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[boundfate]

Analysis: High-seas raid deepens Israeli isolation - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_an/ml_israel_fallout_analysis

Israel's bloody, bungled takeover of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid vessel is complicating U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts, deepening Israel's international isolation and threatening to destroy the Jewish state's ties with

Comments

[boundfate]

Your whole post is conserning settlement activities. My understanding is that the disputed settlements are occuring in west bank, east jeruselum, and golan hights. Those locations are all different than Gaza. Israel stopped building in Gaza in 2005 and forcibly evacuated their people.

Israel is treating Gaza as though it is a foreign nation - a hostile foreign nation. (I think any government that vows to wipe you from the planet qualifies as hostile.) After repeated hostilities (bombings and rockets) they put a supply blockade in place to prevent weapons from getting to that hostile foreign nation. (With limited success given the tunneling from Egypt, and much like we do with sanctions on other countries. I'm sure America would do the same if Mexico vowed to end the US and then started shooting rockets over the border.)

These ships decided that they would try to ram through a military blockade, and were stopped. This action seems correct to me. I get why people are upset on both sides of the whole israeli / palestinan conflict, but I don't understand why this incident is being viewed as so awful. Why would you expect Israel to just stop a three year old military blockade because today, some ships want through?

As to the larger conflict, there is no good answer. You cannot return palestinians to their family homes without destroying israel. (6 million refugees simply will not fit in the available land and resources. In fact, they wouldn't fit even if all the jewish people magically disappeared.) You can't grant them israeli citizenship without destroying israel. (Israel is a jewish country - it would cease to be jewish if you gave citizenship to all the families who used to live on the land.)

Israel should never have been created there and the entire area was given the short end of the stick starting in 1917 when the league of nations decided to name the country palestine and to put Israel there without consulting the people currently living there.

All that said, Israel has been there since 1967 and they won their land the same way every other country currently in existence has won their land - in a war. It wasn't much of a war (more like a slaughter) but that can also be said about most countries. At this point, more than 40 years after the war, those who were displaced need to come to terms with the fact that they are not getting their land back. They need to immigrate to other countries. Unfortunately, other countries (except Jordan) won't take them.

The horror of the palestinians is equally the fault of the world community at this point as it is israel. There is absolutely no excuse for the conditions of the refugee camps, yet no country but jordan is willing to do anything about it. At this point we should all be talking about how to help those people, but instead we all argue over a few miles of land here or there. As long as israel exists, there will not be enough space for the refugees. So we need to take the refugees in, then argue about the stips of land. The fact that almost no one is trying this speaks volumes about all involved's actual humanitarian goals.

If I had been God in 1917, Israel would be located in Montana. If I had been God in 1948, Israel would be located in part of what is now Germany. But I wasn't, so here we are. Maybe we would have been better off if the zionists had put Israel in Uganda like the original plan stated.

[ayoub]

It's awful because it's seen as a bully preventing poor people from getting food and aid... While I can see the Israeli point of view, there is no good solution for them in this situation. They were always going to look like the bad guys, while those who were taking aid to the oppressed were always going to look like heroes.

If Israel had instead simply searched the flotilla, and agreed to let them through, this mess would never have happened.

[boundfate]

Israel asked repeatedly to be allowed to search the flotilla. They were denied, over and over again. They sent warships to escort the group overnight, trying to show they were serious as they continued to ask to search the aid and were denied.

When they finally sent their commandos onto the boat, they armed them with paintball guns, not assault rifles.

Despite being attacked and having to fight back, they are currently taking the ships to their port where they will search the aid and then give it to Gaza. What more could you have expected them to do?

Having the worldwide media punish Israel for being put in an impossible situation and then doing the least violent option at every turn seems like, well, crap. Good PR campaign by the palestinians and boo for all of the people falling for it.

[ayoub]

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Once the flotilla was boarded, be it with paintball guns or assault rifles, Israel lost the moral high ground.

[boundfate]

So what should they have done? Blown out the engines? Dropped tear gas? (I've heard both solutions floated. I'm not sure how good they are.)

There are more 'civilian' ships coming to challenge the military blockade as we type, so how should israel handle this next set?

