Palestine Won Big at the U.N.

M52NICKERSON

Friday, November 30, 2012 6:19 PM

Thing is the US and Israel are not members of the ICC and are not under the courts jurisdiction.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
A warning to everyone, AURaptor is a known liar.
...and now a Fundie!
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=53359

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FREMDFIRMA

Friday, November 30, 2012 6:52 PM

Palestine has always BEEN a state, a nation, what have you, since at least 500BC fer cryin out loud - all this does is force the world to freakin ADMIT it.

It's an old, old, would-be-conquerers trick to claim the ground you want as yours and declare the native people to be squatters, we did it ourselves to the native americans, it was bullshit all the way back through history and it's bullshit now.

One part of the cultural conflict people don't understand is that the antagonism between Muslim and Jew is a relatively RECENT phenomenon, historically they'd been on cordial terms for a thousand years, often with Muslims shielding Jews from Christian persecution - what set it off is that albeit begrudingly, the displaced Jewish population from WWII was offered Sanctuary in 1948 and in an appalling affront to hospitality rights and responsibilities (taken much, MUCH more seriously within Muslim culture) then chose a path of conquest and bloodshed against their hosts.

That they were aided in this by Christians made it just that much worse, and if you were going to make a case for NOT recognizing a "state" it *should* logically go the other way - but regardless, such a betrayal of the most basic concepts of a society burns very deep, especially when supported and encouraged till the Guest eventually becomes an oppressor.

This, more than any other factor, is what gave rise to the radical elements of Islam gaining sufficient power and support to become a voice and force unto their own, one continually supported because they'd rather deal with the devil they know, than take shit from us - and those radical pricks are the ONLY known bulwark against aggression from other nations short of a Nuclear Deterrent, by now both those foreign powers and the radicals use each OTHER as an excuse, I know all too well, but in order to understand the problem you have to realize where it springs from and look at it objectively, or efforts to repair the situation are hopeless.

You remove the threat of that foreign aggression and oppression, you remove any REASON for them to keep those radicals around, and soon enough they will lose support as the locals get tired of their bullshit and start turfing the bastards - as has already begun to happen in areas of Afghanistan that we decided to pull out of and leave well the hell enough alone.
(although not for altruistic reasons, but because they had nothin left to take)

Another aspect of the problem is generational, there's many Palestinians who, frankly, suffer from some level of PTSD, who have never known a day without that oppression, who have watched their childhood friends and peers slaughtered en masse, and that doesn't go away so easily.
People that psychologically damaged are INCAPABLE of giving up the grudge, barring mental health care simply not available there, and will continue their own retaliation past all reason - rather than allowing this to be used as an excuse to continue hostilities, it should be treated as the sad casualty of the cycle of violence that it is, because that's the only way the chain is ever going to break.

On the other end, you have a certain cultural paranoid amongst Judiasm, the fear of being oppressed, which causes hypervigilant overreaction and escalates even the tinyest perceived threat into something that needs be utterly obliterated, something NOT helped by mandatory conscription and subsequent psychological conditioning within the IDF.

I personally don't think much of the UN, but given that we're in ZERO position to be any kind of honest broker here, having a neutral party able to step in and try to chill the situation is SOME kind of progress, although only time will tell.

In any fight, to truly stop it someone has to stop spilling blood, and yes sometimes that requires taking some hits, or more than some, but there's simply no other way which doesn't feed the cycle.

-Frem

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HKCAVALIER

Friday, November 30, 2012 6:59 PM

What, what? Not members of the ICC? But I thought that meant you were a rogue state!

...

Oh.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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PIRATENEWS

Friday, November 30, 2012 7:32 PM

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Niki2:
Israel and the U.S. being so determined NOT to have this vote (knowing how badly they'd lose) to me is one more indication of how the rest of the world isn't blinded by our love affair with Israel.

Quote:

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An instructive week after Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip tested Israel on the battlefield, the pacifist politicians who govern the West Bank notched a significant diplomatic win without much of a fight at all. Just before 5 p.m. New York time, the U.N. General Assembly voted 138 to 9 to bring Palestine aboard as a “nonmember state.” Another 41 nations abstained. Assured of passage by a whopping majority, Israel and the U.S. noted their objections mildly and mostly for the record, their effort to limit the fallout for the Jewish state itself limited in the wake of Gaza.

The status of “nonmember state” — emphasis on the “state” puts Palestine on the same level of diplomatic recognition as the Vatican, which is technically a sovereign entity.

The particular marker of sovereignty it sought from the U.N. is bureaucratic: access to international organizations, especially the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Experts on international law say that, armed with the mass diplomatic recognition of the 150 or so nations it counts as supporters, Palestine will be in a position to bring cases against Israel, which has occupied the land defined as Palestine — the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — since 1967.

The ICC, as it’s known, is on record as inclined to regard Israel’s more than 100 residential settlements on the West Bank as a crime of war. (The Jewish state pulled its settlers and soldiers out of Gaza in 2005 and argues that it no longer qualifies as its “occupier” under international law. Critics argue otherwise.) The physical presence of the settlements in other words would give Palestine a ready-made case to drag Israel before the court — or to threaten dragging it before the court. In the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the real power lies in the threat. But in his last U.N. address, in September, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas began to lay the foundation for charges based not on the settlements but on the violent behavior of some individual settlers, who attack Palestinian neighbors and vandalize property and mosques. Settler attacks have skyrocketed in the past two years, according to U.N. monitors, and now account for the majority of the political violence on the West Bank, despite the lingering popular impression of Palestinian terrorism dating back decades. On the West Bank, at least, the reality has changed.

“If you were in my place, what would you do?” Abbas asked TIME in a recent interview. “We will not use force against the settlers. I can use the court, but it’s better for the Israelis not to push us to go to the court. They should put an end to these acts committed by the settlers.” His address to the General Assembly in advance of the vote on Thursday made the stakes plain enough: Abbas blasted Israel for “the perpetration of war crimes” and “its contention that it is above international law.”

Abbas’ effort actually got an unlikely boost from Israel’s eight-day offensive in Gaza. By standing up to overwhelming Israeli military power for more than a week — and sending missiles toward major cities previously left untouched — the militants stirred a defiant pride and solidarity across the Palestinian community.

“The armed resistance of Hamas in Gaza gave the people hope and the impressions that this is the only way to fight against the ongoing occupation,” Majed Ladadwah, 46, told TIME 0n a Ramallah street, in the West Bank. “I can’t say they won,” said Ladadwah, speaking before Thursday’s balloting, “but they surely gained a lot of points for Hamas in the streets of Palestine.”

That logic was pointed out to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visited Jerusalem to coax him tow

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