From: adam@endor.uucp (Adam Shostack)
Subject: Re: Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 16:48:46 GMT

In article <1992Dec10.130011.25255@bernina.ethz.ch> kessi@laplace.math.ethz.ch (Alain Kessi) writes:
>
>In article <1992Dec9.190129.2357@cs.brown.edu>, hm@cs.brown.edu (Harry Mamaysky) writes:

>If Israel is not in the business of territorial conflict, then why doesn't it
>just, like they were told by some UN resolution (was it 242, or is
>that another 
>one), get their armed forces out of the territories they occupied in 1967. The
>Israelis might not consider this a territorial conflict, but the Palestinians
>certainly do. They'd rather administer and rule themselves, even if there's no

Obviously, you're not very familiar with what 242 says.  It does not
suggest Israel should unilaterally withdraw from territory, it
suggests Israel should do so in exchange for a "termination of all
claims or states of beligerency."

Until its neighbors are willing to negotiate the second, Israel should
not be called on to unilaterally withdraw from territory in conquered
in a defensive war.

I'll post 242 in a minute.


>|> to. Israel's aggression in the territories consists of protecting its
>|> soldiers and citizens. Israel does not attack innocent Arab children
>|> in their schools while they study math. Israel only defends itslef

>Do they not? Well, the case you mention may be too specific to find
>an instance of. They do prevent school kids from going to school once
>in a while, though. 

Unfortunately, the Palestinians have attacked Israeli children in
school.  

>These are not killings I mentioned. That's because I think 
>that living under humiliating conditions is comparably annoying to
>the threat of getting killed one day. 

You've clearly never been in a situation where you could be randoomly
killed for your religion, or the color of your skin.  The annoyance is
not even in the same category.


>On top of that, of course, Palestinians do live under that 
>threat of getting killed. The fact is that because of the humiliating
>conditions 
>(plus historical reasons etc.) the Palestinians resent the Israeli
>presence, which 
>is bound to make the Israeli soldiers nervous, which again pushes them into
>awkward situations where they shoot innocent Palestinians. I would not want to
>be an Israeli soldier in the occupied territories, I can tell you. The only
>solution is for Israel to withdraw.

Which the Palestinians refused to talk about for 20 years.  They
wanted a bloody, violent solution.  A withdrawl doesn't happen
overnight, and it doesn't happen without first figuring out what will
take the place of Israeli provided services.  The only solution is to
sit down and talk, and thank god, that finally being done.


>Try for one minute to imagine a kid who does not have the chance to live in
>his own country, because some foreign military force is occupying it. His
>cousin got killed by special forces, his father and brothers all jailed
>several times, most of the times without charges. Now you're frustrated
>and would like the situation to change. What do you do? The most reasonable
>thing is to go to the military commander and ask him politely to refrain
>from doing such things in the future. He might listen to you. If your
>frustration has reached a certain level, though, you might not like the
>idea of talking with the guy that for you represents the reason for your
>frustration. You might just want him to know you resent him being there.
>Because the commander himself is not in sight, you might just throw stones
>at his soldiers. Is there no way you could sympathise with that? Just for
>one minute?

Larry Nivens first law is "Never throw shit at an armed man."  Its
very good advice, however angry you may be.

However, blaming the Israelis for his frustration is like blaming
Israel for the Iran-Iraq war.  His anger should be directed at the
Arab leaders who have been fighting Israel for 40 years, at the PLO
terrorists who convinced Israel that Arabs were heartless evil
maniacs, at his elders, for not trying to negotiate a settlement with
Israel.  Israel has been willing to talk, and his leaders have not.
Blaming Israel for that is ludicrous.



>|> If as you claim the Palestinians do not hate Jews and Israelis then I
>
>I do not believe that they hate Jews because they are Jews. There are some
>Palestinians who do have revisionist views of WWII history, but I believe
>that this is a (very unfortunate) side effect of their frustration with the
>present situation. The reason they do hate Israel though is because that
>country is occupying there land and preventing them from developing their

Why don't they take out some of that anger on the leaders who
prevented any solution for so long?

>own strategy, be it politically or economically. That does not mean that
>they hate all Israelis. They do have a problem with most of them because
>they have been in the military, possibly even in the occupied territories.
>Isn't that, in a way, understandable.

We don't hate all Israelis, jus those who are over 18.  And those who
might live to be 18, who would then be in the military.  To prevent us
from having to hate all those kids, we try to kill them.  But its only
so we can love them that we have to kill them.


>|> Anisa, Israel does not have these dark secret of which you speak.
>|> Israel is a small country which is trying to insure its survival in a

>I agree with you about the difficult situation of Israel. I do think, though,
>that since 1967 Israel has had some cards they could have played in
>negotiations 
>with Arab nations. Even though most of the time the Arab countries don't give
>a shit about the Palestinians, exchanging the territories for peace or some
>similar deal might have worked. It was worth a try, anyway.

Oh, you mean like Sinai?  Who was Israel going to negotiate with?
They did try, and no one was willing to talk.

>|> I think the Arabs should put down their stones and knives and guns and
>|> negotiate with Israel in hopes of reaching a situation in which our

>They are negotiating! And they gave in to all the preconditions Israel had.

Theyare negotiating, and three days ago, three soldiers were killed in
a drive by shooting.  How about a cease-fire durring negotiations?

>They had no one from the PLO (it's a joke that Israel still doesn't accept
>to negotiate with the PLO; Arafat is/was a terrorist, but then, so was
>Begin, right? was his cause nobler?), no one from occupied East Jerusalem

Begins actions, by large, were nobler.  He tried to avoid random
slaughter, while the PLO, and its associates, revel in it.

Adam Shostack 					adam@das.harvard.edu

What a terrible thing to have lost one's .sig.  Or not to have a .sig
at all because of elections.  How true that is.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast