Do you know of any native people who sat idly by while leaders of a militant racial supremacist group had been giving speeches a century before about ways to expel those natives?

I will share with you a quote from a speech by Herzel given long before any militant Jewish settlers arrived to the shoes of Palestine: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population [he's referring to people like my grandparents] across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. ”

Herzel was the civilized Zionist. Jabotinsky was full of murderous and self-righteous rage towards non-jews of Palestine.

And that’s why I am not in Jerusalem today but you are.

Fact is, Palestinians knew long before any armed Jewish settler set foot in Palestine that the Zionists are coming to expel them if not by starvation then by terror.

What’s happening in Jerusalem today is the ongoing fulfillment of Herzel’s and Jabotinsky visions.

And you want us to reward this with normalization with Israel? Israel exploits the peace process as a tactical PR maneuver to reduce international pressure.

The assassination of Rabin was the price this great man had to pay for deviating from Herzel’s and Jabotinsky’s plans.

You ask what it is the Palestinians can do? Fine. Here is my opinion. The Fayyad approach of unilaterally building a state combined with a changing tone towards the Jewish State of Israel on the part of the Palestinians is one that would work for them over time and would put the Israeli Jewish consensus into an impossible position because they would be faced with an obviously pragmatic government that is interested in building a stable and moderate Palestinian state and is clear in its desire to live next to Israel. Non-violence and even boycotts within that framework can work as tactics, but neither has a chance while the Israeli consensus sees their end goal as the end of the state of Israel.
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Getting back to the discussion at hand… Yes, Muslims and Arabs can come and visit Jerusalem and Palestine if they so choose. There are at least 60 million Arabs and Muslims that don’t need a visa and I personally know that it is possible for Muslims to get visas from countries from which Israel requires visas. The argument that no Muslims or Arabs can come because some will get blocked is simply illogical. It is like arguing that no Pakistanis can come to the United States because some Pakistanis don’t get visas.
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Of course Israel will benefit as well from Arabs and Muslims that come to visit Jerusalem and Palestine, well at least monetarily… The core question is whether the Palestinians would benefit. My answer is unequivocally YES. No one here has bothered to argue this point, except to raise the absurd argument that it is better that the Palestinians suffer as long as Israel doesn’t benefit. Do the Palestinians currently benefit from the current flow of tourists that visit East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Of course. Are Arabs and Muslims even more likely to spend time and money in East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Yes. Some things are pretty simple.
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This was my last post on this thread.

If Israel gets rewarded for taking Jerusalem Palestinians hostage, then it will only worsen the situation of Palestinians in the long run. If you reward Israeli ethnic cleansing with normalization, there will be more ethnic cleansing.

The international boycott against the Apartheid regime of South Africa hurt both blacks and whites but in the long run it ended the system of racial injustice against Blacks. It’s the same with Israel. If we start doing more business with Israel (be it openly or under the various solidarity scams ) it will only reward the system of Jewish apartheid in holy lands, and non-jews will suffer more and for much longer, and the pace of ethnic cleansing will pick.

I don’t how many times I have to repeat this 1 + 1 = 2.

ONE LAST TIME: REWARDING ISRAELI BLACKMAIL AND BRUTALITY = MORE ISRAELI BLACKMAIL AND BRUTALITY = MORE PALESTINIAN SUFFERING.

Just one more thing:

You don’t want the Palestinians to use violence and I agree, they shouldn’t.
And then you call non-violent demonstrations against Israeli land grabs “anti-Israeli provocation”. What exactly do you want them to do?
Leave their homes and never return? Lay down and play dead?

The day Mike’s place blew up in Tel Aviv in 2003 was also not a happy day for many people, including myself. Neither were the days when other suicide bombing took place. Of course Israel faces threats, I don’t think anyone is denying that.

But you also have to take into account the threat that Israel represents to the Palestinians. Israeli violence against Palestinians takes place every single day, not on isolated occasions. Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself, does it also have the right to carry out its own acts of aggression ? Do the Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves?

Would Israelis just sit and let anyone take their land, destroy their homes and orchards and kill and maim their people? How would Israelis react to extrajudicial killings of Jews on the mere suspicion that they might at some point try to carry out an attack? Would the loss of all the people described as “collateral damage” in those attacks be acceptable to Israelis? Are Israeli homes destroyed if someone commits an act of terrorism against Palestinians? It is human nature to defend what is yours and your loved ones, do only Israelis have the right to do so, but not the Palestinians?

We can argue about strategy and I agree that violent acts only lead to more violence. For every Israeli eye that was harmed, thousands of Palestinian eyes were taken in revenge. Palestinian violence has abated in the last years – for whatever reasons. Israeli violence is ongoing and never stops. And you are right, the Israeli strategy of “another goat, another dunam” has been the overriding Israeli strategy ever since the establishment of the Jewish State and they will stick with it, regardless of what the Palestinians do. It has worked so well – why stop?

To come back to the point of this discussion: no, Arabs and Muslims cannot come and visit Palestine “if they so choose”. Many are seriously too scared to even try, because even if they do manage to obtain a visa, the way they will be treated at the border is enough to discourage anyone from trying.

Still, I agree that they should keep on trying. If only just to show Palestinians that they care. But then again, they would not be only helping the Palestinians, they would also be supporting the Israeli occupation. You do realize that the stores in Palestinian areas are full of Israeli products because they are the only ones that are allowed in without hassle? Buying them makes more money for Israeli companies than for Palestinian shop-owners. That by taking a shower in a Palestinian hotel, you pay the increased rate for water that goes straight into Israeli coffers? For water that actually belongs to the Palestinians, but is taken by Israel and sold back at a higher rate?

Things are not as simple as you make them out to be.

You are not standing up for the Palestinians. You are sacrificing them on your ideological altar. Much as I hate seeing people be totally impractical, I am not going to continue this argument. It is a pretty absurd argument when a Zionist is trying to support an argument made by a Palestinian for the best interests of the Palestinians against people who claim to support the Palestinians. Oh well, I guess Israel will stick with the “another goat another dunam” strategy and you can stick to slogans, righteous indignation and a magical threatening clock.
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@Sh, the day Mike’s Place blew up in Tel Aviv was not a happy day for me, and I reject the idea that Israel faces no threats from external Salafis. The point is that most Arabs and Muslims can come and visit if they so choose. Your argument is a non sequitur unless you can find somewhere where I argued that *all* Arabs and Muslims will be able to visit.