My mom guilt trips me into talking.

"I just hope you say everything you want because someday I'll be gone and you'll look back and ask why we didn't talk more often..."

Calling you out on ignoring the realities of current international relations isn't avoiding the issue. But I will answer your educational question with one of my own (which directly addresses yours) can you tell me the details of the Arab Peace Initiative that all of the countries that you have mentioned have voiced support for? Those textbooks exist because conflict persists, not the other way around.

And I would challenge you to prove it with an analysis of the peace process. I know you can't because I am familiar enough with it to know that the only faction in power in favor of peace is a Palestinian one (the PA under Abbas in the West Bank).

And this is simply rather dishonest on two fronts:

1.) The Hamas party charter is not mainstream Palestinian belief, trying to equate Hamas with all Palestinians or even a majority of them is inappropriate.

2.) Hamas as a terrorist organization, has actually done far more to moderate itself than conservative Israelis have on the issue of the conflict. It even ran on a two state solution platform in 2006 and dropped its call for the destruction of Israel, so you are not only misrepresenting the flexibility within Hamas political stances in your attempted rebuttal, you are blatantly ignoring the platform upon which they campaigned during the elections and Hamas' ability to end violence when it tries to (just look at the entire year of 2013). All more than Netanyahu's administration can boast which has little to no support for a two state solution, no willingness to live up to peace plan promises, and a complete inability 9or rather unwillingness) to curb settler violence which has risen over the years.

The Abbas government's ability to control violence in the West Bank completely disagrees with the picture that you are painting. People also used to say the same thing about Jordan which turned out to be utterly untrue (same with Egypt).

And yet there are no details here. You never address the plain fact that Israel has never lived up to a single one of its peace plan promises and has left the primary Palestinian faction under Abbas sitting alone at the peace table for years. at least the "Palestinian side's" primary faction is interested in a two state solution which is far more than can be said about Netanyahu's administration. Trying to treat them with equal culpability is simply doesn't work.

Which you admit that you base simply on anecdotal evidence. I have that too. I also though, have a working knowledge of the details of everyday life and the benefit of a coupling of that knowledge with an outside perspective that is unattached to either ethnic or religious group. I'd also point out that Jews and Palestinians are not immune from falling into the same trap. I routinely speak to people from countries engaged in conflict that have very poor understanding of said conflict. Just take a look at many northern Nigerians who will tell you that the CIA is running Boko Haram in a campaign to discredit Islam, or in Saudi Arabia where you might learn that Jews were behind 9/11. Listening to locals is important, but you also need to supplement that with other sources and more detailed study.

It isn't over complicating the issue to actually talk about the major issues (which is all I really do). Just take a look at the settler violence issue that is a big deal in terms of human rights and security in the West Bank that you didn't even know existed until I posted evidence of it in the other thread. That is important. How can you say with such confidence that "it is both sides (roughly equally)" when you don't even know some of what is happening on the ground? That being said, I think you're much more well versed in the conflict than the average American.

The simple fact here is that Israel has declared war on other countries for seeking to engage in similar activities that it does to the Palestinians every single day (like the water crisis) Those aren't "overcomplications" those are major issues and vital for understanding the conflict. Trying to dismiss something that Israel has used as a justification for war in the past as a "minor issue" isn't very appropriate.

This stopped being a valid excuse for Israel long ago, it has a good working relationship with both the Egyptian government and Jordan, and Lebanon poses very little to no real threat to it. The "Israel is surrounded by enemies!" argument is antiquated and approaching racist levels (to be honest) in this day and age, as though Arabs have to be enemies of Jews. That isn't true in the least.

Do you really find any of the mainstream Palestinian statehood demands to be unreasonable? They are all legal, and all consistent with our expressed international ideology of human rights.

Not solely, but chiefly.

An independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders doesn't in any way depend on a genocide of anyone. Meanwhile A Jewish Israel with permanent occupation and eventual absorption of the territories does depend on either the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, or apartheid. We honestly saw colonies under European rule where the population of the controlled territory was treated MUCH better than how Israel currently treats the Palestinians. It is unjustifiable; plain and simple.

I actually disagree strongly. Palestinians don't deserve to live under the conditions that they are kept under through the occupation. No population deserves that, it goes against our very purported principles as a nation and as a culture and as a global community to be OK with what Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza. I don't want to see the US pullout at all, I want to see it use its close relationship with Israel to pressure it into actually being a partner for peace.

I've always had a problem with this kind of stance. I've heard a lot of people make such comments before and they always seem like cop outs to me; some vague attempt to appear 'balanced' or 'moderate'. But such a stance rarely has any real depth to it. such catch alls don't work in this issue (they rarely do in conflict in general). Just like the "it's both sides" argument. It's very clearly more one side than the others here when it comes to barriers to peace. There is also more than two sides, so the breaking of the conflict into only two pieces I find shallow in general.

1.) The Gaza Strip isn't occupied by Israel

Boston Globe: "Israeli-imposed buffer zones.. now absorb nearly 14 percent of Gaza's total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land. Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85 percent of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three." Human Rights Watch: "Israel also continues to control the population registry for residents of the Gaza Strip, years after it withdrew its ground forces and settlements there." B'Tselem, 2013: "Israel continues to maintain exclusive control of Gaza's airspace and the territorial waters, just as it has since it occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967."


2.) Israel wants a ceasefire but Hamas doesn't

Al Jazeera: "Meshaal said Hamas wants the 'aggression to stop tomorrow, today, or even this minute. But [Israel must] lift the blockade with guarantees and not as a promise for future negotiations'. He added 'we will not shut the door in the face of any humanitarian ceasefire backed by a real aid programme'." Jerusalem Post: "One day after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire accepted by Israel, but rejected by Hamas, fell through, the terrorist organization proposed a 10-year end to hostilities in return for its conditions being met by Israel, Channel 2 reported Wednesday.. Hamas's conditions were the release of re-arrested Palestinian prisoners who were let go in the Schalit deal, the opening of Gaza-Israel border crossings in order to allow citizens and goods to pass through, and international supervision of the Gazan seaport in place of the current Israeli blockade." BBC: "Israel's security cabinet has rejected a week-long Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by US Secretary of State John Kerry 'as it stands'."


3.) Israel, unlike Hamas, doesn't deliberately target civilians

The Guardian: "It was there that the second [Israeli] shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: 'They are only children.'" UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay: "A number of incidents, along with the high number of civilian deaths, belies the [Israeli] claim that all necessary precautions are being taken to protect civilian lives." United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, 2009: "The tactics used by the Israeli armed forces in the Gaza offensive are consistent with previous practices, most recently during the Lebanon war in 2006. A concept known as the Dahiya doctrine emerged then, involving the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations. The Mission concludes from a review of the facts on the ground that it.. appears to have been precisely what was put into practice."


4.) Only Hamas is guilty of war crimes, not Israel

Human Rights Watch: "Israeli forces may also have knowingly or recklessly attacked people who were clearly civilians, such as young boys, and civilian structures, including a hospital - laws-of-war violations that are indicative of war crimes." Amnesty International: "Deliberately attacking a civilian home is a war crime, and the overwhelming scale of destruction of civilian homes, in some cases with entire families inside them, points to a distressing pattern of repeated violations of the laws of war."


5.) Hamas use the civilians of Gaza as 'human shields'

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor: "I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel's accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields." The Guardian: "In the past week, the Guardian has seen large numbers of people fleeing different neighbourhoods.. and no evidence that Hamas had compelled them to stay." The Independent: "Some Gazans have admitted that they were afraid of criticizing Hamas, but none have said they had been forced by the organisation to stay in places of danger and become unwilling human-shields." Reuters, 2013: "A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields."


