Balata's Palestinians - We do not want to fight Israel, but our corrupted leaders

Balata refugee camp mired in recent months with fierce shootouts between Palestinian security forces and Fatah-aligned gunmen, with the Palestinian leadership seen as corrupt and out of touch; 'I no longer want to fight Israel. I'm not willing to die for these officials who are only taking care of their families and letting us suffer.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4881602,00.html

The violence, much of it directed at a Fatah leadership seen as corrupt and out of touch, comes as the movement prepares to hold an overdue leadership conference at the end of the month and reflects a combustible power struggle between the faction's aging leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, and exiled rival Mohammed Dahlan, a former top aide who has the backing of some gunmen and disaffected Fatah activists.
"I no longer want to fight Israel. I'm not willing to die for these officials who are only taking care of their families and letting us suffer," said Abu Riziq, 30, who spent nearly seven years in an Israeli prison for assisting in a suicide bombing.

The violence has left about a dozen people dead this year. Observers warn it could spiral out of control the longer that Fatah remains divided.

Abbas, 82, is pushing for leadership elections in his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella movement dominated by Fatah, before the end of the year, as part of what officials say is largely an elaborate attempt to cement his power and block Dahlan's return.

Abbas has no plans to step down or designate a successor, despite a recent health scare in which doctors ordered an unscheduled heart exam prompted by complaints of fatigue. Those elected to top Fatah and PLO posts could form a pool of potential successors, though none would likely challenge Abbas as long as he is in office.

The last Fatah convention was held in 2009, and one should have taken place in 2014. Abbas repeatedly delayed it, both because Dahlan still enjoyed strong support and because the Palestinian leader had no great interest in making changes. Since then, many Dahlan followers have been purged from Fatah.

Abbas' fierce opposition to Dahlan's return is both personal and political.

 

this doesn't prove Israel's legitimacy. Nevertheless, the prediction is that Israel will annex the West Bank and give voting rights to the Arabs. In the long term, this is the best solution with Israel becoming about 40% Arab by the end of this century.

 

And who's prediction is that exactly? So if Israel's leadership wants to protect the Jewish nation, they should not annex territory heavily populated by Arabs. Well I betcha Israel's leaders know full well how to preserve their nation.
Israel doesn't need to prove legitimacy to anybody. The Jewish nation is a reality. And the truth is former enemies of the Jewish state seem to prefer dealing with Israel over Fatah and Hamas.

 

Israel is hiding behind anti-semitism, which has nothing to do with opposition to Israel.
Israeli officials want to annex parts of the West Bank, once that is done, they will continue.
The IDF calls the area Judea and Samaria, ancient Jewish names for the land. It's a foregone conclusion that Israel will eventually annex the entire west bank and will eventually give the Arabs the vote. Thus, it will be 40% Arab. Then in 150 years probably majority Arab by democratic means.

 

Israel will not do anything that threatens the reality and future of the Jewish state. So my bet is that they will not annex heavily Arab towns. I won't hold my breath for the birth of a Palestinian state but if one is negotiated with Israel, you can count on land swapping to go on just to prevent this 40% prediction thingy. Again, I want to know who's prediction this is exactly.

Oh and the IDF is not the only one that calls those areas by their correct names. I have called those areas Judea and Samaria all my life.

The reason I don't see a two state solution is because of Fatah insisting on a right of return. Thy will have to drop it for a negotiated settlement with Israel. It will all hinge on that right of return for not only those that left Israel but all those that were born after. Israel accepting that would result in the quick death of the Jewish nation and that is not going to happen. I mean who's that stupid?

It serves Israel well for the Palestinian leadership to be so divided and corrupt and hated by their own people.

 

a 2 state solution will never happen. Eventually Israel will annex all Arab areas, they have to, to appease the settler movement. There will be no land swap because there has to be a Palestinian state. Calling it by the Jewish name is a Jewish bias, so there is no "correct" name for the land areas. Only thing that matters is brute force and the Jews have that dictatorial advantage. There will be no right of return, no Arab state at all, and Israel will officially annex all land eventually due to the settler movement and far-right Jewish supremacist ideology. Gaza will not be annexed. Thus in the next century, it will become a majority Arab state by peaceful democratic means. Then racist whites from the west will be terribly disappointed at the loss of their white imperialist ideology.

 

Why is it that the Left and the UN are always supporting violent corrupt bloodthirst Kleptocrats?

 

Islam needs to quit lying to itself and blaming others.

