Occupied territory

[Anonymous]

Does everyone understand what an occupied territory is? Does everyone understand how occupied people are being denied basic human rights?

[Enough Exams Already]

Are you referring to a particular occupied territory, or just occupied territories in general?

[Anonymous]

Both. It's just that sometimes when hearing people speak it seems like they don't understand what it means to have your land "occupied."

It means a foreign power comes in, and takes over your land, but does not give you citizenship, or really any rights. A government which you didn't vote for, and don't want to be ruled by tells you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. You have no rights.

How would you like to be told you have to permanently live under those circumstances?

Think about it.

[Enough Exams Already]

OK...are you trying to voice a case for the Palestinians? What has this got to do with anything? I'm not clear why you're bringing up the topic.

[Anonymous]

On 2001-09-13 15:39, Enough Exams Already wrote:
OK...are you trying to voice a case for the Palestinians? What has this got to do with anything? I'm not clear why you're bringing up the topic.


Can't we just discuss something in the abstract for a while?

[Enough Exams Already]

We can...but what's the point?

[Anonymous]

Okay, abstractly speaking. As with any power or authority issue, I think it depends on the goodness – for lack of a better word -- of the authority taking over. The people being taken over may actually have more rights -- or less -- with the new governing authority. Take Malosovic or Hussain or the Chinese cultural revolution and Tibet, for example, who left the domestic people with less rights. However, there have been times where as a result of the US getting involved people’s rights were better established. For example, I think the US has helped establish honest elections there by providing the people with more rights.

[Anonymous]

Good start to this discussion. I have to correct you on one thing though.

The US doesn't occupy lands. If it takes a place over, it gives their citizens the same rights as all Americans, namely US citizenship and the right to vote. So you can't use US occupation to point out that it can be a good thing. Of course this wasn't true with the native americans, but it is now.

[Anonymous]

The recent terrorist attacks are crimes against humanity. Clearly, the attacks were aimed at maximizing civilian casualties. For example, this was not an attack against the US military. It was an attack on civilians.

US has in the past retaliated against such attacks sending missiles but only when the terrorists were clearly identified (often times terrorists claim responsibility). However, I know that Regan did not retaliate against significant terrorism (I think a few hundred Marines died) at least once because responsibility could not be determined.

However, if you notice we did not go as far as to eliminate Sadam Hussain. The difference here is between establishing proper authority and an act of justice for a crime against humanity. I am postive that after we identify who is responsible – and we will do that -- we will launch an attack like never seen before in history. This attack will be of a different nature than Desert Storm but of, I think, comparable magnitude.

[Anonymous]

It would have been much better for Iraq had the US removed Saddam and setup a democracy for them. Note that wouldn't be occupation. And let's stay on topic.

[Anonymous]

Interesting how the Israelis are continually badmouthed for being "occupiers". Let's see how the situation came about:

Before 1967, Israel did NOT hold Jerusalem or the West Bank. They did NOT seek more land at the time, only wanting to live in peace.

Troop movements by Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, among others, along the borders of Israel foreshadowed a full-out invasion. Israel fought back, and lo and behold, they won. Now they held the West Bank, as "occupiers".

If the Arabs had left well enough alone, there would be no settlements, no fight over "al-Quds", no whiny Palestinians. There would be Trans-Jordan (no need to split it), and a much smaller Israel.

But they provoked, they lost, and now they're mad. TOUGH CRAP.

[Anonymous]

It means a foreign power comes in, and takes over your land, but does not give you citizenship, or really any rights.


The "foreign power" came in after repeated attacks. You can't blame the foreign power for seeking self-defence the only way they could.

[Anonymous]

They came in because they wanted land. Unfortunately for them, you can't just colonize people's land anymore and take the rights of indigenous people.

Sorry.

[Anonymous]

If my country were occupied and I didn't like the policies, I'd move to the country next door, where there are lots of people that are my own religion. Especially if I could walk there.

[Anonymous]

Indigenous people? Palestine was a wasteland before the Jews came. It was a land that had been wracked by wars and invaders, and was mostly depopulated due to many years of high taxation by their richer landowners to the south.

The British remarked again and again upon surveying the land they had taken during WWI about how "underpopulated" the place was. There were a few people in Jerusalem (including the constant Jewish community), and a few people in a couple of the coastal cities, but virtually nothing else. Note that all of the Muslim "shrines" in their third holiest city were in total disrepair, abandoned. That's because they weren't shrines yet, that didn't happen until a cleric in the 1930's, in a bid to spark Arab nationalism, declared Jerusalem "Islam's third-holiest city". (The Jews never left Jerusalem, keeping up their shrines the entire time, BTW.)

The British gave an empty wasteland to the Jews. At first, all of it was for the Jews, including Jordan, but then the small local population got angry, so they said the Jews got everything west of the Jordan, the Arabs everything east.

The vast majority of the arab population in Israel, the West Bank & Gaza, and Jordan, all MOVED there due to the good-paying jobs the influx of jews in the 1800s brought. There was no thousand years of Arab life there, there was a hundred years, and the Jews are the ones who brought them.

The Jews saw the Arabs as a tolerant people, as opposed to the Christians and their Inquisition, and the Orthodox and their pogroms. Apparently, the Arabs were not so tolerant after all.

Also to blame are the Brits, who "sort of" promised one set of land to two sets of people.

The biggest mistake the Jews made was to persuade the Arabs fleeing toward Jordan after 1967 to stay in the West Bank. If they hadn't done this, they could've ceded Gaza to Egypt, kept the West Bank as a buffer zone, and there would've been no refugees.