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Obama Calls for Israel's Return to Pre-1967 Borders
Glyph
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/19/obama.israel.palestinians/index.html?hpt=T1
Not that this is any real change in American foreign policy, but now the plan is being officially endorsed by the Presidency. Already one can imagine the backlash not only from Israelis, Republicans and pro-Israel Jewish Americans but also a great many Christians throughout the United States. Thoughts?
Personally I don't think it's going to help his chances for re-election come next November. Seems like it might even hurt his campaign.
Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama on Thursday made official the long-held but rarely stated U.S. support for a future Palestinian state based on borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
In the past, the United States has unofficially backed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict based on the borders in place prior to the war 44 years ago in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula.
In a major speech Thursday, Obama became the first president to formally endorse the policy, but he also acknowledged the need for modifications through the negotiating process due to conditions on the ground.
Not that this is any real change in American foreign policy, but now the plan is being officially endorsed by the Presidency. Already one can imagine the backlash not only from Israelis, Republicans and pro-Israel Jewish Americans but also a great many Christians throughout the United States. Thoughts?
Personally I don't think it's going to help his chances for re-election come next November. Seems like it might even hurt his campaign.
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Well, that's my first thought.
My second thought is "it's a shame nothing is going to come of this because of all those piece-of-shit, racist, asshole segregationists who are going to fight this."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0511/Romney_Israel_under_the_bus.html?showall
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Obama has undermined Israel's ability to negotiate peace.
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That said, having such a significant rhetorical change without doing anything would be politically terrible as he'll get all the flak from the right for not backing every single terrible thing Israel does while also getting flak from the left for not implementing any changes that get tangible results. So I do think that he will take some reasonable measures.
It's timing is pretty much perfect though. This does line the US up more closely with Egypt's policy. The coming opening of the Gaza border and revitalisation of the peace talks, Hamas/Fatah reconciliation that Egypt has initiated are both positive tangible steps in the right direction (steps opposed by Israel of course) and puts the US in a position to really start pressuring Israel to stop the racist colonisation policies ahead of the coming Palestinian declaration of statehood.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians will be happy with the 1967 borders in any case, this is not going to result in any significant policy change on our or anyone else's parts, and everyone's getting worked up over very little.
You want something that really matters? Last week a shitload of Palestinian refugees marched at Israel without weapons. They do that enough, and fringe elements don't fuck it up, and they'll win like Gandhi did. The US government is not really capable of helping out the "Arab Spring" without fucking it up, and that includes this.
As far as internet and media buzz in the ME goes, that was incredibly popular. Almost everyone wants to see it happen again, and it will; only much bigger.
Uhh...
I don't see how making an unofficial policy official means he's throwing Israel under the bus, but previous administrations haven't. Judging by his comments, Mitt would've been too much of a wuss to do what Obama did today as well.
I'm glad he did this, but as mentioned earlier I'll be even happier if something tangible comes of it.
Considering the usual state of political positions on Israel in the US government, this does count as something tangible.
Theoretically, he undermined Israel's ability to make a ridiculous opening offer during negotiations, but any statement would do that and, in reality, nothing can stop pre-negotiation posturing.
Pretty much the president told Israel to sack it up and stop being douches.
Thus, the GOP reaction is sickening, if not surprising.
I sure do hope so.
A brief history of Israel's borders:
-The Holy Land that the Abrahamic religions like to cling to was a minor backwater held by the rarely-mentioned in history Ottoman Empire. The people living there had not really advanced beyond their tribal warring since the crusades, and local Jews and Muslims were the two main contenders, slaughtering each other Hatfield and McCoy style.
-The Ottoman Empire disintegrated for various reasons, and left territories with little intrinsic value (like a dried-up little religious tourist-trap) a murky morass of squatters, religious nuts, and absentee landlords.
-WW2 ended and the HORROR at what had been done to the Jews left people feeling guilty. Combined with zionism, this led to the construction of the State of Israel.
-The land was obtained through a variety of means, sometimes a government was extorted, sometimes a local squatter was paid, sometimes the land was declared abandoned and taken, sometimes it was taken by force, sometimes the absentee landlords in Turkey were paid, and sometimes some bedouin wandering through town was paid because he was willing to say, "Yeah, I own that land" before skipping town with the money. Quite often the same patch of land would be bought, stolen, and taken by force because multiple people claimed ownership of it.
-TL;DR of the above, the land was taken by a beauracratic clusterfark of nightmarish proportions.
-Many local Muslims left. Some were squatters driven out, some where legal owners driven out, and some simply ran for it because they were the Hatfields and a whole horde of European McCoys were coming over the horizon.
-The neighboring muslim countries took in these refugees but stuck them in out-of-the-way camps and ghettos because everybody in that part of the world is a tribalistic silly goose.
-Some fighting, terrorism, wars, etc. happened. Israel solidified its identity as it's own nation.
-The neighboring muslim countries, having long-since started blaming ALL their problems on jews prepared to invade Israel, again.
