Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

Turning down the peace deal

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Full text:

“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn't tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.

I can hardly talk about this…. And they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights.

All this was offered, including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and his cabinet. And they said no.

And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable.

Well, I got news for them, they (the Jews) were there first before there their faith (Islam) existed. They were there. In the time of King David, in the southern most tribes, Hadjardia and Samaria.”

Posted in

4 responses to “Turning down the peace deal”

  1. Brian Miller Avatar
    Brian Miller

    New reader. h/t Ophelia Benson’s commentariat. Agree largely until the end.
    I think most archaeologists believe King Davud was a myth or at best an exaggeration of a minor tribal chieftain. The real issue is the populations Palestinians and Hebrews, were both Canaanites. So both subgroups may have been there from the beginning. Islam may be a relatively new infection, but the “Palestinians” have been there a long time.

    Like

    Reply
  2. Polyphemus Avatar
    Polyphemus

    No Islamic presence until after Arab conquest. Invaders and local ‘converts’ since then. Accurate history of pre-Roman Levant is still dicey. Precedence is always a poor claim. We can’t really know how recognizably Jewish the Davidic/Solomonic population really was.

    Like

    Reply
  3. Joanne Avatar
    Joanne

    My impression is that neither the local Arabs nor the Jews are descended from the Canaanites.

    Like

    Reply
  4. Graham Avatar
    Graham

    Well over half of the Arab population of Israel and the ‘palestinian territories’ immigrated into the area in the forty or so years leading up to the creation of modern Israel. Most Palestinians have no claim to indigeneity.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to Graham Cancel reply