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On December 31 2023 05:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2023 04:55 stilt wrote:
Overall the success of islamism comes from the failure of pan arabism and arab nationalism to quell foreign imperialism. (And at the time, the western power were pro islam against the arab left... The muslim Brotherhood has been a long time ally of usa until the fall os ussr)
The "muslim brotherhood" in iran was not an ally of the USA while the Soviet Union existed. Show nested quote +On December 31 2023 04:55 stilt wrote:
The application of sharia law by hamas is not better or worse than in most muslim countries.
Being subjucated to a foreign power who puts your kids in prison without any judgment and ofc lawyer is quite worse. At least in sharia law there is ... A law not arbutrary violence. Israelis can even murder 2 years old without any prosecution (see mohamed tamini killed in june 2023...)
So yes, Israel is way worse than Hamas for the average palestinian as israelis have a right of life and death on them. And even when there is a actual prosecution, it ends up like the Elor Azaria's one which tells a lot about the prevalent fascist, racism or wathever you want to call it within israeli society.
are we in here " talkin' 'bout practice? " ( see the Allan Iverson rant about missing 1 practice ). You've outlined one case. The population in Gaza is skyrocketing so the genocide ain't going to great. Prosecutors in any country can elect not to prosecute any one for any arbitrary reason. Happens all the time. Show nested quote +On December 31 2023 04:55 stilt wrote:
The application of sharia law by hamas is not better or worse than in most muslim countries.
How do you know this? You've got knowledge of 50+ countries to make this statement?
Damn I am stating the palestinians are subjugated to a extremely violent and arbutrary occupants with facts and you're answering the gazaoui population is skyrocketing...
I do not have the reference about Allan Iverson... Nor do I understand your second point, that might be because I am not a native but what is it about ? baby killers not being prosecuted ? Or administrative detention for years without a lawyer happens all the time for minors ? Maybe in north korea...
Anyway even if we might disagree on it and you have to admit you don't look super convincing in stating that israeli rule is better than the hamas one for the palestinians.
How do you know this? You've got knowledge of 50+ countries to make this statement?
Most muslim countries are very conservative, except for the female circumcision that you guys are inventing, I fail to see how it is worse that others and you're certainly failing at understanding the political stance and action of the palestinian resistance is conditionned by ... palestinian condition. Aside this extreme israeli violence, there is the negation of palestinian identity with a cultural erasing : the mosques and cemeteries are destroyed and the one which are protected suffer a changement of functions : these places are reduced to tourist attraction like some tibetan temples.
Those policies will produce violence but they are natural as israeli are in majority a bunch of supremacist westerners which don't belong to the land.
And what do you mean about the muslim brotherhood in Iran ? This nebulla has been present in countries with sunni islam, iraq, egypt, jordania, syria and have been supported by the us especially against the panarabism of nasser in egypt and syria.
Its influence will utimatly lead to al qaida, bin laden, al zawahiri and others have all been formed by those guys. Anyway, islamism ended becoming way more robust against the west than all the previous ideology and contrary to what you seem to think, I am not super happy about it.
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the USA was not an ally of Iran in 1979. the soviet union was active militarily in 1979.
as far as open Gaza being an open air prison ... there are conflicting reports about the quality of life.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JXtJF_cOvdk
I worked with a Palestinian for 3 years from 2005-2007 and he was on fence about staying permanently in Canada. He hated staying in Canada during the winter and usually returned to the middle east. Cold Winter was his big complaint. LOL. Anyhow, if the conditions in Gaza was super horrific the population would be going down... not up. Right now, conditions are horrible and the population is going down.
Any place where the population rises from 200,000 to 2.5 million has positives.
Mississauga went from 60,000 to 820,000. They have no medical care, the police routinely shoot any one any time they feel like it... and everyone is starving to death. The drinking water is poisoned with mercury. There is zero chance of economic advancement due to harsh restrictions and everyone is getting poorer and poorer. You see how this story doesn't make sense right?
I have zero sympathy for any Canadian with dual citizenship who voluntarily chooses to re-enter this snake pit in the middle east. That includes judih weinstein. Its sad she is dead. it was a 100% dumb move on her part to move back to Israel and live there full time. She paid the ultimate price... she gets to play the ultimate martyr card i guess?
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-israeli-hostage-leaves-behind-her-poetry
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On December 31 2023 05:43 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2023 05:25 Gorsameth wrote:On December 31 2023 05:20 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:No country in the history of the world would allow such an agreement to take place. Not even Israel themselves. Unless they are thinking of double border checkpoints etc. Not to mention that Egypt has been fortifying their border for the past few weeks. Bigger walls, watch towers etc. JERUSALEM, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The border zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt should be under Israel's control, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday as he predicted the war in the Palestinian enclave and on other regional fronts would last many more months.
