Dailies Contact Lenses - Should we recognize Israel as a state while they reject the right to exist for Palestine?

Should we recognize Israel as a state while they reject the right to exist for Palestine?

For the outside world, Israel's demand for the "right to exist" seems a natural enough request and easy enough words to say. However, most people have no idea of the real import of those words for the Palestinians. For them to accept the "right to exist", effectively means that they accept their own dispossession. That dispossession is still going on after 60 years and there are now some 6 million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return home or even a modicum of compensation. And, that is not counting the 4 million Palestinians under Israel's occupation who daily see more of their land taken from them while they are squeezed and contained in what remains, or the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens in Israel whose rights are being increasingly compromised and denied. As long as the Palestinians exist, Israel will always see them as an obstacle to its ultimate quest for an exclusively "Jewish state" in a greater Israel.

Public Comments

Asked and answered: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Atsk_oUGz_fehotnQdAvIsvY7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20071003000634AAGfCk8
Wellll....Israel's ¨right to exist¨ may seem ¨natural¨ to you but the only thing I see is the 'accomplished fact' - it exists, therefore it has a ¨right¨ to exist. Since there are no ¨rights¨ in Nature, Israel doesn't have a ¨natural right¨ to exist. It only exists by force and by exercising military power, backed by the U.S.,the world's most powerful country. Palestine knows that it will cease to exist if it can not stand up to the force exerted on it by Israel. Palestine is not only facing up to its nemesis ,Israel, but this poorest of nation states also has to contend with us!! So far Palestine has continued to exist as an entity in the eyes of the world by the skin of its teeth. While exerting ever more cruelly drastic measures against it, Israel complains when Palestine fights back! But only by fighting back can Palestine continue to be a reality. This is the position thrust on them by the logic that Israel uses to justify its own existence. By choosing to give unquestioning support to Israel, we(the U.S.) have pushed Palestine to seek allies in unpalatable places. If Israel wishes to take its place among the nations of the world which wish to live in some sort of peaceful co-existence and according to the recognition of un-natural rights which have to be artificially agreed upon, then it should cease trying to make existence impossible for Palestine. So far,all I see Israel doing is following the ¨natural law of the jungle¨(dog eat dog) with our blessing and to the tune of billions of our tax $$ in aid and armament. By taking sides so unfairly with Israel,we have made Palestine into a cause for certain radical elements in the Islamic world to rally around. You know,maybe we should have given the Zionists half of Utah after WW II. Then they'd be fighting it out today with the Mormons. Palestinians would still be tending sheep and watching their orange trees grow and pressing olives,much as they had been doing doing peacefully since before the Christ and until Israel decided to acquire the ¨right¨ to exist..
Well I'm not a history major, so I don't know all the details and timelines, but it certainly seems to me that Israel treats the Palestinians like 2nd class citizens. Yes, I understand the Jews had to endure the holocauust and the thousands that died during that. I understand in the aftermath of WWII that displaced Jews needed a home to go to, and thus Israel was created. That was 60 years ago. Most that lived through it aren't even still with us today, and most of today's Israelis didn't experience that. Even if they had, that doesn't give them the right to boot out the true natives of that area and treat them almost as bad as Hitler treated the Israelis just because their bible says that's their "holy land". Prior to 1900, the area now known as Israel and Palestine, had, at best about 6% Jews living their, with the rest being Arabs who were mostly Muslim. Jews can claim that area all they want, but the fact is it is and always has been largely an Arab territory. Jews are new-commers and should not expect the Arabs to simply bend to their needs. At best the Israelis are treating the Palestinians the way the USA treated Native Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s. In 2007, there's simply no excuse for that type of macho bigotry. If Israel can't peacably co-exist with the Palestinians without forcing them into certain areas and without martial law, then Israel should be given the boot out of the whole region and the country given back to the true natives of the region. added later --------------- Victor M, if you truly have something intelligent to add, given your claim to truly know the history of the conflict - THEN ADD IT. All I really see in your answer is a belittling of the asker, and some veiled bigotry and hatred towards Arabs. Last time I checked there wasn't a length limit on answers, so if you truly enlighten us all on the history - do it. Would you be ready to "talk" if relative strangers took over your house and claimed most of it as their own because the bible said it was theirs? You need a reality check. Thorgirl - The UN is not the be-all, end-all for the world, and just because they don't recognize Palestine really has little to do with the issue. Israel has gotten the prominence it has largely because of $$.
I've tried for years but I still can't understand Zionism. People act as if Israel just rose out of the sea, or god came down and put some land on the map and said "live here"...let us remember all world wars will be connected inevitably...exclusively jewish state right next to Jerusalem??? Fruitless persuits...and a bit fascist too, ironically.
no israel was unfairly placed into the middle of a muslim country the u.s. placed it there to serve as a buffer zone to keeping the middle east in check
your argument is entirely incorrect and I cannot reply to it because it is largely absurd. I have at least five questions relating to your question which you could NEVER answer because you undoubtedly do not know the history of the Jewish/Arab conflict. This entire matter could have been resolved many years ago had the Arabs been ready to talk it through thoroughly. Furthermore, look how much the Arab states did nothing for their Arab neighbors. Virtually nothing! Remember you are dealing with people who would fight then live in peace. Trace their history and especially read the Jihad section of the Koran and judge for your self.
