Palestinian tells UN his people want peace -- US reaction?

[Terran1212]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-un-palestinians-israel,1,3324383.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

Palestinian Tells UN His People Want Peace
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
7:13 AM PDT, April 5, 2006


UNITED NATIONS -- The Palestinian foreign minister said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the new Hamas-led government believes its struggle against Israel is just, but it wants to live side by side in peace with its neighbors.

The language in Mahmoud Zahar's Tuesday letter -- his first official correspondence with Annan since Hamas officially took power last week -- was reminiscent of that used by President Bush and the so-called Quartet of international parties trying to promote a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


The United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia have called for two states living side by side in peace and security.

But Zahar also lambasted Israel's "illegal colonial policies" which he said "will ultimately diminish any hopes for the achievement of settlement and peace based on a two-state solution."

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Too bad Bush and the BFEE don't want peace. No $$ in it for them.

[Terran1212]

2. True...

[barb162]

42. Zahar denied the letter; see my post further down the thread

[INDIA]

3. I'm sure HE wants peace

But there will always be some fucking wacko ready to blow himself up in a coffee shop to throw the whole process off. Too many factions and not enough unity for the Palestinian cause. I truly believe that if Palestinians stopped committing terrorist attacks TODAY, there would be no further attacks from Israel and there would be peace. The ball is in their disorganized, chaotic court.

[Terran1212]

4. Obviously, considering that Palestinian tanks occupy Israel

[INDIA]

5. There's a difference between the two groups

The Israeli armed forces are disciplined and unified under a single command. They follow orders and civilian Israelis rarely take the process into their own hands. Different terrorist factions in Palestine will always have their own self serving interests in mind. If they don't like the way the peace process is going, hey, blow some people up. Hamas, as vilified as they are, have no real control over their wacko foot soldiers.

[Terran1212]

6. They are so disciplined they can massacre Jenin

Did you know until recently when an Israeli judge ended the practice, that Israel had in its official doctrine the use of human shields? They could kidnap Palestinian civilians and use them as shields.

[Jim Sagle]

7. There WAS no Jenin massacre, and everybody goddamn well knows it.

[Violet_Crumble]

15. Actually there was a massacre...

..but you already know that....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937048.stm

Violet...

[Jim Sagle]

24. That's a lie.

[Englander]

25. The slaughter of civilians = massacre.

Monday, 4 November, 2002, 05:48 GMT
Amnesty says Jenin operation 'war crime'

By Ian MacWilliam
BBC News
The human rights organisation, Amnesty International, has accused the Israeli army of committing war crimes during its incursions into the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus earlier this year.

>snip

Amnesty says the army killed civilians, tortured prisoners, destroyed houses and prevented the arrival of humanitarian aid in the Palestinian towns.

While early Palestinian claims that hundreds of people were massacred have now been discounted, Amnesty believes that over 50 Palestinians were killed in the fighting in Jenin, and at least another 80 in Nablus, many of them civilians.

Women and children were among the dead.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2396071.stm

[Jim Sagle]

26. AI lied.

[Tom Joad]

28. You can't expect to accuse Amnesty International of lying and just

leave it at that. If you have some specific knowledge, share it. Post this in the general discussion section of DU that Amnesty International is not to be trusted... but do please, give your reasons.

[Violet_Crumble]

31. Yeah, AI don't lie...

I'm a member of AI and I joined because of their credibility and the great respect I have for the work they do around the world. I read a book that talked about the early days of organisations like HRW and AI and the author pointed out that most times when the groups raised human rights violations they were accused of being liars by the govts carrying out the human rights violations. Of course the vast majority of us here at DU know those govts were the ones who were doing the lying :)

Violet...

[Englander]

32. Dick?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.amnestyintl/index.html

[Tom Joad]

40. That explains the constant profanities. eom

[eyl]

36. Since you're quoting the BBC

UN says no massacre in Jenin

Expert weighs up Jenin 'massacre'

'No Jenin massacre' says rights group

[Englander]

39. Oh, the irony.

The UN is a credible source, now?