Netanyahu held a news conference as Israel entered the 13th week of its war against Gaza's ruling Hamas Islamists, which has stoked violence in the occupied West Bank and touched off attacks by Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
"The Philadelphi Corridor - or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point (of Gaza) - must be in our hands. It must be shut. It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarisation that we seek," he said.
Israel has said it intends to destroy Hamas in Gaza and demilitarise and deradicalise the territory in order to prevent any repeat of the Oct. 7 cross-border killing and kidnapping spree by the Palestinians militant group that sparked the war.
"The war is at its height. We are fighting on all of the fronts. Achieving victory will require time. As the (IDF) chief of staff has said, the war will continue for many more months," Netanyahu said.
He added a rare threat to attack Iran directly over the near-daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border. "If Hezbollah expands the warfare, it will suffer blows that it has not dreamed of - and so too Iran," Netanyahu said without elaborating. Source "we cannot allow Palestinians to have a means to escape us or receive aid". But sure, lets keep talking about how they would be better off under Israeli rule. Under Hamas rule, over 20,000 people have died because they were used as human shields by their own government. Yeah, Israel rule would be better than that.
It’s just awesome what one can do with bad faith. Like, murder 20000 people by carpet bombing their city and blame the other guys because there are fighters in the city.
Hey, maybe it’s the responsibility of the guy dropping the bomb not to assasinate 60 innocent people on the suspicion there is some ennemy in that building, you know? Yeah, urban warfare sucks, but so do crimes against humanity.
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On December 31 2023 09:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:the USA was not an ally of Iran in 1979. the soviet union was active militarily in 1979. as far as open Gaza being an open air prison ... there are conflicting reports about the quality of life. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JXtJF_cOvdkI worked with a Palestinian for 3 years from 2005-2007 and he was on fence about staying permanently in Canada. He hated staying in Canada during the winter and usually returned to the middle east. Cold Winter was his big complaint. LOL. Anyhow, if the conditions in Gaza was super horrific the population would be going down... not up. Right now, conditions are horrible and the population is going down. Any place where the population rises from 200,000 to 2.5 million has positives. Mississauga went from 60,000 to 820,000. They have no medical care, the police routinely shoot any one any time they feel like it... and everyone is starving to death. The drinking water is poisoned with mercury. There is zero chance of economic advancement due to harsh restrictions and everyone is getting poorer and poorer. You see how this story doesn't make sense right? I have zero sympathy for any Canadian with dual citizenship who voluntarily chooses to re-enter this snake pit in the middle east. That includes judih weinstein. Its sad she is dead. it was a 100% dumb move on her part to move back to Israel and live there full time. She paid the ultimate price... she gets to play the ultimate martyr card i guess? https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-israeli-hostage-leaves-behind-her-poetry
You realize that usually it’s the exact opposite, and that extreme poverty and very high demographics are more often than not correlated. Lack if access to healthcare and education means more births, not less. The natality of Liberia is much higher than tte natality of Denmark.
But anyway. The conditions in Gaza being kinda horrific is a fact that has been extremely well documented. Yeah it’s worse when you get bombed to the last building and crime against humanity are commited against you, and then the population indeed goes down. Like, Gaza now is worse than Gaza 3 months ago. But the situation has been hopeless for 20 years.
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On December 29 2023 03:36 Nebuchad wrote:Thanks for taking the time  Although I notice that there is an issue with some of what you brought up: Show nested quote +On December 28 2023 17:20 Cerebrate1 wrote:
-Security checkpoints. I've explained in depth already why Israelis see them as necessary, but I also understand how Palestinians would oppose them.
-Self determination. I've mentioned that this is, in my opinion, the most reasonable (and not hyperbolic for the sake of emotional appeal) concern about settlements. They reduce the profile of a future Palestinian state.
Both of these are things that are problematic about the occupation of Palestine in general, not about the settlements in particular, so they don't really have a ton of explaining power when it comes to the lack of rainbows.
-Security Checkpoints: A lot of the checkpoints are just border crossings between Israel proper and the region intended to be a future Palestinian state. Most people agree that nations are allowed to police their own borders, so I agree that there is nothing objectively problematic about those (they are just annoying if you have a job on the other side of the border). Some checkpoints are within the West Bank itself leading to settlements though. Those are obviously related to the existence of settlements.
-Palestinian state: You don't think that the settlements themselves have any effect on the borders or potential existence of a Palestinian state? You can have a minority view on that if you like, but I think it's safe to say that most of your compatriots do think the settlements impact a Palestinian state, so that's not really a question on me.
