Canadian Politics Today

Beyond Canada => The World => Topic started by: JMT on February 02, 2017, 08:17:16 pm

Title: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 02, 2017, 08:17:16 pm
I have always been a supporter of Israel.  I am not a supporter of Israel's settlement policy.  Today, the Trump Administration came out against the settlements (!).  I agree with this position (I hope I don't have to say that many times).  What are your feelings on Israel's settlement policy?
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Blueblood on February 02, 2017, 09:58:53 pm
The settlement policy is Israel thinking strategically to shore up their gains in the 1967 war which helped secure their country.  It is leverage in negotiations nothing more.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 02, 2017, 10:05:14 pm
It's also, IMO, the irritant cause of some of the violence in the region today (though definitely not the only irritant.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Blueblood on February 02, 2017, 10:29:05 pm
I think the state of Israel being there is an irritant of itself.  The elites of the Muslim world don't like not being in charge of Israel and it drives them nuts. 
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Super Colin Blow on February 04, 2017, 12:34:03 pm
I take the same position: I want Israel to survive, but I think the settlements are in the long run going to hurt them.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Blueblood on February 04, 2017, 01:28:26 pm
I take the same position: I want Israel to survive, but I think the settlements are in the long run going to hurt them.

They are playing the really long game with settlements.  The 1967 war showed weaknesses in israels defence and the expanded territory helps shore that up.  Given israels success on the battlefield they got themselves more chips at the poker table.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: SirJohn on February 07, 2017, 11:33:51 am
They are playing the really long game with settlements.  The 1967 war showed weaknesses in israels defence and the expanded territory helps shore that up.  Given israels success on the battlefield they got themselves more chips at the poker table.

I don't understand what this long game is all about. They've already got 600,000 people on the West Bank. The more people they have there the more unlikely there can ever be a two-state solution. Do they want to simply annex the West Bank and move hundreds of thousands or millions more there? Right now there are about 6.5 million Jews in Israel. They're already facing demographic threats from the growing Muslim/Arab population which is now at nearly 2 million and growing much faster than Israeli Jews. There are approximately six million Arabs in the West Bank. Absorbing them would put Jews in a minority, which would mean no more Jewish state.

That means they would either have to become a true apartheid state, and not let the Arabs vote or have representation in parliament, or expel them all. I don't see any way they can survive the former with any kind of international support, and I don't see how they could possibly succeed at the latter.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: ?Impact on February 07, 2017, 01:14:06 pm
They're already facing demographic threats from the growing Muslim/Arab population which is now at nearly 2 million and growing much faster than Israeli Jews. There are approximately six million Arabs in the West Bank. Absorbing them would put Jews in a minority, which would mean no more Jewish state.

Maybe they need a one child policy, like failed in China.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: wilber on February 07, 2017, 02:09:22 pm
I don't see it as a long game either, just domestic politics that will make it much more difficult if not impossible to reach a lasting settlement and erodes public support in countries Israel relies on for support.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: crystalline on February 07, 2017, 02:41:58 pm
Approximately 86% of the Arab population are not allowed in the Israel's borders which leaves 209,000 Arabs in peace. The Arab-perpetrated wars of annihilation has been against Israel over the past 70 years.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Queefer Sutherland on February 08, 2017, 12:01:38 am
Maybe at one point the settlements were for leverage but I believe Netanyahu believes that the entirety of the West Bank, Jerusalem, even Gaza belongs historically to the Jews and he would like to annex all of it for Israel, but for now as much of the WB as he can.  He certainly doesn't care what the US or anyone else thinks.

I don't have much sympathy for any violence directed at Israel from the Arabs who live in the WB because of it.  It's basically an act of war.  IMO all foreign aid money by the US to Israel should cease until the building stops and is retracted to the legal limits of Israel. 
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: BC_cheque on February 08, 2017, 12:17:08 am
I have always been a supporter of Israel.  I am not a supporter of Israel's settlement policy. 

I never understood this.  How can you support a country with an entrenched (and defining) policy that you don't agree with?

I can't support Israel any more than I can 'support' the US when they're invading other countries, or Russia or any other country that violates human rights through the use of military force.

If/when Israel stops building settlements I will support them.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 08, 2017, 06:19:47 am
I support their right to exist and be free.  I also support them as a democratic country with a pretty good record in that regard.  Some of the things that they do....
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: BC_cheque on February 08, 2017, 11:04:36 am
I support their right to exist and be free.  I also support them as a democratic country with a pretty good record in that regard.  Some of the things that they do....

A while ago I watched an interview with a Hamas leader and the interviewer asked him about his refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.  He answered that in order for him to do that, Israel has to first define what Israel is.

I hate to agree with him, but he's right.  Is he supposed to accept the Israel of today?  Of 1967?  Of 1948?

It's easy to say you accept Israel's right to exist, but if you support their right to exist as they are today, occupiers, then you are contradicting yourself when you say  you don't support their settlement expansion.

Either they need to annex the West Bank and grant its citizens rights (which will never happen), or they dismantle settlements and give back West Bank and East Jerusalem (which will equally never happen).

