Hamas offers 10 year truce. Israel's reaction - immediate rejection!

Israel & Palestine Forum

What is the point of Israel immediately rejecting Hamas' offer of a 10-year truce? Face it, if there is EVER going to be peace between the Israelis and the Palastinians it is never going to be clear, clean, perfect or easy, but this automatic rejection - why?

What good is a truce if the Palestinian government won't recognize Israel's right to exist? There have been truces before and they didn't hold; what makes you think this one will?

No, I'm asking the entire question above -- not part of the question. Are you serious about your post or just not thinking?

If you can't see the benefits of a 10 year truce then you're not looking hard enough.

What good is a truce if Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist? What are the benefits to be realized from a 10-year hiatus in violence? Why not an end to violence altogether and recognition of Israel's right to exist? How much more difficult is that than the offer of a 10-year truce?

I see, so what if Dwight Eisenhower decided that after he became President of the U.S. that he didn’t want to abide by the agreement made between the U.S. and Japan during WWII and that he refused to rule out attacking Japan? Then we proceeded send a little military incursion into Japan and capture a couple of their soldiers?

To lay the onus on Israel for this is preposterous. There has been enough “truces” to last two lifetimes and they never stick.

Secondly, if your assertion that Israel wants to keep the conflict going simply to grab land, why did they agree to the peace deal with Abbas in the first place? If Hamas had any sense whatsoever then they’d disarm that position by agreeing to the terms previously agreed upon by the Palestinian government. Instead they are more worried about saving face by having to actually act responsible and recognize their neighbor.

What you and Hamas fail to realize is that it’s time to move forward with recognition. You cannot possibly believe peace will ever be achieved any other way can you?

I think the peace offerings on both sides are mere postponement of further stalemate.

-HECK!

Polls taken in Israel shows that a majority of Israelis see that immediately rejecting Hamas is NOT the way forward.

h@ts no one wants the violence in Israel or Palestine. It’s the militant orgs and corrupt leadership that’s endemic in the M.E. that prevents situations like these from progression.

However, clearly they were on the road to peace. Abbas in my opinion has his people at heart more than Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, al-qaeda or any of the others claiming to be fighting on their behalf.

They had a comprehensive plan for the road to peace not truce. They don’t need another truce they need lasting peace. Given the history of every other “truce” that has transpired there, I don’t understand why you dogmatically hold to Hamas’ methods.

peace -

Israel has a right to defend itself from attack. It isn't going anywhere, and Hamas will have to recognise this, although I see that once again you ignored that seemingly trivial matter of Iran's offer to recognise Israel in 2002. No doubt in that year, US necon and Israeli policy was enthusiastically geared up towards bombing Iran off the face of the map (with that other axis of evil member, Iraq) and deaf to everything else.

How do you see Israel's motives, policies and actions? Are Israel always the the victim, the attacked, the defender, and all their actions policies and motives must stem from this viewpoint?

For instance, how do you feel about Israel's continued expansion of settlement homes further into the West Bank? What should the Palestinians do?

H@ts,

I read about clandestine Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank every day. And the murder of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

The Israel government is breaking one of the UN's most fundamental resolutions: 242, which states that a country cannot occupy a territory having gained it through acts of war.

Two things: Hamas & Hezbollah must recognise Israel and Israel must withdraw to its position prior to the 1967 war. Q.E.D.

My belief about successive Israeli governments is thus: they have stopped, and are continuing to stop, the likes of Lebanon and Palestine from economic progress because they do not want such states to become fully democratic, simply because this would mean that Israel would have neighbouring economic competitors, and this would not be beneficial to Israel's economy.

As for Hezbollah. If Israel was trying to remove Hezbolla from certain areas, why then did the Israel military recently target over 300 villages with cluster bombs, according to the UN? Villages that were not harbouring Hezbollah fighters. Cluster bombs now lie in Lebanese farmers' land, land that cannot by harvested for fear of being atomised by such bombs. This supports my argument that the current Israeli regime is trying to stifle the economic growth of Lebanon and its transition to a fully democratic state.

