Master peace-architects from around the globe, including the Bush administration and the Putin government, have put together a comprehensive roadmap for Israeli-Palestinian peace. They’re dancing in the streets of the West Bank, and not just because of the small weapons fire being aimed at their feet. Peace, sweet peace has come at last!
Of course, there’s one tiny snag…
“Palestinians have insisted that the first step required of them - the end of attacks on Israelis - will be impossible with Israeli forces entrenched in most of the Palestinian territory…”
Which would be fine, except for…
“Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Sofer told the BBC: ‘Before anything can happen… [the Palestinian Authority] has to really bring an end to terrorism.’”
Which seems attainable, if only…
“The Palestinian militant group Hamas rejected the “roadmap” outright.”
Doh! Who could’ve foreseen this little snafu?
In drawing up the plan, the international coalition has once again boldly avoided the essential conundrum that has prevented previous peace plans from really getting started. No tangible pressure is being put on either side to leave square one, and naturally both sides demand that the other leave the square first. Which is only sensible - somebody has to step on those land-mines, after all.
A real peace plan, of course, would have to involve politically risky measures like censures and the threat of sanctions. It would require brave assertions by the traditional allies of both sides that acts of brutality will not be tolerated.
But now we can say we tried. Hey, we gave ‘em a roadmap:
Fanny Roborat
34 comments
Don
April 30, 2003 at 3:05 pm
1So then, peace would seem to be well on the way to an extremely singular event.
r
April 30, 2003 at 4:21 pm
2As usual, Adam, I am wHOLEly taken in by your brand of black humor — incisive, pithy, finely thought-out.
John Isbell
April 30, 2003 at 6:07 pm
3Inspired roadmap. Maybe send it to the White House.
prmantis
April 30, 2003 at 11:47 pm
4this is the exact same kind of “reasoning” that has led to our Passover Seders getting so small! Someone says something bad about someone else, then the first someone doesn’t get invited next time and so the other person doesn’t get invited after that - pretty soon we’re all eating alone!
Mean Tim
May 1, 2003 at 1:18 am
5Heh, I was hoping their was a little more to the road map then “Hey guys stop killing each other.”
And Don that was the best pun i’ve seen in a while.
BTW can anyone else not get in the forum?
alex kidd
May 1, 2003 at 2:28 am
6looks good to me, except for that little rupture in the space time vortex. oops.
dee
May 1, 2003 at 8:12 am
7I’ve been getting error messages trying to get into the Forum, too. you don’t think it has anything to do with the link to the Department of Justice Privacy notification, do you?
Don
May 1, 2003 at 3:27 pm
8Re: Forum
Is it progress to be refused access by a different error code than earlier?
Mean Tim: Thanks for noticing. I was wondering if I was being too abstruse.
Joshua Scholar
May 1, 2003 at 3:41 pm
9I real roadmap to peace would involve killing terrorist leaders like Yassar Arafat and then denazifying Palestine
Sara J
May 1, 2003 at 6:16 pm
10Joshua,
If the Palestinians are the Nazis, why does Israel have the Sarin gas? (See BBC documentary “Israel’s Secret Weapon”)
I know, the program is mainly about Israel’s nuclear capabilities and illegal detention of Mordechai Vanunu who blew the whistle, but if you’re talking Nazism I refer you to the portion about Israel smuggling Sarin ingredients. Also see the film clips of Palestinian victims of Israeli gas attacks in 2001.
Ah, blind spots.
Sorry to anyone who was studiously ignoring Mr. Scholar, I can’t help it. Must…argue!
Joshua Scholar
May 1, 2003 at 6:30 pm
11Sara: And your point? They have nukes too, as do we. They haven’t used them. Oh, by the way we also have stockpile of nerve gas. Such weapons PREVENT war, you should be happy that they’re there.
Joshua Scholar
May 1, 2003 at 6:32 pm
12As for the Nazification of Palestine, perhaps you should look for the many video’s played on the highly censored PA tv that are aimed at convincing children to become terrorists. They love having dead/maimed young bodies to exploit for propaganda… and boy do they exploit them.