The only thing that we are left with is this: Show nested quote +On December 28 2023 17:20 Cerebrate1 wrote:
-Someone else mentioned that we sometimes end up with a situation where Israelis with the most extreme views are the ones living in closest proximity to Palestinians. I don't think I commented on that because I felt it was a fairly straightforward point, but I agree that that can lead to problems. I certainly feel that this is true, and is one of the problems with the settlements. But I have to wonder, why do these people with extreme views decide that they want to go and live there? In my understanding of the situation, it makes a ton of sense: because their extremism is based on hatred of Palestinians and a willingness to have the land of Palestine belong to Israel, I can see how settling on Palestinian territory, chasing them off with force and taking their land, would be a logical step in that direction. But with your premise that we're just taking some uninhabited land with no violence, I don't see a clear connexion between that and having extreme views. So, what gives?
There seems to be an impression amongst some people here that the way settlements are formed is that settlers show up, shoot a Palestinian in the head, and take his house. I’m not sure how anyone imagines that happening regularly while the Palestinian population happily skyrockets and population distribution remains constant. In reality, settlements are basically acquired in one of three ways:
1. Ownership dispute: One guy has a deed to the land, but the other guy lives there or two guys have competing deeds from different time periods. These cases go to the courts. These are the most messy situations because no matter how it shakes out, someone is unhappy. Police action is sometimes necessary to enforce the ruling of the court. Wars get started over these types of disputes if they get too heated (like in 2021).
2. Home purchase: Israeli buys a house from a Palestinian and moves in. This probably shouldn’t be as complicated as it is, but it is known that Palestinians will kill any of their countrymen who dares sell a house to a Jew. When it happens, it therefore usually involves whisking the seller out of the country to the safety of some other part of the world. Understandably then, with the logistics and whatnot involved, this method is pretty uncommon now-a-days.
Both of the above methods usually lead to an Israeli living in an old apartment surrounded by neighbors who want to kill him. It takes a certain brand of crazy to live in one of those situations. So that, plus all the other hurdles to these happening in the first place, makes the number of settlers in either situation pretty small. When a journalist wants to film someone extreme, he interviews one of these guys.
3. New developments: Someone buys a large plot of undeveloped land, has a developer put up hundreds of housing units, and sells them. Obviously, this method allows a lot more people to move in than either of the other methods, so when you hear about the “number of people living in settlements” as any sort of large number, you can be confident that well over 90% came in with method 3.
With the lack of violence question settled (no pun intended) I shall address your question about the extreme views that I mentioned. For that, I need to point out that not all settlements were created equally. The reasons for their existence and the type of people who live there are often quite distinct. Let’s take a look at a case study of two areas that the wider world term “settlements”:
A. Hebron. Hebron is, quite possibly, the most holy city to Jews outside of Jerusalem. It is featured many times in the Bible and most of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried there. Moreover, there has been significant and continuous Jewish settlement in Hebron since the Crusades. That only ended in the 1929 massacre when local Muslims murdered their unsuspecting neighbors who had lived peacefully with them side by side for centuries. This event neatly fits the definition of “ethnic cleansing” as the surviving Jews fled and left Hebron homogenously Arab. Therefore, there is significant religious and historical reason to demand that Jews be allowed to live in Hebron as they always had, particularly for the descendants of those survivors, who are counted among the “settlers” there.
That said, in a practical sense, actually doing so is a bit crazy. Hebron is now one of the major population centers for Palestinians, and I struggle to imagine any two state solution that doesn’t cede the entirety of the city over to a new Palestinian state. Plus, as can be imagined by the aforementioned massacre, Hebron’s local Muslim population is not the most moderate of the towns in the region. Therefore, any normal Israeli, who cares more about the safety of their family than some higher purpose, does not move to Hebron. The result is that Hebron is a dangerous mix of Israeli idealogues who believe very firmly that they should be allowed to live there and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want their ethnic homogeny from 1929 back.
So when I said that settlements lead to people of extreme views living in close proximity to each other and that that is not “all sunshine and rainbows,” I mean places like Hebron. That place is a tinder box and the IDF expends a lot of resources to ensure that everyone there plays nicely.
The number of Israelis living in a permanent way in Hebron is about 800.
B. Ramot. Ramot is on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but it is across the Green Line, so the UN similarly considers it a “settlement.” There is no particularly pressing religious or historical reason for anyone to live in Ramot specifically. It has been uninhabited wilderness since at least Roman times, possibly Biblical times. That said, it is not impractical to live there at all. In any two state solution, it is widely understood that it would be part of a land swap and become internationally recognized Israeli territory. It directly connects to a larger Israeli municipality and the route between them does not pass through or even by any Arab village. The housing is a bit newer. Negative interactions between Israelis and Palestinians may well be more rare there, than in Tel Aviv.
