The duality of Israel regarding the treatment of Arabs?

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How can that be so? Israeli Arabs and Palestinians are the same people... the only differences really may be with the Bedouin of which there are more in Israel than in the occupied territories. Bedouin serve in the Israeli military yet are treated abominably - what with the unrecognised villages, the Israeli pathological desire to prevent the desert from blooming when they spray Bedouin crops with herbicide... the differences in treatment are linked to the perceived threats coming from each community to the Zionist enterprise that is ongoing and aggressive. The West Bank and Gaza Palestinians are overwhelming majorities in the occupied territories so they are the hardest cases to break and as it's not officially in Israel they can act like Nazis if they want and can deny that this is going on in Israel... this is a special place, a special territory with special status.

In Israel, if they were to behave like Nazis, particularly when there's no war, it could be used to delegitimise Israel itself... a war could be used as an excuse to expel the remaining Arabs there if they want, they used war in this way before. The Bedouin are treated worse because they are the majority in the Negev... they need to be controlled more firmly. There has also been fears expressed by Zionists over the "triangle" and the Galilee also.

Right now the Israelis claim that Israeli Arabs have equal rights. They say they have the right to vote. In truth, Israeli Arabs get far less from the government for health and education and other services than do Jews. Many programmes have as prerequisites military service that Israeli Arabs don't do other than Bedouins, or Jews who were Yeshiva students who get a pass from military service - in short, it's designed to deny the Palestinians in Israel access to services. The right to vote is meaningless when they, 20% of the population, cannot vote in the majority for anyone and there's a policy by the Jewish parties never to admit in a coalition an Arab party. If Labour runs in an election on peace and wins the plurality and seeks coalition partners and they are made to choose between Balad let's say, an Arab party, and the "Let's Kill all the Arabs Jewish Nazi Party", they'll choose the Nazis every day of the week and they have...

So as an Arab voter, what is the choice? Vote for a party that will never have any influence whatsoever on making policy or vote for a party that hates your guts. Some choice. In fact, people often are forced to vote for a party that hates them because if they vote for Arab parties, it increases the possibility that Nazis hold the balance of power - that is the artificial balance of power caused by the Jewish party boycott of Arab parties.

Oh yes, slightly relevant, but i've heard that the company that builds new settlements in Israel is actually a Canadian conglomerate called GreenPark. Led by an american jew, it seems. (link to the "ontarian" website of the company: http://www.greenparkhomes.com/)

Found an interesting article regarding the issue i heard about

http://www.thestar.com/article/458375

Israel as constituted is safe from a demographic perspective. Israel, however, wants to rule the West Bank and Gaza also, but if it was to annex these places, they would have large blocks of Arab majority land and they'd be expected to extend citizenship to the people there. This would mean that all of a sudden, nearly half of the Knesset prospectively could be Arab parliamentarians of Arab parties. This puts the entire Zionist regime at peril particularly as it has no constitution, just a basic law that can be changed by a simple majority.

So their strategy has been to take over as much of the land as possible. This is done by creating an infrastructure linked to Israel - a network of settlements that dominate the hills around the major cities, to surround the major populated areas, to prohibit Palestinian construction beyond its existing footprint. Salients are created, areas are surrounded and bypassed and isolated from one another. An envelope of settlements blankets the outskirts of Jerusalem and a huge settlement is being set up due east of Jerusalem in order to decisively bisect the West Bank. Another salient is set up focused on the Ariel settlement to the north.

In time, the Israelis hope to annex most of the land with the exception of the populated, isolated islands of Palestinian-run townships. They will gain the land and not have to be concerned with the surrounded people who have been subject to a conditioning regime for years to reflexively obey with a policy to choke off territories indefinitely at the slightest excuse. An act of violence or defiance of any kind is punished with siege. This has not worked very well in terms of making people obey, I don't think.

The Israelis have one weakness here. That is that the world has decided, including even the United States, that no annexations will be accepted without the Palestinian representatives agreeing to it. So this game has gone on for over ten years to try to twist the arm of Arafat or Abbas to force him to sign away parts of the West Bank for Israeli annexation, including the large Ma'ale Adumin settlement that bisects the West Bank and isolates Jerusalem...

Now the Palestinians are beginning to say that instead of a farce of a state that Israel and the United States demand, that a one-state solution is preferred and it's the Israelis that are forcing things with the settlements. Some are saying , "We can always have official Apartheid" - to annex the whole thing but keep the Palestinians without citizenship...

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" - probably what the internal Arabs get in the way of treatment.

There are two standards of behaviour; Arab and Israeli. Each judges the other by their own standards.

All I know about the Middle East:
1) anything the Israelis say is a lie, according to the Arabs
2) anything the Arabs say is a lie, according to the Israelis
3) Someone is lying.

And the fact that America exists is reason enough for some Arabs to hate us (heck, I bet there's even Israelis that hate us...) If you want a friend in the Middle East, get a dog...

The fundamental problem for Israel is this - Israel's regime demands a Jewish state in the entire Palestine and has for decades, even though Jews were just 5% and Arabs 95% there in 1920. It also does not help that the Arab population is not one that can be easily wiped out with smallpox or be overwhelmed with numbers, though at times there was hope expressed that they could send 10 million or more Jews there to totally overwhelm the natives with numbers. Everything Israel does is about maintaining this regime and maintaining control over the entire territory and defusing any "demographic bombs" that threaten.

I know it's not going to be easy, but I think that Israel should help the Muslims instead of taking their homes away. I think Israel should be a multi-religous state!

My thoughts on much of what I have read here:

1. The system in Israel is comparable to the Jim Crow system of the United States in the late 1800's.

2. Israel's counter-terrorism barrier is necessary, as it prevents suicide bombers from killing true civilians.

3. It is a war crime to fire from civilian areas. Now Hamas has learned why.

4. Israeli Arabs are treated as second-class citizens. It is very difficult for them to receive grants to develop their neighborhoods.

5. No one, in their right mind, would argue that Israel forfeits its right to exist due to their maltreatment of Israeli Arabs. For one thing, if they were replace by the current Palestinian government, the crimes against Jews would probably be much worse than the crimes against Arabs currently. Much of the criticism of Israel stems more from anti-semitism than from concern for human rights, as these same sources ignore the greater human rights crimes committed by Hamas against Israel, and by Hamas against other Palestinians.

What of Egypt and Jordan in this litany of woe?

The blockade of Gaza is not just an Israeli blokade, it is enforced by Egypt (who has a border with Gaza) as well. Where has Jordan been in efforts to find a home for displaced Palestinians? After all, they are all Hashemites, and Jordan is one of the successor states to Transjordan and the British Mandate of Palestine.

The simple fact of the matter is that until the Palestinian people develop the governance capacity to control their own governments they will continue to be plagued by the tribalism and factionalism that has prevented the emergence of the Palestinian Authority as a legitimate government for ceded territory.

For all its failings, Israel is a Parliamentary democracy in which Arabs hold elected office, senior bureaucratic offices and military positions. When the Palestinian Authority can demonstrate the same, then there can be a meeting of equals.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ5-91kUu98&playnext_from=TL&videos=wl2aSCj0GcM&feature=sub[/youtube]


Just tell me this was a minority incident. One of Liberman's fringe group of wackjobs.