On Jan 13, 3:40*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
Jay Chan wrote:

Israel once occupied the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai). All have
been given up - Sinai to the Egyptians and the West Bank and Gaza to
the Palestinians (except for less than 1% of the West Bank still
under negotiation).

There are NO Israeli settlements in Gaza.

When Hamas refers to the "Zionist occupation" it means the Jewish
state in the Middle East. To Hamas, Israel is unlawfully occupying
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifi, Askelon, and everything in between.

Not really. *There are many many Israel settlements inside West Bank.
And there are many many roads cutting through West Bank to link from
Israel to those settlements. *Palestinians cannot get through those
roads. *If a road cut through a Palestinians property and cut it in
half, of course he gets no compensation, and he cannot reach the other
side of his own property without going many miles away and go through
many check points. *For practical purpose, he has lost half of his
property. *West Bank is effectively being cut into many small pieces
of little cages where people cannot move from one area inside West
Bank to another area inside West Bank. *If they want to go through,
they will have to get approval from Israel and have to wait in the
long line in the check points. *Yes, they are free inside the little
piece of 10 square miles or so of land around their village --
effectively living in a cage -- and is a very tiny cage.

Right. Like I said: Israel continues to "occupy" less than 1% of the "West
Bank."

Not sure where you get that info. But when you search the net, you
can easily see that the area in West Bank that Israel controls and
administrates are 60% -- this includes settlements and Israel military
control areas that are off limit to people. Well, the settlements
themselves may be small if we only count the houses and the
surrounding area. But when you include the roads that link to each
settlements and criss cross the entire West Bank, the areas related to
settlements are big. You can easily see in various West Bank map that
are readily available in the net.

This goes a
long way explaining the reason why years has passed and Palestinians
still continuously hate Israel. *Please note that this situation in
West Bank is not a secret. *The info is readily available in the net.
Jimmy Carter has written a book about this situation. *Our "free
press" choose not to mention this (or bury it inside the back page),
and mis-guide the public. *I guess that's why our "free press" was a
part of getting us into that unnecessary Iraq War.

The Palestinians hated Israel before Israel occupied the West Bank and will
hate Israel afterwards. Israel's presence in the West Bank is irrelevant to
the Palestinian's hatred.


May be they hated Israel peple before or after. This doesn't matter.
What matters is that the ongoing hardship that Palestinians suffer
from Israel keep the hatred alive. Time can wash away many bad
feelings. But continuous suffering doesn't allow time to heal the
wounds.


There were israel settlements in Gaza not so long ago. *They were
removed because those settlements didn't make much sense.

Wrong. They were profitable to the settlers. The settlements were removed in
an attempt by Israel to gain peace.

They might or might not be profitable to the settlers themselves. But
that cost Israel government a lot of money to protect those settlers
because those settlers were not in areas that Israel had a free hand
-- just too dangerous as comparing to West Bank. They were just
wrongly placed. The saying "location, location, location" has a lot
to do with removing those settlements.


Settlements
only make sense to be in open land where the natives are fewer than
the settlers where the settlement can expand relatively easily. *Gaza
is the opposite. *Gaza is densely populated, and there is no room for
the settlements to expand into -- unless Gaza is de-populatd.

Wrong again. There is much open, undeveloped land in Gaza. Gaza is about
twice the size of the District of Columbia and about the same population
density.


I think you realize that District of Columbia is the metro area of
Washington DC, and is not a rural area. You are talking about
establishing a settlement in a city. This is like there is an empty
lot in a city block, and someone decide to build a settlement in it
with bar wire and everything and expect an outside force to protect
them from unfriendly natives. That just doesn't make sense.


Of course, Hama will say all kind of things about Israel. *Just like
Israel say all kind of things about Hama. *First of all, they are no
friends. *Secondly, this is probably something that can be bargained
away -- like "I agree to recognize your rights to exist if you agree
with our rights _and_ give us some of our land back".

