Comments on: Bibi Just Wants To Build

By: Well, Now That’s Settled « Around The Sphere

Well, Now That’s Settled « Around The Sphere — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:46:32 +0000

[...] #9: Gershom Gorenberg and Gorenberg [...]

By: Unnatural Growth

Unnatural Growth — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:08:35 +0000

[...] RSS ← Bibi Just Wants To Build [...]

By: Clif

Clif — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:03:32 +0000

To President Obama – Thank you, thank you, thank you. It has been so long since I have been able to take pride in a president. Not only are you taking the right stand, but you are expressing yourself clearly. This is as refreshing as a cool drink of water in the desert after so many years of bumbling, smirking and general incompetence.

To former President Bush: Good work on clearing more brush on your ranch, it’s what you were always meant to do.

By: David

David — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:54:43 +0000

YBD:

“I see you are repeating the myth that building settlements supposedly makes peace harder. You know very well that the “solution everyone knows the terms of” is an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-67 lines in return for the Palestinians accepting no more than an limited “right of return’”. If such an offer were accepted by the Palestinians than the settlements would go. You know that. Barak at Camp David and Taba offered 94% of that and Olmert recently offered 98% of that. Both were turned down flat. So we see the settlements are not the problem.”

No: a failure of logic here, YBD. Even assuming that your “facts” were correct (e.g. Taba offered more than 94%, and it wasn’t “turned down flat”), all it would show is that settlements are not the ONLY problem. Which is certainly true, but does nothing to show that settlements are not ONE of the problems, indeed one of the biggest problems. Settlements are certainly making peace vastly harder to achieve, even if they are not the only obstacle on the route.

By: Uri Khein

Uri Khein — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:41:49 +0000

Y. Ben-David needs to check more than his typing. What Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians was ersatz statehood, the gift of continued Israeli hegemony, and their own village of Abu Dis as a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Because he’s an ignorant man; Ehud Barak actually believed he was being generous at Camp David; because the hasbara machine is as deftly honed as it is, much of the world continues to share Barak’s state of ignorance.
The return of another ignorant man to the premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu, has a somewhat different implication. An adept economic nerd, bookish, credulous, a gauche player on the world stage, a character entirely bereft of social wisdom, Netanyahu has the ability to achieve what the duplicitous Tzipi never could – destroy once and for all the thin opaque line of respectability that Shimon Peres et al have so painstakingly set in place like some kind of hasbara Bar Lev line. It is the loss of credibility on the international stage that will set of the domino affect – dominoes that will collapse not the settlements but the house that built them inevitably. The only recourse will be the reconstitution of all that lies between the Mediterranean and the Jordan – the common estate of Israelis and Palestinians that must needs become a mutual one. Not even the “youth of the hill” in drunken atavistic reverie can prevent that inevitable human outcome.

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:35:01 +0000

Oops, I meant to say “young people who are NOT deterred at seeing their work destroyed and yet go back and rebuild”. I really should check my typing before submitting!.

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:33:35 +0000

I see you are repeating the myth that building settlements supposedly makes peace harder. You know very well that the “solution everyone knows the terms of” is an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-67 lines in return for the Palestinians accepting no more than an limited “right of return’”. If such an offer were accepted by the Palestinians than the settlements would go. You know that. Barak at Camp David and Taba offered 94% of that and Olmert recently offered 98% of that. Both were turned down flat. So we see the settlements are not the problem.

Bibi is being stupid if he thinks getting rid of the “outposts” will save “natural growth” in the bigger settlements, because Obama has already said he doesn’t accept that either. And giving up outposts in order to get Obama’s help against the Iranian A-Bomb is so preposterous that it is an insult to everyone’s intelligence to even raise that.
Thus, I commend those young people who are deterred by seeing their work destroyed and get go back and rebuild. It is this love of Eretz Israel that kept the Jewish people alive throughout the dark years of the Exile and which made the modern rebirth of Israel possible.
NO COMPROMISE ON THE OUTPOSTS !