palestine is so right in this situation. the isreali's just rape their culture and want to commit genocide against them. the last leader of isreal, ahud barak said that the palestinians have no right to exist and that thy should be allowed to kick them out. if this isn't racist i dont know what is . the palestians are defending themselves but they have no weapons. they have to use bombs and they have to kill innocents because the isreali soldiers kill them if they get too close to them. i don't understand why bush and marine want to support the genocidal jews .


ta ta for now (ttfn)-

Are you Christian? If you are then I don't understand how you can denounce the Jews. They are the chosen people, not the Christians. We, Christians, are looked on as believer in the eyes of God, but we are not the chosen people. Jews are not equivilent to Christians in the bible they are two very distinct people. There were Christians in those days, contrary to what you have said. They were the people who believed that Jesus is the Messiah. If you look at the bible, even revelation(in the New Testament) it says that the Jews, the chosen people, will be given a special place when the end days come to redeem them for standing up for the law of the old testement. The old testement is still part of the bible and cannot be ignored. The bible says that the Jews deserve the land that they have so if you believe in the bible then you MUST support the Isrealis and the Jews in their continuing quest for a homeland.

"Freedom is not Free"-Korean War Memorial, Washington DC.

hey, whoever you are, "againstwar," you have no f***ing idea of what you are talking about!! Jesus did not EMBRACE christianity as an extention of a love of G*d, Jesus turned his back on the Jews. HIS MOTHER. HIS FATHER (Joseph). HIS G*D. MY G*d. MY people. You were supposed to be answering the question "is one side really right or wrong?" Instead, you are babbling about things which have no consequence to the world, just other christians. Oh, by the way, great job parroting exactly what your minister and parents say, instead of thinking for yourself. You know, I was going to make my reply super quick until I read what you said about Jews. F*** you!! No side is "right" or "wrong", per se, because both sides have made mistakes. But Israel belongs to the Jews. And the only people who would say otherwise are either liars, or just plain stupid.

[I just noticed that this was missing from my arguments(or rather not well presented in my posts)]

ever noticed that the land which Moses refered to as "promised land" is located on the exact place where Jesus was born & on which he walked?
The promised land is actually promised for christians, it's where Jesus christ was sent. Back then, at the time of Moses Christians were jews (since those were the only ppl who believed in a one & unique God.)
For us the new testament follows the old & explains it.
For jews the savior didn't come yet... therefore the "promised land" & the "chosen people" is taken literally.
Do you really think that God would prefer a population on another? When you chose God, God choses you. This is why the jews are the "chosen ppl".. but this also means that anyone who choses to follow the lord now would be chosen too. Don't forget that jews are christian's ancesters.
As christians we believe in the bible consisting of both new & old testament.
As jews they only have the old testament (in which we believe) but which is still incomplete since their savior didn't come yet.

This is the way a christian believer would understand the Bible. It's not the same for jews though (it's sad to see that some christians completely neglect the new testament on this messageboard.)

PS: I respect everyone's opinion on this subject, & I hope I didn't offend anyone but I had to post this.

No, peace will not happen soon. In all truth, the conflict has only seriously erupted since the Zionist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century; and even then it wasn't untill about 70 years ago that there was any significant conflict. For most of their collective existence these two have coexisted rather peacefully. However, land and heritage means a lot to people. Borders create wars. If we didn't trow up arbitrary lies enforced by guns and governments there wouldn't be a conflict.

I think everyone is wrong in this matter. I know we will most likely never achieve global peace in this life time but its still something to strive for.

Liberalhunk, you say that the facts are against the pro-Israeli supporters. I'd like to see some of these facts, and though I searched you lovely post with a fine toothed comb, I found that...oh dear... there were none. Just blanket statements with no explanation or fact. If you intend to convince anyone that you are correct you'd better be more intelligent with what you post next time.

Againstwar, I must congratulate you on your finding so much background material to support your point, even though I disagree vehemently. Sometime I'll post an argument.

Palestine is in the right. Wouldn't you attack the blood hungry state of Israel if they ruined your life, slaughtered your ancestors and vioalted your rights? The facts are against you Marine and Conservative . You refuse to see them . Keep up the good work Kahira and Againstwar. Israel has no right to exsits .

Ahmen proudconservative.

Shorten your arguments into something you understand then post the ones that have to do with this discussion. Read what you wrote and what we wrote. No more comments.

Againstwar, stop wasting space.

proud, read what you write & what we wrote. No more comments.

You state that theed States weapons should be far more effective. I would call about 80% effectivenes pretty good. Not as much as suicide bombers but way more effective huh?

Against....no one has he time to read your incoherent babble, I wonder why you spend the time to post it.

