Dear Danny M,
You commented:
their way is not the way of peace and concession; if it were I’d actually support the idea as positive for Israel.
Imagine for a moment that a parent has two children who she loves. She said that each child should get half of their bedroom. But the two children are fighting, and the bigger one controls the whole room, while the smaller one insists on hs half. At first, one might think that it's to the bigger child's advantage if the parent lets the bigger child keep strong-arming the smaller one while the smaller one fights back. However, I think that when children fight, as with adults, both of them come away weaker in the fight, with bruises, feelings of insecruity and resentment. The best would be if the two children would share their room and work together. The bigger child would have more space if he controlled the whole room, but it's better for him if they divide their room because that way he would avoid injuries and resentment. So I think it is actually better if the parent comes in when the children are fighting and tells them to quit fighting and divides the room.
It's like that with the Holy Land too, where the Palestinians and Israelis are brothers, as a large portion-if not majority- of each are descended from the ancient Israelites. So even if the Israelis and Palestinians preferred to fight eachother, it would still be best if the UN enforced its decisions to divide the land and its intentions to recognize both countries.
And this is also true where the Palestinian Authority's preferred way is peace (they focus on negotiations, turns to the UN, and demonstrations instead of military assaults) and concessions. In fact, since the Arab countries originally disagreed with the UN's 1947 decision to divide the Holy Land and create Israel, and since then millions of israeli immigrants have come, accepting Israel and the immigrants would be a huge concession for peace negotiations. Palestinian president Abbas recently said he disagreed with the 1947 rejection of the UN's decision. The Palestinian Authority has even said that Israeli settlers on Palestinian land could stay in the territories if they would accept the Palestinians' laws.
And research shows that we find that Palestinians prefer peace, and that everyday Palestinian Christians want UN membership:
Poll: Most Palestinians want peace with Israel
The majority of Palestinians support a peace agreement with Israel and believe that the Palestinian Authority should use non-violent means to achieve their political goals, a new Fafo poll revealed. Fafo, a Norwegian based international multidisciplinary research foundation, found that 73 percent of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza were in favor of peace negotiations with Israel, but stressed that a settlement freeze should be a precondition to talks.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-d ... l-1.297196
Holy Land Christian clergy bless Palestinian UN bid
Priests in the Holy Land used their sermons on Sunday to give their blessing to the Palestinians' bid for United Nations membership.
The retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, the first Palestinian to hold the post since the Crusades, was to preach in the Roman Catholic church in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
A joint statement by Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran priests pledged their "support for the diplomatic efforts being deployed to win international recognition for the State of Palestine... on the June 1967 borders with Jerusalem as our capital."
http://www.councilforthenationalinteres ... ian-un-bid
I am not sure how much I agree that
it is not inconceivable that it reaches to the heart of the UN
I think it depends what "anti-[entity]" sentiment in general means.
Let me give an example. I really like Coca-Cola. The packaging is nice, it's a tasty drink, and it's the best thing to quell my upset stomachs. But I know that Coca-Cola has outsourced its factories to Colombia, where there are bad working conditions and Coca Cola has faciliated union activists to be killed. There is a campaign to boycott Coke (see killercoke.org) that I sympathize with. I would say that boycotting a company is one of the strongest actions consumers could take. And yet I actually like Coca-Cola, I just want it to stop the killing of its union activists in Colombia, and would especially like it if Coke brought back jobs to America instead.
So I am sure the heart of the UN isn't anti-Israel. The UN's heart is the permanent members of its Security Council, the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China. The UN laid out the creation of an Israeli state and a Palestinian one in 1947, and has never decided to revoke its decision. Instead, the members of the UN Security have made statements against Israeli violations, like the US's statements against continued settlement building. However, criticizing Israeli policies and violations may mean they just want the country to respect people's rights, not that they are anti-Israel- just as my opposition to Coke's killings in Colombia means I want Coke's violations to stop, not that I want Coke to disappear.
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Dear Gman,
You commented:
I don't see how it could be positive for Israel. Israel is already way too small to defend itself.. We are talking about a tiny tiny area and now they want to shrink parts of the border to only 9 mines? That is just silly....
In the example above of the two brothers fighting, it would be helpful because it would be a step toward recognizing and enforcing a peaceful order.
I think you raise a good point about the importance of Israeli security. Overall, it may be much more helpful for the country's security to have peace and order, rather than just more land. If we recognize that one of the main causes of insecurity is the occupation and resulting conflict with the occupied people, then resolving the conflict would go a huge way toward Israel's security.
Further, if we look at the 1967 war, before the West Bank was captured, we see that Israel had massive military superiority, and inflicted enormous losses(20:1). And in the 1973 war, the far superior Israeli army again inflicted massive casualties (10:1). Nowadays, the Israeli army is even more powerful, with 200 nuclear weapons.
There have been quite a number of proposals, including from the Palestinians, to replace Israeli troops with NATO ones that would guarantee Israeli security as part of a Palestinian State. This was particularly proposed by Senator William Fulbright in 1970, whereby the UN members, including Russia and China would also comply with the area's protection.
Abbas Seeks NATO Role in Palestinian State
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told visiting US Congressmen on Thursday that the security of the future Palestinian state will be handed to NATO under US command, his adviser said Friday... In September 2010, Abbas had outlined the government's acceptance of international forces from NATO or similar to the UNIFIL force operating in southern Lebanon playing a role in Palestinian security... On Thursday, WAFA reported that Abbas stressed to the delegates that the Palestinian bid for recognition as a state at the UN was "not an attempt to isolate or delegitimize Israel, but rather aimed at promoting the two-state solution."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e28828.htm
In fact, the presence of NATO troops would be a major guarantee of Israeli security, because people wouldn't want to attack through NATO areas that would practically form a territorial barricade. Attacking NATO would be even more dangerous than attacking the Israeli state.
So UN recognition of a Palestinian State as a step toward recognizing and establishing a peaceful order could be helpful for Israel, because if it is the UN and America that establishes a Palestinian State, it would remove one of the biggest sources of Israeli insecurity- the occupation, while allowing Israel to remain one of the world's strongest militaries, and providing one of the world's biggest security guarantees.
Ultimately, the UN resolving the conflict by establishing two states in peace and security should be a win-win situation for everybody.