Therefore, you don’t have to be an idealogue to live in Ramot. In fact, if you are just a regular guy who wants to work in the big city of Jerusalem but live in a quite suburb nearby, Ramot fits the bill nicely. Ramot still has the issue of adjusting the shape of a future Palestinian state, but not the concern of placing people with extreme views side by side.
The Israeli population of Ramot is about 50,000.
So why do people move to settlements? It depends on the settlement. But there are certainly a lot of reasons outside of the negative ones you mentioned to do so.
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"There seems to be an impression amongst some people here that the way settlements are formed is that settlers show up, shoot a Palestinian in the head, and take his house. I’m not sure how anyone imagines that happening regularly while the Palestinian population happily skyrockets and population distribution remains constant."
People keep repeating this argument as if it made any sense whatsoever. No, it doesn't make sense. There is no logical explanation for why the settlements would result in a reduction of the Palestinian population.
It's the same nonsensical idea that a significant level of starvation would lead to a decline in the population. It's equally nonsense. Several decades ago it was already taught to us in school that this is not how things work, and fairly often a population explodes despite living in extreme poverty.
Poverty, oppression, those things do not necessarily cause a decline in the population, and in reality they indeed very often don't.
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On December 31 2023 20:52 Magic Powers wrote:
"There seems to be an impression amongst some people here that the way settlements are formed is that settlers show up, shoot a Palestinian in the head, and take his house. I’m not sure how anyone imagines that happening regularly while the Palestinian population happily skyrockets and population distribution remains constant."
People keep repeating this argument as if it made any sense whatsoever. No, it doesn't make sense. There is no logical explanation for why the settlements would result in a reduction of the Palestinian population.
It's the same nonsensical idea that a significant level of starvation would lead to a decline in the population. It's equally nonsense. Several decades ago it was already taught to us in school that this is not how things work, and fairly often a population explodes despite living in extreme poverty.
Poverty, oppression, those things do not necessarily cause a decline in the population, and in reality they indeed very often don't.
Most of the time, population explodes because of extreme poverty, not despite extreme poverty.
There is a reason why subsaharian Africa is score above the rest if the world in terms of natality rate. « They can’t be oppressed, they are growing in number » is a very, very ignorant argument.
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On December 31 2023 18:29 Cerebrate1 wrote:
Both of these are things that are problematic about the occupation of Palestine in general, not about the settlements in particular, so they don't really have a ton of explaining power when it comes to the lack of rainbows.
-Security Checkpoints: A lot of the checkpoints are just border crossings between Israel proper and the region intended to be a future Palestinian state. Most people agree that nations are allowed to police their own borders, so I agree that there is nothing objectively problematic about those (they are just annoying if you have a job on the other side of the border). Some checkpoints are within the West Bank itself leading to settlements though. Those are obviously related to the existence of settlements.
-Palestinian state: You don't think that the settlements themselves have any effect on the borders or potential existence of a Palestinian state? You can have a minority view on that if you like, but I think it's safe to say that most of your compatriots do think the settlements impact a Palestinian state, so that's not really a question on me.
Notice that I said "in general", which is what you're describing there as well, we're agreeing. If there were no settlements, there would still be security checkpoints because there would still be a military occupation. If there were no settlements, there would still not be a Palestinian state because Israel refuses that and wants to claim this land for itself. It is correct that the settlements make it harder for a Palestinian state to potentially exist obviously, but that's the feature, not the bug. It's not that they're here and therefore, damn, it's harder to create a Palestinian state, it's that we want to make it harder to create a Palestinian state and, bly me, they're here.
There seems to be an impression amongst some people here that the way settlements are formed is that settlers show up, shoot a Palestinian in the head, and take his house. I’m not sure how anyone imagines that happening regularly while the Palestinian population happily skyrockets and population distribution remains constant.
I've already brought up Vaush in this thread in 2021 so I want to make it clear, I used to think he was pretty cool, no longer so. He's good on Palestine though, and I feel he had the best response to the argument about population increase, which was:
"Then why is the population increasing? First of all, walk into a river. Second of all, because people in shitty desperate ghettos have a lot of kids because there's no fucking video games, okay? The time you might spend breeding is spent gooning and playing video games, because that's what you have access to. But when you are in fucking the Gaza Strip, you have two fucking things you can do to pass time with, throw rocks at IDF soldiers and fuck. The population increasing? Like yeah, people in ghettos tend to fuck a lot, is that an indication of a higher quality of life? Jesus Christ. That reflexive answer, anyone who immediately deflects to that answer, like, massive Hitler particles right there. The idea of like, oh, here's fifty trillion fucking things that Israel is doing to block them in and ruin them and destroy their entire group, and you look at the statements of Israeli politicians that are exterminationist fundamentally, who are like "We're not changing anything, we're going to box them out, this is our land not their land", and then it's like, "Uh, well, they've had more babies, so, uh, how can you possibly say-"... fuck off."
