{"id":710,"date":"2001-11-21T10:17:07","date_gmt":"2001-11-21T15:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=710"},"modified":"2001-11-21T10:17:07","modified_gmt":"2001-11-21T15:17:07","slug":"sigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/21\/sigh.html","title":{"rendered":"Sigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colin Powell gives a widely-lauded speech in which he shows that the US cares about getting a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem that provides justice for all parties. <\/p>\n

Israel response? Build more settlements<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian cause has been hurt time and time again by fanatics and (sorry, BBC) terrorists in their ranks committing acts of such violence and bloodshed that Israel has an excuse to use its (US-supported) military superiority against them. And Israel has, generally, been a diplomatic friend to the US. <\/p>\n

But Israel continues to shoot itself in the foot, coming across steadily and increasingly as a Goliath against the Palestinian David — quite an irony, if you like such things. Part of this is internal Israeli politics — coalition-building is such a fragile arrangement that the voices of those who insist on building settlements must be heard (and this is as good an argument as any why a strong two-party system is actually a good <\/i>thing). Part of this is the Israeli mindset of being locked in a life-and-death struggle in which any tactic is acceptible to secure life, if not peace, and anything which creates a further toehold there along the eastern Mediterranean is a worthwhile effort.<\/p>\n

But regardless of the reasons, regardless of Arab and Palestinian provocations, this has to stop. It smacks of acting in bad faith, of using might to enforce what is right for oneself. And it continues to erode US popular support for Israel, which is a bad thing both for them and for us.<\/p>\n

Peace in the Middle East is not going to be easy. But this sort of provocation only makes a bad situation worse, drives the Palestinians to greater desperation, and makes people of good will and a fair nature wonder all the more which side we should be backing in this conflict.<\/p>\n

(Via USS Clueless<\/a>, who wonders what would happen if we threatened to nuke Jerusalem if there wasn’t a solid peace agreement between the two sides by 31 July 2002. Tempting …)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colin Powell gives a widely-lauded speech in which he shows that the US cares about getting a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem that provides justice for all parties. Israel response?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2708,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/13\/and_on_the_othe.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":0},"title":"And on the other hand","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 13-May-02 12:40pm","format":false,"excerpt":"My support for Israel's battle against terrorism by Palestinian militants doesn't mean they get a blank check to keep building settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. While Jewish...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.csmonitor.com\/2002\/0513\/csmimg\/0513p12a.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":132430,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/23\/us-abstains-from-un-condemnation-of-israeli-settlements.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":1},"title":"US abstains from UN condemnation of Israeli settlements","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 23-Dec-16 3:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"And I'm happy it did, despite Trump's tweets. The problem is summed up by the Israeli ambassador to the UN, who argued: \"Would you ban the French from building in Paris?\u201dNo. But we would ban them from building in Berlin.Despite commitments to negotiate a separate state with the Palestinians, Israel's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133735,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/26\/church-and-state-and-demographics.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":2},"title":"Church and state and demographics","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Jun-17 7:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's occasionally illustrative to our own nation (for those who have eyes to see) when majority-religion issues tie up governments in knots over providing equity across sectarian lines when the majority population sees no reason to do so. Because That's How Things Are, and doing it differently is therefore Clearly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132740,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/02\/and-still-more-foreign-policy-zaniness-from-the-trump-crew.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":3},"title":"And still more foreign policy zaniness from the Trump crew","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Feb-17 5:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"After raking Barack Obama over the coals for daring to disagree with anything Israel chooses to do, and for not opposing a UN resolution condemning Israeli expansion of West Bank settlements, today the Trump Administration ...... basically kinda did the same thing.'\u201cWhile we don\u2019t believe the existence of settlements is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20252,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/18\/mitt-romney-is-a-dolt-pro-israeli-pandering-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":4},"title":"Mitt Romney is a Dolt (Pro-Israeli Pandering Edition)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 18-Feb-11 5:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Actually, he's not a dolt. \u00a0He's a pretty smart guy. \u00a0He just lets his ambitions and political instincts lead him to doltish positions so as to pander to whichever set of voters he's out to try to suck into his inevitable presidential bid. Thus, \"Obama Turns His Back On Israel.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2012","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2012"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/un-israel-britt.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/un-israel-britt.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/un-israel-britt.gif?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":130640,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/10\/of-historic-prejudice-and-modern-geopolitics.html","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":5},"title":"Of historic prejudice and modern geopolitics","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-May-16 5:32am","format":false,"excerpt":"This is an interesting story about a school and its banning of a club focused on human rights and affiliating with Amnesty International.But more interesting to me is the (not unique) conflation in the story between (a) criticism of Israel and\/or support of the Palestinian Arabs with (b) anti-Semitism and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}