I can't' support' a country like that that knocks down homes and has keeps millions of people without human rights. 

How about you, which "Israel" do you support? 
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 08, 2017, 11:36:39 am
That makes some sense.  I'd also say that I'm no more a fan of a Jewish state than I am of an Islamic state.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: SirJohn on February 08, 2017, 11:56:58 am
That makes some sense.  I'd also say that I'm no more a fan of a Jewish state than I am of an Islamic state.

Don't equate the two. The Jewish state is a democracy with freedom of religion and the rule of law with an independent court system. Where do you find any of that in an Islamic state?
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 08, 2017, 12:47:35 pm
I'm not a fan of religion - by extension, I'm not a fan of religious states.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Manob on February 10, 2017, 08:58:29 pm
That makes some sense.  I'd also say that I'm no more a fan of a Jewish state than I am of an Islamic state.

Quote
I'm not a fan of religion - by extension, I'm not a fan of religious states.

I'm not a fan of religion either. However, as much as this concept is totally alien to North Americans, being a Jew is just as much about ethnicity/race/origin as it is about religion. Many Jews are atheists/agnostics or otherwise irreligious, but nevertheless identify as Jews as well. In countries that have had a historical Jewish population, such as in Eastern Europe, the racial difference between Jews and non-Jews (i.e. Slavs) is as visually obvious to the people of that country as the difference between black and white is obvious to Americans. I am an atheist of Jewish origin, and have personally encountered people in Canada who have visually identified me as a Jew and harassed/insulted me for being Jewish, on two separate occasions.

Further, the entire point of Israel is to be a homeland and safe haven for the Jewish people. In this context, Jewish can mean those that self-identify as Jews or, also, those that might be discriminated against by others for being Jewish. Hence, to exercise the right of return to Israel, an individual need only fit the Nuremberg Laws definition of being a Jew (a single Jewish grandparent). While some might point to the modern world of 2017 and say antisemitism is not prevalent as it once was and so Jews do not need a homeland to be safe, I would point to rising antisemitism both from Muslim countries and populations and some of their enablers on the left as well as from resurgent far-right movements in Western countries. Over 2000 years of history has shown that when Jews live as minority groups in the countries of other peoples, they face hatred, discrimination, and massacres every few generations.

The State of Israel is fundamentally required for the safety of any person in the world who might be identified as Jewish and targeted for their Jewishness. Almost every other identifiable racial/ethnic group has a homeland where they form the majority of the population and will not face hatred or violence for what they are, and it is wrong to deny Jews that same safety net.

Furthermore, it is erroneous to characterize Israel as a "religious state". While Israel has an official state religion, the society shares far more characteristics with the secular democracies of Europe than it does with the theocratic monarchies/dictatorships that one thinks of when using the term "religious state".

In an ideal world where all people live together in peace and harmony, the idea of countries based on ethnic, racial, or religious groupings sounds as repulsive to me as it does to you. But in this world that we live in, having faced over 2000 years of hatred and extermination culminating in the Holocaust, a sovereign Jewish-majority state is an absolute non-negotiable necessity for the Jewish people.

As a side-note to the above, I also support sovereign states for all other groups that have faced historical discrimination and form a majority population in a certain area. In particular, based on my knowledge of world events, I would say it is past time for a sovereign Kurdish state to be established... the Kurds have faced hatred and attempts at genocide in all the countries in which they have significant populations for centuries.
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: JMT on February 10, 2017, 09:14:52 pm
And that all makes a lot of sense too.  I think this is one of the world's most complex (if not the most complex) issues.  I'm glad we can have such a civil discussion about it. 

What is your position on the settlement policy?
Title: Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
Post by: Manob on February 10, 2017, 09:28:45 pm
What is your position on the settlement policy?

I think expanding settlements is counter-productive to any possible future two-state solution peace agreement. I do not support the expansion of settlements. I think Netanyahu allows settlement expansion primarily as a result of domestic politics, because of his reliance on right-wing/settler coalition partners to uphold his government.

Ideally, from my point of view, settlement expansion activity would be frozen and a final border for a two state solution would be negotiated, in which certain Jewish-majority parts of the West Bank are traded for certain Arab-majority parts of Israel along the border. It should also be noted that a large Arab Muslim minority population lives in Israel and is relatively unmolested. For those Jewish individuals who really want to live in parts of the West Bank after a two-state solution is implemented, one could only hope that the new Palestinian state would be as tolerant of its Jewish citizens as Israel is of its Arab ones (although in practice, this seems unlikely).

Unfortunately, multiple rounds of negotiations towards a peace deal over the preceding decades have been unproductive, most famously when Arafat was offered ~98% of the land he was asking for but refused the offer at the last minute. During the current period when negotiating a peace deal seems unattainable from the Israeli perspective, it is understandable (but not justified) that settlement policy is driven primarily by short-sighted domestic politics, even if this damages Israel's international reputation and the prospects for a two state solution in the long run, as that is just how politics tends to work.