Anonymous
May 1, 2003 at 9:20 pm
13Can we say “occupation”. Who is oppressing whom?Any people has the right to violently resist a facist occupation. As soon as Israel returns its legal border to the pre 1967 area. We will stop cheering for a pack of smelly warriors. Terror from terrorstate israel must stop BEFORE people terror has any business doing so. That would be a betrayeal of all of us (majority about the planet) who support militant removal of racist/zionist occupation forces-including armed nazimentality settlers like the gang our poster, Joshua shills for.
Folks, our little poster, Joshua is a marginal, fringe, cruel and myopic nincompoop-just like Sharonbush. The opinions nurtured in his little mind and heart are recessive traits unto the gene pool of the planet politic. Soon, they and most racistzionist (outdated-embarassing to thoughtful jews) will be a sda thing of the past-like Goebbels and Hitler-AND Meher Kahane
Elliott
May 1, 2003 at 9:39 pm
14Oh, come on people, Joshua is an amazing satirist. He is a genius of irony, he is the pinnacle of satiric writing. Give him his kudos and applaud is reasoned arguments. Huzzah Josh, Huzzah!!
Joshua Scholar
May 1, 2003 at 10:01 pm
15Elliott: That’s so funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing about the anonymous poster ahead of you.
Joshua Scholar
May 1, 2003 at 10:06 pm
16By the way I should mention that I assumed that the secret gas attack never happened.
That’s as likely a secret as all those dead aliens at Roswell.
It was really dumb of me not to mention my assumption that Sara is spouting complete bullshit.
I really want to make it clear. If Israel has gas, it has never used it.
Elliott
May 1, 2003 at 10:57 pm
17O.K., I was trying to diminish the vitriol in your comments Josh, but you are always in attack mode. The truth is that I don’t think there is anything to change your mind, so why try. So, here I go, most of the people who come to this site respond well to reasoned arguments, but your arguments allow no debate, just like our current government. If you want to have a serious conversation about current events, try to see things from an expanded point of view. The people here usually respond well to a balanced debate.
By the way the “If Israel has gas, it has never used it.” comment is a red herring because the palestinians have nothing but rocks and explosives compared to an occupying power with overwhelming force financed in part by american taxpayers. And Israel was created in part by using terrorism against the British occupation of Palestine. It was one of the first failures of the UN. The UN has changed some since then though.
Joshua Scholar
May 2, 2003 at 5:12 am
18You know, there’s no occupation. There’s people who just want their families to live out their lives in freedom and safety and since the Palestinians won’t allow that under any circumstances, they do what they can to protect themselves.
There’s no imbalance of power, there are just people who are still breathing and people trying to stop them from breathing - a gang with knives kill and oppress individuals just as thoroughly as a gang with helecopters and tanks… It’s all a matter of intent and dead from a knife is just as dead as dead from a cluster bomb. Your distinctions are morally meaningless but serve the purposes of the propagandists who invented them.
If you go to Hama’s web site (Hamas is Arafat’s “party”) you’ll still find the PLO charter displayed as if it was Hama’s charter. It says that armed struggle is the only legitimate means for the Palestinians to regain what’s there.
Why was the method of violence enshrined rather than a goal? Because the charter was written by intellegent men who wanted to avoid the possibility of peace. They wanted and still want no civilized rapproachment to be possible, for them the only legitimate outcome is complete genocide. There must be no Israelis left, and they want to make sure that this war lasts as many centuries as it takes to accomplish this goal.
Arafat talks peace in English and then turns around and gives speaches in Arabic saying that the peace talk is a lie, and that at most he wants temporary peace to build up his strength. He talks of the temporary truce that the profit made before invading Mecca and killing all the inhabitants. Note that Mecca is the holiest place for the Muslims - speaking of this peace makes Israel Mecca.
