Hamas shut off the power to Palestine

[MrsAmera 41]

Oh please, can we not accept that both sides have targeted civilians, you can't stand there and say with all of Israel's aresenal they are so tactical that they only go after so called militants? What about the elderly, children, and pregnant women who are forced to sit at border crossings for days and weeks until or even if the Israeli's make the decision to open them?

More about the "generous offer" after lunch.

[mawilson 2,133]

Also, if anyone thinks that by Palestine deciding not to fire anymore rockets the situation will suddenly get better, I'm afraid to say you're nieve. The Israeli government will continue to take advantage of the situation and make life even worse for Palestinians than it is now.

I don't think so. I was in Palestine (both West Bank and Gaza) in 2000 and things

were looking pretty damn good. No rockets were being fired and Israel didn't

try to "make life worse" for them. The Palestinian economy was booming,

hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had work permits to work in Israel, the

unemployment rate was low, the per capita income was one of the highest in the

Arab world. Then came the "Intifada"...

[MrsAmera 41]

Can i just ask what it is you all want? I mean is it really that you want the fighting to stop and the Palestinians to just give up and be happy with the squat amount of land they've been allotted? I really just don't seem to understand the mindset.

[Fandango 1,439]

People, people...it's 'heroes' as in 'more than one'; not "hero's" as in 'belonging to a hero'

Oh, btw *gooooooooooooooo Israel*

(edit for typo)

Edited January 28, 2008 by LisaD

[mawilson 2,133]

Can i just ask what it is you all want? I mean is it really that you want the fighting to stop and the Palestinians to just give up and be happy with the squat amount of land they've been allotted? I really just don't seem to understand the mindset.

Yes.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Can i just ask what it is you all want? I mean is it really that you want the fighting to stop and the Palestinians to just give up and be happy with the squat amount of land they've been allotted? I really just don't seem to understand the mindset.

Yes.

For starters just stop firing rockets.

[doodlebugg 10]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

[mawilson 2,133]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

No-one was "kicked out of their homes". They had a choice and chose to leave.

Those who stayed became Israeli citizens. There are 1.4 million Palestinians

(Arabs) living in Israel today who are Israeli citizens. No-one "kicked them out".

[doodlebugg 10]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

No-one was "kicked out of their homes". They had a choice and chose to leave.

Those who stayed became Israeli citizens. There are 1.4 million Palestinians

(Arabs) living in Israel today who are Israeli citizens. No-one "kicked them out".

That is the most ignorant thing I have seen in this thread yet.

[AnewKINDofFEELIN 0]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

No-one was "kicked out of their homes". They had a choice and chose to leave.

Those who stayed became Israeli citizens. There are 1.4 million Palestinians

(Arabs) living in Israel today who are Israeli citizens. No-one "kicked them out".

That is the most ignorant thing I have seen in this thread yet.

Then educate somebody, bridget. You are obviously more well-versed on Palestinian-Israeli politics than he is, so prove it.

[mawilson 2,133]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

No-one was "kicked out of their homes". They had a choice and chose to leave.

Those who stayed became Israeli citizens. There are 1.4 million Palestinians

(Arabs) living in Israel today who are Israeli citizens. No-one "kicked them out".

That is the most ignorant thing I have seen in this thread yet.

There are 4 or 5 million Palestinian refugees today. If you seriously believe that all

these people were somehow expelled from their homes in Israel, you're the ignorant one.

[simple_male 1]

I have an extremely hard time picturing the pro-Israel men on this board going quietly into the night without a peep if they were kicked out of their homes and told they could not come back so that a bunch of Arabs could occupy the land they were on.

No-one was "kicked out of their homes". They had a choice and chose to leave.

Those who stayed became Israeli citizens. There are 1.4 million Palestinians

(Arabs) living in Israel today who are Israeli citizens. No-one "kicked them out".

That is the most ignorant thing I have seen in this thread yet.

