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Originally Posted by Bleeding Red
Right, Israel did not need nor want Gaza. That's why they tried to include Gaza in the '78 peace accords with Egypt (who didn't want anything to do with Gaza either) and why Israel pulled up stakes and removed their citizenry from Gaza.
Tried that twice, at camp David & Wye. Land for peace isn't the sticking point. At Camp David Clinton had a preliminary land for peace deal, but Arafat wouldn't meet him on the other issues and walked away. The other issues are in the way of a deal. Israel will never agree to the actual right of return of Arab refugees and their descendants, it would be demographic suicide, and Abbas can never compromise on the right of return, it would be actual suicide (he would be dead within the week).
Jerusalem is extremely tricky. Israel will never allow another party to control Jewish access to the Western Wall (holiest Jewish site) and the Palestinians insist on controlling the Old City as part of their capitol.
Not in our interest to support an active vibrant free market democracy? We should only be supporting dictatorships and repressive monarchies?
It is in our economic interest to support Israel - It is one of the most innovative countries. You have a cell phone and computer thanks to Israeli ingenuity.
It is in our philosophical interest to support Israel - a country with democracy, rule of law, individual freedoms & rights. Arab-Israelis vote, sit in the parliament, hold ministerial positions, and sit on the supreme court. Homosexual Arabs are clamoring to get into Israel where there is a vibrant gay community, rather than be persecuted in Arab countries. Canadians acctually have something extra in common with Israel - we both have Members of Parliament whose goal is the end of the country (Bloc Quebecois).
It is in our tactical interest to support Israel. Being on the front lines of the war against terror they have developed security protocols used around the world along with medical triage items that are used worldwide.
Please remind me which country or government that does not put their own self interest first?
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We would trade with Israel (as does China) regardless of whether we supported them in other areas, and that includes security information so our support of Israel is irrelevant to these areas.
Regardless of how Israel runs its own country our support of them negatively effects our relationship with every other muslim country, in fact the only positive to supporting Israel is it curries favour with the US, if it were not for that there would be no upside what so ever.
We get nothing out of the support we couldn't and wouldn't get anyway through normal trading.
People again talk of Israel being 'the only democracy in the middle east' which is true but irrelavant, if they were positively influencing their neighbours, helping to spread democracy to the region it would be a fair point but the reality is Israel is a destablising force in the region, we support their democracy at the cost of being in a position to help democracy in muslim lands.
All of this would be excusable if Israel was morally in the right, trying to make peace and be reasonable in the area, as they were pretty much pre '67, but the reality is since 82 Israel has been as much to blame as the PLO or Hammas, they have been intransigent and prefer to use their overwhelming force to dominate the region, which is fine for them but I see no reason to support them.