Once the oil wells run dry in the Middle East the US will no longer view Isreal as a strategic partner, and the then US government will inevitably slash its seven billion dollar budget, which Israel annually receives from the US for military spending. Naturally, through lack of US military assistance, Israel will wane and be consumed by it Arab neighbours.

Preston

I recently watched a 2-hour documentary on Channel Four tv in Britain all about religious fundamentalism around the world. When the programme makers visited Israel, we, the observers, were confronted by Zionists, who firmly believed that Israel's governments should banish all the Palestinians from Zion (Palestine) and establish the state of Israel from as far as the Euphrates in Iraq to as far north as Lebanon and the Nile, roughly in accordance with Old Testament references. These remarks came from a so-called educated, middle class family. How many maniacal Zionists exist in Israel with this attitude? It appears to me that many Arabs are justified in distrusting the Israeli government when a Zionist climate still pervades the state of Israel.

Deranged Zionists draw such definition from Biblical sources, namely the book of Genesis, which describes God's covenant with Abraham:

On that day, God made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." - Genesis 15:18-21

In the above context, Greater Israel would comprise, roughly, all of modern-day Israel (including the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights), Jordan, and Lebanon, much of Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait, and parts of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey.

What about the horrible Israeli tactics at Lod, Lydda, Ramla and Deir Yassin in 1948?

William Martin says:

“On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations...”

http://www.cactus48.com/deiryassin.html

In reference to UN resolution 181, which the Arabs turned down, Irgun leader Menachem Begin said:,
“My greatest worry in those months was that the Arabs might accept the UN plan._ Then we would have had the ultimate tragedy, a Jewish State so small that it could not absorb all the Jews of the world.”

Naturally this statement tells us that Begin had a plan to expand the Israeli state right from the beginning. If this is 100% true, are not the Arabs justified in distrusting successive Jewish governments?

According to The Independent Newspaper in the UK, the 300-something villages in Lebanon that were cluster bombed by the Israeli military had no Hezbollah fighters any where near them. The villages were too far north for Hezbollah to fire their rockets from. When the BBC asked an Israeli commander why the Israeli military had attacked the villages with vile cluster bombs, which are hopelessly inaccurate, he merely replied “we did nothing wrong. We acted in accordance with international rules”, meaning that cluster bombs have not been banned yet, so the Israeli military can use them willy nilly despite the misery and damage they do to Lebanese infrastructure.

As for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military, The Independent newspapers claims that many of those shot are the young and elderly. Random massacres by psychopathic Israeli soldiers, who know they can get away with such acts of terror.

Preston.

The Arabs are merely victims of Israel trying to steal land from Iraq to Egypt?

I’m simply too tired to go over all this again from scratch. I don’t believe I’ve seen a more biased post in these forums.

Oneofpeace,

And I was under the impression that many Isrealis had a victim mentality. Just goes to show how wrong one can be.

Preston

H@ts,


Such polls show that the extremist leaders on both sides are ignoring the desires of their respective electorate. Only when both sides learn to elect more moderate leaders will we have a chance of establishing long-lasting unity, which most of us on INreview want.

Preston

Very interesting post, chaps.

Just as a side thought, it's hardly surprising that Iranians, en masse, do not trust the US or British governments/intelligence agencies. They have three good reasons:

1. The overthrowing of Shah Reza Khan during WW11 by the British government. His crime was that he declared his country would remain neutral during WW11, which the British government interpreted as a pro-Germany maneouvre . He was the first ruler in Iran to call for the emancipation and education of women.

2. The overthrowing of the-then democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 by British and US intelligence agencies. Mossadeq's crime was that he wanted to nationalise his own oil, which, at that time, was being extracted by British companies. Mossadeq had intentions of using the money from the nationalised oil to invest in his own country, but this ran counter to British interests.

