This might help:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-tough-guy-gorilla-warfarenavy-seal-copypasta

It's hard to claim it was a victory when the Winograd Commission itself said it was a failure. On paper, it doesn't quite look like a victory, especially when you consider Hizballah went from being in opposition to being part of the government and quickly rearmed itself.

i guess we're using different definitions of military victory. to me you just have to not get hit as hard as your opponent did for it to be a "military victory" which implies a very narrow thing to me.

it can be a pyrrhic victory though, even just militarily.

It was a tactical victory/strategic loss by Israel.

okay that's fair enough. overall obviously a defeat. i was just talking about this idea of a "military victory" by which i meant more or less # of targets destroyed or something narrow and logistical like that. anyway. it's a minor detail

Eden, you post that on the forum every few weeks. There's no way I could possibly not know what it was.

"the Palestinians - and Arab community as a whole - have been given land, treaties, and occasionally resources by Israel. What more can they ask? Not much, other than the rest of the land, and that's what they are shooting for."

What more can they ask? How about not being stateless? How about not having to live under an Israeli occupation which not only makes travel even from one village to another an ordeal but also gnaws away at the land by building illegal settlements?

Hamas wants to destroy Israel and take all the land. That's clear and Israel should not be expected to do anything besides respond to such a threat in kind. But Hamas, popular and powerful though it is, is not synonymous with Palestinians. It is certainly not synonymous with the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, which seems perfectly content with a state consisting of just the West Bank and Gaza. The PA's position doesn't seem too outrageous to me, especially if they are open to border swaps like Israel annexing some settlements in exchange for Palestine to get the Arab-populated Triangle in Israel.

What other solution can there be besides two states? The status quo cannot last, and the longer it does the worse it is for Israel in the long run.

List of countries opposing:

Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, Palau, Panama, and United States of America.

Israel - the actually group which opposed
USA - sway held by pro-Jewish lobby.
Canada - ?
Everyone else, (including Czech Republic) is just making deals with the US.

Holland abstained, which I think is a good thing, because I believe we're trying to meddle into other people's affairs too much. If it was closer, perhaps we should have sided with the US and Israel for historic reasons. I do agree with Octavious to some extent that the timing is poor, but it's a bit of a chicken and the egg discussion. Should the Palestinians get more international recognition and will it diminish their hatred toward Israeli civilians, or is their hatred toward Israeli civilians a reason not to grant them higher status?

Harper is trying to be 'tough'.

Putin I sense a very healthy anti-islamist vibe coming from you. Among the many anti-vibes (of which I have many myself) I consider this one to be among my favorites. But you're not following left-wing party line there, which is what surprises me a tat (and encourages me to ask).

Harper will be gone soon enough. A beautiful, beautiful haircut will take over soon. I wonder what he would have done. Hopefully he would have had the balls to vote correctly.

"Everyone else, (including Czech Republic) is just making deals with the US."

Well, no one really cares around here to make it an issue of public discourse. The only diplomatic issue that even breaks the opinion page in newspapers is whether inviting Dalailama all the time doesn't hurt exports to China.

We have always been pro-Israel by default, apart from the 4 years when Jan Kavan was the foreign minister, which helped him to presidency of UNGA since sucking on Palestinian balls is one of those evergreens in UN. Since our foreign diplomacy is generally viewed as useless, we can just vote like we always do and no one cares, both at home and abroad. Meanwhile, our president leads his own foreign agenda, our foreign minister has his own agenda and the rest of the government has its own agenda since there is no agreement on what should even be a priority on the global stage.

And I seriously doubt the USA will give us something in return for being a lapdog, the vote was meaningless and paying for meaningless stuff is stupid.

"Putin I sense a very healthy anti-islamist vibe coming from you.... But you're not following left-wing party line there, which is what surprises me a tat (and encourages me to ask)."

