Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs
A three part documentary series examines the last years of the Arab-Israeli peace process from the point of view of presidents and prime ministers, their generals and ministers and those behind the suicide bombs and assassinations. The series reveals what happened behind closed doors as the peace process failed and the violence of the intifada exploded.
Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Barak persuaded US President Bill Clinton to devote his last 18 months in office to helping make peace with Yasser Arafat. But after tense negotiations the deal was never made. Then Ariel Sharon made a controversial visit to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem, a site which is also holy to Jews.
The former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell attempted to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. However, his efforts were derailed by his own hard-line colleagues. And the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat himself.
President Bush was determined to stay out of Middle East peace-making. But the war in Iraq forced him to court Arab allies. He needed to push Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon back towards peace. But Ariel Sharon moved the goal posts.
israeli army looks no different than terrorist .....
Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack's words are being completely & wrongfully distorted in the subtitles. Subtitles should be written by a translator, not a lobbyst with a hidden agenda.
This movie is a disgrace to documentaries.
This was a very informative documentary, not because of the information contained therein, but the true nature of the power players is well exposed. For the record, Arafat did not die of a blood disease as according to the documentary, but from radiation poisoning from polonium #210. This was proven after they exhumed his body. (Apparently they had put it in his cigars which he got from Israel)
All I know is assassinating a quadriplegic (Hamas leader) is an act of cowardice of the highest order. Ariel Sharon's political posturing and incitement of the Palestinians when they were so close to an actual solution, was almost as tragic as the way he conducted himself in his prior military involvement. Either way, it is very clear that 'certain Israeli people' have not learned the correct message from the suffering of those who preceded them in the 2nd world war.
Note: Obama, and Netanyahu criticizing Russian involvement in the Crimea is also meaningless since they and their predecessors (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) have destroyed their own credibility regarding adherence to international law, and the Geneva convention. ( white phosphorus, depleted uranium, attack drones, torture, no habeas corpus, etc, etc, etc) This is not a defense of Putin's actions in the Ukraine, only that he hasn't killed a million, and displaced another 4 million in the process, and probably has more justification than they did in Iraq.(they had none, which is not hard to beat)
One thing for certain; insanity is running the world, and if they have their way, we will all go to hell in a hand basket. (misery loves company!) Question: if a person can disown their family and dissolve their citizenship, can they disown humanity? (a spiritual question)
Outstanding insight into the long lasting tensions between the 3 key players. I learned a few new things in regards to Arafat. A saint the man was not.
Do any of you realize that Israel gets multi trillions of dollars from the USA for their war machine against the Arabs and America? This is all free money for them to do as they please and we know how they can make war on us and the Arabs!
You know, Jews & Muslims, Israel & its enemies take up way, way too much room in the public consciousness. Neither matter a mote.
all of u guys are all wrong wrong wrong, i am not with muslims or with jews but my eyes are clear and the fog is over for me, i no longer try to push the dust away to see what has happend this is it: although hitler is a bad ****** **** head he realized that most jews only bring corruption to the world thats y he got into a killing streak but he said that he still left some jews alive so the world can see how sick, and bad they are and about the sufisticated weapons and all of that **** i dont give a **** but i know that the pile of dung is thrown on an arab country so no other country can smell the bad infested **** and am not saying that arabs are good but there rights are being taken away by the way the media wants u to believe what they want u believe u can never find the truth however u dig thanks for listening
The cancer of the world is there.
If anyone had doubts that evil exists then this documentary proves that the so called state of Israel is run by a bunch of military subhumans psychopats. In fact I cannot even imagine these guys are from this planet. Some aliens must have dumped them on earth a few thousands years ago.
The documentary is well made but the felling is fairly clear to me that Israel has no interest in achieving peace for a simple reason which we see in this documentary. Any chance to negotiate has been disturbed by an israeli provokation. The more damage they could do, and there more Israelis citizens would die in a suicide bomb attack and the more strenght they had in negotiation. Always wanting more, never happy enough. This is moreorless the policies Zionism has been using since a long time still milking from countries like Germany for unproven war damages (just check the so called holohoax). I feel sorry for the palestinians people but I’m sure one day they will win even if this means that the only way to assure safety to humanity is a designer weapon to get rid for once and all of these beasts.