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Dario Ferdandez-Morera. Apparently, the wonderful, multi-culti tolerance that the Muslim rulers of medieval Spain wasn't all that:
~
In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden features of this medieval culture by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed...Far from a land of tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life, and by the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities.

As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” Fernández-Morera sets the record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.
~
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AL2SP76/?tag=aoshq-20

 

the Arab-Israeli conflict is not based on religion, but ethnicity. Remember that many Palestinian Christians were involved in fighting the invading Jews.

 

Israel needs not proving its legitimacy to anyone.

 

Arab and Democratic in the same sentence is an oxymoron. And do you truly believe, Jews are suicidal? Why would they entrust their future to Arabs? Keep smoking whatever it is you're smoking

 

zionist adviser thinks Israel should annex entire West Bank

http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-adviser-israel-can-annex-west-bank-and-remain-jewish/

publican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s adviser on Israeli affairs has argued Israel could annex the West Bank while retaining its Jewish character, claiming that “the whole idea that we have to jettison Judea and Samaria to retain the Jewish characteristics of Israel is not true.”

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In a video obtained by Channel 2 News, David Friedman, during a recent meeting with Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, said Israel would maintain its Jewish majority even if it made the 1.7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank Israeli citizens.

Friedman noted that currently 75 percent of Israel’s 8.16 million citizens are Jewish. He noted that Jews were multiplying while “Arab birth rate has gone down.” He also claimed that “a lot of Arabs are leaving,” though he did not offer backing for this statement.

 

It has always been the intention of the zionists to annex the west bank. Sharon's facts on the ground has been the strategy of Likud to achieve its raison d'etre of Eretz Israel from river to sea.

OTOH, I do not see any way that these same zionists would accept such a huge influx of arab israeli citizens. Seems perpetuation of the status quo by continuing to foster the clustermuck of palestinian politics while chipping relentlessly away at the physical assets is to my mind the most foreseeable near to mid term future of the saga.

 

indeed, I can see the clever wicked hands of the zionists in the Palestinian political machinery. It's well known they supported Hamas as leverage against Arafat, so why not do the same meddling now. As you stated, this is to continue the theivery and oppression to force ethnic cleansing, making life so miserable that the Arabs leave. Or not, then demolish homes anyway.

The 2 state solution is a fantasy used by politicians to continue the status quo which favors Israel 100%. In my view, a true humanitarian end to this 100 year old saga would be to annex the west bank and give them citizenship. They will resist for a few years but this is actuallyin their best interests now and even better in 50-100 years when they gain the demographic advantage. The alternative is status quo for the next 3000 years.

 

So the leadership is not really for Palestinians,
but amassing wealth, what a shame mostly when the struggle did cost a multitude of lives.

 

Muslims, Jews, and Christains lived together in Muslim Spain for centuries. The Christians took over and kicked out the Jews and Muslims. This is a fact you can't deny.

Christianity needs to stop projecting itself on Islam...

 

Yeah, after the violent Islamic conquest of Spain they stayed until they were thrown out. The Muslims brutally subjugated the Catholic population. The al- Andalus were autocrats who ruled by brute force by means of an army of more than 40,000 soldiers. They demolished the ancient Catholic church of Cordoba to build a mosque. Catholics suffered confiscations of property, enslavement, and increases in their exacted tribute, which helped finance the embellishment of Islamic Cordoba.

Catholics were killed in Cordoba for preaching against Islam, while others were expelled from the city. Saint Eulogio, beheaded by the Islamic authorities. Muhammad I ordered that “newly constructed churches be destroyed as well as anything in the way of refinements that might adorn the old churches added since the Arab conquest.”

Abd al-Rahman III declared himself Caliph of Cordoba and lived off the the taxation of Catholics and Jews and the booty and tribute obtained in military incursions against Catholic lands. He punished Muslim rebellions mercilessly, keeping the lid on the boiling cauldron of multicultural al- Andalus. His rule was a ferocious military dictatorship backed by a huge army. He built palaces, burned books and terrorized Catholics, sacking Zaragoza, Osma, Zamora, Leon, Astorga, Coimbra, and Santiago de Compostela. In 985 he burned down Barcelona, enslaving all those he did not kill. Quite the peach. Quite the "Golden Age".

