I know whom exactly I will support in the new round of conflict in Israel. Whoever is the first to say, “Fuck this, it’s crazy to kill and die in the 21st century because of an argument over whether a temple was built someplace 3,000 years ago” is the side I can support.
Everybody else is too scary for my taste.
Clarissa's Blog 
Here are links to a video of President Abbas’ remarks about the Al-Aqsa Mosque and an article about Palestinian reactions.
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If the Israelis and Palestinians, and the people around the world who make this the focus of so much ideological sympathy, put as much energy into developing cheap desalination as they put into fighting each other then soon they would have nothing to fight about. They would also have a technology that they could sell to the rest of the world and use to solve a bunch of other conflicts in the process.
Instead the world is vexed over a conflict rooted in property deeds issued on Mt. Sinai.
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GOOD point.
3,000 years ago? Seriously? This is what they are willing to kill for today? That’s every kind of insane.
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\ 3,000 years ago? Seriously? This is what they are willing to kill for today? That’s every kind of insane.
Obviously, it’s about today’s resources: land, water, etc.
And lack of faith in another side leading to belief that giving some resources to Palestinians won’t bring peace anyway. Only more attacks, long-term.
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Land and water at the site of the mosque on Temple Mount?
“And lack of faith in another side leading to belief that giving some resources to Palestinians won’t bring peace anyway. Only more attacks, long-term.”
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\ And man, you’ve got to hear how horrible this sounds. And I’m not even sure you don’t mean it literally.
I don’t understand. Haven’t you yourself previously said that Palestinian state will lead to increase in attacks (short and middle – term, aka probably during all my entire life)?
What do you mean “literally” ? By “some resources” I meant control over land and water resources (bringing water to Tel Aviv, btw) which Palestinians currently don’t control.
\ Land and water at the site of the mosque on Temple Mount?
No, but Temple Mount is a great front for real reasons for the ongoing war and a good tool to excite the masses. Especially Arab masses since secular Jews don’t seem to be all that interested in Al-Aqsa.
That religion is only a cover for real issues can be glimpsed f.e. from a recent front page of Israeli Russian newspaper I saw in a shop. It ran something like “The battle for Temple Mount is already lost. Now we may lose the battle for Jerusalem.”
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Because it sounds like you are saying “what’s the point of giving people water if they will not promise to be docile in return”?
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Israel is doing quite well with desalination.
Please read the entire article.
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This is fantastic! Now the next great step would be to stop the medieval arguments about 3,000-year-old temples.
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Ain’t gonna happen and very much more is at stake than the Al-Aqsa mosque. Here, in that connection, is a link to a semi-satirical article I wrote for my blog last week.
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For now it’s not going to happen. But I’m hoping that the young people will start finding the discussions of “holy sites” increasingly irrelevant to their lives and will not be recruited for all this.
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It’s a pleasant hope and one that I share. However, as long as Palestinian youth are taught that their duty is to kill Israeli Jews, it probably will not come to fruition. This article includes two embedded videos. The first features a preacher at the Al-Asqa Mosque and the second features a Hamas summer camp.
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\ But I’m hoping that the young people will start finding the discussions of “holy sites” increasingly irrelevant to their lives
Do you believe young generation of Palestinians and Jews will bring peace?
Read this right after your comment:
Организация защиты детей отдыхает
http://lobastova.livejournal.com/819893.html
Young people, teens and children are the ones throwing stones and firebombs in the first place. The word “youths” is constantly used in the article RE:
// Clashes break out in Arab towns across Israel in solidarity with Palestinians, and as a reaction to video showing female terrorist being shot in Afula.
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I only look at this conflict in a human rights context. Making it about the land or history makes it easier for status quo to continue, and is frankly stupid.
It is 2015 and millions of people are being kept in an open air cage, with full support from the most powerful country in the world.
It’s about fundamental human rights and dignity. That’s all.
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“I only look at this conflict in a human rights context. Making it about the land or history makes it easier for status quo to continue, and is frankly stupid.”
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The “cage” that the Gazan Palestinians are supposedly in was built by their own hatred and stupidity toward Israel. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians had a chance to live in peace alongside Israel and get on with their lives, but they chose instead to elect corrupt terrorist leaders whose ongoing murderous actions have forced Israel to place heavy restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza, and to periodically take limited defensive military action.