In reality, settlements are basically acquired in one of three ways:
1. Ownership dispute: One guy has a deed to the land, but the other guy lives there or two guys have competing deeds from different time periods. These cases go to the courts. These are the most messy situations because no matter how it shakes out, someone is unhappy. Police action is sometimes necessary to enforce the ruling of the court. Wars get started over these types of disputes if they get too heated (like in 2021).
2. Home purchase: Israeli buys a house from a Palestinian and moves in. This probably shouldn’t be as complicated as it is, but it is known that Palestinians will kill any of their countrymen who dares sell a house to a Jew. When it happens, it therefore usually involves whisking the seller out of the country to the safety of some other part of the world. Understandably then, with the logistics and whatnot involved, this method is pretty uncommon now-a-days.
Both of the above methods usually lead to an Israeli living in an old apartment surrounded by neighbors who want to kill him. It takes a certain brand of crazy to live in one of those situations. So that, plus all the other hurdles to these happening in the first place, makes the number of settlers in either situation pretty small. When a journalist wants to film someone extreme, he interviews one of these guys.
3. New developments: Someone buys a large plot of undeveloped land, has a developer put up hundreds of housing units, and sells them. Obviously, this method allows a lot more people to move in than either of the other methods, so when you hear about the “number of people living in settlements” as any sort of large number, you can be confident that well over 90% came in with method 3.
Interesting context, thanks! Do you have any statistics on how often, in those territorial disputes, the Palestinian is deemed to be in the right, and how often the Israeli settler is deemed to be in the right? We could do some fun mathematics with that statistical information.
I feel like there's a 4 missing in your list there, though. I'm reading that for example, on October 12th, 2023, "dozens of Israelis turned up at the village [of Wadi al-Seeq] and gave [the residents] an hour to leave their land, among them settlers, soldiers and police." That feels like a 4, don't you think? To me it looks like it should be a 4. Especially since it is of course not an outlier, we've had numerous examples of this type of event happening, before and after October 7th.
With the lack of violence question settled
One of my favourite tricks of idealism: if I don't mention something, I have dealt with the question. Amazing.
That said, in a practical sense, actually doing so is a bit crazy. Hebron is now one of the major population centers for Palestinians, and I struggle to imagine any two state solution that doesn’t cede the entirety of the city over to a new Palestinian state. Plus, as can be imagined by the aforementioned massacre, Hebron’s local Muslim population is not the most moderate of the towns in the region. Therefore, any normal Israeli, who cares more about the safety of their family than some higher purpose, does not move to Hebron. The result is that Hebron is a dangerous mix of Israeli idealogues who believe very firmly that they should be allowed to live there and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want their ethnic homogeny from 1929 back.
I feel like you're misunderstanding extremism. Extremists are not defined by the fact that they are crazy, they're defined by the fact that they have extreme views. We have seen Daniella Weiss do various interviews recently, this is not a crazy person, this is an extremist person. Where does she live, is it Hebron, with the 800 crazy people? Nah, she lives in Kedumim, a place I've not heard of (actually I've heard of it because Bezalel Smotrich is also from there but that helps the flow of my argument, I'm not above doing that). Let's investigate Kedumim: Israel has between 1967 and 1993 confiscated land from three Palestinian villages to construct the various parts of the illegal settlement of Kedumim: 231 dunams from Kafr Qaddum, 163 dunams from Immatain, and 13 dunams from Jit. 4600 inhabitants. It's okay though, I'm sure an Israeli court determined that this was all fine.
Rightwing political extremists still have rational reasons why they do things. They are not truly defined by their extremism, although they are also extremists and will use violence to reach their ends, they're defined more by their radicalism, and specifically what their radical vision looks like. Their goals are insane because they're based on an idealized version of the world that has no connexion to material reality, but the ways in which they plan to achieve their goals are usually very logical. In general they tend to be more rational than the proportion of centrists who are apolitical, and will probably believe most of what they believe out of a desire to not do politics and follow the lead of the current government wherever it's going.
On December 31 2023 18:29 Cerebrate1 wrote:
[Ramot.]