The battle in Jenin resulted in 100 homes being demolished, regardless of whether the
occupants had left; the usage of tanks/apc/helicopter gunships against a refugee camp;
38% of all reported fatalities were children under the age of 15 years, women and men
over the age of 50 years; and ambulances & aid workers were denied access to the area.
If that doesn't qualify as a massacre, then what would?

[Tom Joad]

27. Jim, read the reports. dozens killed. homes demolished.

"For three days, I just demolished non-stop. The whole area. Any house they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some other houses. were warned by loudspeakers to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give just one push, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. ...I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.”

From an interview with a Cat' driver, who under orders of his Israeli military superiors, operated a giant Caterpillar D-9L bulldozer and helped make 4,000 camp residents homeless in Jenin refugee camp, April 2000.

[Psephos]

9. I heard they eat Palestinian babies, too !@!@!

Jenin?

The Jenin "massacre" was concocted by MSM, and debunked within weeks.

Here, read up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenin_Massacre

There's a support group for the nine people left who still don't get it.

Peace.

[The Stranger]

10. What do you call it when 52 civilians are killed then?

If you do not like the term "massacre," then by what name shall you call it?

This is from your link:

The report agreed with the total casualty figures provided by the IDF but documented a higher proportion of civilian casualties. Amnesty International concurred. The HRW report documented instances of unlawful or willful killing by the IDF, some of which could have been avoided if proper procedures were followed, as well as instances of summary executions. It also documented use of Palestinians as 'human shields', by the IDF, and prevention of humanitarian organizations from accessing the camp despite the great need.

[Psephos]

12. A tragedy.

As are all deaths in wartime. No one disputes a military action at Jenin, and that people died.

But it wasn't a massacre (unless you want to use the term colloquially), even though it was staged as one by the Palestinians, and then reported uncritically as one, especially by British press. Evidence soon showed otherwise. If there's one thing I truly hate it's being manipulated, and I felt manipulated by the initial reporting about the Jenin "massacre." I had a lot of company.

I don't get it. Why did you cherry-pick one slender piece of that Wikipedia article, and ignore all the rest that didn't fit your template? My experience is that discussion with people who do that rarely yields anything of value.

Peace.

[Violet_Crumble]

16. I'm sensing full-on doublespeak at work again...

Isn't it interesting how when it happens to Israelis, everyone accepts it as a massacre eg the Passover massacre that killed 19 Israelis, but when it happens to Palestinians suddenly it's not a massacre. A suicide bomber blows up a bus full of Israeli civilians and it's labelled terrorism, yet when Baruch Goldstein massacred (will you be arguing that it wasn't a massacre?) Palestinians in a mosque, he's not labelled a terrorist, but a deranged extremist with the stress being on him being deranged. There's so many examples of this type of doublespeak happening in the mainstream media...

Violet...

[The Stranger]

37. This really begins to sound like the Bush Admin. talking about torture.

Talk and talk and talk and "we all wish we could do better, but people die, what can we do?" And "we don't torture, but we do waterboard, brutalize, sic dogs and murder people, but it isn't torture."

Please.

[eyl]

33. 52 civilians?

Read the link again. HRW claimed 22 civilians (total, not in a single incident); the 52 includes fighters. And bear in mind that some civilians were involved in the fighting (for example, an IDF unit was lured into an ambush - where 13 of them were killed - by a group of civilian women*), and that the Palestinian fighters aren't necessarily distinguishable from civilians - further muddying the waters.

*Described in an interview in Al-Ahram, among other places.

[The Stranger]

38. 22, 52, how many Palestinian civilans have been murdered in the past year?

By trying to "muddy() the waters," you are eloquently (albeit unknowingly) illustrating my point.

