Amun-Ra : Fight to the Death

Amun-Ra

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Does anybody remember why they Palestinians and the Israelis are fighting? Do they even remember why they are fighting? More importantly, does anyone really care?

These are not questions to be taken lightly although it seems that it no longer makes a difference. Unfortunately, the reason for the seemingly endless struggle may be locked away in hate-fogged memories and myopic views of revenge and retaliation, or it may have been forgotten altogether in the endless bloodshed and carnage.

It seems that the same conflict has been going on forever. Has there ever been peace in the Middle East? Even since Biblical times there has been constant turmoil and war with no end in sight. Why is peace an anathema to the Middle East? What ever the answer, it is long past due as that same unrest is now seeping into the rest of the world with Islamic extremist bent on bringing the world to war.

Perhaps, it is far past time to reevaluate of relationship with Israel and it seems that the United States is doing just that after the September 11 World Trade Center catastrophe. We have been one of the Israelis staunchest allies and they have been ours, but is it time to reevaluate the alliance? According to Israel, they don’t plan on having a solution at their expense and of course neither do their Arab neighbors.

Whatever the answer, we can no longer ignore the Middle East as it has come to our doorstep and knocked the door down after terrorists crashed passenger jets into the Pentagon and the World trade Center Towers last month. Still, why are these people fighting? What are they fighting for or against?

As a journalist I am tempted to research the subject, but instead I decided to rely on my feelings about it rather than dig back through the dusty news reels, yellowed newsclips and forgotten UN resolutions. I have lived with the fighting in the Middle East for as long as I can remember and I still don’t know for sure what it is about and at this point I really don’t care.

That is not a cavalier attitude speaking but rather a pragmatic view of a situation that has not changed for ages. It is the sarcastic spouting of a soul that thinks “just let them fight it out and whoever wins becomes our new best friends.” There have been attempts at peace and all have failed and the fighting has continued. Both sides are caught in a closed-loop of revenge, retaliation and reliving the past. No new ground has been broken, nor will it be broken as long as minds continue to live in the past with no thought for the future. At what point does man weary of war? Or, does the constant fighting make it seem that life is meant to be lived that way?

We cannot abandon our allies nor can we allow this fighting to continue endlessly until it spills over the brim and the whole world is at war. It is past time that we get the Israelis and the rest of the Middle East to stop and if that means angering the Israelis then let them be angry. If it means angering the Arabs states, let them be angry, but let them stop fighting and start thinking about moving into the 21st century.

A real effort needs to be made to resolve the real issues that afflict most of the Middle East. We have stood idly by and done nothing for so long as it stayed in the Middle East. That time is past and if we don’t want to become embroiled in the same endless war, it is time we stepped on a few toes, bent a few stiff backs and made the peace table a number one priority—or—give everyone guns and bombs and let them fight until there is no one standing, then we will declare peace.

Exasperated

:mad:
 
Amun-Ra

Amun_ra, before September 11, I can honestly say I wasn't interested in matters of the middle east, I would see it on the
news, but I never bothered to find out why.
Now, with everything happening and the different viewpoints
concerning the United States policies and Israel, I must admit
it began to peak my interest. Yes, I think it is very important that
we know whats going on over there, because it may in the long run impact us more then even... we know. It is another example of people being oppressed by a political bully, in a country that doesn't even belong to them.
When I checked out this thread, I decided to do a little research of my own, to try to get an idea of whats behind all the animosity.
It was a very interesting read. Unfortunately, I couldn't get all the information, but I did get the most important. I would like to share
it with you and others.




The conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews
is a modern phenomenon, which began around the turn
of the 20th century. Although, these two groups have different religions (Palestinians include Muslim, Christian
and Druze), religious differences are not the cause of the
conflict......it is the struggle over the land. Until 1948, the area that both groups claimed was known internationally
as Palestine. Following the war of 1948-1949, this land
was divided into three parts.the state of Israel, the West
Bank ( of the Jordan River) and the Gaza strip.