Israel IS already recognized by the UN. Palestine is not. Simple enough.
Israel rejects the right of a Palestinian state while the Palestinian people do not acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and even talk of throwing the Jews into the sea. And as long as that is there official policy, they,the Palestinians, deserve no state!
I think therefore I am.
Here you go, i think you've already had some of this article. Interesting none the less. "The Right To Exist" By Sonja Karkar (Counterpunch) It is a curious phrase this "right to exist". Israel wants the world to accept its "right to exist" as a state, but it denies the indigenous Palestinians their right to exist as a people in their own land. International relations only acknowledges the rights of people, not states. [1] States exist because of the formal recognition afforded them by other states, and now that Israel is recognised as a state, it in fact exists. It makes no sense to demand that a political party recognise Israel's "right to exist", much less punish 4 million Palestinians because a majority voted the Hamas Party into government. Yet, these are the very words that are holding the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, to an impossible ransom. For the outside world, Israel's demand for the "right to exist" seems a natural enough request and easy enough words to say. However, most people have no idea of the real import of those words for the Palestinians. For them to accept the "right to exist", effectively means that they accept their own dispossession. That dispossession is still going on after 60 years and there are now some 6 million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return home or even a modicum of compensation. And, that is not counting the 4 million Palestinians under Israel's occupation who daily see more of their land taken from them while they are squeezed and contained in what remains, or the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens in Israel whose rights are being increasingly compromised and denied. As long as the Palestinians exist, Israel will always see them as an obstacle to its ultimate quest for an exclusively "Jewish state" in a greater Israel. Israel's demand that its "right to exist" be recognised, is constantly fluid. Israel refuses to accept any demarcated borders and certainly not the internationally-recognised Green Line of 1967 and is the only nation in the world without declared borders. [2] As far back as 1948, Israel determined that its territory had to be more than the 55 per cent given it by the UN partition and wasted no time in its ruthless expropriation of Palestinian land--driving out the Palestinians or simply forcing them to live under Israel's occupation. The 78 per cent of Palestinian land that it amassed is now recognised as Israel, and it is that area that was painfully acknowledged by Palestinian Chairman Arafat in 1988 as "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security". His crucial mistake was to ask for nothing in return. He should have demanded that Israel recognise the right of Palestinians to exist as a free people in the remaining 22 per cent. Israel, of course, accorded no such right to the Palestinians who continued to live--and still do - without any peace or security under Israel's occupation. The grave injustice of Palestinian dispossession has never been redressed. When Arafat held up the olive branch and said "do not let the olive branch fall from my hand', that was the moment that Israel could have freed the Palestinians from its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and allowed a Palestinian state to exist side by side with Israel. Edward Said saw it clearly when he stated "only the Palestinians explicitly recognised the notion of partition. Israel never has." [3] Instead, Israel intensified its illegal settlement enterprise and continued with its mass immigration program of Jews from around the world to settle them inside occupied Palestinian territory. By the time Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak made his fallacious "generous offer" of land to the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, [4] the Palestinians had barely 12 per cent left of their historic homeland, and seven years later, it has been whittled down to around 7 per cent. So, it is perfectly legitimate for the Palestinians to ask--on how much of the land does Israel want to exist? Every policy and action undertaken by Israel is focused on creating an exclusively Jewish state in all of Palestine. From the very beginning, Zionist leaders made sure that all land taken would be held in trust on behalf of "the Jewish people in perpetuity". [5] Through a process of confiscation and transfer--known as "redeeming the land"--Jews worldwide have available to them land for lease in Israel. This discriminates outrageously against the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens living inside Israel who are not given equal rights with the immigrant Jews and who are allowed to live on only 3 per cent of the land while the rest is available only to Israel's Jewish citizens. They are finding themselves more and more isolated from the rest of Israeli society with none of the privileges as Israel finds even more fiendish ways to contain its demographic problem. It is a problem because Israel wants a "Jewish" state, not a "state for all its citizens"; a democracy for "Jews only", not a democracy for all its citizens. This should give pause to everyone holding up Israel's "beacon of democracy" as something to admire. Furthermore, when Israel insists on the Palestinians accepting its "right to exist", it has everything to do with the Palestinians signing off on their own dispossession and nothing to do with Israel's fear of an existential threat. Israel's survival is guaranteed because of its overwhelming military might and not by the Palestinians recognising its "right to exist". It is the fourth most powerful army in the world [6] and there is not an Arab nation today that would challenge Israel's war machine. If Israel allowed a Palestinian state to exist, Israel knows very well that it would never have the military capacity to threaten Israel's existence. However, it makes for powerful propaganda as the world is still in thrall with the David and Goliath illusion. A worrying development for the Palestinians in the past week has been the report that Palestinian President Abbas has already given Israeli Prime Minister Olmert a commitment to recognise Israel as "a state for the Jews". If true, it would really give free rein to Israel's already racist policies and practices. The Palestinians living inside Israel would suddenly find themselves not only discriminated against, but