[TheWraith]

11. I'd ask how you address this.

Awhile back there was an article about a young Israeli soldier, who had given an interview talking about how disillusioned he was by the things that he'd seen in his time in the West Bank: how Israeli troops would drive their jeeps around with loudspeakers on, broadcasting taunts at the Palestinians, talking about how many Palestinians they'd killed, etcetera. When one or more of the Palestinian youths would get angry enough to start throwing rocks or broken glass at the Israelis, they would hunt him down and shoot him. Then they would start all over, bragging about how they'd killed the boy and daring his friends to come out.

Another good dissection of the situation from an Israeli's perspective is an article by Gideon Levy, called (I think) "Exposing Israel's Original Sin."

[Phx_Dem]

8. not that simple--hamas denies proposal

see this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x121572

[Minnesota Libra]

13. I'm not convinced Palestinians truly want peace, if they did......

....they'd simply stop the suicide attacks.:shrug: Palestinians have said numerous times that their one and only goal in life is to kill every Jew on the face of the earth.:banghead: Yet now all of a sudden they want people to believe they want peace??:sarcasm: Maybe they're talking about the next lifetime.:sarcasm:

I know, I know, the land Israel is on right now at one time belonged to the Palestinians. Well, guess what, every inch of land on the face of this globe belong to someone else at one time. So if land is to be returned to anyone let's go back to the beginning of time and return the land to the original owners. Argument over!

I know this is not the popularly accepted belief at DU of always being against everything Israel does, and totally for everything the Palestinians do. I never have been one to go with group think.

[Violet_Crumble]

14. What an ignorant post...

If yr not one to go with group think, then why are you engaging in the group think so popular with many Americans? Nothing of what you said is based in any sort of reality, but seems engineered to portray the Palestinian people as monsters....

Here's a few facts for you:

The Palestinian people don't carry out suicide attacks. Groups like Islamic Jihad do, and Hamas did in the past, but there's rarely a suicide bombing nowadays. Much more frequent is the tendency of the Israeli military to attack built up Palestinian civilian areas, usually with the end result of dead Palestinian civilians...

The Palestinian people have not said numerous times that their one and only goal in life is to kill every Jew on the face of the earth....

Israel has no right to the West Bank which is currently occupied by Israel and of which a chunk of it looks like it will be illegally annexed by Israel. There's this important thing known as the 4th article of the Geneva Conventions and UN242 that have something to say about things like the inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war. Those things are international law. While it's par for the course for conservatives to pretend that international law is something to be ignored when it suits them, as progressives we must respect it...

Violet...

[Minnesota Libra]

18. I've never claimed that Israel is right in everything and never will....

....but to be fair about it the Palestinians are not always right either.

A good chunk of the earth is presently occupied by people who obtained their land through war or just moving in and setting up housekeeping. As I said the entire argument would be over if we simply went back to the original - beginning of time - landowners.

"The Palestinian people have not said numerous times that their one and only goal in life is to kill every Jew on the face of the earth...." Are you saying this with a straight face?:shrug: With all due respect, I've read and HEARD with my own ears, people claiming to represent Palestinians, say this very thing. So I'm not relying on anything from anyone else.

Personally, I think the Israelis AND Palestinians should BOTH have a home land. To me, they both act like a bunch of two-year-olds fighting over a toy but in this case it is so much more deadly because weapons are used in their fighting. I'd like to see an International force run Jerusalem that did not include any Israelis or Palestinians so there could be no possibility of favoritism either way.

[Violet_Crumble]

19. And I've never claimed that Israel is wrong in everything...

Guess we're even on that...

Until the 20th century colonialism ruled the world and Europeans committed many genocides while they stole land from the original inhabitants. There were many things in the past that were very wrong and thankfully as the 20th century progressed, many of those things were put to rest. International law is very clear in stating that it is illegal to acquire territory by war. Arguments that go along the lines of 'but it was okay in the past' just don't cut it. Women didn't have the right to vote anywhere in the world until 1893 when New Zealand was the first country to grant the vote to all adult women, and any argument that we should toss the vote for women out the window coz women didn't used to vote is the same sort of argument that would be used to claim that it's okay to acquire territory through war...