Jewish claims to this land are based on the biblical promise
to Abraham and his decendants, on the fact that this was the historical site of Israel and on the Jews need for haven from European anti-Semitism. The Palestinian Arabs claims to the land are based on continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years and the fact that they represent the demographic majority. The Arabs maintained that since they are the decendants of Abraham's son Ishmael, then the promise also includes them as well.
They felt they should not have to forfeit their land for injustices put upon the Jews by the Europeans. The Jews wanted a land where they could be identified as a race. They chose Palestine as the site of Jewish origin. The Zionist movement began in 1882
with the first wave of European Jewish immigration to Palestine.

In short, Jews took occupation over Palestine. In 1948,
( there was a lot of info between, I just got the jist of it)British evacuated Palestine, and Zionist leaders proclaimed the state as Israel. Neighboring Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq) then invaded Israel claiming to "save" Palestine from the Zionist.

In fact, the Arab rulers had territorial designs on Palestine and were no more anxious to see a Palestinian Arab state emerge than the Zionist. In June of 1948, The Arab-Israel war was in doubt, Czechoslovakia shipped arms to Israel and with the weapons superiority gain control over the territories, Israel and beyond the state. In 1949, the war between Israel and the Arabs states ended with the signing of an armistice agreement. The country once known as Palestine was now
divided into three parts, each under separate political control. The State of Israel encompassed over 77 percent
of the territory. Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the
hill country of central Palestine (The West Bank)
Egypt took control of the coastal plain around the city
of Gaza (the Gaza Strip). The Palestinian Arab state envision by the Un partition plan was never establish.
As a result of the fighting in Palestine/Israel between 1947
and 1949 over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees.
After the Israeli occupation, 75% of refugees were expelled through Israeli military actions, psychological campaigns
aimed at frightening Arabs into leaving, and direct
expulsions. There are well-documents cases of massacres and atrocities that led to large-scale flight.
The most infamous atrocity occurred in Deir Yasin a village
near Jerusalem, where estimates of the number of Arab
residents killed in cold blood by Israeli fights range from about 125 to over 250.

Amun-ra, as I typed this, I was soooo angry, because it has been this kind of devastation, that these people have wreaked
all over this world on people of color. This is what I mean about educating ourselves, we cannot rely on the US media
to be honest with whats really going on. I have heard bits and pieces of what this war was all about basically from Israel's perspective.

The standpoint of the Palestinian, some experts have come on
and spoke of the atrocities that Israel inflicts on Palestinians
and it is a drop in the bucket compared to what these people
are dealing with in a land that belongs to them. Its the
same old story of taking something that doesn't belong
to them and wanting the whole pie, at the expense of the
indigenous inhabitants. It was done to the Aborigine, the
American Indian, The South American Aztecs were completely eliminated. We should not be so comfortable to realize, that it is (in a much smaller scale) and could happen to us. As usual, the United states is backing Israel in this interest........and thats why, they are hated.

Not to be alarming, but I think that we have so become accustom to the lies, all of us...black and white...that we don't even search
for the deeper reasoning.....I wouldn't be surprise, if we delve deeper to find that those countries were all a part of Africa...millions of years ago.... so we could be ancestrally related. They are being oppressed by the same regime as we are and have been. To not see that is a oversight and the best policy used
for division.........through that division, who can really see the truth, until you stop and think....to begin peeling off the layers of
deception to see the naked and rotten truth.


If you are interested in reading the complete story...

the link is www.merip.org/palestine-israel_primer/intro-pal-isr-primer.html

I think you will find it interesting, informative and sad.



Epiphany :heart:
 
In 1947 the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution to partition the disputed region of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Arabs rejected the plan but Jews accepted it, declaring the independent state of Israel in 1948. War broke out between Arabs and Jews after the creation of Israel. When the fighting ended in 1949, Israel had gained more land than had been allocated to it by the UN resolution. After armistice agreements, Egypt (which had fought on the side of the Palestinians) retained control of the Gaza Strip (an area just north of Egypt), and Jordan (also a Palestinian ally) kept the West Bank, a territory west of the Jordan River that it annexed in 1950. Palestinians in the West Bank thus became Jordanian citizens, and those who stayed in Israel eventually became Israeli citizens. Palestinians who stayed in the Gaza Strip or fled to other countries became refugees.