Kahira, we watched a special documentary off of TV in which they stated that they lied. If you want me to send you a copy I will, oh no it is not biased, nor has our media been towards Israelis. All that is in the papers is "poor hungr innocent" palestinias whom picked a fight which it was not ready for, not my problem.
Also religion is what this war is abou, if you do not acknowledge this then you are blind.

I do not care what marine says...I AM NOT MARINE nor do I read/care about everything he posts.

I guess all against Palestine and its HOLY JIHAD citizens are ignorat, liers or pathtic. Sounds like god arguments to me.

"The abstention from formulating a constitution was no accident. The massive expropriation of lands and other properties from those Arabs who fled the country as a result of the War of Independence and of those who remained but were declared absent, as well as the confiscation of large tracts of land from Arab villages who did not flee, and the laws passed to legalize those acts - all this would have necessarily been declared unconstitutional, null and void, by the Supreme Court, being expressly discriminatory against one part of the citizenry, whereas a democratic constitution obliges the state to treat all of its citizens equally." Israeli author, Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"


"It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier 'territorial compromise', namely in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised 'national home for the Jewish people,'...a decision that is difficult to criticize in light of the fact that 'the number of Jews living there permanently in 1921 has reliably been estimated at two, or according to some authorities, three persons.'" Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."


"Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine was neither historical nor a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic 'mysticism' of 'blood and soil' and the Romantic 'cult' of 'death, heroes and graves'... "The claim of Jewish 'homelessness is founded on a cluster of assumptions that both negates the liberal idea of citizenship and duplicates the anti-Semitic one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic nation. In a word, the Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid as the anti-Semitic case for an ethnic state that marginalizes Jews." Professor Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict,"


"The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention's provision that certain violations of humanitarian law are 'grave breaches' meriting criminal punishment for perpetrators, found a number of Israel's practices during the uprising [the intifada] to constitute 'war crimes.' It included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees and their subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition of collective punishment on towns, villages and camps; the administrative detention of thousands of Palestinians; the expulsion of Palestinian citizens; the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and demolition of Palestinian houses." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."


"The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard...Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents...Many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied Palestine - the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.


"The first UN General Assembly resolution--Number 194- affirming the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has negated the possibility of return... [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."


"Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was 'self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly concede that the Arab population fled as a result of Israeli action - whether directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to the panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in Arab population centers throughout Palestine. However, even though the historical record has been grudgingly set straight, the Israeli establishment still refused to accept moral or political responsibility for the refugee problem it- or its predecessors - actively created." Peretz Kidron,



"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion, quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress.

"Since their occupation of the Palestinian territories 30 years ago, and up to this day, the Israeli authorities have been waging a quiet war--- a land war--- against the Palestinian population there. To the international
community, this war is less well-known than the violent acts committed by the Israeli forces against the Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to the occupation, particularly during the years of the Intifada.

The strategic aim of this land war is to systematically dispossess the Palestinians of their property, displace them from their land, replace them exclusively with Jews and turn the Palestinians into a people without a land. This is a continuation of the Jewish policy that was carried out in the 1920s and 1930s in Palestine, under the slogan "Dunum after dunum" of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements. During and after the 1948 war, the Jewish armed forces, as well as the underground terrorist organizations, evicted more than 750,000 Christian and Muslim Palestinians from their
homes and lands and, in the process, gained control of over 78 percent of historic Palestine. Between 1948 and 1950, the newly created Jewish
state destroyed over 400 Palestinian depopulated villages and built some 161 Jewish settlements over their ruins and on the lands of the uprooted
Palestinians.1


From 1950 to 1967, it established an additional 185 Jewish settlements
on the lands of the dispossessed Palestinians in order to preempt the possibility
of their return to their property, as called for by United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948.2 This resolution, with which
Israel refuses to comply, required the Jewish state to permit the return
of Palestinians to their land and property or to compensate those who did
not wish to do so.



Land War against the Palestinians


In the aftermath of the 1967 war, Israel occupied the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine, namely the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
and the Gaza Strip. Soon thereafter, during June of that same year, Israel launched its land war against the Palestinians by destroying three
villages--- Beit Nuba, Yalu and ?Imwas--- located west of the town of Ramallah in the Latrun salient. A total of over 8,000 villagers were displaced and over 24,000 dunums (4 dunums equal 1 acre or 1,000 sq. meters) of cultivated
land belonging to these three villages were seized. Subsequently, the Jewish settlement of Mevo Horon was established over the ruins of one of the villages, and Canada Park (funded by Jewish Canadian contributions) was built over
the ruins of ?Imwas.