Joshua Scholar
May 2, 2003 at 5:12 am
19Oops that’s Prophet, not profit…. I need to learn to proofread.
Joshua Scholar
May 2, 2003 at 6:15 am
20And “Fatah” not “hamas”.. I worked 24 hours, I’m so burned out right now…
ghani
May 2, 2003 at 8:24 am
21Both sides Israel and Palastine are making lots of ‘mistakes’. I think that both governments want to keep this conflict going. As long as the people are scared the government has more power over the people.
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and expose the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
-Hermann Goering (talking about nazifying, he should know)
prmantis
May 2, 2003 at 10:12 am
22and my sister still never gets invited to dinner
dahlia
May 2, 2003 at 2:16 pm
23“They have nukes too, as do we. They haven’t used them. Oh, by the way we also have stockpile of nerve gas. Such weapons PREVENT war, you should be happy that they’re there.
Posted by Joshua Scholar”
Golly gee willikers, JS. Then shouldn’t we encourage all countries and peoples to stockpile nerve gas and nukes so that we never, ever, ever have war again?!! (Maybe you should take a nap. Your logic seems sleep-deprived.)
adam
May 2, 2003 at 3:12 pm
24I’ve spoken to many Isaraelis and Palestinians, and there are those who wish for peace and those who wish for genocide on both sides.
No, Arafat can not be trusted. Yes, Palestinian attitudes need to change. So do the attitudes of many Israelis.
But saying things like “there’s no occupation” is counterproductive, and it’s also untrue.
Both sides have done things that I would call indefensible and wrong. Many of Joshua’s criticisms are at least partially correct. On Israel’s part, the establishment of those settlements in the West Bank comes to mind. Their vulgar political purpose was apparent from the get-go. Despite the fact that many of the settlers are militants who WANT to be there on the front lines, their children didn’t make that choice and the Israeli government never should have allowed it. It’s akin to Saddam’s notorious “human shield” tactic, and - more damningly - many of these settlements were established after Israel had agreed in principle to a Palestinian West Bank.
Sara J
May 2, 2003 at 8:39 pm
25Wow, I hardly think it’s necessary for me to add anything here. Both sides and the middle are well represented.
I do, however, take exception to being accused of “spouting bullshit” by the likes of Joshua Scholar. If you won’t read the news stories, or watch the damning footage, you have no right to state categorically that “Israel has no gas.” They do, and they have used it. Against a civilian population that, despite your lumping them all together under the label of Hama’s [sic] or Fatah, depending on your level of sleep deprivation, is largely made up of families with children who just want to live in peace.
And if you want to call yourself a scholar, first learn how to use apostrophes.
Duncan
May 3, 2003 at 10:01 am
26“Master peace-architects from around the globe, including the Bush administration and the Putin government”
Laughed so hard at this I nearly fell off my chair. Wonderful.
Jake
May 3, 2003 at 9:35 pm
27Okay, I just have to say this about a comment of Josh’s:
“a gang with knives kill and oppress individuals just as thoroughly as a gang with helecopters and tanks”
Are you crazy? Can you seriously believe this? A gang with helicopters and tanks opresses individuals exponentially more than a gang with knives. The knifies can’t blow up my house. The knifies can’t see what I’m doing from above. The knifies can’t instantaneously kill a large group of people. The tankies can.
I don’t agree with the rest of your argument either, but that bit really stuck in my craw.
Joshua Scholar
May 3, 2003 at 10:26 pm
28Jake, caring how big and modern the tools of oppression and violence are is a form of fetishism of machismo blindness.
Adam: the word occupation is used as a moral bludgen. It obscures the fact that the current “occupation”, the check points and so on are the only ways that Israelis can protect their lives from people who are trying to kill them. Every single day, terrorist attacks are discovered and thwarted. Yet I’ve never heard a Palestinian sympathizer admit that the purpose of a checkpoint is to save innocents - the lives of innocent Jews are so cheap in this world that saving them is considered a blatant form of harassment, a diliberate annoyance and humiliation.