Using a clever sleight of hand that you've used several times in this thread, you have spent the majority of your answer to my question of "Why are there so many extremists among the settler population that you felt it was worth talking about it when I asked why it's not all rainbows in the settlements?" painting a picture that is tangentially related, but absolutely unresponsive. Now the extremists are like the 800 in Hebron who are crazy, but then there are 50000 in Ramot who are not. You're now answering a made up person who said, "Every individual settler in the West Bank is a kahanist", and you're destroying that made up person's argument.
If there are 800 extremists but 50000 non-extremists in the settlement, then it is no longer true that the settlements are problematic because they attract a bunch of extremists and place them near the Palestinian population. It is true in the real world, because there are very many extremists among those settlers (not all), but we've still failed to discover why. Well, you have. I know why, of course.
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I'd also like to address the recurring argument that, because Israel has a significant minority Arab population, therefore Israel is not oppressing Palestinians.
This is tantamount to saying "I'm not racist because I have a black friend". It's a fallacy. If I go into other neighborhoods and beat black people to a bloody pulp, but in my own neighborhood I'm friends with black people, that somehow means I'm not a violent racist? No, what it actually means is that I'm two-faced. There are plenty of reasons why a racist could be nice to black people over here while ruining the lives of other black people over there. Likewise Israel can treat its own Arab population with (relative) kindness while disrespecting all the rights of other Arabs outside of Israel.
If the Arab population in Israel gained a majority in parliament, I guarantee you the Zionists would be shitting their pants, because they're racist supremacists who can't handle a loss of power. But they know this is never going to happen because they're ensuring through various policies that the lid is always kept well enough on the Israeli Arab population. Conveniently this allows them to pretend like they're being nice to Arabs, even though there's plenty of evidence that their own Arab population isn't being treated fairly either.
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On December 31 2023 22:50 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +There seems to be an impression amongst some people here that the way settlements are formed is that settlers show up, shoot a Palestinian in the head, and take his house. I’m not sure how anyone imagines that happening regularly while the Palestinian population happily skyrockets and population distribution remains constant. [Population increase does not disprove hardship]
For sure. But I was examining the possibility that settlements were formed by killing all the locals and taking their houses. I've seen estimates that there are as many as 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If each of them murdered a family, we would see that on a population graph no matter how many babies Palestinians were having. Even if someone wants to claim that it does happen, it can't happen all too often compared to the other methods.
But hey, maybe I made a strawman. Let's assume that when people say "the settlements were founded through violence" no one here thinks that means the locals were murdered so the settlers could take their houses. Perhaps they just mean that they were scared off, like the example you brought here:
I feel like there's a 4 missing in your list there, though. I'm reading that for example, on October 12th, 2023, "dozens of Israelis turned up at the village [of Wadi al-Seeq] and gave [the residents] an hour to leave their land, among them settlers, soldiers and police." That feels like a 4, don't you think? To me it looks like it should be a 4. Especially since it is of course not an outlier, we've had numerous examples of this type of event happening, before and after October 7th.
This situation sounds bad in any case, but my list was of ways that settlements are formed. Did the settlers move into the village of Wadi al-Seeq? Is that a settlement now? If not, it's not really a 4 on the list.
I think this theory for settlements in general is unlikely if you look at a map of where they are. If they were all built atop evacuated villages, then there would be regions without any Arab villages. Instead you see that most settlements are adjacent to Arab villages. Were there two villages side by side and they only kicked out the inhabitants of one? Did the villages just flee one valley over and feel safe rebuilding there? It fits the facts a lot better if you say the settlers built on an adjacent empty hill.
Meanwhile, without seeing your story in depth, I'd still venture to guess that something that happened on Oct 12th had something to do with the war. Maybe that village was found to be planning an attack and was in a strategically critical location. Seems like an odd time to be moving Israelis into settlements to me.
Show nested quote +
That said, in a practical sense, actually doing so is a bit crazy. Hebron is now one of the major population centers for Palestinians, and I struggle to imagine any two state solution that doesn’t cede the entirety of the city over to a new Palestinian state. Plus, as can be imagined by the aforementioned massacre, Hebron’s local Muslim population is not the most moderate of the towns in the region. Therefore, any normal Israeli, who cares more about the safety of their family than some higher purpose, does not move to Hebron. The result is that Hebron is a dangerous mix of Israeli idealogues who believe very firmly that they should be allowed to live there and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want their ethnic homogeny from 1929 back.
I feel like you're misunderstanding extremism. Extremists are not defined by the fact that they are crazy, they're defined by the fact that they have extreme views. We have seen Daniella Weiss do various interviews recently, this is not a crazy person, this is an extremist person. Where does she live, is it Hebron, with the 800 crazy people? Nah, she lives in Kedumim, a place I've not heard of (actually I've heard of it because Bezalel Smotrich is also from there but that helps the flow of my argument, I'm not above doing that).