From 1950 to 1967, Israel established an additional 185 Jewish settlements on the lands of the dispossessed Palestinians in order to preempt the possibility of their return to their property, as called for by United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948


In July and August of 1967, three more Palestinian communities in Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley were destroyed, namely, Makhrouk, el-Ajajreh and Sattariyeh. Today, the Jewish settlement of Masoa is built on the site of the destroyed village of Ajajreh and its lands are being exploited by the Jewish settlers
there. In the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel destroyed over 135 homes of what was known as the Moroccan Quarter, in order to make way for a plaza in front of the Wailing Wall. Additionally, 30 acres of land were seized for the expansion of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Post-1967 Israeli Strategies


From 1967 to 1977, under the successive Labor governments, Israel?s expansionist policy was based on the Allon Plan (named after Israel?s then- foreign minister [1967] Yigal Allon). The plan calls for the annexation to Israel and the settlement of the following areas of the West Bank:


Occupied East Jerusalem and its immediate environs. The municipal boundaries were expanded to three times the area of the pre-1967 East
Jerusalem Municipality.

A "security belt," approximately two kilometers wide, running the length of the Jordan River Valley, along the eastern borders of the West Bank.


During this decade, land confiscation and seizure of Palestinian property by the various Labor governments for the purpose of settlement building were focused mainly on Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. Land was also seized for the cluster of settlements in the Beit Ummar area and for the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron.


With the advent, in 1977, of the right-wing Likud government in Israel, the land war against the Palestinians was expanded to include all the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This was based on the Likud?s ideological
claim that the West Bank and Gaza are the liberated lands of the Jewish people and that these areas had to be settled in order to become part of what they call "Greater Israel." To implement this policy, the Likud government
began seizing Palestinian property for the establishment of Jewish settlements between and around the Palestinian populated areas in the West Bank highlands.
The purpose was to fragment the West Bank in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, having territorial and political continuity.


A Variety of Tactics


Israel has employed a variety of pretexts in order to seize Palestinian private lands for Jewish settlements in the territories:


In East Jerusalem which was annexed to Israel following the 1967 war and, hence, subjected to Israeli law, Palestinian property is seized for
"public purposes" in accordance with those laws. The "public" means the Jewish public and excludes the indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinians
of Jerusalem; and the "purpose" is the building of private apartments in fortress-like settlements. Until they see bulldozers destroying their land, many owners are not aware that their property has been seized. Since
June 1967, 25,000 dunums of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the annexed areas of East Jerusalem have been confiscated through the use of this method. The market value of this seized property is estimated at over US $1 billion, which shows that land expropriation not only dispossesses the Palestinians, but also impoverishes them.

A summary of the lands seized in annexed Arab East Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements built on this property is given below:


In January and April of 1968, 4,800 dunums in the heart of East Jerusalem were confiscated from Palestinians, mostly in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for the building of the first Jewish residential settlements of French Hill, Ramat
Eshkol and their extensions. In addition, an industrial park was established in Qalandiya, northwest of the Jerusalem expanded municipal borders, on property owned by Palestinians from Qalandiya and Rafat.


In August 1970, 13,000
dunums of land were seized for the building of four large fortress-like settlements. These include Ramot on Beit Iksa and Beit Hanina land; Gilo on land belonging to residents of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Safafa and Sharafat; East Talpiyot on Sur Baher land; and Neve Ya?acov on land owned by Beit Hanina residents.

In March 1980, 4,500 dunums
were seized for the construction of the Pisgat Ze?ev settlement on land owned by villagers in Beit Hanina, Hizma and Anata. This fortress settlement
is presently expanding very rapidly and is expected to become the largest of the Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, with over 50,000 settlers.

In April 1991, 1,300 dunums
were seized from private land owners from Beit Sahour and Sur Baher for the projected settlement on Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa) in the Bethlehem
area annexed to Jerusalem in 1967. In May 1997, Binyamin Netanyahu?s right-wing government ordered the construction of a new settlement on this site. The action, in violation of the Oslo Accords, brought the peace process to
a halt.

In April 1992, 2,000 additional
dunums were seized for the construction of another new settlement called reches Shu?fat on land belonging to owners from Shu?fat.


In short, approximately one-third of the land of the annexed East Jerusalem area was seized for the construction of exclusively Jewish settlements. These are now encircling the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem,
hindering them from building or expanding their own neighborhoods.3


The 'State-Land' Pretext


In the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were governedby military law, the occupation authorities used security as a pretext
for land-grabbing. Property would often be fenced off and then transferred for civilian Jewish settlements.


