Oh that sixteen year old Palestinian boy was burned alive

[Scootaloo]

44. "Will that region ever see peace"?

Peace doesn't just fall from the sky one day.

The core of this conflict is territory. it's dragged up a lot of other baggage, but the territory is the central issue that needs attention - everything else, for all its "heartfelt sincere beliefiness" is fluff, distraction from the core issue.

Israel has been grabbing territory from someone else since day one; literally, day one. In 1948, israel sought recognition fromthe rest of the world, and it declared its borders to be contiguous with the outlines suggested by UNGA Res. 181. At the time of this declaration, Israel was occupying territory beyond those bounds - Western Galilee, southern Gaza, and several potions of the West Bank. When hostilities ceased between Israel and the Arab League, these territories were behind the Armistice line - which is why it's an armistice line and not a border. In 1949, Israel requested formal annexation of these pieces of territory as a condition for allowing some refugees back into Israel - the request was denied. And good thing too, since the UN has no authority to hand someone's territory over to someone else.

Basically, the legal boundaries of Israel mirror those drawn in 1947, as those are the boundaries Israel declared to the world when it sought recognition as an independent sovereign state. Everything beyond those bounds belongs to someone else and Israel has no right to any of it. Yes, that includes Jerusalem.

Of course if Israel were ever going to follow international law on this issue it would have done so in the period between 1949 and 1956. it didn't, so we have to assume it's never going to do so, on its own - especially as it has since added Golan and even more of the West Bank to its annexupation.

Simplifying things is that the current Palestinian government, since Oslo, has had an offer on the table, that contingent on a peace agreement, territory on the Israeli side of the Armistice lines goes to israel legally. That is they're not demanding Israel pour itself back into its declared borders, and are willing to shave off a third of their own legal and rightful territory as a gift to Israel as part of a peace agreement. While it is their legal right to make such a demand, it's not especially realistic.

Unfortunately, by now it should be pretty clear to all spectators that israel has no interest in stopping its eastward stomp. In fact the charter of the leading Israeli political party, Likud essentially promises the annihilation of any hope of an Arab state east of the Jordan. There's no less reason to take them at their word than we do when we look at Hamas' covenant that promises more or less the same thing going the other way.

Speaking of Hamas, if flying pipe bombs and the occasional kidnapping is the best that Palestinians can offer by way of organized resistance to the invasion of their territory, well, they're clearly not going to accomplish anything with those efforts.

So then. Israel will not deliver peace until the Jordan is its Eastern border and every Palestinian in the way is dead, caged, or exiled. Palestinians obviously are unable to stop this process militarily (not that this would be a peaceful process, obviously), and have huge hurdles to go through politically.

We are one such hurdle. You and I and most of the people who are reading this are citizens of the United States - most of the readers who aren't are Europeans and Australians, two other hurdles. We're all citizens of democracies, yet our governments have invested extensively in what is amounting to the slow but sure eradication of Palestine as a state and possibly even as a people, and i like to hope that such an agenda is in opposition to what most of us want to see as the outcome of this mess.

You want peace? The only way it's going to happen is from outside pressure from the US, from EU, from whoever else is invested. BDS, campaigns to bar US funds from being granted to support the annexupation, organizing support for Palestinian bids at the UN, etc. harass your representatives with phones, letters, and email. Not just the ones in DC - go local as well. Momentum begins with small motions.