At last, I agree with a Palestinian Authority official on something! I think Olmert is living on another planet also, although I doubt the PA wonk and me have exactly the same idea of why that is. In this story, the PA official takes Olmert to task for daring to suggest that Israelis may stay on what he regards as "occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people." The only problem is that when one starts inquiring into what these Palestinian spokesmen believe are the particular "occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people" in question, one finds that they're referring to every bit of Israel, such that only someone who lives on another planet, like Olmert, could possibly believe that this or that concession of land would satisfy them.
"PA: Olmert must be living on a different planet," by Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Sr. Soph):
The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday reacted angrily to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's assertion that Ma'aleh Adumim was an "indivisible" part of Jerusalem and Israel, and warned that continued construction in the settlements and Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem would "sabotage" the peace process.In an interview with The Jerusalem Post published Monday, Olmert made it clear that he did not envisage a permanent accord along the 1967 lines, adding that his primary responsibility as prime minister lay in ensuring a "separation" from the Palestinians.
"I don't think when people are talking about settlements they are talking about Ma'aleh Adumim," Olmert said.
Asked to comment on Olmert's statements, a top PA official in Ramallah said, "Olmert must be living on another planet. Peace and settlements don't go together. If this is his policy, he can forget about finding a partner on the Palestinian side."
The official stressed that the PA does not distinguish between an illegal settlement outpost and Ma'aleh Adumim or Har Homa.
"These are all illegal settlements that were built on occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people," he said.
Olmert is like Bush in that he is trying to please everyone and ends up pleasing no one. The Palis will never be happy unless Olmert gives up all of Israel so Olmert is best served by thinking about the welfare of his people, not the Palis.
Of course, it's not like the "PA wonk" can be described as being from planet Earth, exactly. The phrase "occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people" is a dead giveaway.
Regards,
HAID
It is not surprising that a local Arab, in this case a so-called "Palestinian," apparently not quite as willing to say whatever the Slow Jihadists of Fatah will say in order to turn on the Jizyah-tap from the ever-willing Infidels, regards all of Israel as "occupied" Muslim land. It is. So is Spain. So is Greece. So is Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia. So is Rumania, Bulgaria. So is most of Hungary. And much of Russia. And most of India. and parts of western China. All, all, "occupied."
But it is surprising that the Western world continues to think that ignoring Islam, in attempting to understand Islam, so as to most effectively deal with Muslim claims, Muslim grievances and long-term immutable attitudes, is the best way to proceed. It isn't. And throwing Israel to the Muslim wolves, by pretending to believe that the war on Israel, a Lesser Jihad, has a "solution" and that the "solution" involves ignoring that Muslim Arabs have no intention of ever accepting the state of Israel, or any Infidel nation-state, and certainly will not accept it if that state is in any way weakened, as weakened it will be if any further concessions are wrung out of it. The only way to preserve the peace between Israel and those who wish to destroy it is to ensure permanent Israeli military superiority, borders that are defensible (as Resolution 242 in any case calls for), and Israeli control of invasion routes (which means permanent control of the Judean heights), of critical aquifers (found in the "West Bank"), and a ratio of length of border to land area which, while it is already the highest in the world, should not be made still higher. For the Israelis are very brave and very clever, but they are not supermen, and should not have imposed on them impossible tasks.
The principle of "Darura" or "necessity" should be the key to peace-keeping between Muslim Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. It was not wrong, it was right, for one of the many non-Muslim or non-Arab minorities, the Jews, to be permitted to immigrate to, and buy land in, that former sliver of land that once was part of the Ottoman Empire, and to provide, as the League of Nations did, for a Mandate, which Britian as mandatory authority had solemnly committed itself to fulfilling, that is to "facilitating Jewish immigration" and "close Jewish settlement on the land" -- two of the clauses in the Preamble to the Mandate for Palestine that the British did not honor, though individuals, including Colonel Meinertzhagen, and Captain Orde Wingate, in Mandatory Palestine, and Wyndham Deedes, back in London, were honorable exceptions to the general dishonor, most spectacularly on display in the behavior of Bertie Watts-Taylor and later, in Macdonald's White Paper of 1939 (limiting Jewish immigration to 15,000 a year, for five years, at a time of the greatest peril to European Jewry, perhaps a million of whom might have escaped death had the British opened Mandatory Palestine, as they were obligated to do so in any case, to Jewish refugees).
Palestinians: Olmert must be living on another planet.
He has a lot of company. Negotiating and begging for "peace" with an enemy willing to sacrifice their own lives and children to destroy you is a sure road to slavery or extinction... which, of course, is the goal.