The Palestinians have had SIXTY-SEVEN years to accept the fact that Israel isn’t going away, 67 years to make peace with the Jewish State, and they’ve blown every opportunity, every single time.
Israel has been much too tolerant of Palestinian terrorism for much too long.
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Is it really about religion any more? At least based on interactions with ex-Soviet people who got to North America via Israel it seems to be more and more about classical nationalist “our ancestors fought for this land”. (Equivalent of Russian “dedy voevaly”.) I understand that Jewish Israelis cannot unilaterally stop this war any more, but this endless war definitely serves its purpose for Israel, reinforcing this “dedy voevaly” mentality.
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Read Ottomans and Zionists blog and he does have a few good words to say about Netanyahu’s behavior in the current situation:
“[Netanyahu] has so far refrained from a large and public show of force in the West Bank in response to multiple firebomb attacks, shootings, and stonings” —
People may assume that a leader of a Center or Left-wing party would refrain even more (not discussing whether it would be bad for Israelis here), but I am not sure. Netanyahu seems to be a person who isn’t into military adventures (rhetoric is another matter), and I appreciate that. People abroad tend to view him badly, but he is the most moderate (famous) Right politician. Much more moderate than many of his voters, that’s for sure. In the last elections, some “Jewish Home” voters (more Right than Likud) voted for Netanyahu because of him succeeding to scare them “if you don’t vote Likud, Left wing party headed by Herzog will win the elections.”
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Is it really about religion for the Israelis? At least based on interactions with ex-Soviet people who got to North America via Israel it seems to be more and more about classical nationalist “our ancestors fought for this land”. (Equivalent of Russian “dedy voevaly”.) I understand that Jewish Israelis cannot unilaterally stop this war any more, but this endless war definitely serves its purpose for Israel, reinforcing this “dedy voevaly” mentality.
As for Palestinian cage being built from their own hatred… There are two ways Palestinians can abandon their hatred. Either because they are beaten into submission, or because they get more civilized than Israelis are, and give up from the position of strength. I guess the latter is a bit unrealistic to expect? From any people, I do not have any special affinity with the Palestinians…
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Oh, absolutely. It’s not about religion for either party. It’s totally the matter of principle at this point. I would hope that the idiocy of the pretext would show to the participants how flawed the principle is, but so far there’s been no awakening.
My only hope here is seriously that one day these young men will say, “Screw that, I need to go play with my new XBOX instead.”
It’s the XXI century, gosh, it’s time for everyone to let go of the “it was our land first” thing.
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I agree with you but still cannot resist to point out that you yourself obviously cannot adopt a position “It’s the XXI century, gosh, it’s time for everyone to let go of the “it was our land first” thing.” as long as the subject is Ukraine…
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??? There are few things I detest more than the discussions of who lived where first in terms of Ukraine. I think they are a disgrace and need to be abandoned immediately.
I’m nothing if not extremely consistent.
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Well, then it is not a problem that some people sincerely believe that “Novorossia” is a legitimate entity and Ukraine was invented by Austro-Hungarian military command to split otherwise united Great Russian nation that lived there first?
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All nations are invented communities, all of them. The mechanisms of nation-building are the same for everybody. Ukraine is neither more nor less invented than anybody else.
I hope you never saw among those very weird folks who argue that “Ukrainians are real Slavs while Russians are Finnish-Hungarians who came from the North.” 🙂 Those people are coocoo. 🙂
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From a genetic viewpoint they are partially right. But so what?
I am teasing you because I am trying to extract from you some rational explanation for why you support Ukraine. If this explanation is not nationalist (“Novorossia is much more imagined than Ukraine”), then this explanation has to include some idea of justice, I suppose. Returning to Palestine and Israel – apparently both have some vision of “justice”, and these are conflicting visions… and either side cannot just drop its vision… Just like Ukrainians can’t drop theirs. (At this point I am not arguing about whose vision is right and whose wrong, it only matters how sincerely the opponents believe in their visions.)
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“I am teasing you because I am trying to extract from you some rational explanation for why you support Ukraine.”
“Returning to Palestine and Israel – apparently both have some vision of “justice”, and these are conflicting visions… and either side cannot just drop its vision”
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Perhaps, as you suggest, religion has little to do with the current mess in Israel, for Jews or Palestinians. However, and this may be a bit off topic, it is important elsewhere in the Middle East.
