USA Foreign Policy

[JollyRoger]

Palestinians can live in relative peace and security in and near Israel. Jews do not receive reciprocal consideration.

J

Overall, between January 1 and October 31, 2016, Palestinians killed at least 11 Israelis, including 2 security officers, and injured 131 Israelis, including 46 security officers, in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli security forces killed at least 94 Palestinians and injured at least 3,203 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel as of October 31, including suspected assailants, protesters, and bystanders, according to the United Nations.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/israel/palestine

 

[onejayhawk]

Overall, between January 1 and October 31, 2016, Palestinians killed at least 11 Israelis, including 2 security officers, and injured 131 Israelis, including 46 security officers, in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli security forces killed at least 94 Palestinians and injured at least 3,203 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel as of October 31, including suspected assailants, protesters, and bystanders, according to the United Nations.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/israel/palestine

You understand this constitutes agreement, right? Israeli police are not safe in and near Israel.

J

 

[JollyRoger]

I must have misunderstood your point. I thought your point was that Palestinians can live in relative peace and security in and near Israel. Jews do not receive reciprocal consideration. The numbers seem to run counter to that point, so I do not see how my response constitutes agreement. It is true that Israeli security do face risks (your original point was broader - Jews), but it does seem that Palestinians are not able to live in relative peace and security given the number of deaths and injuries inflicted on them by Israelis.

 

[Takhisis]

Reality is bipolar. It does the opposite of whatever 1jayhawk says but it simultaneously agrees with him.

 

[Broken_Erika]

You understand this constitutes agreement, right? Israeli police are not safe in and near Israel.

J

And neither are Palestinians, or anyone else, for that matter.
That's just the result of decades of endless attack and retaliation.
It's a rather vicious cycle that can't really be broken easily without bombing both sides into oblivion.

 

[Takhisis]

Technically it suffices with just bombing the one side into oblivion.

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: This thread is not of RD status any more. If it degenerates any further, it will be closed and the topic will be off-limits for new threads without moderator permission.

This will happen to more and more RD threads if people continue to disrespect the RD tag.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Ajidica]

A tad dramatic, don't you think?

In any event Trump is following through on something other Presidents have promised. RR should have been done this more than a generation ago.

J

No, I'm not being dramatic.
The original UN partition plan (that Israel agreed to!) would have placed Jerusalem in a legal situation similar to Trieste, an International Free City under UN protection. That didn't pan out, Subsequent negotiations, including Oslo, did not make any statement on the status of Jerusalem because both sides wanted it as their capital and it was thought the final status of Jerusalem could be addressed later in bilateral negotiations.
By recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Trump is saying -and the official position of the United States government- is that Palestinian claims to Jerusalem are invalid and, by extension, Palestinian claims to statehood. Despite Congresses weirdly intense support for Israel, the US administration and State Department has traditionally been only somewhat disastrous when it comes to negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Now that is well and truly out the window with the president openly disparaging the two-state solution, disregarding Palestinian claims, breaks with our staunchest allies by not condemning the Israeli land-grab with settlements, and having his son -who donates to highly controversial Israeli settlements inside Palestine- "negotiate peace in the Middle East".

 

[Takhisis]

"negotiate peace in the Middle East"

‘Peace’ in the same sense used when discussing how much ordnance is required to pacify the aborigines/insurgents.

 

[Ajidica]

‘Peace’ in the same sense used when discussing how much ordnance is required to pacify the aborigines/insurgents.

I've seen some people compare Trump to Churchill, so perhaps he will fall back on Churchill's favorite pastime- gassing Muslim hill tribes and aerial bombing along the North West Frontier.

 

[Takhisis]

To go on the same line, the fact that Churchill once wrote that the entire population of India should be executed proves he's not a racist. But that'd divert us from the issue.

So far, a few people have been killed and many, many more injured in demonstrations in the Middle East against Jerusalem being declared the capital of the Jewish state (and not the Palestinian state, which the US still doesn't officially recognise). Also all Muslim countries are putting aside some differences in order to, at the very least, protest formally.
So onejayhawk's assertion that it's just symbolic and no harm will come of it is once again proven right.

 

[onejayhawk]

To go on the same line, the fact that Churchill once wrote that the entire population of India should be executed proves he's not a racist. But that'd divert us from the issue.

So far, a few people have been killed and many, many more injured in demonstrations in the Middle East against Jerusalem being declared the capital of the Jewish state (and not the Palestinian state, which the US still doesn't officially recognise). Also all Muslim countries are putting aside some differences in order to, at the very least, protest formally.
So onejayhawk's assertion that it's just symbolic and no harm will come of it is once again proven right.

I never asserted that no harm would come from it, just that it was not a showstopper. The bottom line is still Israel's existence, not the location of its capital.

J

 

[Verbose]

I never asserted that no harm would come from it, just that it was not a showstopper. The bottom line is still Israel's existence, not the location of its capital.

J

For all we know, this is Jared Kushner playing politics.

The parsing through by media of the shocking lack of US representation in the Mid East under trump (ambassadors only appointed to Morocco, Algeria and Bahrein) means odds are quite good that US foreign policy in the region is being conducted by Jared personally and alone.