3. The Iraq/Iran war 1980-88, which saw the US back Iraq all the way.

The above probably explains why successive Iranian governments have supported Arabs in their struggle with the Israel, which is viewed by many Iranians/Arabs as being the USA's mule in that region.

As for Ahmedinejad, well he's just an ultra Conservative and a twit, like that buffoon in the White House. However, Ahmedinejad did not specifically say that Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth, but the Zionist regime, which has nothing whatsoever to do with democratic Israel (Zionism being as backward looking as the Taliban or the Christian Right in the US, in my view). The Iranian president said that: "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm," he said. "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihiliation." And that doesn't mean using nuclear weapons. Why on earth would Ahmedinejad want to use nuclear weapons against Israel when he continually talks about 'liberating the Palestinians"? You cannot have a liberated Palestinian territory if you use nuclear weapons against Israel because that would render the whole area an ungovernable dead zone, contaminated by radioactive fallout.

As extreme as Ahmedinejad is, he's not daft. He talks like most extremist Conservatives (including Bush), in that loud-mouthed way, which, when examined, amounts to nothing more than a childish game of posturing and stick waving.

Preston.

oneofpeace said this in post 34:

"My point was if military might was reversed would Israel exist today. The answer is no."

Total supposition. If the Arab countries surrounding Israel had the equivalent military might of Israel (3 billion dollars military aid from the US annually) they wouldn't fear being expunged by successive Zionist Israeli governments. They would be in the position to dictate to the Israelis, keeping a squeeze on the size of Israel's borders and economy.

Preston

ONEOFPEACE said:

"Supposition? You mean like the “Israel bombed Lebanon because they don’t want any competing economies in the region” supposition you previously posted?"

Mine was a theory, not a supposition. You stated your claim as though it was some sort of irrefragable fact.

ONEOFPEACE said:

"I never heard Israel declare the destruction of Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran or the Palestinians."

The above statement is exactly what many Zionists (extremist, backward-looking fundamentalists) believe in. The restoration of the Zion along biblical lines. From as far as the Euphrates to the Nile and beyond.

ONEOFPEACE said:

"It was Israel’s neighbors that decided to annihilate Israel in 48."

I hardly think 'annihilate' is the correct appellation in the above statement. In light of how barbaric successive Israel regimes have been towards civilian Arabs, is it any wonder Israel's neighbours wanted to control Israel's quest for expansion?

On September 26, 1948, Ben Gourian proposed the Israeli provisional government that Israel should attack the West Bank. Again, he had reiterated how a war could be used as an instrument to "transfer" population, and he used Lydda's and Ramla's occupation and the subsequent expulsion of their population as a precedent. According to a detail plan of the operation recorded in his diary, Israeli forces would take:
"Bethlehem, and Hebron, where there are about a hundred thousand [Palestinian] Arabs. I assume that most of the Arabs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron would flee, like the [Palestinian] Arabs of Lydda, Jaffa, Tiberias, and Safad, and we will control the whole breadth of the country up to the Jordan."

And, Oneofpeace, you wonder why the Arabs distrust/distrusted the Zionist cult that pervades Israel. Hardly scientific, is it?

ONEOFPEACE said:

'It was Nasser who decided to declare war in 56"

Nassar was an extremist twit. Israel has had many such twits who believed in swelling the Israel population so that is would eventually consume Palestine and beyond. According to Nur Masalha in the book "Expulsion of the Palestinians" Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem.

Nassar laid his intentions on the table unlike the above Zionists, who played the furtive 'population' game (the outnumbering of Arabs by Jews in that region to the point of no return for the Arabs).

ONEOFPEACE said:

"It was also Arabs that killed Sadat for simply making peace with Israel."

And it was also Menachem Begin, whose terrorist organisation, Irgun, killed dozens of British soldiers and many civilians at the King David Hotel bombing in 1946. And this terrorist, Begin, was elected as Israel prime minister in 1977. Makes you think, doesn't it? The state of Israel was founded upon acts of terrorism (the British government relinquished the role of protectorate in Palestine following Irgun's act of terrorism). And were the Arabs expected to trust a state that was formed through acts of terrorism? I think not, my friend.