The PLO was the sole representative of the Palestinian people until recently. They have NEVER said what you claimed they said. In fact, the PLO have since the early 90's, officially acknowledged Israel's right to exist. While there may be some extremists who claim to be speaking for the Palestinian people who have said something similar to what you claimed, there's also extremists amongst the Israelis who say equally horrible things about the Palestinians. Would you also be claiming that the Israelis say those sort of things coz some extremists who claim to speak on behalf of all Israelis say them?

Couldn't agree more about yr last paragraph, especially about Jerusalem. I was reading in Robert Fisk's book about how at the Madrid peace conference, there was bickering for months over what the West Bank and Gaza were to be called in the negotiations. And both sides acted like spoilt brats rather than two sides in a conflict that needed to be resolved...

Peace...

Violet...

p.s hope you found the thread now it's been relocated :)

[pelsar]

21. but did nothing to teach co-existance...

" the PLO officially acknowledged Israel's right to exist."

so whereas some of their politicians acknowledged israelis existance, what they taught their children was a very different story....

[Violet_Crumble]

22. Neither did Israel...

When it came to teaching co-existance, both sides did an abysmal job. Trying to portray the Palestinians as being the only ones at fault is just falling into that blame game nonsense again...

Violet....

[pelsar]

20. this is new..blame israel for successfully stopping suicide attacks....

"but there's rarely a suicide bombing nowadays."

duh! guess why?...its not as if the bombers arent trying...they get stopped at the checkpoints....raided, arrested and killed before they get the chance...

[Violet_Crumble]

23. The hudna has a hell of a lot to do with it...

Or are you going to try to claim that Hamas is trying and trying but those ever so efficient checkpoints and Israeli intelligence is thwarting them?

Violet...

[pelsar]

29. islamic jihad...

does not have a "hudna"...al aska brigades, tanzim, fatah, force 17, etc.......are all still trying.....

[Violet_Crumble]

30. Hamas carried out most of the suicide bombings, didn't they?

Or am I wrong and they actually carried out none, which would mean that the hudna would have no part to play in why things have quietened down on that side of things?

Violet...

[eyl]

35. It might surprise you to know

but the checkpoints and intelligence are quite effective; before the "truce" (which basically meant that Hamas shifted from suicide bombings to rockets), an estimated 80%-90% of attacks were stopped.

[eyl]

34. It's odd hearing you

characterizing suicide bombings as a thing of the past. While there have been few successful bombings recently, quite a few suicide bombers have been captured in the recent period.

[Pavulon]

17. Binary Simple

Hamas wishes the destruction of Israel. That is what they stand for. They have released press statements over the last few weeks saying as much.

Luckily they have no money and no means to carry out a real military action against Israel that would not end up in their deaths. The world is turning their back on them.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/02/content_4373348.htm

"I dreams of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it," he said. "I hope that our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine (including Israel)."

"This dream will become real one day. I'm certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land," said al-Zahar.

As for Jenin the status of those killed will never be know. However when two parties have a gunfight in a city people tend to be killed. Happened in every major urban fight in ww2.

The palestinians kill civilians as a RULE. That is their method of attack. Israel does not launch unguided rockets blindly into palestinian areas. If israel decided as a state to kill civilians the number would be more like 53000. They have a modern military capable of causing that kind of destruction, they CHOOSE not to use it to kill civilians as a RULE.

[barb162]

41. Zahar of Hamas denies having referred to 'two-state solution'

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/702504.html

Palestinian Foreign Minister and senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar on Wednesday denied referring to a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, wording that might have hinted at Israel's right to exist.

A senior Palestinian diplomat at the United Nations said on Tuesday that Zahar had made the reference in a letter he sent to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week.


"Such a sentence was not used in the letter," Zahar told Reuters. A copy of the letter seen by Reuters also showed no mention of a two-state solution
snip