By 1031 al- Andalus fragmented into several tyrannical little “kingdoms,” the so called taifas. Between 1086 and 1212, new waves of Islamic jihadists from North Africa washed over the land. The almoravides, fundamentalist warriors with the support of the Muslim Andalusian masses who resented the heavy taxation and the debauched and impious life of the princely rulers, deposed the taifa kings and unified Andalusia. They made the life of both Catholics and Jews much more difficult than before. By 1138, another wave of North African fundamentalist Muslims, the almohades swept in, they the almoravides had become too lax in their practice of Islam. By 1170 the almohades had taken control of Andalusia and unleashed new horrors on Catholics, Jews, and other Muslims. The almohades were decisively beaten by the allied kings of Castile, Aragon, and Navarra at Navas de Tolosa in 1212. From then on the Catholics kept the military initiative, finally defeating the last Muslim kingdom, Granada, in 1492.

The early Muslim invaders maintained the Catholics in a state of dhimmitude —as a “protected” class curtailed from any possibility of sharing political power or compromising the hegemonic position of Islam. In times of war or political turmoil, the Catholics’ freedom was further restricted. Catholics fleeing Muslim rule lost all “protection,” and their property was confiscated by the conquerors. “Tolerance" at this extreme is not easily distinguished from intolerance.

For reasons of strategy, not “tolerance,” the invaders obtained the help of Jewish leaders unhappy with their treatment under the Visigoths. Jews were not very numerous, either in Andalusia or in Catholic Spain, but for a time Jewish garrisons kept an eye on Catholics populations in key cities like Cordoba, Granada, and Toledo. Jewish leaders achieved positions of power, as visirs (prime ministers), bankers, and counselors. Others wrote literary works, mostly in Arabic. Jews thus formed for a time an intermediary class between the hegemonic Muslims and the defeated Catholics. This was the so-called “Spanish Jewish Golden Age.” But Jews remained dhimmi, a group subject to and serving the Muslim rulers.

These presumably “best of times” ended with the arrival of the jihadist almoravides and almohades. Jews as well as Catholics fell victim to their religious zeal. Many Jews migrated to Catholic lands, where some became important writers (the author of the Zohar) and men of influence (diplomats, bankers, tax collectors, finance ministers to kings). They participated in the achievements of the reign of Alfonso X “The Learned” of Leon and Castile (1221- 1284), who gathered in Toledo speakers of many languages and ordered the translation of Arabic moral works such as the Calila e Dimna along with the production of Spanish scientific, legal, and historical treatises, and who himself wrote lyric poems in Spanish and a classic of Galician literature, the Cantigas de Santa María.

Upon conversion, some members of formerly Jewish families (conversos) reached important positions within the government (the wealthy Luis de Santangel, tax collector and financial officer to Ferdinand and Isabella, and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of the kingdom of Aragon) and the church (bishop Pablo de Santa María, and Tomás de Torquemada), and even intermarried with the nobility. They also suffered periodic bloody persecutions at the hands of peasants and the urban lower classes while being generally protected by the upper nobility and the higher echelons of the church, in a way reminiscent of Islamic “protection.” This pattern had been evident under Muslim rule as well: in Granada in 1066—before the arrival of the almoravides—rioting Muslim mobs assassinated the rabbi and visir Joseph Ibn Naghrela and destroyed the entire Jewish community; thousands perished—more than those killed by mobs in the Rhineland at the beginning of the First Crusade. The memoirs of king Abd Allah of Granada (c. 1090) muster familiar anti-Jewish accusations against the visir: avarice, deception, treason, and favoritism toward coreligionists. Muslim suspicion of the Jewish community lasted until the end of Islamic rule: before surrendering Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, Muslims inserted a clause in the peace treaty protecting themselves from feared Jewish hegemony: “their Highnesses [the Catholic monarchs] will not allow Jews to lord or be tax collectors over Moors.” The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.

Abd-al-Rahman III, we are told, kept Islam safe from religious dissension, “saving us from the trouble of having to think for ourselves”; under him “the people were one, obedient, quiet, submissive, not self-sufficient, governed rather than governing”; he succeeded by applying religious inquisition efficiently, “persecuting factions by all means available...chastising the innovations of those who drifted away from the views of the community.” This tenth-century ruler, long before the almoravids and almohads, was as effective as he was at maintaining control, thanks to the thoroughness so admired by his chronicler, which included the exhumation of the muladí (a Muslim of partly or wholly Catholic ancestry) rebel Omar ben Hafsun and his son—in order to prove that both had died as Catholics and thus justify the public desecration of their bodies. With the money collected from the taxation of Catholics and Jews and from the booty and tribute obtained through military incursions into Catholic lands, Abd-al-Rahman III not only embellished Cordoba, but built for his favorite female slave a splendid palace, Medina-Zahara. It contained 300 baths, 400 horses, 15,000 eunuchs and servants, and a harem—not a Catholic institution— of 6,300 women. In 1010 the almoravides destroyed the palace in the course of their jihad and knifed all its occupants.