I agree. Many people were kicked out of their homeland. These pro-Israeli people will never understand, because they believe "might is right" principle. Can you guarantee that the state of Israel will have the military might over all its neighbors forever? If you do, then it is nothing but arrogance.

[doodlebugg 10]

Have you heard, for example, of the town that was called Ramle? Maybe you could talk to some of the people who's families lived there for generations upon generations who are now expelled and forbidden to even move back there and then come back and tell me how they were not driven from their homes by gunpoint.

Seriously I don't even enter into these discussions normally because they are fruitless. No one here is going to convince the other of their side so it's not even worth the energy it takes to type but to flat out say that the ones who left did so peacefully is just beyond my comprehension and proves that it's just pointless to argue.

[mawilson 2,133]

When hostilities between Arabs and Jews broke out in 1947, there were 62,500 Arabs

in Haifa; by May 1948, all but a few were gone, accounting for fully a tenth of the total

Palestinian dispersion.

...

But what exactly happened in Haifa? Was there "an act of expulsion," as the Palestinians

and Israeli "new historians" have argued? Or was the older Israeli contention correct–

namely, that the Arabs who fled the city in 1947-48 did so of their own volition, and/or

at the behest of their leaders? During the past decade, as it happens, Israeli and Western

state archives have declassified millions of records, including invaluable contemporary

Arab and Palestinian documents, relating to the 1948 war and the creation of the

Palestinian refugee problem. These make it possible to establish the truth about what

happened in Haifa–and by extension, elsewhere in Palestine.

...

As the British Mandate in Palestine neared its end in 1947-48, the city of Haifa became

engulfed in intermittent violence that pitted Arab fighters, recruited locally as well as

from neighboring Arab countries, against the Jewish underground organization known

as the Hagana. The hostilities would reach their peak on April 21-22, 1948, when the

British suddenly decided to evacuate most of the town and each of the two parties

moved in quickly to try to fill the vacuum and assert control. But the first thing the

documents show is that Arab flight from Haifa began well before the outbreak of these

hostilities, and even before the UN’s November 29, 1947 partition resolution.

On October 23, over a month earlier, a British intelligence brief was already noting

that "leading Arab personalities are acting on the assumption that disturbances are

near at hand, and have already evacuated their families to neighboring Arab countries."

By November 21, as the General Assembly was getting ready to vote, not just

"leading Arab personalities" but "many Arabs of Haifa" were reported to be removing

their families. And as the violent Arab reaction to the UN resolution built up, eradicating

any hope of its peaceful enforcement, this stream of refugees turned into a flood.

Thus it was that, by mid-December 1947, some 15,000-20,000 people, almost a third

of the city’s Arab population, had fled, creating severe adversity for those remaining.

...

Even the stoic Stockwell was shaken. "You have made a foolish decision," he thundered

at the Arabs. "Think it over, as you’ll regret it afterward. You must accept the conditions

of the Jews. They are fair enough. Don’t permit life to be destroyed senselessly.

After all, it was you who began the fighting, and the Jews have won."

But the Arabs were unmoved. The next morning, they met with Stockwell and his advisers

to discuss the practicalities of the evacuation. Of the 30,000-plus Arabs still in Haifa,

only a handful, they said, wished to stay. Perhaps the British could provide 80 trucks

a day, and in the meantime ensure an orderly supply of foodstuffs in the city and its

environs? At this, a senior British officer at the meeting erupted: "If you sign your truce

you would automatically get all your food worries over. You are merely starving your

own people." "We will not sign," the Arabs retorted. "All is already lost, and it does not

matter if everyone is killed so long as we do not sign thedocument."

Within a matter of days, only about 3,000 of Haifa’s Arab residents remained in the city.

Were the Palestinians Expelled?

[AnewKINDofFEELIN 0]

These pro-Israeli people will never understand, because they believe "might is right" principle.

History is against you. The muslims didn't exactly purchase that land from the jews to begin with. It was kind of taken forcefully.

Do you only study the anti-Israeli portions of history?