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"Dave" wrote:

Now that it's pretty clear the Israeli's are quite serious about withdrawal from Gaza, what can we expect from the Palestinian side?

Is this the end of land grabs for both parties or will there be more bickering?

Will this result in fewer attacks from both sides?

Dave, Israel will be serious when they end occupation and go back to the border of 1967 at least...otherwise forget it. as the land belongs to the palestinians anyway....

get rid of the wall...

stop knocking palestininan houses down...

then u wont get any suicide attacks..and then you can think of living in peace...

otherwise palestininas wil still continue fighting the occupation...

its like if your houss is occuped by thugs, and afetr 30 years they say you can have the kitchen back.... what would you say Dave..oh thank you thugs , you are so kind, expect me to be happy now.....

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salaam

yep yashmaki, its called hypocricy!!!!

and with the issue of Israel, we dont have a problem with Jews, its Zionism we have a problem with. Jews are people of the Book, we respect them and have dialogue with them. Zionists want a greater Israel and want to occupy palestininan and muslim land.....they are the lowest of the low...
There are many jews who oppose the occupation and detest zionism.

wasalaam

[b]Jewish Terrorism" Mars Gaza Evictions[/b]

It is the second time a Jewish terrorist kills Palestinians in cold blood in two weeks. (Reuters)

OCCUPIED Jerusalem, August 18, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Israeli troops continued Thursday, August 18, forced evictions of hardcore settlers from Gaza Strip, hours after a West Bank settler went on a shooting spree, killing four Palestinians in cold blood, prompting [b]Israel's Prime Minister to call it "Jewish terrorism".[/b]

The four Palestinians, employed at the Shilo settlement industrial zone in the northern West Bank, were killed by a settler from a nearby enclave who wrested a weapon from a security guard at knife point, security sources said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Another Palestinian was injured in the hail of bullets, according to Israeli medical sources.

Read full article here:
http://islam-online.net/English/News/2005-08/18/article01.shtml

let's see if the media labels them as jewish terrorists, i doubt it...terrorists are only words reserved for palestinians i'm afraid!

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_pal... on Gaza Pullout[/url]

they all say they are occupied, live like prisoners, no life, no future, they want israel to get out of their entire land so they can get on with their lives....

"yashmaki" wrote:

But Dave the gaza strip is just that a "strip" its a tiny piece of land. It's like offering a dog scraps. Surely you don't think palestinians should be quiet and make their state there? I think we should hold judgement and speculation until we see what occurs after this. I'm very cynical I don't think this will lead to more freedoms for Palestinians at all. It seems like a step forward but i fear it's gonna be a large step back. I mean what are Sharons intentions in doing this. Sharon has made it clear it's to fortify settlements elsewhere:

They have been fighting over Gaza for years though this is a major front in the war between the two and Israel is effectively saying that it will cede that land and stop hostilities there. Most importantly that is a major change in the "Greater Israel" mindset - an abrogation. It should call for equal change in the Palestinian mindset.

The two are going to have to abandon these absolutist positions and realise that they are both going to be around for quite a while, and that their ambitions to expand present borders are only going to lead to further hostility.

Its could be a very positive move.

Or it could be a calculated move to gain greater control of the West Bank.

I (as many others) suspect the second, but we may be wrong. It may be used as a confidence building measure

[b][size=18]The settlers' retreat was the theatre of the cynical[/size][/b]

[b][size=16]There was no 'sensitivity training' when bulldozers went into Rafah[/size][/b]

[b]Jonathan Steele[/b]
Friday August 19, 2005
[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1552190,00.html]The Guardian[/url]
[b]
Contrast the world's overwhelming coverage, especially on television, of the departure of Israeli settlers from Gaza with the minimal reporting of larger and more brutal evictions in previous months.

There was no "sensitivity training" for Israeli troops, no buses to drive the expellees away, no generous deadlines to get ready, no compensation packages for their homes, and no promise of government-subsidised alternative housing when the bulldozers went into Rafah.[/b]

Within sight of the Gush Katif settlements that have been handled with such kid gloves this week, families in Rafah were usually given a maximum of five minutes' warning before their houses, and life savings, were crushed. Many people did not even have time to go upstairs to collect belongings when the barking of loudspeakers ordered them out, sometimes before dawn. Fleeing with their children in the night, they risked being shot if they turned round or delayed.

Article continues
As many as 13,350 Palestinians were made homeless in the Gaza Strip in the first 10 months of last year by Israel's giant armour-plated Caterpillar bulldozers - a total that easily exceeds the 8,500 leaving Israeli settlements this week. In Rafah alone, according to figures from the UN relief agency Unrwa, the rate of house demolitions rose from 15 per month in 2002 to 77 per month between January and October 2004.