Egypt, under and with the help of President Sisi, just began a Christian church in memory of the Coptic Christians slaughtered by members of the Islamic State. President Sisi, unlike former President Morsi, is one of President Obama’s least favored Muslim leaders because he helped great masses of Egyptians get rid of Morsi, a great fan of the Muslim Brotherhood which continues to assist Hamas in Gaza and elsewhere in Israel.
Might there be a comparable “secular” movement some day in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to emulate Egypt’s current ecumenical tendency?
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I don’t think that the Ukraine wants to dissolve into anything. It wants to be a free, secure, and independent nation-state that associates itself with Western European values. Ideas about a “pan-European entity” (aka the EU) will disappear long before individual nations do.
Israel also wants to be a free, secure, and independent nation-state living in a peaceful neighborhood.
For practical purposes, the two nations have the same goal.
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The nation-state is withering away. It’s a fact of objective reality. Those who understand this and turn it into their advantage – both individually and collectively – will reap enormous benefits. Those who resist accepting this reality will lose out massively.
Now is the time for everybody to make their choice.
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What will those enormous benefits be?
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For individuals, the most rich, comfortable, pleasurable existence anybody has ever achieved anywhere with the greatest opportunities for enjoyment, development, happiness.
To achieve that, one has to accept and embrace fluidity, instability, constant change, personal and professional refashioning. The moment you feel comfortable and secure, get up and move after new opportunities. People who are agile enough (mentally, physically, intellectually, etc.) will succeed. And the rest will sit there, bemoaning change.
I sound like a sales agent now. 🙂
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Pardon my cluelessness (is that a word?), but I don’t see how any of the great things you listed have ANY relationship to the concept of — or to the absence of — the nation-state.
How in the world would the disappearance of the United States make my existence the least bit more comfortable and secure?
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The United States is not going to disappear as a political entity. It will simply farm out many of its functions to private entities. And its inhabitants will lose the remaining shreds of emotional attachment to the entity.
The names of the countries will remain, the borders will remain. But their power and the function they serve will change. They have changed already and in a big way. One example: at the height of the nation-state, citizens were prepared to die to defend their nation. Today, not only are they unprepared for this sort of major sacrifice unless they get a salary (and even then they are reluctant) but they believe it’s too much of a trouble to get an ID to vote. Nobody is ready to suffer any inconvenience for their nation. But that’s OK, the nation is repaying in kind.
So yes, there is still and there will continue to be the United States. But you will agree, I’m sure, that this is a very different United States from the one that existed 30 years ago.
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Well, I don’t see the U.S. or the world as THAT different from 30 years ago. People nowadays tend to see themselves in a more international light in some ways, thanks to worldwide satellite television, the internet, instant global communication capabilities, etc. (mainly due to advancing technology).
But people’s main interests will always be parochial — look at all the squawking the labor unions and their Democratic lackeys are doing over free trade issues like TPP (a VERY multi-national big idea).
Most citizens aren’t willing to go to war anymore because WWII and even the Cold War are ancient history, and almost nobody believes that the U.S. is under any existential threat. If Putin dropped a nuke on Long Island, the country’s war fever would ignite very quickly.
I agree that the world is rapidly changing in ways that you describe, but those changes look relatively minor from my perspective. They show the nation-state system evolving, as it’s always done throughout human history, but they don’t show it going away.
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The nation-state is a very recent invention. It was only invented in the 18th century and the theory was actually put into practice in the 19th. One of the mechanisms of its creation was precisely that it existed “throughout human history.” It didn’t , though. It was manufactured, served its purpose, and is now dying off in essence if not in the increasingly meaningless trappings of borders, flags, etc.
Obama can’t do anything to Putin. But you know who could? The transnational, exterrritorial business elites. Banning Russia from SWIFT would have a greater impact than anything whatsoever than any national government could. This means that a government can’t even conduct foreign policy without farming it out to private interests.
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I’ll also continue here.
As far as I can judge based on Baltic experiences (we can of course debate to what extent all that can be projected onto Ukraine), the pro-European choice has two main components: a) the East-Europeans want to be officially recognized by the West-Europeans as equals (and not some suspicious European-Russian hybrids) and b) they want everything to be like in Europe – living standards, social safety nets, political and civic society institutions, WITHOUT really going through long-term psychological changes that are required to achieve that. (Many believe that they have achieved that psychological change simply by virtue of not being Russians.) They are not willing to abandon the nation state, including particularly xenophobic versions of the nation-state, in favor of some pan-European unity. They want that pan-European unity to accept them as they are. Western Europeans are expected to exhibit understanding of the fact that these nations were deprived of playing with the nation-state at the appropriate developmental stage (by various empires, most notably Russian/Soviet one) , and need to relive this stage.
