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What Exactly Is The Israelie-Palestinian Conflict About?


I'm considered to be a student of history and I know for a fact that the land of Israel which is really just the land of Judea belongs to the Hebrew people (the Jews), historically speaking. As a Christian who thanks the early followers of Y'Shua the Messiah for preaching the gospel to other nations, who were Jewish, I'm sort of confused on who occupies Israel at the moment since 1948. Is the majority of Israel occupied by a Jewish sect or Jewish people in general? Aren't the Palestinians technically Arabs? Wouldn't their ancestry have come from the Arabic Peninsula? Last time I checked Judea/Israel isn't part of this peninsula which brings in another question, didn't the Muslims in the middle ages take this land by force? Everyone WITH intelligence knows Islam was always a geopolitical movement. What's with the Jewish hate amongst those radical Muslims? Didn't those protesters get influenced by a terrorist organization named HAMAS?


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It seems you've got your information mixed up. The Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites and the Israelites (who were essentially a sub-branch of the Canaanites). The Canaanites predate Judaism by thousands of years (as state in your bible) itself. However, in the last 2000 years many other civilizations have conquered Palestine and some of them settled there, such as the Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arab Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans.

Those people have changed their religion over time. Judaism was widely spread in Palestine early on. However, during Byzantine times most residents of Palestine converted to Christianity. During Arab Muslim rule, most converted to Islam. However significant Jewish and Christian minorities remained. This mixture of people made up the Palestinians of today. Thus most of the Jews that you refer to who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago have converted to Christianity and Islam and are part of the Palestinian people today.

Most of the Jews occupying Palestine today are not native to the land, but in reality immigrants from all over the world. nearly half come from European origin who are totally foreign to the whole region and not just Palestine.


Asker's Rating: Asker's Comment: Thank you for your information. In a way President Obama made a good decision about the borders and how the Jews who live there today should sort of give up the land. I guess its all about compromise to bring peace though.


It boils down to two things. 1) Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist as a nation and will all die before they change their beliefs. 2) The Palestinians refuse to give up The Dome of The Rock which is built upon the past site of the Jewish Temple and where they made sacrifices to God. Those two simple, yet positively impossible to change facts, are the reasons that the world will end starting in Jerusalem.


People called Arabs are really people who have Arab as their mother tongue. The people called Palestinians are descendants of various groups of people that have at some time or another settled in the area. That is, the Palestinians of course also have some Jewish ancestors. Of course, they also have ancestors from the Arab peninsula, probably also some European Christian crusaders from the middle ages. By the way, not all Palestinians are Muslims, some are for instance Christians. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jews who had been living there had up to this point been considered Palestinians too. Palestine was simply a geographic label for this areas. After Israel was established, the Palestinians Jews identified as Israelis and "Palestinian"became a label for the remaining, largely (but not exclusively) Muslim population.


So what is it about? It is clearly about land. Land which is considered as "holy" by three different religions.

Alan Dershowitz Critiques Obama Mideast Speech

Breaking from Newsmax.com
Obama Explains His Mideast Speech — and Makes It Worse
By Alan Dershowitz


In his press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Wednesday, President Barack Obama explained his thinking as to why he insisted that the first step in seeking a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians must be an agreement by Israel to accept the 1967 borders with mutually agreed-upon land swaps. Here is what he said:


"It is going to require wrenching compromise from both sides. In the last decade, when negotiators have talked about how to achieve that outcome, there have been typically four issues that have been raised. One is the issue of what would the territorial boundaries of a new Palestinian state look like.


"Number two: How could Israel feel confident that its security needs would be met? Number three: how would the issue of Palestinian refugees be resolved; and number four, the issue of Jerusalem.


"The last two questions are extraordinarily emotional. They go deep into how the Palestinians and the Jewish people think about their own identities. Ultimately they are going to be resolved by the two parties. I believe that those two issues can be resolved if there is the prospect and the promise that we can actually get to a Palestinian state and a secure Jewish state of Israel."


This recent statement clearly reveals the underlying flaw in Obama’s thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no way that Israel can agree to borders without the Palestinians also agreeing to give up any claim to a “right of return.”


As Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad Salaam once told me: each side has a major card to play and a major compromise to make; for Israel, that card is the West Bank, and the compromise is returning to the 1967 lines with agreed-upon adjustments and land swaps; for the Palestinians, that card is “the right of return,” and the compromise is an agreement that the Palestinian refugees will be settled in Palestine and not in Israel; in other words, that there will be no right to “return” to Israel.


President Obama’s formulation requires Israel to give up its card and to make a “wrenching compromise” by dismantling most of the West Bank settlements and ending its occupation of the West Bank. But it does not require the Palestinians to give up their card and to compromise on the right of return. That “extraordinarily emotional” issue is to be left to further negotiations only after the borders have been agreed to.


This temporal ordering — requiring Israel to give up the “territorial” card before the Palestinians even have to negotiate about the “return” card — is a non-starter for Israel and it is more than the Palestinians have privately asked for. Once again, President Obama, by giving the Palestinians more than they asked for, has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Palestinians to compromise.


Earlier in his administration, Obama insisted that Israel freeze all settlement building, despite the fact that the Palestinians had not demanded such action as a precondition to negotiating. He forced the Palestinians to impose that as a precondition, because no Palestinian leader could be seen as less pro-Palestinian than the American president.


Now he’s done it again, by not demanding that the Palestinians give up their right of return as a quid for Israel’s quo of returning to the 1967 borders with agreed-upon land swaps.


So it’s not so much what President Obama said; it’s what he didn’t say. It would have been so easy for the president to have made the following statement:


"I am asking each side to make a wrenching compromise that will be extraordinarily emotional and difficult. For Israel, this compromise must take the form of abandonment of its historic and Biblical claims to what it calls Judea and Samaria. This territorial compromise will require secure boundaries somewhat different than the 1967 lines that led to war. Resolution 242 of the Security Council recognized the need for changes in the 1967 lines that will assure Israel’s security. Since 1967, demographic changes have occurred that will also require agreed-upon land swaps between Israel and the new Palestinian state. This territorial compromise will be difficult for Israel, but in the end it will be worthwhile, because it will assure that Israel will remain both a Jewish and a fully democratic state in which every resident is equal under the law.


"For the Palestinians, this compromise must take the form of a recognition that for Israel to continue to be the democratic state of the Jewish people, the Palestinian refugees and their descendants will have to be settled in Palestine. In other words, they will have a right to return, but to Palestine and not to Israel. This will be good both for Palestine and for Israel. For Palestine, it will assure that the new state will have the benefit of a large and productive influx of Palestinians from around the world. This Palestinian diaspora should want to help build an economically and politically viable Palestinian state. The Palestinian leadership must recognize, as I believe they do, that there will be no “right of return” of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel. Compensation can be negotiated both for those Palestinians who left Israel as a result of the 1948 wars and for those Jews who left Arab countries during and after that same period."


It’s not too late for President Obama to “explain” that that is what he really meant when he declared that Israel must remain a Jewish state and that any Palestinian government that expects compromises from Israel must recognize that reality.


Central to Israel’s continued existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people is the Palestinian recognition that there can be no so-called “right of return” to Israel, and that the Palestinian leadership and people must acknowledge that Israel will continue to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people within secure and recognized boundaries.


Unless President Obama sends that clear message, not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians as well, he will not move the peace process forward. He will move it backward.
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Defense Cuts After Osama's Death?

Will there be an Osama 'peace dividend'?
msnbc.com msnbc.com
updated 5/3/2011 With Osama bin Laden dead, can America go back to the days before terrorism and the big defense costs that came with it?


The Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the United States took place near the end of a fiscal year in which the federal government ran a budget surplus of $127 billion. Military spending that year amounted to $291 billion, or about 15 percent of total spending.


But the attack sent military budgets soaring. Defense outlays since 9/11 have increased, on average, by nearly 7 percent a year in inflation-adjusted terms. Military spending this year will be about $700 billion, nearly two-and-a-half times the level in 2001, and nearly 20 percent of total federal spending.


The new billions being pumped into defense, along with other factors, helped change the budget surplus of 2001 into the deficits that followed. This year's deficit will be close to $1.5 trillion, nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product, adding to growing fears of a debt crisis.