In the eleventh century, again before the invasion of almoravides and almohades, the man of letters Ibn Hazm saw his books burned and was imprisoned several times. And long after almoravid and almohad rule, the fourteenth-century thinker Ibn al-Jatib was persecuted, exiled to Morocco, and assassinated in prison. Indeed, already in the first century after the conquest, the malikite way of Islam “configured a closed society in which alfaquis, muftis, and cadis exercised an iron control over the Muslim and non-Muslim population.” No wonder that when political correctness did not yet exist, the great historian of Islam Evariste Lévi-Provençal observed: “The Muslim Andalusian state appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.”

The majority of Andalusian Muslims belonged to this malikite way. A sample of its teachings can be found in the dhimma writings of jurist Ibn Abdun (Seville, c. 1100):

A Muslim must not act as a masseur to a Jew or Christian; he must not clear their rubbish nor clean their latrines. In fact, the Jew and the Christian are more suited for such work...A Muslim must not act as a guide or stableman for an animal owned by a [non-Muslim].... It is forbidden to sell a coat that once belonged to a leper, a Jew, or a Christian, unless the buyer is informed of its origin; likewise if this garment once belonged to a debauched person.... No...Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual.... In effect, “Satan has gained the mastery over them, and caused them to forget God’s Remembrance. Those are Satan’s party” (Quran S. lviii. 19). A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them so they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace; the sound of bells must be prohibited in Muslim territories and reserved only for the lands of the infidels; it is forbidden to sell to Jews and Christians scientific books unless they treat of their particular law. They have translated scientific books and attributed them to their coreligionists and their bishops, whereas they are really the work of Muslims! It would be preferable not to let Jewish or Christian physicians heal Muslims. Since they are incapable of noble sentiments toward Muslims, let them treat their fellow infidels; knowing their feelings, how is it possible to entrust the lives of Muslims to them?

Ibn Abdun again writes, “No one will be absolved because of a transgression against religious law, except in the case of people of high social position, who will be treated accordingly, as the Hadith stipulates: ‘Forgive those in elevated social position,’ since for them corporal punishment is more painful.”

The enslavement of black Africans was an entrenched part of the culture of Andalusia. So was racial prejudice. In his Proverbs, al-Maydani (d. 1124) wrote, “the African black, when hungry, steals; and when sated, he fornicates.”

Traveling through Africa, Ibn Battuta (1207-1377?) claimed that blacks were stupid, ignorant, cowardly, and infantile.

These attitudes could be found throughout the Islamic world. Early in the wonderful Arabian Nights, the worst thing about the adultery of the wives of kings Sahzman and his brother Shariyar is that their infidelity was with blacks. In Nights 468, a black slave is rewarded for his goodness by being transformed into a white man. A similar case occurs in the eleventh century “Epistle of the Pardon” by al- Ma’arri, where a black woman, because of her good behavior, ends up as a white huri in Paradise.

In 1068, before the arrival of the almoravids, the cadi of Muslim Toledo, the Arab Sa’id Ibn Ahmadi, wrote a book classifying the nations of the world. In it he accounted the inhabitants of the extreme North and South as barbarians, describing Europeans as white and mentally deficient because of undercooking by the sun, and Africans as black, stupid, and violent because of overcooking. In contrast, Arabs were done just right. Racial self-consciousness led the Andalusian Ibn Hazm to insist that the Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his predecessors, were all white and ruddy-skinned.

What about the claim regarding the “progressive” status of women in Andalusia? Muslim treatises tell a different story. Ibn Abdun lists numerous rules for female behavior in everyday life: “boat trips of women with men on the Guadalquivir must be suppressed”; “one must forbid women to wash clothes on the fields, because the fields will turn into brothels. Women must not sit on the river shore in the summer, when men do”; “one must especially watch out for women, since error is most common among them.” Elsewhere he also condemns wine drinking, gambling, and homosexuality, following the Quran and the Hadith. Truly “liberated” women like the now much admired Wallada bint al-Mustafki (994-1091) were exceptions. The average woman in Andalusia was treated much the same as elsewhere under Islamic sharia, with practices like wearing the hijab (following Quran S. xxxiii. 59), separation from men, confinement to the household, and other limitations that did not exist in Catholic lands. Even the much praised poetry of El collar de la paloma displays attitudes that would be called misogynistic today.