Parts of Rafah now resemble areas of Kabul or Grozny. Facing Israeli army watchtowers and the concrete wall that runs close to the Gaza Strip's boundary, rows of rubble and ruined homes stretch for hundreds of yards.

The house where I stayed three years ago, which was then one row back from the frontline, has gone. So have three more lines of houses behind it, thanks to Israel's remorseless policy of clearing the zone for "security" reasons even after Ariel Sharon announced his plan to leave Gaza.

Palestinians who visit the ruins or try to use one or two rooms that survived the onslaught risk their lives from Israeli bullets. A warning shot rang out as one homeowner took me on to his roof in broad daylight last month to survey the miserable scene. We quickly came down.

These cruel evictions have of course been reported, and some foreigners who tried to block or record them, such as Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller, paid with their lives alongside scores of murdered local Palestinians. But coverage was never as comprehensive or intense as this week's removals of Israelis. Sharon wanted the world's media to see the protracted agony of the settlers, so as to make the (spurious) point that if it is hard to get 8,500 to leave Gaza, getting 400,000 to withdraw from the West Bank and east Jerusalem will be impossible. However sincere the settlers' grief is at leaving their homes, for the organisers of the retreat it was theatre of the cynical.

The exaggerated focus on the settlement evictions has some benefits. Those who claim, genuinely or dishonestly, that the world's media are biased in favour of Palestinians had their argument collapse this week. TV viewers around the world have also been exposed to the ugly sight of rampant religious fundamentalism.

As they were dragged off, some Israeli zealots had no shame in minimising the Holocaust, absurdly comparing unarmed Israeli police to the Gestapo. Others used racist insults. "Jews do not expel Jews," they shouted, presumably wanting to imply that only non-Jews do it. They apparently did not realise that most people will see the irony in terms of contemporary rather than historical events - "Jews do not expel Jews ... Jews expel Arabs."

Perhaps the ugliest part of the Israeli settlers' behaviour was their corruption of youth, with parents instigating their children to wrap themselves in prayer shawls and sob or shriek defiance.

No one who spends time in Gaza's Palestinian communities can avoid being saddened by the ubiquitous focus on the gun, which also diverts children from normal growing up. It appears on graffiti everywhere alongside the names and faces of those who died by violence, in suicide attacks or shot down by Israeli fire. Almost every teenage boy aspires to use a Kalashnikov or hand grenade. At a recent wedding, I saw a dancing mother twirl a rifle in both hands above her head like the baton of a majorette.

Trapped in their Israeli-enforced ghetto, Gazans can at least claim that this pervasive and corrupting militarism is the legacy of a decades-long national resistance movement to defend land that belongs to them. Islam is part of the mix, but religion follows the national flag. For many Israeli settlers in Gaza that dynamic was reversed. Religion was their driving force, and they had no individual or national right to the land on which they built their armed camps.

Israel's worst practices from Gaza are likely to be transferred to the West Bank now. Controls over freedoms in the West Bank have been tightened relentlessly in recent years. More roads were closed. More checkpoints sprang up. Walls and fences were extended, in defiance of the international court of justice's ruling that they are illegal. However, even with this creeping oppression, life in the West Bank is not yet as constricted as it was for those in Gaza.

That will probably change. Sharon - one of whose nicknames, appropriately, is Bulldozer - wants to expand the West Bank settlements and demolish more Palestinian homes around Jerusalem. Unless his strategy of unilateralism is blocked, evictions may reach Rafah-like proportions.

The break-up of the settlements will give those in Gaza freedom to move within their narrow enclave, but this benefit may be outweighed by the West Bank's losses. One of the worst places in Gaza used to be the Abu Houli crossing, a tunnel for Palestinian vehicles that went under the road to the Israeli settlements of Gush Katif. At any moment Israeli Land Rovers or tanks would emerge to block the tunnel, leaving Palestinians stranded on what was the only road linking the north and south of Gaza. Pregnant mothers could not get to hospital. Relatives missed weddings. Students failed to reach their colleges to take exams.

Israel intends to build at least 16 gated crossings in the West Bank. It is one thing to have segregated roads - a step that America's Deep South and apartheid South Africa never reached. But to insist on the right to block even those roads that are allocated to Palestinians is grotesque. The West Bank will be sliced into a series of ghettoes that Israeli forces can isolate at will. Whatever the security justification, the effect is to impose collective punishment on every Palestinian.

