The data shows that the settlers are on 40% of privately owned Palestinian land. The settlements in general violate international law while that 40% violates Israel’s own laws about private property. You can download the report from reference article 3 in the original post. The confirmation that 40% of the settlements are violating the law comes from the Israeli government itself. Before you make any judgments on how Peace Now gathered this information you should read the report.

You believe that the Israeli settlements are buffer zones? Civilians put on the front lines to protect the mainland? Interesting.

It is quite fascinating that what is enough for an Israeli political leader to call apartheid, simply doesn’t do it for you.

I don’t think anyone is trying to give excuses for massacres. I thought that comment was pointless. What the facts on the ground do show are violent settlers that have a long history of attacking Palestinians and stealing their livelihood. I could show you many articles on this but I am sure you will respond with claims of bias, unclear information and too many unknowns.

Again, does this mean Palestinians are all nonviolent peace activists? No.

As far as my “definition” of aggression and that providing a rationale for attacks on Israel. Fine. Whatever. It’s usually fait accompli anyway, whatever rationalization is offered offered up. People are dead either way, and I don’t really care how you think my definition or idea of something or other acts as a justification that can be flung back in my face. Once you’ve gotten to that point, we’re already disagreeing on so many assumptions and preconditions to that statement that arguing at the endpoint is fruitless.

I don’t really get the Afghanistan thing. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you must, should, or will do it. But, yes, if a country was attacked and beat back the attacker, I think it could be justified in taking a buffer zone out of the attacker to discourage future attacks. That’s unlikely to come up for the US, given its location. Israel is not so lucky.

As far as the 8% thing, there’s not enough in that article for me to make a good judgement. It actually says only 8% result in indictment, not that they weren’t addressed. I don’t know what the indictment rate is at large or the nature of the complaints. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some favoritism going on though, just as I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many spurious complaints. I suspect it’s a mixture of both. Whatever the case, I certainly don’t see it as an excuse for a massacre, should one occur.

No one is calling the Palestinians perfect. I am sure you can point out many acts that prove otherwise.

Legal bias
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1033864.html

Vice Premier using the word “apartheid”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1225199634856

All the settlements are illegal based on international law. If you really believe what you are saying, the United States has the right to build settlements in Afghanistan. Enjoy the weather.

If 40% of the settlements are illegal, that implies that 60% are legal, so this doesn’t address those. It also doesn’t explain whether that 40% is by number or population or area or what. That’s assuming the 40% number is correct, and my guess is Peace Now used the most liberal interpretation of private property possible in an area of the world where such records are tenuously maintained at best. It also doesn’t address whether any of those settlements were there before the supreme court decision or whether that decision was retroactive.

The whole pre-1967 borders thing has always struck me as a weird formulation. So you’re allowed to attack another country with the full intent to wipe them off the map, but if you fail and, in fact, end up losing ground, you get to call take-backsies? Is that really how it works?

What kind of behavior on both sides of a conflict are we encouraging with that kind of formulation? It seems like, by lowering the penalty for failed aggression, you make aggression more likely in the future. It also encourages a more total war on both sides, since you’re better off afterwards if there’s no one around from the other side to call take-backsies. I just can’t imagine that’s the kind of behavior we want to encourage.