What it signifies is that the US has taken itself off the map as eventual arbiter in the conflict. The conflict is btw real, and Jerusalem is probably the thorniest bone of contention, and really the only part of it GUARANTEED to see to it that the entirety of Islam, all directions, have as stake in the outcome.

If the US isn't part of the solution, it is part of the problem. And even if the US like this is fast rendering itself increasingly less relevant, it is certainly still important and powerful enough to just have made the conflict rather worse.

Whether this is helpful to Israel, of what's sometimes known as "a bear's service", remains to seen.

 

[Ajidica]

I never asserted that no harm would come from it, just that it was not a showstopper. The bottom line is still Israel's existence, not the location of its capital.

The continued "existence" of Israel is not an issue and hasn't been since the early 70s, at least in a physical security sense.* Rather, any "threat" to Israel is going to come in the fact they seem dead set on trying to either expel Palestinians from the intended territory of a Palestinian state (that the Israeli government nominally agreed to) or reduce them to the equivalent of South African Bantustans without even the decency of "independence".** Either the Israeli government -and its conservative right wing who dominate the Knesset and their nutjob settler wing- learns how to get along with its neighbors and acknowledges the Palestinian desire for a state, or they lock themselves into decades of military occupation and militant activity.

*And even that is dubious as Sadat's plan with the Yom Kippur War was to breach the Bar Lev line and then sit there until the Israeli military was humiliated enough to convince the government to come to peace talks.
**South Africa actively encouraged its Bantustans to be independent, nobody but South Africa bought that lie though.

 

[Azem.Ocram]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rex-tillerson-diplomat-letter_us_5a2d3fbae4b073789f6a91c5

An important diplomat in Somalia has quit because of the ‘stinging disrespect’ Rex Tillerson has for diplomats.

As paradoxical as it seems to Republicans, solely focusing on furthering American interests with disregard to human rights actually hurts American interests by making us the bad guys. Yes, the USA is now the evil empire, at least by several metrics. We interfere with soverign nations, we have a bigger military than the rest of the world combined, we make bilateral agreements impossible (in essence removing the possibility of peace by any other means than death), we persecute peaceful activists and reward sexual predators and corrupt politicians.

The USA is no longer a great nation of opportunity. It is for the most part a xenophobic, violent, imperialist, and greedy country.

 

[uppi]

The continued "existence" of Israel is not an issue and hasn't been since the early 70s, at least in a physical security sense.

This is true only in a physical security sense. In the political sense, which would be relevant for any kind of peace effort, it is still an issue and will be an issue until Palestinians stop making it an issue.

 

[Ajidica]

This is true only in a physical security sense. In the political sense, which would be relevant for any kind of peace effort, it is still an issue and will be an issue until Palestinians stop making it an issue.

The PLO/Fatah has made a two-state solution the baseline for their negotiations since the 90s so that comment isn't particularly relevant or useful.
The sticking points, as was seen at the 2000 Camp David summit, was the ultimate status of Jerusalem and exactly how much land Israel gets to claim in the West Bank for "security" reasons and to protect their settlements which have been actively encouraged by successive Israeli governments in order to create new "facts on the ground" in the same way China is building islands.

 

[uppi]

The PLO/Fatah has made a two-state solution the baseline for their negotiations since the 90s so that comment isn't particularly relevant or useful.

The Fatah is not the only politically relevant Palestinian organization and the Hamas has a different "solution" in mind, so the comment is still very much relevant. Even if the Fatah and Israel would somehow come to an agreement, there would be no guarantee for actual peace.

 

[onejayhawk]

The continued "existence" of Israel is not an issue and hasn't been since the early 70s, at least in a physical security sense.* Rather, any "threat" to Israel is going to come in the fact they seem dead set on trying to either expel Palestinians from the intended territory of a Palestinian state (that the Israeli government nominally agreed to) or reduce them to the equivalent of South African Bantustans without even the decency of "independence".** Either the Israeli government -and its conservative right wing who dominate the Knesset and their nutjob settler wing- learns how to get along with its neighbors and acknowledges the Palestinian desire for a state, or they lock themselves into decades of military occupation and militant activity.

This is wishful thinking. Genocide is of Jews is still basic foreign policy of several nations. This does not even bother with pseudo-nations like ISIS which is openly genocidal. Jews are not tolerated--period. Name one Islam majority nation with a Jewish enclave, not counting embassies.

This is true only in a physical security sense. In the political sense, which would be relevant for any kind of peace effort, it is still an issue and will be an issue until Palestinians stop making it an issue.

Not even the physical security sense. What you have is an acknowledgement of superior firepower in the military field. Open war still continues in guerrilla form, eg the West Bank tunnels.

J

 

[AdrienIer]

Name one Islam majority nation with a Jewish enclave, not counting embassies.

Iran recognizes Jews as a minority with a seat in parliament. So even though there is no enclave AFAIK there is no genocide there

Edit : and of course there's Turkey and a minor presence in Morocco (Casablanca mostly). Yemen used to have a large Jewish presence but most of them moved to Israel and the rest is fleeing the civil war.