ONEOFPEACE said:

"Now where in the world would you suppose that I got the notion that if military fortunes were reversed, Israel wouldn’t exist?"

Total supposition again. A cyclical argument. Well done.

Just for the record, what religion are you? I'm neither Arab nor Jewish. I'm 'religiously' impartial on this topic.

Preston

h@ts response

Oneofpeace said:

"Furthermore, when Arabs were fighting with money from the USSR"

Have you got any sources you can direct me to regarding USSR military hardware to the Arabs? I'm curious to learn more on this topic.

Oneofpeace said:

"When Sharon was assassinating Hamas leaders from those helicopters,"

Wasn't aware that Sharon was personally responsible for assassinating Hamas leaders from Helicopters. Quite some bloke that Sharon was. He could run Israel as well as kill Hamas leaders from helicopters at the same time. Amazing.

Oneofpeace said:

"We’ve been over the Hamas offer. It was a quantum leap backwards from the progress already"

A quantum leap is the smallest possible distance travelled between two objects (see theory on sub-atomic particles). Your statement suggests that there was no real backwards step taken.

Preston

Preston, the origin of quantum leap is indeed from the world of science, however in 20th century vernacular, it meant an abrupt or sudden change. Indeed Hamas position is a quantum leap from what took years of struggle to reach. Despite what you and h@ts may think, it’s totally unacceptable.

I will be answering your other post when I have enough time. Since you seem o doubt my claims about how Arabs got their military armament I guess I'll have to respond, unless you've checked up on it already and found I'm right.

It's just a little tiresome to post it again along with supporting material for the umpteenth time.

Everyone Theres a new site just about Palestine and the politics. Go to (link removed-spam)

Oneofpeace,

A Quantum Leap is a quantum leap whether in sub-atomic science or spoken/written communication. I've never met anybody who has ever used it to mean the opposite of what it actually means (the smallest possible distance travelled between two objects). Your reply was merely lazy. I'd prefer it if you just held your hands up and said, 'yes, it was an error'.

As for not believing your claims about Palestinians being armed by the Russians, I never doubted your claim, I merely asked for sources so that I could explore the origins of your cliams and expand on the topic. Your assumption about yours truly not believing your claims was unfounded.

Preston

Tell me what do they offer in this 10 year truce?

All organizations will stop their actions against Israel? Can they make it happen?

What do they demand in return? Halt all military operations + go back to 1967 border + free all Palestinian prisoners?

Don't forget that Hanniyeh is in close contact with Ahmadinejad. Imagine the 2017 war with Syria, Iran attacking from outside and Palestinians attacking from the inside. Imagine how in 10 years Iran could arm the Palestinians.

It's a risk. Will Hamas change their minds with time, see that Palestinian people are satisfied and want peace, and eventually recognize Israel's right to exist? Or will they arm themselves and prepare for the day that they realize their long awaited dream of destroying Israel and go for their last chance of success?

You know, if you ask me, I'd take the risk. It's either peace or war, I'm tired of living in between. If there is a war and Israel wins, don't expect Israel to remain in '67 borders and wait for the next war. Sometimes you need land for security.

H@TS...

I can guarantee that you you reject it to if you were surrounded on all sides by people that wanted to kill you, your friend, family, and the other 4 million people in your country. The arabs have been trying to eliminate Israel since it was founded in 1948. Israel has been in a state of perpetual war for almost 60 years. I would want more than just there word that there would be 10 years of peace.

you criticize Israel for doing something in a situation that you have never been in. have you ever been shot at: or how about having a suicide bomber blow up a block from you house and kill a friend: or a sniper open fire on you when you are going to work.
Also are you really naive enough to believe that the Palestinians will really halt there jihad against Israel.