Israel and the UAE normalize relations

coinop wrote: »

Your nationality is the country of your birth. Simple. Unless...all those kids in Ireland born to Nigerian parents are not actually Irish after all...

So David Ben-Gurion was Polish?

Avigdor Lieberman is Moldovan?

I know which country I'd rather live in.

coinop wrote: »

Your nationality is the country of your birth. Simple. Unless...all those kids in Ireland born to Nigerian parents are not actually Irish after all...

So all the people who immigrate to Israel are not, in fact, Israeli at all? And Israelis (whether real Israelis or, in your view, pseudo-Israelis) who settle in the West Bank, outside the borders of the State of Israel, will have children who are not Israelis?

Seriously, you should engage your brain before you open your mouth.

Modern Zionism began in 1895 with Herzl's publication of Der Judenstaat. The first Zionist congress was held two years later.

NIMAN wrote: »

The news said last night that this couldn't have come about with Trump.

Will he get any credit in the media, or does it not fit the narrative?

Or, is he in fact due no credit?

Let's be honest; neither Israel nor the UAE is dumb enough to do anything more than very short-term in reliance on Trump. He has a considerably less than 50% chance of still being President in 6 months' time, and he has said himself that if the Democrats win they will undo everything he has "acheived". Even at the best of times he's just not somebody on whose words or deeds anybody with a titter of wit would ever allow themselves to depend.

Whatever motivated the UAE to take this step, it is wildly unlikely to have been anything Trump said or did. It's probably best seen as a logical and expected development in a trend of normalisation or relationships that has been operating slowly but for a long time.

LuasSimon wrote: »

There isn’t an ounce of humanity in Israel .

In fact there are plenty of people in Israel who are unhappy with their government's policies towards the Palestinians, but do carry on with the kind of generalisations and group guilt-assignment that helped give rise the the problem in the first place... :rolleyes:

Odhinn wrote: »

#


The problem isn't 'Israels right to exist' within its 1967 borders, its its expansionist colonisation of the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem etc.

In truth it's both.

Most of the Arab world have formally stated they want to see the destruction of the Israeli state. We know that if they had been crushed militarily, any time they had been invaded by their neighbors, that that would have been the likely conclusion.

Arab grievance is motivated by Israeli treatment of Palestinians. But, being honest, we know that it is also motivated by large-scale Jewish immigration to lands that have significant religious and cultural significance to Arabs. From my point of view, all peoples should have a right to their own state. Ensuring the existence of the only Jewish state in the world is important. It is unfortunate that it happened to be in land promised to two different peoples, but there's not much point crying over spilled milk (particularly when much of that milk was spilled by the Third Reich).

Israel essentially has the position of 'in for a penny, in for a pound' and doesn't care about its neighbors' views on what they do with the West Bank. Why should they? Their neigbors don't even believe a Jewish state should exist, and actively pretend that it doesn't.

It is telling that this divide is religious in nature, featuring countries that don't give two shíts about human rights.



Light green are countries that reject anybody using an Israeli passport.
Dark green rejects anyone who even has an Israeli stamp on their passport or who has ever obtained an Israeli visa.

Execute the gays one day, complain about the treatment of Palestinians on the grounds of human rights the next? Right.

But thankfully things are beginning to change. The most important changes were Egyptian and Jordan recognition of Israel (though many assassination attempts of the leaders of those countries were a consequence of that). In 2002, the Arab League proposed recognition of Israel by Arab countries as part of the resolution of the Palestine-Israel conflict as part of the Arab Peace Initiative. The lifting of the ban on the Israeli flag and national anthem from events like the International Judo Federation Grand Slam in Abu Dhabi in 2018 (with even Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev being allowed to attend the event) is also the kind of good sign we should be looking for. This naturally has been followed by the full normalization of relations between the two countries.

The Arab states have used Palestinians as a proxy in their ideological war, but once they abandon that war, they may actually be able to start exerting pressure on Israel to back off the West Bank. Just as Jewish people should have a right to their own state, so should Palestinians.