As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.
Which country actually initiates negotiations is not very interesting, if you can even accurately determine the "start" of any negotiation in this time of digital communications and backchannel diplomacy.
> As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.
It would also be nice if Lebanon accepted the international community's ruling that yes, the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon really happened, and there is in fact no remaining occupation of Lebanese land.
Why should Lebanon accept rulings from the international community when Israel has ignored almost every single one since 1948?! The core of the issue is the 30 square kilometers Shebaa Farms area which Israel occupied in 1967. Syria and Lebanon claims that it is Lebanese territory and Lebanon wants it back. Israel claims that it was Syrian territory that it occupied and subsequently annexed in 1980.
That sounds like rather much of a diversion from the simple factual question of whether any under international law Lebanese land remains occupied by Israel, to which the answer is a simple no.
The CIA did a fake vaccination program to find Bin Laden. I'd probably look askance at offers of aid workers from a country I'm technically at war with.
People were up in arms that palestinians weren't offered vaccines. If Israel doesn't give medical aid they are devils, when they do, they really want to cause harm.
There is a lot of confusion here. Israel is 25% Arab (mostly Palestinian). All those Palestinians have full medical care just like any other citizen of Israel.
Israel has now begun to vaccinate Palestinian workers that commute from Gaza and the West Bank, and has also donated vaccines (despite the Palestinian government stating repeatedly they don’t want help from Israel) to Palestine.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) [...] is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians.
Before that it was vanilla antisemitism, pogroms and massacres organized by the local Muslims, no different than how it was done in other places in the Middle East (or other places in the world). Some even were Nazi sympathizers/collaborators, like the Mufti of Jerusalem [2].
I wouldn't say millenia, but hundreds of years seems appropriate[1][2][3][4] ....
The "resistance" didn't start with the PLO. They are only the latest manifestation of a conflict going back centuries. It didn't start in 1948, or 1964, etc. It started long before that.
That's exactly what I wrote, so we're in agreement here.
Before 1964 it wasn't driven by a Palestinian national aspirations, it was driven by religious antisemitism/bigotry, and in a much lesser extent by pan-Arabism.
There were many massacres of the Jews (including of women and children) by the local Arabs. It wasn't something specific to Israel, it happened with many minorities all over the Middle East. My family has oral memories of one such massacre.
But I wouldn't call massacres of the civilian minority population - a "resistance".
I should clarify that I was ironically using that word. Basically the point is that this is part of a much larger history, that has pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with the formation of Israel.
Unfortunately, most of the people who've been tasked with bringing the "conflict" to an end cannot seem to fathom, or more importantly, actively choose to deny the existence of these prior elements. As they would completely undermine their (only) thesis.
Again, I hate giving Trump credit for stuff, but his approach of "lets make deals with parties willing to make deals, and ignore those who want to waste our time" has opened doors. It would be a tremendous shame if we walked backwards to the old (failed) peace processors viewpoint. With the current administration, I'd say that was inevitable.
Lebanon could benefit from this. So could the Pals. All they have to do is stop trying to kill Israelis and destroy Israel. I have little hope of this happening in my lifetime.
Very much similar to the Tuskegee experiment. When your opressors experiment on you in the name of science it is logical to distrust the science of your oppressor.
Would any Jew in 1950 have willingly taken a German vaccine?