Any parallels with Israel, Quebec, etc are purely coincidental. 🙂 🙂
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“hey want everything to be like in Europe – living standards, social safety nets, political and civic society institutions, WITHOUT really going through long-term psychological changes that are required to achieve that.”
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(I’m not entering this as a reply to your last comment, because if I do, WordPress will display it in a column about 1 inch wide!)
You’re using a VERY limited definition of “nation-state.” Ancient Greece was a nation-state. So was the Roman Empire. After we colonize Mars, it will develop nation-states. They’ll eventually even have flags and fight border wars. The nation-state will disappear when the human race is extinct.
Obama WON’T do anything about Putin. The U.S. could turn the entire country of Russia into radioactive rubble overnight if we had the inclination.
Transnational, extraterritorial business elites NEED nation-states, so they (the businesses) can locate factories in nations where labor and supplies and taxes are very cheap, and then move their goods into rich countries where the products can be sold at a highly marked-up price. What do they care about ISIS and Putin as long as the terrorists and dictators don’t interfere with their profits?
You and I aren’t actually having much of a debate, though — just disagree on semantics the definition of the term “nation-state.” 🙂
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It’s not my definition. 🙂 This has been studied at length and, believe me, nobody on this planet who studied the issue is disagreeing that the nation was invented in the 18th century. I can’t go over this again because I’ve done it dozens of times on this blog but there are tons of old posts on this subject.
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I can’t believe that all of those scholars are using the wrong definition. 🙂 🙂
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The Israeli Palestinian conflict is an identity war of brand maintenance. It serves too many interests on both sides to go away.
Israelis get to still be victims (since Jewish identity is largely about feeling alienated and/or victimized). They can point to international condemnation (often about things they should be condemned for) as proof that the world will never accept Jews. And without the Palestinians to keep them together (however fractiously) Israeli politics degenerates pretty rapidly.
Palestinians get to be martyrs and symbols of Pan-Arab aspirations (Arab identity seems to be largely about lost glory and the recreation of a Pan-Arab superstate). As long as the Palestinians remain dispossessed they (and other Arabs by proxy) get to experience all kinds of self-righteous anger (perhaps the most addictive emotion).
Who wants to give all the emotional rushes and reinforcement of identity that they get from the conflict for a trifle like peace?
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All true, but hey, the victimhood-based identity standard has passed to Americans. The Jews were victimized by the Holocaust which, at least, was real. Americans are victimized by “the killers of Christmas”, microaggressions, ungrateful Europeans, and triggering works of literature.
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Victimhood is a component of most national identities to some degree. American victimology is kind of new (it’s beginnings go maybe to the late 80s) and pretty pathetic because for most Americans there’s so little real victimization to fall back on and so the race is on to fine opression.
Some subsets of the population do have, of course, real victimization to look back to but they mostly don’t try to make so much hay from it.
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“American victimology is kind of new (it’s beginnings go maybe to the late 80s) and pretty pathetic because for most Americans there’s so little real victimization to fall back on and so the race is on to fine opression.”
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// But I’m hoping that the young people will start finding the discussions of “holy sites” increasingly irrelevant to their lives and will not be recruited for all this.
“The Palestinians who stabbed two in Pisgat Ze’ev on Monday afternoon, leaving a 13-year-old Israeli in critical condition, were aged 15 and 13, from Beit Hanina. Both were shot at the scene by Israeli security forces; the 15-year-old was killed and the 13-year-old wounded.”
I read (in Russian) this explanation of the terror wave (in the linked comment) :
http://lobastova.livejournal.com/821002.html?thread=15180810#t15180810
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The only thing that will help with this specific issue of children is a dramatic improvement in women’s rights. When women’s rights make an appearance, birth rates plummet, and every child becomes precious. Helicoptering is not perfect but it’s better than this.
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\ The only thing that will help with this specific issue of children is a dramatic improvement in women’s rights.
How may it be achieved? General economic development and higher standard of living in the West Bank?