Why are so many Western political leaders such neurotic pansies about subduing or killing an enemy that clearly announces its imperialistic intentions? These "leaders" shouldn't have the responsibility for the safety of a convenience store, much less the free world.
Our response to the endless Islamic whining and moaning over "occupied" lands should be that, in the West's view, all Muslim land is "occupied" non-Muslim land.
"These are all illegal settlements that were built on occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people", says a "Palestinian" Arab Muslim, describing Jewish communities built on the ancient Jewish land of the Judean hills.
Hugh points out that in Muslim eyes the whole of the land of Israel, under the Jewish state, is "occupied" Muslim land, and 'So is Spain. So is Greece. So is Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia. So is Rumania, Bulgaria. So is most of Hungary. And much of Russia. And most of India. and parts of western China. All, all, "occupied."'
And there's more: in fact, in strictly orthodox Muslim eyes, every part of this planet earth that is not, at the moment, inhabited by a Muslim majority and/or under the thumb of cruel, capricious, greedy and corrupt Muslim Lords of Misrule is..."occupied" Muslim land. That's right. Not just those regions that, like Israel or Timor Lorosae or Spain, involve Infidel reclamation and reconquest of ancestral homelands that had previously been invaded and dominated and ruined by Muslims; but - everywhere.
Every single non-Muslim population and non-Muslim sovereign state is seen as "illegally" occupying what these greedy, arrogant b*****s firmly believe to be Muslim land. Beijing and Shanghai and Taiwan. Russia. Japan. Korea. Bangkok. Manila. The Marshall Islands. New Zealand/ Aotearoa. Papua-New Guinea. Botswana. Norfolk Island. It's ALL, in the eyes of these greedy liars, "illegal settlements" built on "occupied lands" belonging to the Muslim people.
Yolngu tribespeople in northeastern Arnhem Land in Australia, Arrernte tribes deep in the Red Centre, never mind that they've lived there for thousands and thousands of years, are "illegally" occupying Muslim land. The Pygmy tribes in the depths of the forests of equatorial Africa are illegal occupants. The Navajo ,the Sioux and the Inuit are illegally occupying Muslim land. The Greenlanders and the Icelanders are "illegal settlements" on occupied lands belonging to the Muslims.
The aggression, the greed, the falsehood and the sheer bloodcurdling arrogance involved in this particular feature of the Muslim belief system, are completely disgusting.
When Mohammed's deluded followers marched out of Arabia with the fixed intention of robbing, pillaging, slaughtering and enslaving the whole of the rest of humanity, they did so under the utterly false rationalisation that they were righteously rescuing *their* stolen property from wicked thieves!
... and until he and the rest of Israel relocate the Jewish homeland thusly, the jihad will continue.
Then there will be a brief pause, during which time a Voyager 3 (the result of A.Q. Khan-type "sharing" of technology, no doubt) will be launched with a Dawa Disc (sans graven images, let alone the nudes on the original Voyager disc). And when all of "Palestine" looks as swell as Gaza, they will attempt to deflect attention with a fatwa declaring the kuffar can't pollute the other planets with their man-made laws.
And the jihad will go on.
(Star Trek fans, beware of the red-shirt jihadist.)
What rubbish are you talking about here guys??!! I am Palestinian Muslim Arab, and actually a conservative one. All your claims that Muslims consider non Muslim land as occupied is just crap! Muslims don't think like this! Except maybe for a bunch of idoits like the ones you are!
Regarding Israel, yes it has been established on occupied Palestinian lands. And that is not a claim, this history you ignorants. Many of us, especially the refugees who fled from Israel, are too romantic to forget about that land. But Most of I dare say (based on suveys) are so good that we want to give up that land to the Jews to have their state and will be realistic and accept WB, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Not only that, we are also so nice that we decided to fight our brethren who does like that!! History will never witness more peacefull people than Palestinians who were ripped of everything and have been living without political identity for decades but still want to make peace!
I tell what guys...it is to the favour of Israelis to make peace with palestinians and give them a decent postion of their land. Or else History will not be nice to the zionists. The demographic equations and the future politics are not to the favour Israel in the future. And only time will tell.
Israel should have defensible borders but what are its people willing to do to achieve that? How are people who live in Israel being convinced that their own society is immoral?
What should people think when Jews say this?
I refer to Sylvain Cypel, author of "Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse".
One of his suggestions for ending the conflict was for Israel to accept the Palestinian right of return on paper and then just not implement it, as if making the gesture would be sufficient.
He came across as very pro-Palestinian, with the belief that Israel's military superiority would be its undoing. (How do you claim to defend yourself by firing heavy weapons at people who are "merely" throwing stones?) Maybe he just likes underdogs. All I could learn about this man was that he lived in Israel for twelve years and is now an editor at Le Monde.