very likely in danger of being ethnically cleansed from the Jewish state. It would also absolutely negate the inalienable right of Palestinians to return home, and all the rights the Palestinians have under international law would suddenly become irrelevant. Needless to say, such reports (if indeed they are true) leave the Palestinians wondering what is left to them after all the years of sacrifice and struggle. Despite the 67 United Nations resolutions that have been passed acknowledging their rights, despite Israel flagrantly breaching international law and continuing to violate their very person and property, despite the meticulously documented evidence of Palestinians having been massacred and terrorised into fleeing so Israel can appropriate their land, despite the voices of respected world figures exposing Israel's apartheid practices, despite Jewish voices increasingly raised in protest against Israel's racist policies, despite internationals risking and losing their own lives to help the Palestinians in non-violent acts of resistance, the Palestinians are staring at a future that refuses to recognise the gross injustices done to them, much less provide any protection for their existence: that is, if Israel has its way. No other nation in the world demands a "right to exist". It most likely arose in international relations because former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in 1975 that the US "will not recognise or negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) as long as the PLO does not recognise Israel's right to exist and does not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338". [7] The international community took up the refrain and continues posing the question "What about Israel's right to exist?" without giving a single thought to Palestinian rights, especially their right to exist. With each demand, we are seeing Israel edge closer to its ultimate goal. Ehud Olmert let us know as much last year when he said to the US Congress on 24 May that he believes the Jewish people have "an eternal and historic right to this entire land". [8] It could not be clearer: Israel demands the right to exist as an exclusively Jewish State in all of Palestine. No wonder previous peace negotiations have failed: there is nothing to suggest that the November peace conference will be any different. As long as Israel refuses to recognise Palestinian rights, and as long as international interlocutors insist on Israel's "right to exist" over the rights of people, every attempt at negotiating peace will be doomed to failure. The situation for the Palestinians right now is very dangerous. Israel's settlement enterprise has been largely achieved: 40 per cent of the West Bank is off limits to the Palestinians and the rest has been virtually cantonised with movement all but restricted between them. Gaza is totally isolated. There is not a border or space in or around Palestinian land that is not controlled by Israel. Also, Israel is creating facts on the ground that have already made it impossible for the Palestinians to have their state within the 1967 Green line. What is left has been made deliberately confusing and has led to the myth of the "generous" offer. The 92 per cent that Israel is again offering the Palestinians, is 92 per cent of the 22 per cent of land left within the Green line, not 92 per cent of the whole that the Palestinians originally owned. Such an offer is frankly insulting and so are the further border adjustments that Israel is making even as the offer is on the table. It shows to what audacious lengths Israel will go to exist as a Jewish state. That it is at the expense of the Palestinian right to exist in their own land, is illegal and immoral. It would be suicide for the Palestinian leadership to agree to anything that is not reciprocated, particularly the unconditional recognition of the Jewish state and the demand for its "right to exist". Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
Yes. Israel is a state while Palestine is a loose collection of Killers.
the only place in the world called Palestine today is in Texas. Some facts: "The fact is that today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, Muslim Sherkas from Russia, Muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door. The civil and tribal wars between Yemenites (from Yemen) and Kessites (from Banu Kais of Saudi Arabia) ... are well known among Palestinians. "My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants." - Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector, talking about the recent immigration of Arabs to Palestine. quoted from "Answering Islam" The terrorists are the Arab Muslims who blow themselves up in Israeli restaurants and who fire rockets at Israeli civilians. The ones who fight back against the terrorists are the protectors of freedom and democracy. They act in self-defense. And occasionally cause collateral damage. But they are not aiming to kill Arab civilians. The distinction is critical. Since the rebirth of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands have swarmed into the new state. In 1948 more than 850,000 Jews lived in the Arab world. Today there are fewer than 29,000, a shadow of the former ancient community. Most of those Jewish refugees fled to Israel. Where did they come from with such urgency -- and why? Contrary to the myth that Jews lived in harmony with the Arabs before the Zionist state, innumerable authoritative works document decisively the subjugation, oppression, and spasmodic anti-Jewish eruptions of violence that darkened the existence of the Jews in Muslim Arab countries. .
complicated issue aint it...doesnt israel exist as an annexed part of iraq/iran....i guess i would have difficulties accepting that wouldnt you??
Israel is a state, Palestine is not.
It seems fair to recognize each as equal, thus with the capacity and freedom to pursue their politics, religion and economics, without interference from each other or outside parties.
No we shouldn't recognize Israel a sovereign state because they denied the right to exist for Palestine. Enuff said!
Israel is a rotten racism regime , she owns no Land
The UN,NATO and basically the whole world should not recognise Israel as a true country at this point and heavy sanctions should be put in place against them. This should only change when they agree to go back to the old 1948 borders and allow all the rest of the land they now occupy to be used in the creation of a separate and fully independent Palestinian nation.They should also have to compensate the Palestinian people for the last 59 years.
That's just an Israeli excuse to try and justify their perpetual war against the Palestinians. http://www.zionismexplained.org/map/landmap1.jpg