Does Palestine Have the right to exist as an independent state?

[still_one]

Poll question: Does Palestine Have the right to exist as an independent state?

Again this is not what the boundaries should or shouldn't be, just the right to exist as a seperate state

[CuteNFuzzy]

1. Obviously not

Palestinians have one right available - the right to be terrorized by Israel whenever Israel pleases

[still_one]

2. again my point was not to cause a flame bait

just to see if there is common ground

[AlamoDemoc]

3. I think you poll shows that Palestinians have a right to exist, as people

[still_one]

4. of course, but also to demonstrate that common ground can be found

and that the attention always seems to focus away from the peacemakers and toward the agressors on both sides

[IChing]

5. remember the alamo..........

Nation states are transitory according to the consciousness
of a necessity of singularity of totality in one's needs to find consensus
vs. the singularity of all humans wants and needs to exist.


May you live long and prosper

[everythingsxen]

6. Except what you are forgetting is...

every time Israel reduces restrictions, even a little, suicide bombers blow stuff up. I mean how would you run your country?

[AlamoDemoc]

7. Who's blowing who? Israel or Palestine?

[everythingsxen]

8. Last I checked...

Israel doesn't distribute video tapes of how to build suicide bomb packs and then teach people how to blow up markets.

[CuteNFuzzy]

10. no need

Why make instructional videos on how to suicide bomb when you have jet fighters and attack helicopters?

[regnaD kciN]

11. That's simply not true...

For a number of years following the Oslo accords, restrictions were quite lax and terrorist attacks died down to nearly nothing. Even Mossad reported that the Palestinian security forces were doing a very good job stopping the militant factions in the Occupied Territories.

This only came to an end several months after the outbreak of the "second intifada" in the autumn of 2000. Remember, the first suicide bombings didn't take place until spring of the following year. Until that time, the intifada had been restricted to protests -- some nonviolent, most accompanied by rock-throwing -- to which the IDF had responded with live ammunition, resulting in a death toll that was almost 100% on the Palestinian side.

I think a more considered look at the past decade or so would suggest that, when Palestinians were given reason to hope that diplomacy and negotiations will get them a better life (which includes, but is not restricted to, a nation of their own), they would endorse the path of moderation. If/when they came to believe that they would get nothing from the moderate approach other than a continued impoverished existence in a reservation-like Israeli bantustan, they concluded that their only hope lay in AK-47s and bomb belts. (In the mid-'90s, opinion polls taken in the West Bank and Gaza showed Hamas supported by 20% and opposed by 80% of those polled; after the breakdown of Oslo and the first few disastrous months of the second intifada, those numbers had flipped.)

Surely it should be no surprise that, while Oslo's "peace process" seemed to be bearing fruit, there was little in the way of restrictions, and little in the way of terrorism?

[JackNewtown]

9. Absolutely

I hope a Palestinian state can be established as soon as possible. Unfortunately, that is impossible right now with Hamas in charge of the Palestinian government. Negotiations with Hamas are unrealistic.

[DemFromMem]

12. Most Israelis would vote yes

Public opinion polls in Israel show solid support for two states and government policy is to separate. So your poll seems pretty pointless.

[Lithos]

13. Locking per I/P guidelines

Not based on a recent news or op-ed article

Lithos
DU Moderator