If operations in Afghanistan and Iraq came to an end, total defense outlays would be reduced by roughly one fifth.


Of course the Pentagon would still be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on pay and benefits for the troops, operations and maintenance, new weapons purchases, military construction, and housing for military families. The United States, for example, still keeps nearly 80,000 military personnel in Europe and 35,000 in Japan.

Room to cut spending?

As members of Congress return from recess this week to intensify their debate over the deficit and the debt, Osama bin Laden's death focuses attention on military spending and specifically on the $110 billion-a-year U.S. commitment in Afghanistan.

Until now, cuts in defense spending haven't played a dominant role in the budget debate. But if U.S. troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan — which President Barack Obama says he wants to begin doing by July 1 — and if voters don't see the need for continued outlays at post-9/11 levels, it could transform the budget debate.


Smaller military outlays might reduce the need for big cuts elsewhere in politically risky budget items like Medicare spending.
In his fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, Obama has already called for discretionary military spending (that is, not including spending on military retirement benefits) to be cut by 5 percent.

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a top State Department official in the Bush administration, said Monday that bin Laden's death "raises questions about our strategy in Afghanistan."


The successful raid "shows the continued promise of tactical counter-terrorism operations," he said, it also "reinforces also the question of whether the course we're on — which has a large element of nation-building and capacity-building and counterinsurgency within Afghanistan — can succeed, given the willingness of Pakistan to provide sanctuary for at least the Afghan Taliban, not to mention others."
Successful tactical counterterrorism — done in Navy SEAL operations or drone attacks from Yemen to Pakistan — might not require 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration, said bin Laden's killing "might open space for the Obama administration to ease its way out of Afghanistan, if it so chooses, not because the threat will be dramatically less, but because they'll be able to (in the phrase attributed to Sen. George Aiken about the Vietnam War) 'declare victory and go home' — if they want to. We'll see whether they want to."


Lawmakers are divided about what bin Laden's death could — or should — mean for troop levels in Afghanistan.


In a campaign email, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, urged her supporters to sign a petition to "send a strong message (to Obama) that people in Maine and around the country want the decade-long war to end, want our troops out of harm's way, and want to focus on the many pressing issues facing us here at home."


But a counsel of caution came from one of the Senate's hawks, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I – Conn., who told reporters Monday, "I've already heard a few calls that we quickly withdraw from Afghanistan because 'the war is over,' because bin Laden is dead. I wish we could say that."


But, he warned, "if we did that, we would repeat a mistake that we made once before when we pulled out of Afghanistan and that region after the Soviets did and that invited the Taliban and al Qaida into Afghanistan, and from Afghanistan they attacked us on 9/11."


Going after waste — and much more


Asked about military spending in the wake of the bin Laden killing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that senators on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees are "looking for any waste in the Pentagon. Secretary Gates is doing the same thing."


But there's far more at stake than waste. Despite battles with members of Congress and lobbyists over individual items such as an extra engine for the F–35 fighter, Gates is mostly trying to squeeze savings out of the Pentagon as a private-sector CEO would with an overgrown corporation: by shrinking headcount and cutting health care costs.


And, even when it comes to defense costs that would seem to be focused on guns and steel, it turns out that there's no escaping from the health care debate.


As Gates told the Senate earlier this year, "Sharply rising health care costs are consuming an ever-larger share of this Department's budget," growing from $19 billion in 2001 to $52.5 billion in the budget request for fiscal year 2012.


He has proposed what he calls "modest increases" to the fee charged for enrolling in TRICARE, the health care plan which covers uniformed service members, retirees and their families.


He said the Pentagon's current health care plan, "one in which fees have not increased for 15 years, is simply unsustainable, and if allowed to continue, the Defense Department risks the fate of other corporate and government bureaucracies that were ultimately crippled by personnel costs, in particular, their retiree benefit packages."


A shrinking military


Gates's cost-cutting also hinges on shrinking headcount.


In a speech at West Point last February, he argued that "the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the U.S. military are primarily naval and air engagements" and that "the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely."