In June 1964 the PLO was founded at a summit meeting of the Arab League, an association of Arab-speaking countries, in Jerusalem. The PLO was established to provide a more legitimate and organized channel for Palestinian nationalism than was offered by independent Palestinian guerrilla groups. Later some of these groups would join the PLO, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Saiqa, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Professional, labor, and student groups also joined the PLO, but over time the fedayeen proved dominant. The PLO was dedicated to organizing Palestinian people “to recover their usurped homes” and, according to its charter, to replacing Israel with a secular Palestinian state. The PLO's fedayeen were divided between those who, like Fatah, thought these goals should be achieved by Palestinians only and others who, like the PFLP, believed Arabs from all parts of the Middle East should unite to liberate Palestine.

In its early years the PLO was based mostly in Jordan, and it sponsored many guerrilla and terrorist acts both in Israel and internationally. Although proven otherwise, the PLO denied, however, taking part in some dramatic terrorist raids by Arab fedayeen, such the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. In March 1968 PLO fedayeen won fame by repelling an Israeli attack on the PLO's Jordanian bases, less than a year after Arabs had suffered a devastating defeat by losing control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights region of Syria to Israel during the Six-Day War. In 1969 Yasir Arafat, the leader of Fatah, was elected chairman of the PLO. PLO raids into Israel drew increasingly devastating reprisals on Jordan, and by late 1970 Jordan and the PLO entered a short, bloody war, after which most PLO fedayeen fled to Lebanon. As in Jordan, the PLO soon became a state within a state, raiding Israel and heightening tensions that culminated in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Syria, originally supportive of the PLO, feared that a victory by Lebanon's radical Muslim left (with whom the PLO was allied) would provoke Israel and lead to a full-scale Arab-Israeli war. Wanting to prevent regional warfare, Syria invaded Lebanon in 1976, attacking the Muslim-PLO forces. As a result, the PLO was often on the defensive throughout the late 1970s.

The PLO did, however, achieve several diplomatic victories. In 1974 Arab nations at an Arab League summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco, recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Previously the Arab countries had considered themselves the Palestinians' representatives. In another important victory, in December 1974 Arafat addressed the United Nations (UN), where the PLO was granted status as an observer despite the objections of Israel.

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to stop PLO raids across its northern border. The invasion severely weakened the PLO, intensified splits among its factions, and forced some 12,000 PLO members in Beirut to flee once more, this time to several Arab countries. PLO members loyal to Arafat made their headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, where an Israeli bombing raid severely damaged the main buildings in October 1985. After the 1982 invasion, several thousand Palestinians, including members of the PLO, stayed in Lebanon in refugee camps. After Israel withdrew most of its forces from Lebanon in 1985, some of these Palestinian refugees and other Palestinians who returned to Lebanon tried to reestablish a foothold for the PLO there. These efforts led to several confrontations between the PLO and Muslim forces loyal to Syria.

In 1987 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip began a spontaneous uprising, known as the intifada, against Israeli occupation. The PLO and other groups supported the uprising, which quickly spread to the West Bank. At the same time several events led the PLO to reverse its call for the end of Israel. First, the United States, which had led several peace efforts in the Middle East, reiterated that before it would include the PLO in peace talks, the PLO would have to accept Israel's existence and renounce terrorism. Second, in 1988 Jordan's King Hussein relinquished to the PLO all claims to the West Bank, which Jordan had lost to Israel in 1967. Arafat seized the opportunity to call for a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Jerusalem (a city that straddles the border between the West Bank and Israel). Arafat did not call for a Palestinian state in Israel itself, which was seen as an important shift in PLO objectives. In November 1988 the PLO's assembly, the Palestine National Council, officially recognized the sovereignty of Israel, and the following month Arafat renounced the use of terrorism, in keeping with U.S. demands. The United States and the PLO could thus begin direct “diplomatic dialogue,” the first step toward a negotiated settlement with Israel and the first step toward Palestinian self-rule. In the meantime, the intifada had intensified. On the one hand, this created pressure for Israel to negotiate with the PLO. On the other, the clear demonstration of Palestinian unrest gave several fundamentalist Islamic groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a powerful position from which to accuse Arafat of making too many concessions.