The Spanish Jewish community was not much more harmonious, perhaps because of “contagion” from the zeal of Spanish Muslims and Catholics. The autonomy granted by their dhimmi status in Andalusia may also have favored intolerance. In Granada, rabbi and visir Ibn Naghrela “The Prince” boasted that “[Andalusian] Jews were free of heresy, except for a few towns near Christian kingdoms, where there is suspicion that some heretics live in secret. Our predecessors have flogged a part of those who deserved to be flogged, and they have died from flogging.” In Catholic lands in the eleventh century, Orthodox Jews persecuted the then thriving Karaite Jewish community, which rejected the authority of the Talmud, and expelled it. Spanish Jewish literature was not averse to showing hostility towards Muslims and Catholics: Abraham bar Hiyya (d. c. 1136) concentrated on the Catholics, while the Cancionero of Antón de Montoro preferred to satirize the mudéjares. Both the Muslims and the Catholics were treated harshly in some of the works of the Andalusian Talmudic commentator and philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204).32 His views could have been affected by his unhappy experiences: the almohades’ enforced conversions caused Maimonides and his family to escape first to the Catholic kingdoms and later to Morocco and Egypt. No wonder that in a letter to Jewish Yemenites he wrote that no “nation” compared to Islam in the damage and humiliation it had inflicted on “Israel.”

Islamic Spain was not a model of multicultural harmony. Andalusia was beset by religious, political, and racial conflicts controlled in the best of times only by the application of tyrannical force. Its achievements are inseparable from its turmoil.

How then can one explain the persistence of the belief that Andalusia was a land of peaceful coexistence? The historian Richard Fletcher has attempted one possible explanation: “[In] the cultural conditions that prevail in the West today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour...do wonders for sharpening up its image. But Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.”

Another explanation could be what one might call Spanish self-hatred, the obverse of what once was Spanish self-aggrandizement. Such a view allies itself effortlessly with many non-Spaniards’ hatred of Catholic Spain, in an attitude that sooner or later brings up Las Casas’ condemnation of the Spanish conquest of the Americas—while ignoring the question of why there was not an English, Dutch, or French Las Casas to criticize the English, the French, and the Dutch. As if these nations carried out conquests that left undisturbed the native populations of their colonial lands.

A more convincing explanation may be that extolling al-Andalus offers the double advantage of surreptitiously favoring multiculturalism and deprecating Christianity, which is one of the foundations of Western civilization. This mechanism is not unlike that in the mind of those who dislike Western culture intensely, but who with the fall of Communism find themselves without any clear alternative and so grab Islam as a castaway grabs anything that floats. So anyone who dislikes Western culture or Christianity—for any reason, be it religious, political, or cultural—goes on happily pointing out, regardless of the facts, how bad Catholic Spain was when compared to the Muslim paradise.

https://home.isi.org/myth-andalusian-paradise#sthash.8r7EjAFZ.dpuf

 

the historical interaction between Muslims, Jews and Christians in Spain 500-1000 years ago has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

It's not their fault, they are the remains of former Arab countries domination in the area, from Syria, Jordan and Egypt, they were left behind and no one gave them a hand other than the UN, they are not really a ppl in terms of unity and political aspirations.

 

Nowdays its also about religion, the last riot was around the Temple mount remember ?

 

a coincidence that Arabs are not Jewish and Jews are not Muslim. Overall, this is a race war with white supremacists siding with their ethnically linked Jewish cousins -- whites have nothing in common with Arabs who are basically aliens from the southern areas of Mars.

 

Please name me a solitary European country or kingdom where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together for centuries. I'll be waiting patiently.

 

That is certainly good news!

To a small degree this is also the result of peaceful outreach by Israelis to the Palestinians to let them know that over eighty percent of Palestinians........ are genetically Jewish or Levite.

It was wise indeed for Mr. Tsvi Misinai to let Palestinians know that he feels that they are his distant relatives...... and he personally wants true peace with them.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsvi_Misinai

.......

 

Wait as long as you want, if you think we are going to live in subjection to Islam like they did in Muslim Spain, you are doing some dreamin'.

 

most outreach by Israelis towards Palestinians is not "peaceful". Rather it's live ammo, tank fire, jet bombing, rubber bullets to the face intended to take out eyes, arrests of thousands, bulldozing. Then the Jews pretend to be the victim. They are very clever and white westerners are very stupid, so this makes for a dangerous mix.