In the 1980s, however, the Israeli authorities changed tactics and began seizing Palestinian property by designating certain areas as "state land" in accordance with an old Ottoman law. The change came about after Palestinians
successfully challenged the security excuse in the Israeli High Court when private land from the village of Rujib near the city of Nablus was seized for the building of the Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh. Exceptionally, the High Court ruled that there was no security justification for the establishment of this Jewish settlement on private Palestinian property, as it was located next to a large Israeli military base. As a result, the Court ordered the dismantlement of the settlement.4


In the wake of the Elon Moreh case, to be able to seize further Palestinian land, Israel started implementing an 1850 Ottoman law. This law states
that any plot of land which is not cultivated for three consecutive years, or has less than 50 percent of its area cultivated, reverts to the Ottoman sultan. It should be noted that the Ottoman sultan enacted this law in
order to encourage farmers to work their land. The Israeli authorities, for their part, used the law as a tactic to take the land away from the
Palestinian farmers. Using these tactics and pretexts, the Israeli occupation authorities have succeeded in seizing an estimated 8 percent of West Bank land. In the Jordan Valley, which extends from Jericho in the south to Bardala in
the north, the Jewish settlers have seized, or are in control of, 50 percent of the arable land there.

Land seizures have often been accompanied by the destruction of crops. This writer has gathered first-hand information on instances where wheat
fields were bulldozed; fruit-bearing trees, such as olives, almonds, plums and grapes were uprooted; and even defoliants were used for the destruction of crops before lands are seized or during the process of expansion of existing settlements. Despite the peace process and the presence of the Palestinian Authority, the destruction of crops continues to this day.5


In a survey of all lands seized for Jewish settlements, the writer found that 95 percent of all Palestinian land seized was privately owned. Only 5 percent could be classified as state property. As a result of the quiet land war being
waged by Israel against the Palestinian people, thousands of Palestinian farmers and land owners have been either partially or totally deprived of land.


These facts were created in violation of international law governing occupied territories, such as the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Convention of 1949 and successive UN Security Council resolutions.


The present right-wing Israeli government is continuing on the path of expansion on, and destruction of, Palestinian property. Instead of reconciliation and peace with the Palestinians, Mr. Netanyahu has chosen to pursue the quiet land war against them. This policy will only perpetuate the conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians and hinder its resolution through peaceful means.



Endnotes



1. Walid Khalidi, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages
Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington,
D.C.: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993.


2. The number of Jewish settlements established pre-1967 in Palestine is extracted from the Map of Israeli Settlements in "Eretz Israel," presented by the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization, January 1990.


3. For more about the Judaization of Jerusalem, see Ibrahim Matar, "To Whom Does Jerusalem Belong?" Washington: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, 1993.


4. A settlement of a similar name was established near the city of Nablus on the site of a forest considered state land.


5. According to Al-Haq (the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists) figures for the month of August 1997, an estimated 227,661 trees have been uprooted by Israeli soldiers and settlers between
1987 and August 1997. Of these, 81,000 were olive trees, which shows that this policy specifically targets olive trees, given the fact that they
constitute about 25 percent of the total agricultural produce of the West
Bank."

-Ibrahim Mattar

[This article is based on a number of studies and publications by the writer on the subject of Jewish colonization of Palestine. The most
recent publication is "Jewish Settlements, Palestinian Rights and Peace."
Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, 1996.]

:P

LOL, more irrelevant babble, LOL. My points and arguements were made in about seven posts and they have still not been proven wrong, LOL. It has taken you people just short of 50 posts to say what you have to say and it is an incoherrant mess with no valididation in it, LOL LOL LOL. I have no need to say anything new, LOL, you people say something new every ten minutes and it simply dilutes your arguement, LOL. LOL, I give you the facts and you ignore them. The only reason I stay on here is to show people that the 'trueth' you ignorants are submitting is diluted, LOL!!! LOL, you peoplke make up facts yet everything I say is true!!!! LOL!!! You people say I waste time by repeating myself, LOL, but you lets so lets count the repetivness, LOL. I post one, your people post 5, LOL, who is ignorant and wasting space now? LOL!!!! LOL, you ignoramouses favour quantity of an arguement over quantity, YOU FOOLS, that is pathetic, LOL!!! You people don't even live here, LOL, and talk about our media, congrats, you fools truely are puppets in a propoganda scheme. LOL, you people don't credit the bible as history, despite the fact that the majority of the world does, who is blind now? LOL!!! LOL, go ahead and flood this site with useless and pathetic lingo that has nothing to do with what we are talking about, but don't worry, i won't read it, I will just respond, like you fools, with even more irrelevant babble. LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long live long posts that are irrelevant to the arguement, right Kahira and againstwar? LOL!!!!!