In Israel, Arabs already get numerous opportunities to succeed in life. Though low levels of employment among Arab women are still a problem. Would trying to help more Israeli Arab women find a job help, in your eyes? Nobody in politics seems to look so deep while analyzing problems. 😦
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“General economic development and higher standard of living in the West Bank?”
A group begins to fight for its rights whenever it is ready and not a moment sooner. Unfortunately. There are many places around the world where women still need to get to their first feminist revolution. I hope it happens sooner rather than later. Hey, on the eve of the October revolution, the Russian Empire was behind everybody else in the Western world in terms of women’s rights. And after the revolution, within the matter of just a couple years, we had the most advanced women’s rights situation in the world. So miracles happen.
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\ There are many places around the world where women still need to get to their first feminist revolution.
Can today’s front page news in “The Latest News” Hebrew newspaper be seen as one of the signs of Palestinian women’s revolution? Turns out many Palestinian (supposedly young) women joined men in the current terror wave: stone throwing, stabbing, etc. For instance, today “an 18-year-old female terrorist stabbed a Border Policeman in Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill.” It’s a serious question.
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How do you suggest that women’s rights among Palestinians be improved? By emulating other Muslim enclaves such as Saudi Arabia (the new head of the UN Human rights council) or Iran?
I do hope that you have read Ayaan Hirsi Ali autobiography Infidel. Much of it relates what it’s like to grow up in Somalia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia. It’s rather depressing from perspectives of women’s rights and human rights in general.
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I wish that I had a different answer to this enormous issue than that things will begin to change when women in the region decide that this is what they want. This is not something that anybody else can do for people. They have got to learn to want it.
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Do you think that there are enough Palestinian women who have heard of the concept of women’s rights to make a difference or to help others to desire them? A few may have heard of such things in Israel, but that’s about it. Palestinian television? Not likely. Nor does it seem likely that that those who may have heard of the concept favor it, after many centuries of accepting and fostering male domination. Again, please see Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography.
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Nobody heard about women’s rights in the XVIIIth-century Europe either until the concept was invented by the Enlightened feminists.
You are absolutely right in that this is something that women need to choose to want, like their sisters in Europe and America did in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until they make that choice, nothing will happen.
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It seems unlikely that there are many persuasive women’s rights advocates in Palestinian areas.
How much would you, or anyone else, sacrifice for a concept of which neither you nor any of your associates had ever heard and of which neither you nor any of your associates had ever experienced the benefits?
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It definitely can’t be harder for Palestinian women than it was for the European feminists of 200 years ago who were creating the movement for women’s rights in a complete vacuum. But they need to want it. It’s not the kind of work anybody else can do for one.
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Very interesting take on the issue:
The intifada of the young and hopeless
Analysis: The young male and female murderers flooding Israel’s streets are not lunatics from the margins of the Palestinian society; they are part of an army of unemployed academics and hopeless high school students who could care less about the regional political problems.
…
This phenomenon of an army of unemployed youngsters is well known on the ground. Professionals in the defense establishment have been following it, writing about it, warning about it for years, but no one – neither in Israel nor in the PA – has done anything about it. After all, this requires a long-term process with huge investments, and who in the Middle East has time to invest in long-term processes?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4710577,00.html
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I was foolish enough to be surprised by the following:
Palestinian proposal to UNESCO: Western Wall is part of al-Aqsa
Proposal likely to pass due to automatic Arab-Muslim majority there; proposal also condemns Israel for calling on its citizens to bear arms.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4712189,00.html
Not only Jews must not pray at the Temple Mount while Arabs may, now Western Wall should go to Palestinians too and be called by all Buraq Plaza. As if Jewish temple never existed, long before Islam appeared at all. If UNESCO agrees to such erasion of history, Israel should ignore the sham organization.
As for Palestinian respect of holy sites, “Palestinians set alight parts of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus overnight Thursday as they rioted and threw Molotov cocktails.” At least, Palestinian security forces extinguished blaze.
Despite living in Israel, I understood the best what was going on with al-Aqsa after reading Ottomans and Zionists blog:
Unholy Fire on the Temple Mount
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The only reason to try to ban Jews from the Western Wall is to provoke a fresh round of hostilities.
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Palestinian Authority head Abbas continues to incite Palestinian terror attacks on Jews by fibbing about Israel’s intentions vis a vis Temple Mount, the “execution” of Palestinian children and the like. It’s a long and well-sourced article
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