When Gates first took office in 2006, in order to "relieve the severe stress on the force from the Iraq war as the surge was getting underway" he expanded the Army by 65,000 to a total of 547,000 and the Marine Corps by 27,000 to 202,000. He later added 22,000 more to the Army.


But, starting in 2014, Gates proposes that the military begin reducing the active duty Army by 27,000 and the Marine Corps by between 15,000 and 20,000.


He won't be around to carry out these plans: it will be up to his designated successor, Leon Panetta, or whoever might follow him, to do that.


Despite the cuts, this won't be a "peace dividend" of the magnitude of the 1990s.


During the Cold War, from 1947 to 1990, defense spending accounted for 40 percent of all federal spending. In President John F. Kennedy's first year in office, over half of all federal spending went to defense. By President Ronald Reagan’s final year in office, defense spending had dropped to 27.3 percent of federal outlays and by 1999, it had shrunk to 16 percent.


Measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, defense outlays shrank by more than a third between JFK and the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, going from 9.4 percent of GDP to only 3 percent of GDP. They now stand at about 5 percent of GDP.

Osama bin Laden Killed in Firefight With Navy Seals and CIA Paramilitary Forces

NBC News and msnbc.com

updated 24 minutes ago 2011-05-02T07:33:50
Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was slain in his luxury hideout in Pakistan early Monday in a firefight with U.S. forces, ending a manhunt that spanned a frustrating decade.
.."Justice has been done," President Barack Obama declared as crowds formed outside the White House to celebrate, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "We Are the Champions," NBC News reported.
Hundreds more sang and waved American flags at Ground Zero in New York — where the twin towers that once stood as symbols of American economic power were brought down by bin Laden's hijackers 10 years ago.


Bin Laden, 54, was killed after a firefight with Navy SEALs and CIA paramilitary forces at a compound in the city of Abbottabad. He was shot in the head, NBC News reported.
A U.S. official told NBC News that bin Laden was later buried at sea "in accordance with Islamic law and tradition."


Other U.S. officials said one of bin Laden's sons and two of his most trusted couriers also were killed, as was an unidentified woman who was used as a human shield.
Al Arabiya reported that two of bin Laden's wives and four of his children were also captured during the operation.


Bin Laden was holed up in a two-story house 100 yards from a Pakistani military academy when four helicopters carrying U.S. forces swooped in, leaving his final hiding place in flames, Pakistani officials and a witness said.

They said bin Laden's guards opened fire from the roof of the compound and one of the choppers crashed. However U.S. officials said no Americans were hurt in the operation. The sound of at least two explosions rocked Abbottabad as the fighting raged.


Abbottabad is home to three Pakistan army regiments and thousands of military personnel and is dotted with military buildings. The discovery that bin Laden's was living in an army town in Pakistan raises pointed questions about how he managed to evade capture and even whether Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership knew of his whereabouts and sheltered him.


The news of bin Laden's death immediately raised concerns that reprisal attacks from al-Qaida and other Islamist extremist groups could follow soon.
"In the wake of this operation, there may be a heightened threat to the U.S. homeland," a U.S. official said. "The U.S. is taking every possible precaution. The State Department has sent advisories to embassies worldwide and has issued a travel ban for Pakistan."


Police in New York, site of the deadliest attack on Sept. 11, said they had already begun to "ramp up" security on their own.


Charles Wolf of New York, whose wife, Katherine, died on Sept, 11, 2001, rejoiced at the news, which he called "wonderful."
"I am really glad that man's evil is off this earth forever," Wolf said. "I am just very glad that they got him."
Former President George W. Bush said in a statement that he had personally been informed by Obama of the death of the terrorist leader whose attacks forever defined his eight years in office.

Death of Osama bin Laden Updated 22 minutes ago 5/2/2011 7:33:50 AM +00:00 US forces kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan
Updated 32 minutes ago 5/2/2011 7:24:35 AM +00:00 US tracked couriers to elaborate bin Laden compound


NYT: Bin Laden, the most wanted face of terrorism


Updated 7 minutes ago 5/2/2011 7:49:16 AM +00:00 For 9/11 families, 'no such thing as closure'


Kin of 9/11 victim: 'Justice,' but 'more work to do'
Bin Laden: Alleged mastermind of global attacks
Updated 7 minutes ago 5/2/2011 7:49:11 AM +00:00 Bush, victims react to bin Laden's death


.."This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001," the former president said.