No one should be surprised if, in the face of such injustice, Palestinian anger and resistance grow.

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

So... my original question still is hanging about - what concessions can we expect from the Palestinians, this is a major step that is going to require something in return if this process is going to continue (and bare fruit)

Irf - we never segregated roads, that would have been totally irrational and stupid.

Instead we segregated public washrooms, drinking fountains, schools, busses, gymnasiums, markets, businesses, churchs, ports, restaurants, housing districts, government buildings, courts, public pools, country clubs, and garbage collection.

Because that made total sense.

As proud as I am of my home, even I don't think I could have lived in such a time.

Not that things are so brilliantly better anymore.

"Dave" wrote:

So... my original question still is hanging about - what concessions can we expect from the Palestinians, this is a major step that is going to require something in return if this process is going to continue (and bare fruit)

What do you have in mind that would equal this move on the Isreali side?

"Dave" wrote:

Irf - we never segregated roads, that would have been totally irrational and stupid.

Quote:

It is one thing to have segregated roads - a step that America's Deep South and apartheid South Africa [u]never[/u] reached.

"irfghan" wrote:

What do you have in mind that would equal this move on the Isreali side?

Make Abbas Gov't the sole authority for Palestinian affairs, and completely reject the authority and "help" of any other group such as Hamas. Militarily if necessary.

Or abandon the extremist doctrine that all of Israel including the pre 1960 borders is an occupying force and not a legitimate state.

If the Israelis are abandoning the "Greater Israel" expansionist doctrine, equal doctrine changes should be demanded from the Palestinians.

"irfghan" wrote:

Like the article says: It is one thing to have segregated roads - a step that America's Deep South and apartheid South Africa [u]never[/u] reached.

lol I was sarcastically implying nothing was as bad as what we did.

There was a time when people would lynch a back person from a tree and the entire community would make a picnic of it. During the 1950s there were these morbid postcards Southerners would send to family and friends of the entire community gathered around a tree smiling cheerfully with a man hanging and burned alive behind them.

"Dave" wrote:

"irfghan" wrote:

What do you have in mind that would equal this move on the Isreali side?

Make Abbas Gov't the sole authority for Palestinian affairs, and completely reject the authority and "help" of any other group such as Hamas. Militarily if necessary.

Or abandon the extremist doctrine that all of Israel including the pre 1960 borders is an occupying force and not a legitimate state.

If the Israelis are abandoning the "Greater Israel" expansionist doctrine, equal doctrine changes should be demanded from the Palestinians.

An acceptance of the 1967 borders is not unreasonable. This would require the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the West Bank too.

Suppression of Hamas is likely to leave the Palestinians in a state of all-out civil war. Esp if the Isrealis continue to antagonise the Palestinians and therefore cause a rise in support for Hamas and other extremists.

"Dave" wrote:

There was a time when people would lynch a back person from a tree and the entire community would make a picnic of it. During the 1950s there were these morbid postcards Southerners would send to family and friends of the entire community gathered around a tree smiling cheerfully with a man hanging and burned alive behind them.

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. :roll:

"irfghan" wrote:

An acceptance of the 1967 borders is not unreasonable. This would require the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the West Bank too.

Suppression of Hamas is likely to leave the Palestinians in a state of all-out civil war. Esp if the Isrealis continue to antagonise the Palestinians and therefore cause a rise in support for Hamas and other extremists.

I actually said all Israel [i]including[/i] the [i]pre[/i] 1960s border - in short they have to formally recognize that Israel is around for good, Israeli pullout from Gaza admits that Palestine is going nowhere, it's time we see that from Palestine. As for the 1967 borders Gaza and the West bank should be withdrawn there are not significant numbers of israelis living there. I do not know about the population of the Golon heights so I cannot comment, East Jerusalem is entirely populated now by 2 generations, there cannot and should not be a pullout IMO.

"irfghan" wrote:

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. :roll:

Southerners are so used to tragic irony a little laughter is about the only way we deal with it.

At least we are all laughing together now - rather than in segregated forums.

Just to clarify, I meant the borders before the 1967 Six Day War.

"irfghan" wrote:

Just to clarify, I meant the borders before the 1967 Six Day War.

I was operating under that assumption... aren't the 1967 possessions the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, East jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza?

"Dave" wrote:

"irfghan" wrote:

Just to clarify, I meant the borders before the 1967 Six Day War.

I was operating under that assumption... aren't the 1967 possessions the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, East jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza?

Sinai was given back to Egypt. The rest is still under 'nominal' Israeli occupation.