That word occupation needs to go.
Sara J
May 4, 2003 at 11:19 pm
29A modest proposal: the Palestinians should be able to set up checkpoints to keep out the Israelis with their guns and their helicopter gunships, and protect innocent civilians. And they should be allowed to target Israelis for killing who have plotted raids into Palestinian territory. Perhaps they would use bombs for those “targetted killings.” If a few babies are killed too, who cares? life is cheap.
In reality, these are the chosen tactics of Israel. Apparently, Joshua “Scholar” is fine with that.
Joshua, semantics gets you nowhere. The word “occupation” will go when the occupation ends. You could choose a much more constructive manner of hastening its departure.
Joshua Scholar
May 5, 2003 at 1:42 pm
30Sara as Steven Beste wrote the other day:
Ultimately, there won’t be peace until the Palestinians collectively want it. Until now they’ve claimed to want peace, but the only peace they’d actually accept would come through total victory over Israel [total victory means a complete invasion, no more Israel, no more Jews - JS]. It will only be when they want peace more than victory that peace will become possible. I think it will happen, but not because of this roadmap. It will happen as part of our larger effort to try to straighten out the larger problem of Arab failure over the course of the next 30 years. Until then, the roadmap is a useful way to force the Palestinians to begin to implement reforms, and to keep the Europeans and Russians and UN entertained. But will the “roadmap” process actually lead directly to peace? No; not until other larger events help to manipulate the situation to force the Palestinians to give up the struggle. You can’t plan peace unless both sides actually want peace, and right now the Palestinians still don’t.
It took the Arabs hundreds of years to expell the crusaders, and Arafat thinks on the same time scale. He wants to set up a country committed to war to the end and he figures he has centuries to achive this as long as he can prevent peace from ever breaking out. I’m always shocked at how successful he and people like him are.
Since peace is not being allowed, Israelis do what they have to to protect themselves. There’s a big difference between the reality and the propaganda. The propaganda war makes it sound like Israelis could have peace any time they wanted to where as in reality, the only choices they’re being given are total invasion and mass death (of Israelis) or fighting for their lives. Since people have a responsiblity to keep their families safe, they really have no choice, they must keep on resisting the terrorists.
Joshua Scholar
May 5, 2003 at 1:43 pm
31By the way the rest of the paragraph after the “]” was supposed to be italicized. It’s all a quote.
Tuxedo Slack
May 5, 2003 at 2:43 pm
32So, to clarify: anyone who says the Israelis are doing bad things must think Yassir Arafat is some kind of candidate for sainthood, just as anyone who objected to the way Gulf War II was conducted must have thought Saddam Hussein was just a misunderstood teddy bear who wanted nothing more than to wrap the world in one gigantic mushy hug. Anyone who sees any evil in one person must be seeing all the evil in that person and no evil in any other person, particularly not in anyone opposed to that person. If Saddam Hussein was a bad man, then George W. Bush must have been good by the simple act of opposing him, and if you think George W. Bush is a bad man, you must think Saddam Hussein was a good man. Everyone sees the world only in black and white. Nobody sees shades of gray. Nobody is capable of nuance.
If the previous paragraph is at all different from what’s going on in your so-called head, Joshua “Scholar”, the burden of proving it, and demonstrating how it’s different, is now squarely on your shoulders. Until then, I will regard it as an example of the main pathology of you and your fellow neoconservatives — in psychological circles, it’s called “projection”, and its presence in every aspect of neocon thought is too blatant for me to need to rehash here. Thank you and good afternoon.
Joshua Scholar
May 5, 2003 at 5:49 pm
33Mr. Slack, the big problem with you changing the subject to your own obsessions is that you don’t even realize that you’re changing the subject. I would love to debate those ideas, but only with someone capable of following a conversation and noticing what’s actually being discussed.
baby
December 29, 2005 at 5:02 am
34cheating naughty sex