They should just settle this once and for all with a game of rock, paper, scissors!
this video does not show that from 1978-2006 pro-israeli political action comm have contributed $43,724,035 to candidateswho vote in congress according to AIPAC'S recommendations americas pro-israel lobbyAIPAC{american israel public affairs committee] has a multi million dollar budget. In 2003 U.S. government approved $10 billion in aid to israelthis money is u.s.tax $ so that israelis can expropriate land deport civilians imprison over 9000 childre destroy homes prevent civil from working do to non freedom of movement restrict road usage put up militarized checkpoints that detain civilian for hours preventing acces to medical attention of any kind ,school, worship, or jobs that few still have , removal from homes repeadedly for no reason physical abuse at will to the civilian population, people are being forced into camps where there is no running water electricity homes, decent f food.are we in favor of this treqatment to any human being? WE are supporting the israelis and their actions and we are being kept from the truth once again. israel has 2-300 nuk warheads they have 3930 tanks palis have 0 they have 362 f-16jets palis have 0 they have the largest f-16 jets fleet in any country in the world behind u.s. does it sound like they are being tormented by any one to you i think not. people need to start looking into matters on their own because we can not trust our own media nor can we trust our leaders . post that!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great documentary. I wish my fellow Americans would all watch this. I sincerely believe that Obama wants the Palestinians to have their own country. Now that he has insisted the pre-1967 border must be used for negotiating, it will be interesting to see how the process plays out.
1st & above all, this "Problem" began even before WWII.
That is before 1939.
You just can't imagine what the Brit' endured under the "Normands" reign.
Way, way before Cesar took over the atrocities.
Maybe you heard of "Attilla"?
May I state that I sure did viewed all WWII docs?
Plus a few antisemite ones including the one on this site.
I watch them all. You know what?
Whatever can be said about this, that or any nation, I had to realize that Jews, Japaneses, USA using napalm in Vietnam, Chineses, Mogols when they carried their razzias in N-China, the Portugese & Spain in S-America...
All have the exact typical behavior of the beast known under the term "Homosapien"! What's the most dangerous beast on planet earth?...
A vicious, perverted sadistic beast.
I don't know to what extent, what % of those beasts on planet earth but it seems as that % didn't change a bit a million years.
Just raffined the abusals, tortures and means of plundering.
Ok! Just take an example which is not semitique or anitisemitic...
You must have heard that the Irish nation always been ideal settlers all over the world? Australia, N-Zeland, USA & Canada?
Also known that wherever they "Migrated",they remained pretty proud of their origin. I like it 'coze of the parties! & The beer!...
What if the Irish Gov. would announce all over the world the following:=>
Come back living in Ireland, we'll grant you immediate citizenship, sponsor some ~ approx. $50,000 if you buy a house.
We have the land, we intent to take over some uncoppied territory within Scotland and England that were always considered as being ours!
And you can keep your former nationality!
Hum! No the best "Non-Antisemite" example since the Queen of England is a Scott? But anyhow, just pretend that it ain't the case...
Still, I really think Israel should always have had a home in the middle east.
Historical matters...
But bottom line, I now realise that the Jewish nation is nothing more than one nation of homosapiens among all the other ones if you see what I mean?
Obviously, the Jewish nation teached the whole world the most important lesson we could ever dream of!
Soon after what they went through in WWII, they forgot, up to a point where they teach their youngs the very same hate insanities we seen in the 40's. (I seen the documentary) and are now committing the very same atrocities over whatever other homosapiens they stumble on.
-The definition of what is the homosapien, left aside a few others.
It began by terrorism a little before WWII.
That is fully documented albeit their propanda ignore, and denies facts like massacres. They sure learned their lesson!
BTW: My deceased uncle was there in Germany giving care to freed concentration camp survivors.
One of my neighbor is one of those. Pretty old...
No pride into the abusal going on in Palestine.
Rather disgusted. He sure knows what all this is about.
Taking away what one man own for centuries, denying the existance of a nation, Palestine, coze he knowns atrocity has no nationality, no religion, no language, no good will.
Once you disarmed a nation, keep expulsions going as it was done before 1948, what do you expect homosapiens do?
Go back to the doghouse or the tents provided by the UN?
Bound to be doomed, late or soon.
So what you saying is if Hamas choose suicide to blow a bus with citizens then Israelis should do the exact same thing in order to be proportionate?
How would you set the proper response for the killing of your family or friends ?
Or you would like for Israeli soldiers to leave the Planes, Tanks or any other means to protect their lives and go die, for you to be cool with the proportion? Maybe we should bomb their Buses and Infiltrate their settling at night and butcher entire families with knifes ? Wouldn't you agree this is the proportion you are looking for ?
@Maitreyi
Israel does not aim at civilians. it uses those very sophisticated weapons because they allow a direct hit in the target with as little civilian casualties as possible.
the Israeli army uses those weapons in 2 cases: 1. to prevent an attack on Israel based on good and accurate intelligence.
