Signing off for the night,
On 10 June 2010 21:28, socialismorbarbarism
<socialismorbarbarism at gmail.com> wrote:
> CB: Does Israel claim to be sovereign over Gaza ?
>
> 1) There's sovereignty in the basic, traditional sense, that is, the
> sovereign is he who has the right to do anything he wants. (I'm
> paraphrasing somebody--Lord Acton? I can't remember and I haven't been
> able to find the source of the quote.) Well, maybe the sovereign was
> limited by God or gods, at least in those cases where the sovereign
> was not the living embodiment of said gods... At any rate, Israel
> certainly "claims" sovereignty in this meaning.
>
> 2) But the acting meaning of "sovereign" in contemporary political
> discourse is a shorthand reference to the *sovereign nation state,*
> which since the 20th century is technically no longer "sovereign" in
> the sense of my paragraph 1), as nation-states are expected to follow
> certain laws, at least vis a vis other nation-states; and, even if not
> themselves signatories to such laws, are expected to follow certain
> international norms as determined by a vote of a Security [sic]
> Council of the United [sic] Nations, who, in theory, have almost
> unlimited recourse to violent action against adjudged violators. (I am
> taking seriously the assertion--much clearer from the perspectives of
> 1919 and 1946--that the League of Nations and the more serious UN were
> something new, and were legitimate--yes, of course, and
> legitimating--attempts to move beyond, and where deemed necessary
> supersede, the traditional treaty system.)
>
> Now, we can see that Israeli claims to sovereignty over Gaza are
> consistent: They claim to be the representative nation-state governing
> Gaza whenever it suits their interests, as determined solely by
> themselves; and they disclaim such authority whenever it suits their
> perceived interest, as determined solely by themselves.
>
> That is, Israel embraces the pre-modern understanding of "sovereign,"
> as in my paragraph 1), and shows nothing but contempt for the 20th
> century attempt at some form of progress, as defined in my paragraph
> 2). To be fair, in this they are following the lead of their
> benefactor, the United States. On the other hand, showing nothing but
> contempt for the institutional arrangements that were basic to the
> founding of one's own nation-state, not so very long ago, strikes me
> as fucking stupid. I might have written "lunatic," except I apparently
> need to show my clinical credentials before I'm allowed to do so on
> this list. ;)
>
> On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 5:15 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Victor Friedlander wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Gaza is not a sovereign state but only a
>>> break-away district of the State of Israel.
>>
>> ^^^^^
>> CB: Does Israel claim to be sovereign over Gaza ?
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
>>
>>
>> Gaza Strip
>>
>> The Gaza Strip (Arabic: قطاع غزة Qiṭāʿ Ġazza/Qita' Ghazzah, Arabic
>> pronunciation: [qitˤaːʕ ɣazza]) lies on the Eastern coast of the
>> Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel
>> on the south, east and north. It is about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long,
>> and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of
>> 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi). The territory takes its name from
>> Gaza, its main city.
>>
>> The territory has a population of about 1.5 million people, as of July
>> 2009,[1] 1 million of whom were, as of March 2005, refugees[2] who
>> fled to the territory as part of the 1948 Palestinian exodus following
>> the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, from those parts of Mandate Palestine that
>> became Israel, and their descendants. The population is predominantly
>> Sunni Muslims and speaks a Western Egyptian dialect of Arabic.
>>
>> The Gaza Strip acquired its current boundaries at the cessation of
>> fighting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which was confirmed in the
>> Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement on 24 February 1949.[3] Article V of
>> the Agreement declared that the demarcation line was not to be an
>> international border. The Gaza Strip continued to be occupied by
>> Egypt. At first it administered the territory through the
>> All-Palestine Government and then directly from 1959 until 1967, when
>> Israel occupied it following the Six-Day War. Pursuant to the Oslo
>> Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation
>> Organisation in 1993, the Palestinian Authority was set up as an
>> interim administrative body to govern Palestinian population centres,
>> with Israel maintaining control of Gaza Strip's airspace, some of its
>> land borders and territorial waters, until a final agreement could be
>> reached. As agreement remained elusive, Israel unilaterally disengaged
>> from Gaza in 2005, saying it was no longer the occupying power there.
>> The UN, Human Rights Watch and many other international bodies and
>> NGOs still consider Israel to be the occupying power of the Gaza
>> Strip,[4][5][6] which Israel disputes.[6]
>>
>> The Gaza Strip is one of the territorial units forming the Palestinian
>> territories.[7][8][9][10] Actual control of the area within the Gaza
>> Strip borders is in the hands of Hamas, an organization that won civil
>> parliamentary Palestinian Authority elections in 2006 and took over de
>> facto government in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority by
>> way of its own political maneuvering and armed militia in July 2007,
>> while consolidating power by violently removing the Palestinian
>> Authority's security forces and civil servants
>>
>> ___________________________________
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>
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-- Victor Friedlander