"History will never witness more peacefull [sic] people than Palestinians..."
Yes, the ones that elected Hamas with its charter to eliminate Israel and plans to institute shariah and jizyah, the ones that kidnapped and forcibly converted news reporters, murdered Israeli soldiers and slathered their blood on their hands (oh, and did they eat the intestines on another occasion?), and have murdered innumberable civilians in pizza parlors, etc., with suicide bombs, and the ones that have nearly eliminated Christians from their areas and defiled Christian sites.
Robert Spencer wrote: "The only problem is that when one starts inquiring into what these Palestinian spokesmen believe are the particular "occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people" in question, one finds that they're referring to every bit of Israel..."
Robert, you are a Christian. I am a Jew. Who does the land of Israel belong to? What does your Bible say?
Are Palestinians living on another planet or deep below the Earth's surface in a fiery hellhole of their own making?
"All your claims that Muslims consider non Muslim land as occupied is just crap! Muslims don't think like this! Except maybe for a bunch of idoits like the ones you are!
Regarding Israel, yes it has been established on occupied Palestinian lands."
-- from a "conservative Muslim Arab"
No one here has claimed that Muslims consider all "non-Muslim land" (that is, land that is not part of Dar al-Islam but part, still, of Dar al-Harb) is "occupied." What has been claimed is quite other. That is, that on the To-Do List of Muslims, the first lands that must be taken by Muslims, made subject to the dominance of Islam and to rule by Muslims, are those which were once under such rule. Israel is one example, but hardly the only one. Spain is another, Sicily another. Greece, and the Balkans, and Rumania, and Bulgaria, and much of Hungary, are another. Much of Russia, almost all of India, are still other lands once ruled by Muslims, that by rights must revert to Muslim rule. The word "occupied" is not used; that word is used, for obvious political purposes, by Muslim Arabs in speaking of Israel, because they have found that the Western audience responds to this sly elision, whereby the descriptive and neutral word "occupied" (as in "Israeli forces now occupy the 'West Bank'") has been given a new and sinister meaning, that of an "occupied land" to which the occupier has no legitimate title, save that of military conquest. But of course Israel, even if it had not won the 1967 war pushed on it by Nasser, even if it did not now possess the "West Bank," would still have a legal, moral, and historic claim, based mainly (but not solely0 on the precise terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. And that claim would prevail amoong the fairminded, but would not ever be accepted by Muslim Arabs, who take the relentless view that in the Middle East and North Africa, so wrongly called now "the Arab world," no non-Muslims, not the Jews, nor the Copts, nor the Maronites, nor the Assyrians, and not any of the non-Arab Muslims, not the Berbers, and not the Kurds, entitled to be independent, or at least to be entitled to a large measure of autonomy, and certainly entitled to be free of the Arab supremacism of which Islam is such an obvious vehicle, beginning with Arab cultural and lingusitic imperialism.
No, Arab Muslims do not regard the Lands of the Infidels as "occupied" in an immediate sense. But in another sense, everywhere that Muslims do not yet rule, and Islam does not yet dominate, is merely a land that is being illegitimately "occupied" by non-Muslims who dominate it, and have no right, in the end, to do so. Because, in the end, the entire world belongs, by right, to Allah, to Islam, and to the Muslims, the Believers who should everywhere rule as Islam should everywhere dominate. That is what is right, in the Muslim view. That is what, in the Muslim view, should come to pass.
"Regarding Israel, yes it has been established on occupied Palestinian lands. And that is not a claim, this history you ignorants"posted by Averroes
Palestine was…. Ummm… let’s see. The name comes from the Roman Empire renaming the province of Judea after the Jewish uprisings of the first century to insult them, (also when the Second Temple of the Mound was destroyed, how Mohammed saw it in his “night flight” is extremely strange). The Mohammedan hadn’t even arrived on the scene until the seventh century. And they were Mohammedan first, and Arabs second, not “Palestinians”. When they had arrived they were part of the conquering Ummah of the Caliphate, not some renamed Byzantine Province. And when the Ottoman Empire took over the seat of the Caliphate. There still wasn’t a single “Palestinian” person. The whole Palestine issue was raised when the “Evil Jooos” declared independence and ended their Dhimmitude and the Jiyaz tax (the Mohammedan welfare system, make the kafur pay for your bread.). Again you are revealing only the common Mad Mohammedan position that the only “Good Jew” is one that is a Dhimmi in any form and in any country. Can’t have those uppity “Evil Jooos” with self-rule and the human rights, now can we?