2. to shoot back to the sources of the fire.
that's it, if you check the real statistics you'll see that we hit Hamas or Jihad people alone in about 90% of the time.
civilians are there, civilians die on both sides, i'm not saying it's ok but it's inevitable when terrorist are shooting from a civilian area. that's the real truth and not your "facts" the facts are meaningless without the story.
that's like saying:"you killed the man? you are guilty" you see the connection? no asking weather its self defense, or if it was intentional. i don't think you would like that process of thinking in everyday life situations, so why are you simplifying it like your audience is a bunch of 4 year olds? i don't know about you but i believe that most people are smarter than that and can see through this claim.
there are many legitimate claims against Israel with a complicated answer, like the settlements, which i can understand why people are criticizing Israel about.
the problem with the propaganda machine that got a steady grip all around the world is that there is no legitimate or illegitimate claim, everything you say against Israel is true and everything the Israelis say in return is ignored.
Will you admit that Israel uses these weapons?
Will you then concede the fact that Palestine has no army or defence..no jets, no ships..
If you agree to these two points, which are clear fact, then you must also agree that the the force Israel uses to 'Defend' itself is disproportionate
@Maitreyi
if we use "sophisticated weapons" as you say all the time does that make us evil?
they are using "unsophisticated weapons" to kill us so i guess it is ok by your theory.. as long as it's not "sophisticated" it's ok to kill innocent people!
and if we are trying to get rid of them we're doing a lousy job considering our "sophisticated weapons". have you seen the numbers? it's like half a day of typical African tribe war and they are using Machetes for gods sake.
children lined up? stop watching Palestinian propaganda films.
this discussion is over, you are brainwashed as hell. at least i can admit of some wrongdoings or mistakes on our side, you just keep on going without thinking clearly for one second.
i never understood the looking at one side approach, i was raised differently. i'll never have such formed opinion on a place and people I've never seen and know so little about.
The incursion & bombardment of Gaza, is not about destroying Hamas, it is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel, it is not about achieving peace.
The desicion by Israel to rain death & destruction on Gaza, to use lethal & sophisticated weapons of the modern battlefield on a largley defenceless civillian population is the final phase in the decades long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless, & impoverished ghettos in the West Bank & Gaza, where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building a series of ringed Palestinian enclaves, where the Israeli military will have the ability to instantly shut off food, movement, medicine & goods to perpetuate the misery.
Privilege & power, especially military power is a dangerous narcotic, violence destroys those who bear the brunt of it's force, but also those who try to use it to become Gods.
Israel uses sophisticated attack jets & Naval vessels to bomb densley crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, Mosques & slums, to attack a population that has no Air Force, no Air Defence, no Navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanised armour, no command & control, no Army, & Israel calls it a War. It is not a War, it is Murder.
Images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep, on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Isreal will from now on speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. Those who orchestrate such sieges, do not grasp the terrible rage borne of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence & abuse. A Father or a Mother, who's child dies due to lack of Vaccines, or proper medical care, does not forget. A boy whos ill Grandmother dies while being detained at an Israeli Checkpoint, does not forget. Families who carry the broken bodies of their children to hospitals, do not forget.
All who endure humiliation, abuse & the murder of those they love, will never forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who eventually stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71% of children interviewed in a school in Gaza recently, said they wanted to be a Martyr. The refusal by our political leaders, from Barack Obama, to all but five members of Congress, to the major media, to speak out in defence of the rule of law & the fundemental Human Rights, exposes our cowardice & our hypocrisy. The public debate about the Gaza attack, engages in the absurd pretence that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, whose security & dignity is being threatened. This blind defence of Israel is really brutality towards the Palestinians, is a betrayal of the memory of all those kikilled in other Genocides in other times the lesson of the Holocaust is not that Jews are special, it is not that Jews are unique, it is not that Jews are the eternal victim, the lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt Genocide & you do not, no matter who carries out that Genocide, or whom it is directed against, you are culpable & we are very culpable. The F16 Fighter Jets, the Apache Attack Helicopters, the 250LB Smart GBU 39 Bombs, the White Phosphorous, are all part of the 3 Billion Dollars in Military aid we give to Israel. Palestinians are being killed, tonight, with American made weapons, but perhaps our callous indifference to human suffering is to be expected, we afterall kill women & children on an even vaster scale in Iraq & Afghanistan
@ lemekid
my best guess is that you claim to know how many Jews were killed during the second world war..
anyways thats not the point. whether it was 6 million or 3 million, the Jews were being exterminated in death camps.
in my grandparents's families they are the only ones left alive from their entire family (4-5 people) so if i would have guessed an uneducated guess like yourself i would say there were maybe 8-9 million Jews that were killed.
every fact i say comes from some basic knowledge. whether its 100% true? nothing is 100% true, we talk about history and there is more than one version and each person takes what seems the most accurate to his opinion.
i don't think you know anything about this conflict but these documentaries. i'm not saying that they are all false, but they are definitely subjected to the opinion of the ones that created them (and the funding of the Palestinian people's supporters).