-A NATO-backed and well-trained Israeli army struck first and crushed 3 much larger countries' military forces handily (six days). They also snatched up some prime territory from their neighbors, quite a few refugee ghettos were included.
-more crap happened, Israel set up palestinian "territories" where the refugees had no political power but could live.
-More wars happened, Israel encroached on those territories for various reasons, terrorism continued, everyone claims the same land, everyone promises to stop building illegal settlements (israel) or performing terrorist attacks (palestinians) and then failing to do so.
-The whole thing boils down to several groups of dickheads alternately shooting each other and crying about how they're being shot at over land that has resources left but archaeologically-interesting ruins, sustainable farmland, and a climate that I'm told is really good if you like it warm and sunny (I prefer cool and dim myself).
The above is VERY simplified, there are a thousand sticking points and argued, "but THEY did this" or "but THOSE GUYS' crimes were justified by that." But basically it's a crapload of tribal geese duking it out of land that, if it were an Alpha Centauri map, would take massive terraforming just to sustain one or two low-value bases.
I don't envy their position, but the situation they find them in has allowed their more extreme elements to seize power.
It's really your medias fault for letting them get away with it though. The immediate reaction to a statement like that should be to question why they are distancing themselves from Bush's/the previous republican position. But instead the American media will no doubt spend the vast majority of today discussing the ramifications for Israel (while also failing to recognise the difference between the hard right Israeli government, the centrist parties and the Israeli activists who all have differing views on the issue) and largely ignore how appalling the current occupation is for Palestinian civilians.
Add to this the fact that the issues goalposts will now be moved to the right with what was bush's position "close to 1967 borders; 2 state solution" being the left goalpost and "let the Israeli's do whatever they want" being the right. With some nonexistent "middleground" in between, when really that is just the continuation of the status quo; endless occupation and settlement building fucking over the Palestinians. Which is of course what the right wants (or at least what it wants AIPAC and the fundies to believe they want).
Three years running.
Think that might have influenced this?
Most of the clips just weren't very substantive, though, so I wasn't really sure what he was on about. This is interesting, though.
So he's using a completely non-related, made-up "controversy" about some "America-hating" reverend who was actually talking about America having done some fucked up things and having some bad karma to endure to prove that Obama is anti-Israel? Brilliant.
This is a gross distortion of what happened.
Yes, at the end of World War II there were many people left recoiling in horror at what gifts the fascists in Germany had left the world to inherit. The euorpean Jewish community, however, was quite divided; the fanatical rabbis almost destroyed their own religion by trying to explain away the Holocaust in the immediate aftermath, claiming it as a punishment by their deity for exile from the Holy Land - many survivors within their congregations saw this kind of talk, finally, for the barbaric insanity that it was and simply left the religion, either staying where they were in Europe and trying to pick-up the pieces of whatever remained of their lives or moving to the west where many of their peers had fled.
The initial nucleus for Israel's formation was a misguided but secular one: create a state for the disenfranchised, where the Jewish people could forever remain protected from pogroms and anti-semitism. Zioism did not take center stage again until the Israeli-Arab conflict in the late 40s. After Israel won the war in 1967, then the proverbial ram's horn roared around the world.
This.
It just raised eyes because it's OBAMA who said it and the Republicans are literally the dumbest major party in any first world country in existence.
It will, like U.S. statements always, have no effect on Israel's position in the peace negotiations...which has always been an un-negotiable, unfair position that is going to result into nothing more then the two-state solution becoming impossible in the end. If it already hasn't.
EDIT: See?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13465133
My emotional responses towards Israel that are fed by how I was raised and what I was taught are battling the logical reactions and knowledge that I have and my rational mind.
And I just haven't really had the energy to sit and think about just exactly how I feel about it all, other than it's a mess and that i don't know how i feel.
I know that it's probably my next 'big step' in being a self-thinking person, but i have been doing mental gymnastics for years to just simply avoid it.
I know I'll have to figure it out someday.
I guess now is probably as good a time to start as any, right?
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=137497&page=49
I thought it was interesting that Obama spoke of a "contiguous" Palestinain state. As in one entity, not separated. Did he actually mean to say that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be linked, or did I mis-understand? Because that would be a change in official policy I believe, and I don't recall that being a normal demand either.
Where's the payoff here?
If you mean one state in which Jews and Arabs are both enfranchised, the reason it's off the table is demographics -- in a few generations the Jews in Israel would be totally outnumbered, defearing the entire purpose of a Jewish state. The Israelis would never go for it.
Now if you mean an apartheid state, well.
Ya, I was talking about the jewish/arab state.
The thing that makes me mad is that if anyone else said "We are not letting them vote because of their race/religion" they would be under sanctions in a week.
Actually, Palestinian population growth has been slowing down, and the prediction of a population switch is now seen as incorrect. The big problem is that any one state solution would be tantamount to one state annexing the other, and neither party would tolerate being ruled by the other's government.
I would also note that both Jews and Arabs inside Israel are enfranchised. The only disenfranchised party is Palestinian Arabs, who would probably be pretty pissed if the Israeli government declared them to be subjects.