6.) This current Gaza conflict began with Hamas rocket fire on 30 June 2014

Times of Israel: "Hamas operatives were behind a large volley of rockets which slammed into Israel Monday morning, the first time in years the Islamist group has directly challenged the Jewish state, according to Israeli defense officials.. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.. Hamas hasn't fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012." The Nation: "During ten days of Operation Brother's Keeper in the West Bank [before the start of the Gaza conflict], Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians without charge or trial, killed nine civilians and raided nearly 1,300 residential, commercial and public buildings. Its military operation targeted Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011."


7.) Hamas has never stopped firing rockets into Israel

Jewish Daily Forward: "Hamas hadn't fired a single rocket since [2012 Gaza conflict], and had largely suppressed fire by smaller jihadi groups. Rocket firings, averaging 240 per month in 2007, dropped to five per month in 2013." International Crisis Group: "Fewer rockets were fired from Gaza in 2013 than in any year since 2001, and nearly all those that were fired between the November 2012 ceasefire and the current crisis were launched by groups other than Hamas; the Israeli security establishment testified to the aggressive anti-rocket efforts made by the new police force Hamas established specifically for that purpose.. As Israel (and Egypt) rolled back the 2012 understandings - some of which were implemented spottily at best - so too did Hamas roll back its anti rocket efforts."


8.) Hamas provoked Israel by kidnapping and killing three Israeli teenagers

Jewish Daily Forward: "The [Israeli] government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas' West Bank operations.. Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren't acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas' Hebron branch -- more a crime family than a clandestine organization -- had a history of acting without the leaders' knowledge, sometimes against their interests." BBC correspondent Jon Donnison: "Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def lone cell, hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership.. Seems to contradict the line from Netanyahu government."


9.) Hamas rule, not Israel's blockade, is to blame for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip

US State Department cable: "Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.. Israeli officials have confirmed.. on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge." The Guardian: "The Israeli military made precise calculations of Gaza's daily calorie needs to avoid malnutrition during a blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to files the defence ministry released on Wednesday under a court order.. The Israeli advocacy group Gisha.. waged a long court battle to release the document. Its members say Israel calculated the calorie needs for Gaza's population so as to restrict the quantity of food it allowed in."


10.) The Israeli government, unlike Hamas, wants a two-state solution

Times of Israel: "[Netanyahu] made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.. Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, 'I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.'"


11.) All serious analysts agree it was Hamas, and not Israel, that started this current conflict

Nathan Thrall, senior Mid East analyst at the International Crisis Group, writing in the New York Times: "The current escalation in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement." Henry Siegman, former national director, American Jewish Congress, writing for Politico: "Israel's assault on Gaza.. was not triggered by Hamas' rockets directed at Israel but by Israel's determination to bring down the Palestinian unity government that was formed in early June, even though that government was committed to honoring all of the conditions imposed by the international community for recognition of its legitimacy."


Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/20...gaza-israel

Which is fine, but in order for that to happen, we have to talk about it and promote wider open discourse on the subject. We have to put forth strong arguments on why we shouldn't be involved (or less involved) if we are to overcome entrenched long standing mechanism / groups that have kept us there and kept us so active, in the first place.

I think you are forgetting here that we are already very involved in this issue and have been for decades. Ignoring that fact and not talking about it doesn't make it go away. It seems that perhaps your stance is though that we shouldn't be involved at all? Which is fine, but that is far removed from 'not caring'.

Well that's where the discourse and the current debate comes into play.

Your point would have been better if we weren't already involved, but we are and have been from the get go. Ignoring the reality of that involvement isn't very prudent when it comes to national defense.

That would depend on the conflict, but in this case the existence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our own entrenched participation in said conflict through large aid packages to Israel have long created national security problems for the US and has made the US and its assets a target.

Do you agree, then, that we shouldn't pick sides?

What do you think of this line?

    Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.