In early 1991 the PLO's relations with the United States and pro-Western Arab states deteriorated when Arafat publicly supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. When a U.S.-led international coalition defeated Iraq, the PLO lost some of its bargaining power. Arab states in the Persian Gulf region withdrew financial support for the PLO and deported many Palestinians as punishment for Arafat's support of Iraq, causing severe financial difficulties for thousands of individual Palestinians and the PLO. In July 1991 the PLO's negotiating position was further weakened when the Lebanese army, backed by Syria, forced the PLO to abandon its strongholds in southern Lebanon near Israel's border. Secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel began in late 1992 following an Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid, Spain, in 1991 and during further talks in Washington, D.C. In January 1993 Israel, in a major policy shift of its own, repealed its ban on official contact with the PLO.

Several months later Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin concluded a surprise accord. Signed in Washington, D.C., in September 1993, this accord, known as the Declaration of Principles, opened the way for limited Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. The declaration also established the interim Palestinian National Authority, headed by Arafat and staffed with many PLO members, to administer self-rule. Many Palestinian nationalists objected to the PLO's recognition of and negotiations with Israel. In November 1994 the police force of the PNA clashed with and killed at least 12 Muslim fundamentalists who were protesting further talks with Israel. Fundamentalists responded with several terrorist actions against Israel over the next several months, to which Arafat responded by arresting numerous suspected terrorists.

In September 1995 the PLO signed a second agreement with Israel extending Palestinian self-rule to almost all Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank. The agreement also provided for the PA's first elections, which were held in January 1996. Arafat was elected president by a wide margin; Hamas and other fundamentalist groups boycotted the elections. In April 1996 Arafat led the Palestine National Council in voting to abolish the sections of the PLO's charter calling for Israel's destruction. However, removal of these sections was delayed after peace negotiations stalled following Benjamin Netanyahu's election as Israel's prime minister in May. Netanyahu's call for fewer compromises with the Palestinians—as well as continued Palestinian terrorist attacks, and tensions surrounding continued Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories—caused a drastic slowdown in negotiations over implementation of the Declaration of Principles and its subsequent agreements.

In July 1998 the UN, over the objections of Israel and the United States, voted by a wide margin to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation, known officially as Palestine since 1988. Seen largely as a symbolic step toward statehood, the new status allows the Palestinians to participate in UN General Assembly debate and to cosponsor draft resolutions on Middle East issues. In December, as part of an accord providing for further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank in return for Palestinian security guarantees, the Palestinian National Council removed from its charter the sections calling for Israel's destruction. Nevertheless, that same month Israel froze the implementation of the accord, claiming that the Palestinians had not met other conditions of the accord.

Epiphany, you gave some informative works there but you made a statement that is incorrect. The whole premise of this battle is not just over land but over land promised in part to religious beliefs. Therefore, religious differences was the root of the problem. The land that was intially discussed was land promised to the Children of Israel in the Old Testament. This had been an ongoing battle for centuries but it was not until the statehood of israel was established that it became more of a political struggle. The problem today is simple. The United Nations was in support of making Palestin ad statehood which would remove the Israeli's from the land they considered promised the them. The U.S. was very careful in it's approach to this situation for it doesn't want to confuse the people surrounding it. But since 9/11/01, President Bush has admitted that he was in support of Palestine reciveing statehood. This has caused a rift in the political process...
 

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