. In Sept, the UN will admit Palestine as a full member. That will mean the Palestinians have sole inalienable legal right to the West Bank Gaza and Ease Jerusalem.

Just to be clear though. Recognition is not the point where a nation throws out it's border guards and starts issuing passports. But it's a very important distinction politically. It's something of a game changer for Israel. It makes unilateral military actions trickier, among other things.
   But I also realize we're talking about a country with a serious set of military balls who've been willing in the past to do some pretty brave things for such a small country.. like send sorties into Iran.

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ORIGINAL: PROMINENTtool
It will definitely put more pressure on Israel, but it also works both ways, now firing rockets at Israel from Gaza, would be an official act of war, for example.

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Obama did decide to go medieval on Israel - which remains to be seen, he doesn't have a majority in the US congress to do anything,

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ORIGINAL: SternSkipper
(I'll admit that there are now a few alias here that I won't read anymore due to high dementia content... so I may have missed something)

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ORIGINAL: SternSkipper

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Obama did decide to go medieval on Israel - which remains to be seen, he doesn't have a majority in the US congress to do anything,

Hey ... tell me how you get from 'fading support' from the US, which is about the strongest thing anyone has really advanced here (I'll admit that there are now a few alias here that I won't read anymore due to high dementia content... so I may have missed something), to "Obama going medieval on Israel"  I doubt that you saw that published in any credible place.
  I think though that Israel may be hearing from it's allies that it needs to do _something_ before the vote is called on Palestine. And I don't know what to think for sure. But I know intuitively that if that page gets written @ the UN, large amounts of truisms that we here in the west ALWAYS hear change in varying degrees across the board.
    Maybe we've finally got our foot in the door of the New World Order George Sr so loved referring to in his speeches.

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I intentionally brought up the worse case scenario (which i stated as unrealistic), in order to make a point. also, if you actualy listend to both Obama's and Nentanyahu's speeches, you would notice that they are pretty much saying the same thing.

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ORIGINAL: PROMINENTtool


You negate what you said in previous posts... if you believe that what will and should happen, is to reach an compensation compromise, why did you even bother arguing with me all over the last page, about how Israel's existance is less important compared to the right of every Palestinian to return to where they came from, when i already stated prior to that, that not only do i think that it is what should happen, but it had also been Israel's offical stance during negotiations?

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I suppose Israel could learn from the PA how to deal with this. After all the PA has to deal with Likud, whose Constitution "flatly rejects"* a Palestinian State. Like for like hey? [:D]

* http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm

I'm hardly an avid Likud supporter, but what exactly was the purpose of what you posted, if the head of the Likud already stated years ago, that he believes in a two states solution?

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
I don't see that I negate anything. My first post was to point that the right belongs to Palestinians - not you, me the US or Israel. Only they can exercise or surrender it. How they choose to exercise is a matter that can be influenced by other parties. But the right belongs to the Palestinians alone.

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If you're saying Netanyahu is for a two-State solution that's a big claim. It goes against his history, philosophy, election mandate, public utterance, policies and decisions ..... He chose expanding the colonies over peace despite a massive bribe from Obama. I'll consider it if and when he stops expanding the colonies. In the meantime he's on the record as promising to stay in the West Bank for an "eternity".*

Again, it's up to the Palestinians to choose their own negotiators, not us and certainly not Israel. Israel swore it wouldn't ever talk to the PLO for years and look what happened. Ditto the UK Govt and the IRA. If there's ever going to be a lasting peace, Hamas and the people it represents has to be included in the process somehow. Like I said Israel has to compromise if it expects others to compromise. I hope it finds a way.

* http://www.haaretz.com/news/palestinians-netanyahu-s-claim-to-west-bank-destroys-peace-efforts-1.261983

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Netanyahu on Wednesday presented a proposal for resolving the ongoing Israeli-American dispute over construction in the settlements. In a meeting with Mitchell, Netanyahu suggested a temporary freeze, reportedly for nine months, on construction in the West Bank, a government source said.

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The prime minister endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state that would exist alongside Israel for the first time on Sunday. Two and a half months after taking office and following considerable pressure from Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally uttered the coveted term in his policy speech at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

Bribe? Precisely what is the Kenyan offering Israel as a bribe?