@ israeli
You need to quickly review your history and do a fresh research about the history of the formation of the State of Israel. Just google around or look around youtube and you may find other suppressed documentaries that debunks a lot of your "facts". For example, one documentary showed that the plaque that was made in Germany to tell that 6 million Jews were killed have been silently removed and replaced with just a memorial stone. The reason for its removal was that not 6 million Jews were killed during the second world war.
The Europeans dont want the jews thats why hitler was used as a reason to either kill of move then off the continent. Even today Europeans like the fact that the jews have moved out to Israel and are not interested in any resolution lest the jews come back to make claims on europe for all the autocracies they had to face.
Imagine if USA and Europe really wanted to solve the problem relocating 7million ppl would be pretty easy..
The Arab countries hate each other for different historic and religious reason. The Israel Palestine conflict is a manifestation of this problem. Imagine if there is no israel then all these arab countries would be fighting each other, so the Palestine conflict is kept alive to keep peace on their own lands.
If Jordan,Egypt,Syria, UAE, SA wanted peace it would be easy for them to relocate the population to any of these countries. But i dont think any of them want to solve the problem.
Israel is 1/10 the size of the smallest of these countries so this whole problem is fabricated for sure..
Israel is committing genocide by keeping the Palestinians like prisoners and thats another story, but again when survival is at stake anything sells. For Palestine it is suicide bombers and for israel it is isolating the Palestinians.
The Arab Israel has no solution..If u are not directly affected by the conflict best not to have any views because having a view itself would be very judgmental on the other side.
tiggyt,
i can write a whole book as a comment to your comment (not necessarily a negative one) but i'll steak to the more interesting spots.
start at the end- the most confusing subject- Israeli-Arabs.
we, as Jewish Israelis, have a dream: that when an Arab person living in Israel will be asked for his identity he'll say "i am an Israeli". a small minority of them says that and when we hear that we wanna hug him. reality is that most of the Arabs defined themselves as palestinians. so does about 70% of the Jordanians.
which brings us to the question: what is a Palestinian?
the word "Palestinian" did not exist in the form of "a Palestinian people" or language or culture or even a coin.
when yaaser arafat and his gang sat in Jordan and thought of a way to unite the Arab nation with the common goal of destroying Israel they (i must say brilliantly)named their people Palestinians in order to prove themselves worthy of the land of former Palestine (a name given to the land by foreign empires that was not referring to an Arab people).
the fact is that the Jews in Israel were from day 1 until today ready to make peace and live with the Arabs. the problem is that the Arabs have hate for the Jews in their veins. it's a mixture of religious beliefs, propaganda, envy, victims of the wars they swear to revenge their blood by all means, refugees being band (by the Palestinian authority, Hamas, Lebanon and Syria) from living their refugee camp and live with the rest of the population, and i swear to god i once heard of someone who blamed Israel for the luck of rain in the west bank.
few interesting facts: thousands of marriages between Israeli-Arabs to Palestinians or other Arabs every year. all of them move to Israel for the good life, zero moves to "a better life without the evil Jewish rule".
the PLO still has "armed struggle against israel" in it's constitution. the Hamas does more than that, it says Israel doesn't have the right to exist and that there could never be peace with Israel (without any conditions).
the Hamas won the last (and only) fair elections.
since the West Bank barrier was built there were almost no terrorist acts against Israel, and growth rate of the GDP in the west bank was the highest in the Arab world accept oil countries.
in the last 5 years, the Arab municipal authorities in Israel got more money per capita from the government than the Jewish ones, and that is to try and balance these corrupt authorities, unable to collect taxes from their own people.
the israeli arabs live longer, they have more degrees per capita, more freedom, the possibility to be gay, the right to demonstrate, the right to vote, the right to drink alcohol, to have sex with whoever they choose, social security, the right to be elected to the congress, the ability to watch t.v. stations and internet websites hostile to Israel.
on the other hand, you'll say, the Palestinians are denied from these rights. but ask yourself this:
The people of Gaza strip- before israel took over, after it took over and untill the first intifada, or since they started the armed struggle against israel. when was the life of the average Palestinian better?
the answer you can here in the most common quote:" i miss the days i used to go out every morning to work in Tel-Aviv and come back in the evening to my family."
the truth is, that every time the Arabs or Palestinians cooperated with Israel, they ended up having the best conditions possible for success. if they had played their cards right, they would have been the most prosperous Arab nation and would have their happy country living next to us. and we would have been the exact copies of Sweden or Norway except the blonde hair.