The settlers of Hebron are an example of the extremism you are talking about. They believe that Jews should be allowed access to their holy sites and be able to live in a city they have for centuries despite that being extremely impractical. The danger just highlighted that there couldn't be many non-extremists in their number.
Let's investigate Kedumim: Israel has between 1967 and 1993 confiscated land from three Palestinian villages to construct the various parts of the illegal settlement of Kedumim: 231 dunams from Kafr Qaddum, 163 dunams from Immatain, and 13 dunams from Jit. 4600 inhabitants. It's okay though, I'm sure an Israeli court determined that this was all fine.
Were there houses on those dunams? If there are only two towns, you draw a line on the map between them and say all the empty land is "within the jurisdiction" of one of the towns. If you make a new town in the middle, you have to redraw those lines. You can debate the morality of redrawing said lines, but that doesn't remove it from my Method 3.
Using a clever sleight of hand that you've used several times in this thread, you have spent the majority of your answer to my question of "Why are there so many extremists among the settler population that you felt it was worth talking about it when I asked why it's not all rainbows in the settlements?" painting a picture that is tangentially related, but absolutely unresponsive. Now the extremists are like the 800 in Hebron who are crazy, but then there are 50000 in Ramot who are not. You're now answering a made up person who said, "Every individual settler in the West Bank is a kahanist", and you're destroying that made up person's argument.
I was indeed dealing with concerns brought up by several other posters within my post. Once I was writing an essay, may as well deal with everything, right? I apologize for any confusion that has brought.
If there are 800 extremists but 50000 non-extremists in the settlement, then it is no longer true that the settlements are problematic because they attract a bunch of extremists and place them near the Palestinian population. It is true in the real world, because there are very many extremists among those settlers (not all), but we've still failed to discover why. Well, you have. I know why, of course.
I did actually address the motives of settlers in both cases I mentioned though. The Ramot people just want to live in the 'burbs and don't really have an extremist problem. The Hebron people want religious freedom and the right to live where Jews have for centuries (despite basically requiring an IDF soldier each to keep them alive). Hebron is problematic and has the potential to trigger a wider war if a local confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians gets out of hand. We could examine other settlements and the motives of those if you want (it's not as though I'm lost and confused on the topic), but I've already sufficiently explained my original statements.
Edit: That is, my statements are not contradictory or lacking explanation. They may not mean exactly what you thought they meant when you first read them, in which case, I'm glad I was able to clarify. We seem to have additional disagreements, but I feel like each is it's own discussion and many of them are pretty minor differences between us.
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The world is way beyond the existence of "unclaimed land". Nebuchad and GH will no doubt jump that that is part of the problem, but every single square inch of land is owned by someone, even if they aren't actually doing anything with it. In the case of "empty" land between two villages it's probably grazing ground for goats, and there's some agreement between the villages about who gets to graze how many goats and when. Showing up and claiming "oh, there's nothing here but goats, I'll take it" breaks things, because now where do the goats graze? Either they don't and the villagers lose their livelihood, or a fight breaks out over the land. In both cases the Palestinian villagers almost certainly lose out and are forced to move somewhere else where they can make a living. Then someone notices that the village is now abandoned, rinse and repeat.
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On January 01 2024 08:08 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2024 07:48 Acrofales wrote:
The world is way beyond the existence of "unclaimed land". Nebuchad and GH will no doubt jump that that is part of the problem, but every single square inch of land is owned by someone, even if they aren't actually doing anything with it. In the case of "empty" land between two villages it's probably grazing ground for goats, and there's some agreement between the villages about who gets to graze how many goats and when. Showing up and claiming "oh, there's nothing here but goats, I'll take it" breaks things, because now where do the goats graze? Either they don't and the villagers lose their livelihood, or a fight breaks out over the land. In both cases the Palestinian villagers almost certainly lose out and are forced to move somewhere else where they can make a living. Then someone notices that the village is now abandoned, rinse and repeat. I think this is a good honest response to an actual problem with what is actually happening. And cerebrate had great level of detail on what the settlement and settlers really look like.
Thanks!
On January 01 2024 07:48 Acrofales wrote:
The world is way beyond the existence of "unclaimed land". Nebuchad and GH will no doubt jump that that is part of the problem, but every single square inch of land is owned by someone, even if they aren't actually doing anything with it. In the case of "empty" land between two villages it's probably grazing ground for goats, and there's some agreement between the villages about who gets to graze how many goats and when. Showing up and claiming "oh, there's nothing here but goats, I'll take it" breaks things, because now where do the goats graze? Either they don't and the villagers lose their livelihood, or a fight breaks out over the land. In both cases the Palestinian villagers almost certainly lose out and are forced to move somewhere else where they can make a living. Then someone notices that the village is now abandoned, rinse and repeat.