That line is superficial. USSR initially supported Israel but the rivalry with the US meant it had to default to Arabs. And even then the US has many Arab lapdogs as well. If the US was a leftist country, being pro-Palestine would be a right-wing case. More importantly, a leftist materialist has exactly 0 ideological reasons to support religious extremists. Some enemies of my enemy are not worth the trouble.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/20121130145940757197.html

"
But you're not following left-wing party line there, which is what surprises me a tat (and encourages me to ask). "

The left is in love with anything that smacks of third world national liberation. It doesn't matter that it was Islamists who spent the duration of the Cold War and beyond fighting alongside imperialism and killing leftists and communists. It also doesn't matter that Iran & the US collaborated on suppressing the Baath Party in Iraq during the occupation. Nor does it matter that Hizballah and the US collaborated on murdering leftists in Yugoslavia. Or that western imperialists are funneling money and providing political cover for Chechen & Uighur "freedom fighters".

Wait, wait, wait - supporting things as instrumental isn't the same as supporting them overall. I'm a pretty strong anti-statist and I want nothing to do with nationalism, whether the nation-state in question is Catalonia (well, a free Catalonia would be pretty sweet), the US, Israel, or Palestine. But that doesn't mean I don't support self-determination, and especially that I don't support the right of occupied people to seek the protections and the possibilities for an ability to, I don't know, live in their houses without having their infrastructure destroyed, homes flattened, farms ripped up, etc. A Palestinian state is no better than any other "state", and would probably be a bit worse, but that doesn't mean I oppose the rights of the Palestinians to seek it, especially when thy are living under occupation from a country that is armed to the teeth by the world's largest empire.

Palestine never knew greater prosperity than during the Israeli "occupation" prior to the First Intifada. It is a wonder why the Palestinian activists never bother to complain about the Jordanian occupation.

Probably for the same reasons Americans likely wouldn't get too worked up about a Canadian occupation, but would go berserk over a Chinese occupation.

Really, do you know of an American who assassinated a Canadian PM, like Palestinians did to the Hashemites?

Black September anyone?

If Canada invaded and occupied the United States, I could absolutely see an assassination attempt happening. Probably several. Even if most Americans "prospered" and were generally docile under the fairly benign Canadian occupation.

As for Black September, I could also easily see that happening if the Chinese invaded America, tens of millions of American refugees were driven into Canada (from where they launched cross-border raids on their former land, which was being resettled by Chinese), and the Canadian government felt compelled to put a lid on it to forestall a Chinese invasion of Canada.

So did they get worked up about living under Hashemite rule or didn't they?

The answer to that question is greater than "0" but less than "1".

The Palestinians (anachronic, I know, they were just a sort of West Jordani back then before Arafat's marketing shtick) were treated like pigs once they arrived in Transjordan refugee camps. Nothing more than a political tool to smite Israel with; that part hasn't really changed till today among Arab elites. It's one thing being treated like shit from your enemy but being treated like shit from someone who pretends to be your best friend is even worse.

Palestine was considered a crusader plot to delineate territory for Zionist purposes. Palestine was always considered part of a territory called "Sham"/Greater Syria, as integral to Syria as Alsace-Lorraine was to France.

WTF Putin? Your intense anti-Arab sentiment pretty much negates any progressive credentials you might have in my book.

or at least anti-Palestinian. yeah yeah I know, Palestine doesn't exist. Save it for the Zionists.

Anti-Arab? Give me a break. I alone here vocally support/supported Gaddafi's Libya in the middle of the terrorist takeover of Libya (which incidentally the Palestinians completely betrayed, despite Gaddafi's very longstanding support for them). I alone here continue to vocalize support for Baathist Syria against the Turkish/imperialist supported terrorists there (supposed supporters of the Palestinian refugees don't bother to talk about how the Free Syrian Army is targeting them). I alone here continue to laud the achievements of Baathist Iraq.

So spare me the lecture about my progressive credentials. It's easy to sit here and cheerlead Palestine and not give a damn about the imperialist takeover of the Middle East (or worst, repeat their talking points about how supposedly evil secular nationalists are in the Middle East).

The simple fact is Palestine is not viable as an independent state. Palestine would be better served, as would the wider Arab world, if it had held fast to its pan-Arab tradition instead of embracing the cancer of Islamism.