All one has to do to realize the total fraud of this is are the demands of the Jihadist for the return of Spain also. If they want Spain back… then I want the Western and Eastern Roman Empire back… That would be the North Coast of Africa, Asia Minor, most of Europe, and most of the Middle East to the boarders of the Persian Empire and the hinterlands of Saracens (a.k.a. Arabia).
RIGHT OF RETURN OF THE BYZATINE PEOPLE NOW!!! A NON-NEGOTIABLE POSITION!!! (roflmao)
Seems history is know here Averroes, so go try your taqqiya on the bleeding heart Cultist of Multiculturalism and know that your are just a silly Mohammedan Kittman.
Averroes, as long as we are demanding our lands back let me say as an indian, I want all of our occupied lands back. these land include west indian states that now are parts of pakistan and our whole bengal state. All arab worshippers and interlopers must vacate these lands ASAP. additionally the tibetans also need to be given their country of Tibet back from the chinese occupiers. and by the way we had a tiny Jewish population in out southern state. Most left for Isreal for the reason that Isreal had a large jewish population. But I would welcome them back with open arms because they were far better immigrants then the muslim invaders.
Monk asks: "Who does the land of Israel belong to?"
The Jews.
I found this website entitled: Seven Reasons Israel Belongs to the Jews: http://www.kcholmim.org/seven.php
Here is the first reason, and the other six can be found on the above website.
"The first reason is that Israel has the right to the land because of all of the archeological evidence. That is reason, No. 1. All the archeological evidence supports it.
Every time there is a dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that Israelis have had a presence there for 3,000 years. They have been there for a long time. The coins, the cities, the pottery, the culture--there are other people, groups that are there, but there is no mistaking the fact that Israelis have been present in that land for 3,000 years. It predates any claims that other peoples in the regions may have. The ancient Philistines are extinct. Many other ancient peoples are extinct. They do not have the unbroken line to this date that the Israelis have. Even the Egyptians of today are not racial Egyptians of 2,000, 3,000 years ago. They are primarily an Arab people. The land is called Egypt, but they are not the same racial and ethnic stock as the old Egyptians of the ancient world. The first Israelis are in fact descended from the original Israelites. The first proof, then, is the archeology."
When the Israelis were first willing to give land to the "palestinians" ol' Yasser got greedy and wanted more, deal dead. Fast forward. Then the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and the West Bank, what do they have to show for it, why rockets being launched before the tracks on the dirt had faded behind the Israelis. And being vilified for erecting check points to stop suicide bombers and walls to hinder snipers. Don't preach at how peaceful "palestinians" are. Actions speak louder than words. If "palestinians" are truly peaceful, kick out Hamas, Fatah, and all those other "minority troublemakers." Take control of your destiny and show that you are peaceful. Don't sit and preach at how peaceful you are while rockets are being launch amid shouts of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." We have enough empty platitudes to deal with here.
And from which planet are you, you ' peaceful, conservativePalestinian Muslim Arab?'
Is there any room for infidel idiots on your planet Islamistan?
I agree that all the squatters should be expelled from "occupied lands belonging to the Palestinian people" if by that we mean the real historical "Palestinians" who are Jews and Christians instead of the Muslim Arabs who have usurped the "Palestinian" identity.
Looking at just the so-called "West Bank" we see that Muslim invaders have invaded and stolen the historically Christian cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah as well as the historically Jewish cities of Hebron and Jericho. These Muslim occupiers should be expelled and these cities returned to their original inhabitants.
The same principle applies for Nazareth and the historically Jewish and Christian districts of Jerusalem as well. Judea, Samaria, and the Galil (Israel/Palestine) should be for Jews and Christians only since the Muslims already have their own independent state in Palestine. It's called Jordan.
Averroes:
...it is to the favour of Israelis to make peace with palestinians and give them a decent postion of their land.
I don't see how, or why, the Israelis would be motivated to give Palestinians anything at this point. Having been screwed over by your own leaders for decades doesn't make it the fault of Israel.
Or else History will not be nice to the zionists. The demographic equations and the future politics are not to the favour Israel in the future.
History, like demographics, will take care of itself. Worry more about just how much history you'll get to witness and participate in, or whether you're part of group that pushes so hard, so unreasonably, that your enemies decide to be unreasonable too, and erase all your demographic gains.
Be wary of those advocating the rejection of the pleasures of this world for promises of the next. Especially when the men selling this line of crap are so eager to gorge themselves on the pleasures of this world and so reluctant to share them with you, or leave them to go with you to the next.
Don't expect the rest of the world to care long about your future or your life, when as a group, you state and demonstrate daily how little life means to you. This is not the message you want to put out to the world. Because, at some point, the world will wind up in agreement.