Hi israeli,
I am using the standard, dictionary definition of the word Palestinians: the native inhabitants of Palestine / an Arabic-speaking Mediterranean people with family origins in Palestine.
When you say Palestinians includes people from the general area of Israel, West Bank Gaza and (part of) Jordan, well yes historically these areas were all ancient Palestine. In my opinion, ancient history with its tit-for-tat of wars, conquests and fluctuating borders over thousands of years always takes up too much time in these debates. The concern is with living history, with the people whose families lived in modern-day Israel and Palestine consistently for centuries and who can trace their lineage and ties to the land back for generations, who were forcibly removed to make way for the state of Israel. They are who we're all talking about.
Surely it is nonsense to say that these people didn't define themselves as Palestinians til the late 1950s or 1960s - who were they and what did they call themselves when they asked for national independence in 1921? Perhaps there is some other non-literal meaning you're trying to convey which I'm not aware of, if so please do enlighten me.
You say "that if they defined themselves as Palestinians that’s what they are." But if you acknowledge that’s what they are, then why do you insist on calling them something else? Their key facet of national identity is the place where they come from and that has been eroded, so why deny them one of the few identifiers they have left?
You then say "the Palestinian people’s characteristics are exactly the same as the other Arabs in terms of language and culture. my point is that talking about them as Arabs or Palestinians is confusing in about the same level."
Yes they share elements of language and culture but that doesn’t make them the same, as I tried to express in the previous comment. You are aware that Palestinians are not uninvolved foreign Arabs but ones who have intimate connections and claims to your homeland - denying them their name strips them further of their dignity and identity.
But wait ... the more I think about it, perhaps the complexity lies in the fact that about 20% of the population of Israel itself, who have Israeli citizenship and are considered part of the nation proper, are Arabs. That puts things in a new light for me. From a purely external and linguistic perspective, there are definite negative connotations to denying the name of the Gazans/WestBankers/refugees and calling them Arabs instead of Palestinians. But Arab citizens of your country are referred to as Israeli Arabs and the relevant question is: do you think of them as Israelis or Palestinians? As an outsider I’m not sure what they identify themselves as, nor am I sure what Israeli Jews identify them as. But I think I'm now seeing that you call Palestinians Arabs because you see them as the same as your Arab fellow-citizens, which implies you don't really see Arab Israelis as Israelis - is that it?
@tiggyt
the definition of the term "Palestinians" is not so clear.
it's a people of a general area that includes Israel, the west bank, Gaza and Jordan. and the Israeli or Jordanian Palestinians are not (anymore) a part of the conflict.
further more, those people didn't define themselves as Palestinians until the late 1950's or 1960's, they all defined themselves as a part of "the great Arab nation" which they thought would come back after world war 1, and than thought again after Israel's promised defeat.
they didn't get their great Arab nation, so they reinvented themselves as "Palestinians".
i'm not one of those people that talk about "transfer" i think that if they defined themselves as Palestinians that's what they are, eventually every people is defined not by others but by itself. nevertheless, the Palestinian people's characteristics are exactly the same as the other Arabs in terms of language and culture.
my point is that talking about them as Arabs or Palestinians is confusing in about the same level.
(NB apologies that was a point toward the general debate, not just Arcticfox & israeli. i did have loads of points for them but i got carried away with that one! Will save them for another debate, i don't want to hog this whole page :)
Anyway, that underhanded racism whereby all Arabic nations are interchangeable equally works the opposite way, where certain factions in different Arab countries lump all rich, progressive nations into "decadent Westerners." The whole thing feeds into a mindset that pits East against West, an Us and Them mentality. It deepens cultural chasms and sets the stage for a deliberate clash of civilisations instead of aiming for any kind of stability or harmony. It's really unhelpful from either side. In this instance, why not afford those poor people the dignity of their own name instead of sweeping them away in a generalisation. Just calling them Arabs disrespects them and feeds into the radicalisation so desired by vested interests on either side. Call them Palestinians. Is it so much to ask?