Oh Bother! Note that Israel is the ONLY entity in the region that has "given
back" any land to anybody.

They gave back to Egypt. But Palestinians get nothing -- not only
nothing, actually getting less and less with the increasing number of
settlements and roads in West Bank.


Please note that UN had passed resolution to ask Israel to return back
to pre-1967 border. *I doubt that Israel will give back all of those
lands (because they have a better bargaining power now). *But they
should give back some of the land back to Palestinians -- and that is
where bargaining comes into picture. *Some of the chips will need to
be traded. *If Israel refuses to talk to Hama, bargaining cannot take
place, and we have a deadlock, and human suffering will continue.

Unfortunately, there would not be peace either if Hama stopped
terrorist activities. *What Gaza would have ended up like one of those
tiny cages in West Bank. *The only difference is that it will become
the largest cage among the many tiny cages: Trying to go from Gaza to
West Bank would need to go through numerous check points, no over the
land air traffic to avoid the check points, no marine traffic, no
international airport, numerous border closure at any time, no way to
earn a living to feed your family.

You can imagine what would happen if you owned a business in Gaza and
you wanted to sell some stuff to another country. *When you were ready
to ship the products, the border was closed (or Israel didn't allow
you to ship because you said something bad about them in the press)
and you missed the deadline. *Now, you needed to pay penality,
additional fee for extended credit to finance the inventory that get
stuck at border, and your customer was not likely to order anything
from you any more. *You lost your business, and your employees lost
their jobs. *Your employees and you became restless. *And the deadly
cycle began.

For many, many years business and life flourished in Gaza (under Israeli
occupation). Businesses, such as your example, traded freely; workers from
Gaza went into Israel daily to their jobs. By every objective standard
(income, education, life expectancy, health services, wages, standard of
living, etc.) life for the residents of Gaze exceeded that of their
counterparts in neighboring Arab countries. Then the extremists gained
control of Gaza.

If I remember correctly, most of the Palestinians income are coming
from Palestinians who work in foreign countries and send money back to
their family.

Working as cheap labors in Israel also brings income.

The thing is that Gaza and West Bank are tiny places; they cannot
possibly be self-sufficient. *They must depend on trading with other
people in order to grow their economy. *Having Israel controlling all
the border crossings (even in a border with another Arabic country) is
a bad situation for Palestinians because this gives Israel total
controls over the economy growth of Palestinians.

Uh, Jordan controls the border between the Palestinians and itself. Egypt
likewise with Gaza.


Therefore, we need a solution that Palestinians can at least live
with. *Something that the Russian has proposed recently is a good
start: *Both sides stop attacking each other and Israel remove the
blockage on Gaza.

Israel does NOT control the border between Gaza and Egypt. Israel DOES
control the border between itself and Gaza. The Israeli's - for obvious
reasons - don't want the Gaza people to run amok in their country. Evidently
the Egyptians feel likewise.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

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Israel has military exclusive zone all along the Jordan border in West
Bank. You cannot go from here to there. Please check the maps in the
net. Those maps are readily available.

Israel can shut down the narrow border between Egypt and Gaza at any
time. Egypt being a US ally and a very complying country will close
the border as requested and has done that many times. That's why
people in Egypt are very angry about their government.

Of course, you cannot ship anything through sea or air either because
of the blockage.

All these on-going suffering in Gaza just because Israel doesn't want
to talk to Hama and want to lock down Gaza. If Israel truely want to
settle this issue, they should talk to Hama for one simple reason:
They get the votes and are representing the Palestinians at least in
Gaza (and will likely vote into office in West Bank if PLO allows
voting to take place). If Israel wants to talk, obviously they should
talk to someone who is representing the people that Israel want to
talk to. What did that accomplish if Israel only wanted to talk to
someone who only represented a small part of the people, but not most
of the Palestinians? That won't accomplish anything other than
serving as a delay tactic.

Wasn't US talk to USSR in the peak of cold war? Of course we talk
because that's how people solve problem.

Jay Chan