[ayoub]

What they should have done, is work with the flotilla from the beginning. They could have opened up pathways to ports where the goods can be checked. They backed themselves into a corner with their posturing, and sheer stubbornness led them to an action that was unnecessary.

BTW, you do realise that the Israeli attack was in international waters, right? Turkey could look on this as an act of war, if they chose to.

[boundfate]

How do you work with someone who refuses to work with you? They offered, multiple times, to take the goods to their port and check them. That was refused, multiple times. I fail to see their posturing. They have a blockade - they do not allow ships through. That isn't a posture, it's a military position. They do allow aid -send it through their port. Again, not posturing, just a fact.

We are two days out and the next group on the flotilla have publicly stated that the only solution they will accept is to break the blockade. They are refusing to divert to port for a security check. What should Israel do?

As for international waters - they were 70 miles from their coastline. Had they allowed the flotilla to reach their waters (which would have happened in a couple of hours) before acting it would have been daylight instead of dark. The chances of loss of life go up with a day boarding vs. a night boarding. I'm not sure how anyone can rationally argue that israel should have waited the 70 miles and increased the risk of loss of life.

Turkey will never call it an act of war - in doing so they would have to say they were officially supporting sending civillian aid ships with full intent to break a military blockade. There are international regulations against that as well, not to mention how horribly unethical it is.

[ayoub]

There is nothing ethical about Israeli behaviour towards the occupied territories since the six day war, and there is nothing ethical about the blockade.

To be perfectly honest, the only ethical thing Israel can do right now is to lift their blockade, and try to seek peace with the Palestinians for the first time ever.

[boundfate]

So your solution is for Israel to cease to exist? Because those are the conditions the palestinians have given for peace.

[ayoub]

Hamas' demands would become more realistic if they thought there was a chance for peace. Just look at Sinn Fein in Ireland. They were the public face of the IRA, before.

[boundfate]

I've never seen or read anything from Hamas that makes me think their demands would grow less. In fact, it seems like the opposite. Every time Israel complies with demands they are bombed for it. But if you put in charge of all of it tomorrow, what solution would you give?

You can't compare the IRA to this situation. There's a million differences, a huge one being religion.

[ayoub]

If I was put in charge of all of it tomorrow, I'd turn the entire region into molten glass.

But then, that's me. I have no love for either side of the conflict.

[boundfate]

That's certainly an opinion many Americans would agree with you on. Since I know that the next target of these terror groups after Israel is taken down will be the US, I'd prefer if Israel stay in there fighting.

[fireglideflht]

As Macchiavelli said (in paraphrase): Let's you and he fight. I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.

[ajaxtalbot]

I have to agree with Fate here. I don't believe that any Palestinian leader could reach out to Israel in a moderate, reasonable way without coming under attack from his own party. That's part of why Hamas won elections and not Fatah.

[boundfate]

I knew the act of war thing sounded wrong. I'm no where near knowledgable of international laws (I barely know Ohio ones) so here's the argument (copied and pasted) that I read:

First, Article 86 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the High Seas specifically excludes from its application any portion of the sea that is "included ... Ver m... See Moreásin the exclusive economic zone, in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State..." This seizure took place within Israel's exclusive economic zone.

Second, nothing in the 1982 Convention applies to war nor did it alter or amend long-standing international law doctrines in place since Roman Times, in particular, the law of contraband and the law of blockade. Under the 1854 Declaration of Paris, a blockade must be maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. The Turkish demand that Israel allow the Hamas flotilla “free passage” to the Gaza port must be understood, in this context, as a demand that Israel give up its legitimate right to self-defense by imposing the blockade in the first place.

Third, in time of war, any belligerent has the right to blockade the enemy and possesses the right to board and inspect any ship, neutral or otherwise, which seeking to run the blockade to determine whether there is contraband on board the ship. Such boarding may be done ANYWHERE, including on the high seas, as in the case where U. S. and other ships seized a North Korean freighter carrying SCUD missiles 600 miles off the coast of Yemen a few years back.

Fourth, under Article 59 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, Israel has the right to inspect all “relief” shipments bound for Gaza to ensure that what is being transported is, in fact, “relief” supplies within the meaning of the Geneva Convention.

So in short, they did nothing wrong by boarding in international waters, despite what many news outlets are saying. (Assuming that these quotes of law are right - I don't know where to look them up at.)