demagogue on 21/11/2012 at 06:38

---

If you wanted it under international law, many individual Palestinians have a respectable claim for an unjustified land taking without compensation, but those claims would be barred by things like (in the US) the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (and Israel & other countries have their own versions), where a foreign sovereign is immune from jurisdiction by its status as a sovereign (there's also a version where it's immune for official actions).

One of the exceptions is for "commercial claims". Since some of the land was handed over to commercial ventures, claims on land like that has a little better chance since they don't get the sovereign immunity (where the company would have to at least pay fair compensation to the Palestinian villagers descendants, if not some injunction where the land has to be given back, which would be a harder sell practically). The statute of limitations is another issue that might bar a lot of claims, but possibly not all.

Whatever the facts on the ground at the time, most torts have exceptions for necessity, I still sympathize when a village has held land for 100s of years, and your great-great-great-grandfather grew up in the same village... If that's taken and the village obliterated from the map, that's a kind of irreducible wrong or harm that deserves some kind of recognition and at the very least compensation. I can't imagine Israel ever getting the political will to allow a right of return (above any except some symbolic small number), but recognition and compensation is another issue in the cards.

------------------------

Edit: I should say my knee jerk bias as a typical American fan of liberal democracy is a single multicultural state with rights for religion and full political and civil rights for everybody. I don't buy that, e.g., American Jews are somehow "incomplete" as Jews because they live in America, so I don't see how Israeli Jews would be any less Jewish in a single democratic multicultural state. But this is not the reigning political foundation for the State of Israel, and I'm realist enough to understand you have to work with politics to have any sustainable solution. So the two state solution is the best end in the real world.

But it can't be held off indefinitely. If Israel insists on the occupied territories being a permanent part of the State of Israel, then they need to come to terms that they're effectively calling for a single apartheid state & need to give Palestinians some civil rights & citizenship status. It has a choice, a path to two states with Palestinians out or a single multicultural state with them in, and it needs to get on a path to one or the other, but it can't have both worlds forever. I'm talking about a long term process and the end-game though. This is separate from a right to self-defense when rockets are incoming in the present situation, which I wasn't questioning (it just needs to be proportional within its power under the laws of war, which hopefully they are making an effort towards. But yeah the rockets need to stop & are inherently disproportional, since they're not targeting military targets, and a clear violation of int'l law triggering a right to self defense under the UN Charter.)

demagogue on 21/11/2012 at 13:13

---

I don't envy Israel's situation at all. They know what they have to do to make the missiles stop (without a settlement, basically house to house clean-up), and they are looking for a long-term settlement (i.e., Egypt cutting off the Gaza tunnels) which might at least give them a base to work from, but they can't do much more than that until there's a Palestinian leadership they can actually work with. As the occupying nation, under int'l law they still have special obligations for what's under their control and have to let cooler heads & rule of law prevail, even when it's a tough slog like this... I mean being proportional and not doing something insane like cutting off all electricity or food coming in that affects innocent people, or allowing a massacre a la Sabra & Shatila.

And from the Palestinian's situation, it's hard to miss looking at it honestly that Hamas is acting incredibly irresponsible dragging Gaza down in the gutter like this for no conceivable gain. Nobody ever has any illusions going in that firing missiles will lead to an Israeli onslaught like clockwork.

There was an article on Morsi the new Pres of Egypt, who is from the Muslim Brotherhood, the whole organisation which used to have a pretty close relationship to Hamas in the past -- And he's politically compelled to denounce Israel and all of that, ok understandable -- but even they are recognizing behind the scenes that Hamas is way out of line. And now that they actually lead a country, he can't just think about pure ideology anymore or afford to be drug down with them, so MB is getting moderated and Hamas & the MB are getting pulled apart. They're apparently putting pressure on Hamas to moderate too, but it and its military wing are still not thinking of themselves like state institutions yet, and it's hard to imagine how they ever will, I think was the punchline. There was also some blurb about the ambivalence parents feel about their sons wanting to join Hamas's military wing, although there's the whole civic pride angle of course, but it's close to a guaranteed young death, and they wonder to what end...

SubJeff on 21/11/2012 at 14:44

---

Oh for sure Thirith. The IDF are very heavy-handed, there is no doubt about that. They are using artillery in this current conflict and compared to laser painted targets and guided missiles that has to have a very high risk of causing death, injury or damage in places you don't intend.

And I recognise that its a hard life for the everyday Joe in the Gaza strip, and have every sympathy for that.

The problem is these people voted in a terrorist organisation and unfortunately they are paying for it. When are the new elections? Where is the way back from it? Is there any possibility of Fatah getting back in, and if they do would they be able to stop the terrorists?

If Israel stopped attacks and lifted the blockade totally what would happen? Because that would be the best outcome for the Palestinians, no? It probably wouldn't be for Israel though because even if they were given the chance, and given international aid (from the US and Europe) to build their infrastructure and economy there would likely STILL be terrorist attacks on Israel.

froghawk on 21/11/2012 at 15:57

---

^exactly



They were offered many plots of land to create Israel on, including ones that weren't particularly occupied (Wyoming, for example), but they chose a heavily populated area for religious reasons and opted to kick people off of their land.

Icemann, you can't just expect people to get over what the previous generation did when their friends and relatives continue to be killed around them and their day-to-day life continues to be obstructed. They have every reason to continue being mad.

faetal, Yakoob and DDL are right.

Vasquez on 21/11/2012 at 16:21

---

What, the Bible?