Goat grazing land is certainly a relevant point of concern. The "milk" from the phrase "Land of milk and honey" in the Bible actually refers to goat milk. People have been herding goats in the region from time immemorial, and those grazing lands shrink with every new building that humans put up.
That said, I can't imagine any villages emptying out because the local goat herder has less area to roam. It's not like everyone in a village has that same job.
Edit: Now that we brought it up, you may notice that many of the interviews with Palestinians about settlements are with goat herders. That's because they can feel the effects more acutely than most.
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Don't know why it's such a riddle to people how exactly Palestinians were displaced in the West bank. There was a war. A lot of them were blocked from returning. This is only one of the many reasons. Omitting that and other reasons while feigning ignorance about the potential reasons is simply dishonest, or shows a severe ignorance of the history.
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Cerebrate should not get praise for his posting in this thread. I can't judge mist of the statements he makes as I am not invested and grounded in this conflict as he is. What I can do is analyze his way of posting. And his way of posting is so obviously partisan that he should not be used as a local expert without having someone else to counter his opinion. It would be like asking a German why right-wing parties are on the rise and accept the answer "because of all the Muslims". Someone that is asked about the problems of settlements and answers with Palestinians are murderers and they genocided a city 95 years ago as relevant data points should not be considered a valuable contributor to this thread. He is patient and overexplaining his point of view so it seems like he is the adult in the room with the authority to educate the stupid masses, but all his posts are one sided to an extreme.
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On January 01 2024 19:56 Magic Powers wrote:
Don't know why it's such a riddle to people how exactly Palestinians were displaced in the West bank. There was a war. A lot of them were blocked from returning. This is only one of the many reasons. Omitting that and other reasons while feigning ignorance about the potential reasons is simply dishonest, or shows a severe ignorance of the history.
It’s a bit more of a systematic ethnic cleansing than a war, with several instances of jewish militias murdering whole villages, women and children included.
Actually the intervention of the Eisenhower administration, which threatened to take military action if the exactions didn’t stop at once, is one of the reason the Naqba didn’t turn into a full blown genocide. It’s hard to remember that before JFK, the US was not friendly whatsoever towards Israel.
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On January 01 2024 22:50 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2024 19:56 Magic Powers wrote:
Don't know why it's such a riddle to people how exactly Palestinians were displaced in the West bank. There was a war. A lot of them were blocked from returning. This is only one of the many reasons. Omitting that and other reasons while feigning ignorance about the potential reasons is simply dishonest, or shows a severe ignorance of the history. It’s a bit more of a systematic ethnic cleansing than a war, with several instances of jewish militias murdering whole villages, women and children included. Actually the intervention of the Eisenhower administration, which threatened to take military action if the exactions didn’t stop at once, is one of the reason the Naqba didn’t turn into a full blown genocide. It’s hard to remember that before JFK, the US was not friendly whatsoever towards Israel.
Right, there are a multitude of reasons for the displacement. There were historical spikes of aggression and there were also periods of more or less methodical violence and segregation. A few large bites, many small bites. It's not a single cause that brought on all the ethnic cleansing, it's a combination of many instances with different methods.
Fortifications of the settlements and building of roads additionally play a large part in it, as they create buffer zones from which continuous aggression and other infringements increase and solidify the gaps between each area. Acts of aggression are painted as defensive efforts. This was a key part of the discussion in this thread, where a few people such as Ren, Cerebrate and others kept trying to "explain" the zoning out of Palestinians as acts of "self-defense", when in reality the continuous encroachment is already an act of aggression that initiates the conflict, and thus "self-defense" is not a valid claim.
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On January 01 2024 21:19 Broetchenholer wrote:
Cerebrate should not get praise for his posting in this thread.
meh, He puts in some good effort and makes some interesting points.
On January 01 2024 21:19 Broetchenholer wrote: It would be like asking a German why right-wing parties are on the rise and accept the answer "because of all the Muslims".
the whole right-wing//left-wing paradigm is pretty BS at this point. I get labelled "left wing" because I don't want Canadian governments building free stadiums and arenas for professional basketball, hockey, and football teams. During some years "right wingers" are in favour of free trade agreements.. during other years "right wingers" are against free trade deals.
Also, everyone gets labelled as an "extremist" by some group of very loud people no matter how solid their reasoning is.
Hopefully, this Cerebrate guy keeps on posting.
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EPT