"The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."
Obama echoed his predecessor, declaring that "the death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's struggle to defeat al-Qaida."
But he stressed that the effort against the organization continues. Al-Qaida remains in existence as an organization, presumably under the leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri, 59, an Egyptian physician who is widely believed to have been bin Laden's No. 2.
"We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad," he said, while emphasizing that "the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam."






Officials had long believed that bin Laden was hiding a mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In August, U.S. intelligence officials got a tip on his whereabouts, which led to the operation that culminated Sunday, Obama said.




U.S. officials told NBC News that CIA paramilitary forces and Navy SEAL Team Six carried out the attack on the al-Qaida compound.

The special operations forces returned with the body to Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.


One U.S. helicopter was damaged and was destroyed at the scene to protect its intelligence. All U.S. personnel got out safely, U.S. officials said.


The role of Pakistan, with which Washington has had a difficult relationship for years, remained unclear. A senior Pakistani intelligence official told NBC News that Pakistani special forces took part in the operation, but senior U.S. and Pakistani officials said Pakistan was not informed of the attack in advance.


Critics have long accused elements of Pakistan's security establishment of protecting bin Laden, though Islamabad has always denied this.


A senior adviser to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told NBC News that the politician was expected to make an "extremely positive" statement later Monday because bin Laden was "an enemy of the Pakistani people."
"The bottom line of our collection and analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound held a high-value terrorist target," a senior official said, with a "strong probability" that it was bin Laden.


Bin Laden's compound was huge and "extraordinarily unique," about eight times larger than other homes in the area, U.S. officials said.


They said the compound was isolated by 12-foot walls, with access restricted to two security gates. It had no telephone or Internet service and had clearly been custom built to hide "someone of significance."


Story: For 9/11 families, 'There's no such thing as closure' 'I'm completely numb'


Reaction to the news of bin Laden's death was swift.


Bonnie McEneaney, 57, whose husband, Eamon, died in the 9/11 attacks, said the death of bin Laden was "long overdue."


"It doesn't bring back all the wonderful people who were killed 10 years ago," McEneaney told msnbc.com by phone from her home in New Canaan, Conn.


"I'm completely numb. I'm stunned," she said.


"The first thought I had in my mind was that it didn't bring my son back," Jack Lynch, who lost his son, New York City firefighter Michael Francis Lynch, on Sept. 11, 2001, told msnbc.com.


"You cut the head off a snake, you'd think it would kill the snake. But someone will take his place," Lynch said. "But people like him still exist. The fact that he's gone is not going to stop terrorism."


Video: 8 month lead up to bin Laden’s death (on this page) Lynch, 75, is a retired transit worker. His family's charity, the Michael Lynch Memorial Foundation, has made grants to send dozens of students to college. He said he would not celebrate bin Laden's death.


"I understand that bin Laden was an evil person. He may have believed in what he was doing. I'm not going to judge him," Lynch said. "I'm sure some people will look at this and they'll be gratified that he's dead, but me personally, I'm going to leave his fate in God's hands."




Reaction from U.S. officials who have been entrenched in the battle against al-Qaida for years were more jubilant.


2012 presidential candidates react


Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's opponent in the 2008 election, said he was "overjoyed that we finally got the world's top terrorist."


"The world is a better and more just place now that Osama bin Laden is no longer in it," McCain said in a statement. "I hope the families of the victims of the September 11th attacks will sleep easier tonight and every night hence knowing that justice has been done."


Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said that "today, the American people have seen justice."


"In 2001, President Bush said 'we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.' President Bush deserves great credit for putting action behind those words," King said in a statement. "President Obama deserves equal credit for his resolve in this long war against al-Qaida."


Al-Qaida has bedeviled U.S. presidents going back to the Clinton administration. Besides the Sept. 11 attacks, the organization also claimed responsibility bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, killing 231 people, as well as a maritime attack on the USS Cole in 2000 off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors.


Msnbc.com staff, NBC News, WNBC, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.


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