Steve Benson for September 16, 2010

build more walls. that seams to work…

I wish I understood the message.

I’d say it is that the continuing settlements are crowding the Palestinians out and soon there might not be enough land/resources for them to get a state.

glenbeck tries to be sarcastic. His problem is that indeed the walls do work. Brilliantly.

4uk The Arabs living in the West Bank can been offered 95% of the land mass. They said no, they only want 100%+.

Just like Mexico is not going to get back California and Texas, 5% of the land mass of the West Bank is staying as Israeli territory.

“4uk The Arabs living in the West Bank can been offered 95% of the land mass. They said no, they only want 100%+. ”

Considering that the land was supposed to be theirs and is not recognized internationally as blonging to Israel in the first place, a full restoration is not particularly outlandish. Also, I’d say it depends which 5% it is - or , in the current terms, which 40%.

Seriously, if Mexico (however that might be able) occupied Texas and suggested to keep only (choice) 5% of it, who would agree?

Russell/4uk

3 wars were fought and all were lost by Jordan/Syria/Egypt and the Palestinians. They initiated the wars. They lost. The price they pay is 5% of the West Bank.

+= Jerusalem

The reason we have California and Texas is we won them. Remember the Alamo?

Uh, we lost at the Alamo, though it did buy enough time for Sam Houston to organize the Texas Army to win at the Battle of San Jacinto.

^^Then the solution to Middle East is not peace, but war.

If religious conservatives in the U.S. weren’t counting on the myth of them all converting in the “rapture”, how much support would those conservatives be giving to the continued bloodshed and wars over a small parcel of stolen land?

Nuke Jerusalem, and Jesus returns? Man, he is gonna be P.O.

The Palestinians were not part of any war because they didn’t have an army and still they don’t !and Jerusalem is not that cheep to be taken as a reward by the Israelies..millions of muslims and Christians are waiting to pray there..

No, the rockets fired by Hamas which kill innocent civilians don’t count against the Palestinians.

you mean those water pipes..?? you are kidding, right? Israel is using F16 against us..

So Israel is to the point where they don’t want to offer ANY land. They care more about keeping all of the land than they care about peace. I wonder what their “final solution” will be.

What is unfair, fennec? They have been offered numerous proposals, and the Palestinian leadership always walks away. I honestly have no idea what anyone expects Israel to do for “peace”. Maybe everyone secretly believes like Helen Thomas, I have no idea….

I like Palestinos suggestion that Muslims are waiting to pray in Jerusalem. Muslims are already a large presence in Jerusalem, I suppose he means “millions more”.

The interesting thing is that historically, Jerusalem was NOTHING to the Muslims of the world. It was not “sacred” or even held in any esteem. This entire religious argument is an entirely modern construction for political leverage.

^ Unless you’re a muslim, you can say Jerusalem is not sacred to them, but it doesn’t seem like you know what you’re talking about.

Just like a muslim saying Jerusalem isn’t sacred for christians wouldn’t know what he’s talking about.

“They initiated the wars. They lost. The price they pay is 5% of the West Bank.”

To be exact - not all wars, Israel started one itself. Also, “price” implies agreement, and there has been none on the issue. No one - not the US, not the UN, not any other entity that matters - has recognized the claim over any part of the Palestinian terrotiries. I don’t believe Israel has officially made that claim in the first place - lands annexed in war, “defensive” or no, are generally not considered part of a state’s own territory. These territories are just occupied, nothing more.

And hey, I’m all for Hamas paying a price for civilians killed by its rockets, but in the interests of fairness - what should IAF pay for civilians killed by its actions? A civilian is a civilian, no matter what headwear they wear.

@ Habanero - Jerusalem nothing to Muslims? Umm… it’s been considered a holy city since before Mohammed’s death.

yes 4uk isreal starts war because it continues to be

Mecca?

4uk4ata, study the history of Jerusalem, it has often been left to a meager group of peoples depending on the empire that was in control of the land.

Daniel Pipes with a quick illustration:

“What about Muslims? Where does Jerusalem fit in Islam and Muslim history? It is not the place to which they pray, is not once mentioned by name in prayers, and it is connected to no mundane events in Muhammad’s life. The city never served as capital of a sovereign Muslim state, and it never became a cultural or scholarly center. Little of political import by Muslims was initiated there.

One comparison makes this point most clearly: Jerusalem appears in the Jewish Bible 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, or 823 times in all. The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times. In contrast, the columnist Moshe Kohn notes, Jerusalem and Zion appear as frequently in the Qur’an “as they do in the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita, the Taoist Tao-Te Ching, the Buddhist Dhamapada and the Zoroastrian Zend Avesta”—which is to say, not once.”

Um, Habanero, that’s partially because when Mohammed tried to link up with the Jews, they rejected him. Here’s a turning point for you: Muslims originally prayed to Jerusalem. After being rejected by the rabbis, Mohammed swung around to Mecca to pray instead, and his followers did too. Contrary to what you note, Jerusalem is indeed a holy place to Islam, because they accept the Old Testament, and therefore it is a vital place to Islam. Pipes is talking through his hat. You need not have it has a sovereign state to have it be important.

I didn’t realize that Jerusalem was a city of men….I thought it was a city of God. Just on a whim, he failed to make mention of this city in his writings because some mean old rabbis knew he was full of himself? A farcical turn of events.

The point stands, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran. The story of Mohammed’s ascension to heaven from Jerusalem is a construction made some eighty years after his death. There is no evidence that Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem, despite the argument of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The testimony of history is clear…Muslim claims about the significance of Jerusalem are overwhelmingly political and petty.

Hab^ What you know about Islam is very shallow to even state facts about its importance to Islam .. 1-Prophet Mohammad’s journey to Jerusalem was at the very beginning of his call for Islam and was considered as one of Gods miracles because he was sent to Jerusalem were he met the rest of the prophets and they prayed together in al Aqsa mosque (which is mentioned clearly on the Quran(Al-Esraa verse), then he was ascended to be near God who ordered him and the muslims to pray the five prayers(which are important to every muslim in the world),the people of Mecca refused to believe that he visited Jerusalem and asked him to describe it and he decribed it for them. 2-Jerusalem is very holy to muslims because they prayed towards it for two years at the beginnig of Islam then they were ordered to pray towards Mecca in respect to prophet Mohammad but that doesn’t mean that it stopped being holy,muslims are ordered to pray there (praying there equals 500 prayers in other places). 3-Jerusalem was all the time a very important cultural and educational place throughout the Islamic era it has very ancient schools (which equelled universities of our days) and muslims from all over the world came to study in ,where scholars from India to Morroco joined to learn the knowledge of that time ,libraries were full of books and writers at the time where Europe was still asleep.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HyJBPEuyyk&feature=geosearch

“BTW, there is no such thing as a “palestinian””

Apart from a whole lot of people calling themselves that?

Hey, them ‘thar Romans were ignerant savages, what did they know about namin’ nothin. Couple thousand years of history means there ain’t no Alabama neither!! Maybe that’s where Moses left, not Egypt, another “made up” name?

Someone had enough time on his hands to count how many times “Jerusalem” is mentionned on a Bible and wants the politics in the area to be based on that?

^That means some people have even MORE time on their hands…or made a bet in a pub.

That doesn’t mean we have to base politics on that.

How does the lettering stay straight in that sand?