Comment by DiogenesKynikos
1 day ago
> So, nothing concrete beyond your opinions not grounded in facts.
You can read about every round of negotiation, going back to Madrid in 1990. This was consistently the Palestinian position. At Madrid, the Israelis were so obstinate that they refused to even meet with a Palestinian delegation at all. The Palestinians had to join the Jordanian delegation. The Palestinians proposed a two-state solution with 1967 borders. The Israelis refused to commit to the idea of a Palestinian state at all.
> What? How do you replace entire tank force within days from across the globe?? How do you train the crews on new equipment? Why are inventing things that never happened?
It sounds amazing because it was. The US used its massive airborne heavy-lift capacity, and flew in hundreds of M60 tanks within literally days. It was an amazing, unprecedented feat of logistics, intended partly to save Israel from defeat, and partly to impress the Soviets. The Israeli tank crews did not have to be replaced from scratch - when a tank is knocked out, the crew often survives. They just don't have a tank any more. The resupply effort also brought in large numbers of aircraft to replenish the Israeli air force, and massive amounts of ammunition. The Israelis simply did not have enough ammo to fight such a high-intensity war for longer than about one week. No US ammo resupply would have meant that the Israelis would have had to freeze all of their offensive operations and start conserving ammo just a few days into the war.
> Realizing that piece is better than constant wars and trading the land for it is a good move. I’m not sure what are you trying to show here.
That Israel will not trade land for peace with the Palestinians, because unlike the Egyptians, the Palestinians don't have anything like a serious army that could threaten Israel.
> Of course not. Making your own people blow themselves up in cafes and buses is immoral.
Israel just dropped a bomb on a café in Gaza used by Palestinian journalists a few days ago. Is that more moral? Israel has been doing things like this many times a day, every day, for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of civilians and wiping Gaza off the face of the earth. Now, the Israeli Defense Minister has proposed building a giant concentration camp for 600,000 Palestinians in southern Gaza. Is that moral?
> You can read about every round of negotiation, going back to Madrid in 1990.
And then we had Oslo Accords.
How can you make such a claim, when a bit later there was a deal???
> and flew in hundreds of M60 tanks within literally days
The whole airlift took about a month! No denying, ofc US helped Israel caught with their pants down, but making it like US just brought 200 tanks overnight, is laughable. Regardless: Israel turned the war around. Israeli forces were forced to stop on their march to Cairo. What kind of victory is that for Egypt?
Making a land deal for peace to make future wars impossible is a good deal. There was no war with Egypt ever since, so it clearly worked. I don’t understand why you denying this simple fact?
> That Israel will not trade land for peace with the Palestinians, because unlike the Egyptians, the Palestinians don't have anything like a serious army that could threaten Israel.
Israel literally left Gaza. Why would they leave Gaza if they want more land?
> Israel just dropped a bomb on a café in Gaza used by Palestinian journalists a few days ago. Is that more moral?
It’s different. I don’t understand how can’t see a difference between military action that has no incentive whatsoever for those who carried it out vs. paying your civilians to carry out attacks against civilians and making the payment directly proportional to the severity and number of casualties.
> Israel has been doing things like this many times a day, every day, for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of civilians and wiping Gaza off the face of the earth.
It’s called war. People die in wars. UK was in war with Germany (including bombing civilians). Was it immoral war?
> Now, the Israeli Defense Minister has proposed building a giant concentration camp for 600,000 Palestinians in southern Gaza. Is that moral?
If such concentration camp would be built it would be immoral.
I am not surprised that someone who values people lives with two different sets of rules to not see that one (state’s military) is more moral than state sponsoring its own citizens (not even its own armed forces, which still would be less moral) to kill civilians (not even armed personnel) of the other side.
> The whole airlift took about a month! No denying, ofc US helped Israel caught with their pants down, but making it like US just brought 200 tanks overnight, is laughable. Regardless: Israel turned the war around. Israeli forces were forced to stop on their march to Cairo. What kind of victory is that for Egypt?
Israel would not have been able to turn the war around without the massive US airlift. As I said, the Israelis were literally running out of ammunition by the time the US airlift began. Without the airlift, they would have had to cease offensive operations and conserve ammo. The airlift enabled them to wage an entirely different type of war, without fear of running out of ammunition, tanks, airplanes, etc.
What Egypt proved in the war was that it was a serious military threat to Israel. Six years after the Six-Day War, which was a complete humiliation for the Arab forces, Egypt successfully pulled off a sophisticated crossing of the Suez Canal. It broke through the IDF's fortified line, and then decimated a large Israeli armored counter-attack, knocking out hundreds of Israeli tanks. That was a huge psychological shock to the Israelis.
Even though the Israelis turned the tide of the war, they were acutely aware that they had been caught with their pants down and had needed massive American aid to get through the war. Nobody could guarantee that the next round would end the same way. That was the major motivation to seek peace with the Egyptians.
There were other factors involved as well, like the American moves to woo Egypt away from the USSR, but the key thing that broke the deadlock and convinced the Israelis that they should negotiate with Egypt was the Israeli realization of their own vulnerability.
> And then we had Oslo Accords. How can you make such a claim, when a bit later there was a deal???
The Oslo Accords specifically avoided mentioning anything about a Palestinian state. Why do you think that is? It's because the Israeli negotiators refused to agree to any framework that explicitly called for a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian negotiators at Madrid were shocked to learn that behind their backs, in secret, the PLO had negotiated an agreement with Israel that contained no mention of a Palestinian state, no commitment by Israel to end the expansion of illegal settlements, etc.
This is really basic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that you should know.
> It’s called war. People die in wars. UK was in war with Germany (including bombing civilians).
First, this has nothing to do with war any more. This is one-sided slaughter and destruction of everything, which has sadistically been carried on for nearly two years now. Second, why is it that defenders of Israel always point to war crimes from WWII to justify what Israel is doing? Do you really think that makes Israel look better? Third, nobody except for the most strident Israeli partisans think it's the Palestinians who are analogous to the Nazis in this conflict.
> If such concentration camp would be built it would be immoral.
Then what do you think it says about Israel that the Defense Minister, a major political and governmental figure, is calling for the creation of a concentration camp for Palestinians in Gaza?