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News, Peace in the Middle East?


MustardSeed

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And this is why when I want serious news I tend to go outside US to look for it. ;) 

It is a sad commentary that I, the news phobic, actually knew about this before someone else.  I was looking up something else and saw it in one of the side banners.  I am pretty sure someone mentioned it here in passing, but I was thinking people were seeing it as too political  

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54151712

Edited by Calm
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1 hour ago, MustardSeed said:

The White House official statement is overblown and propagandistic, but there is no denying that some Arab states are thinking about their future without oil.  Israel is a successful and prosperous high technology state, and these other states want to get on the gravy train.  A very practical reason to make peace.  Also, in a world of frenemies, it helps to keep Iran at bay.

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https://apnews.com/7544b322a254ebea1693e387d83d9d8b
 

Quote

 Israel on Tuesday signed historic diplomatic pacts with two Gulf Arab states at a White House ceremony that President Donald Trump declared will mark the “dawn of a new Middle East,” casting himself as an international peacemaker at the height of his reelection campaign.

The bilateral agreements formalize the normalization of Israel’s already thawing relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in line with their common opposition to Iran. But the agreements do not address the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, who view the pacts as a stab in the back from their fellow Arabs and a betrayal of their cause for a Palestinian state.

 

Edited by Calm
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40 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The White House official statement is overblown and propagandistic, but there is no denying that some Arab states are thinking about their future without oil.  Israel is a successful and prosperous high technology state, and these other states want to get on the gravy train.  A very practical reason to make peace.  Also, in a world of frenemies, it helps to keep Iran at bay.

The two states that signed have never been at war with Israel, so while a significant step towards balance in the area, it is not a dramatic turnaround imo. 

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1 hour ago, Calm said:

The two states that signed have never been at war with Israel, so while a significant step towards balance in the area, it is not a dramatic turnaround imo. 

Except that both have funded the PLO in the past. Though a percentage of those funds went to support the Palestinian people, they have also funded the PLO's wars with Israel in the past. 

What is important about these agreements are they remove players from the conflict. They may have been financial players, but when the money dries up, there is a significant impact on the ability to continue to fight. 

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4 hours ago, Calm said:

The two states that signed have never been at war with Israel, so while a significant step towards balance in the area, it is not a dramatic turnaround imo. 

Storm Rider has it right.  These are Islamic states, and this makes a huge difference in normalizing the State of Israel.  I lived in Israel for four years, and I constantly heard Israelis telling me that they just wanted to be a normal country.  They also constantly complained that it is hard to be a Jew.  These changes help a lot on both counts.

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1 hour ago, Nofear said:

But that doesn't stop Trump from getting a Nobel Peace Prize nomination (his second nomination, /sigh).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54092960

No politics. It is just the best way to go. When politics, particularly in our day and age, is introduced into the topic, it sours instantly. Suffice it to say, if any other president had this achieved there would have been parades, endless hours of bright, positive coverage and cheers. We are incapable of anything except condemning this Administration. 'Nuff said. 

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It is a good thing generally though the Palestinians feel betrayed as it was once the Arab consensus that recognition of Palestine was the cost of gaining diplomatic normalization. It is a minor victory though. The UAE’s main regional competitor is Iran and not Israel. While the UAE was anti-Israel it was largely rhetorical. It will be interesting to see if this can lead to a domino effect of other nations in the region doing the same. I doubt it but it would be nice.

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2 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

The reason I ask is because my end of days friends are foaming at the mouth.  

Somehow the UAE establishing diplomatic relations with Israel heralds the battle of Armageddon?

Oh, I bet I know what it is. Is this the "pact with death and hell" that Israel is supposed to make? Kind of underwhelming for a pact.

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On 9/18/2020 at 6:04 PM, The Nehor said:

Somehow the UAE establishing diplomatic relations with Israel heralds the battle of Armageddon?

Oh, I bet I know what it is. Is this the "pact with death and hell" that Israel is supposed to make? Kind of underwhelming for a pact.

I think a good indicator of how close we are to this prophesied phase of history (and its proper interpretation) is what the Church is doing to prepare her people for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

People look back and suggest that the emphasis in messaging and changes prior to the COVID-19 pandemic prepared us precisely for that, but it may well be for future perplexities as well.

I think the "signs of the times" complement faith, much as grace complements all we can do. Both faith and all we can do are found in and promoted by the Church's emphasis in messaging and continued changes.

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On 9/18/2020 at 11:04 PM, The Nehor said:

Somehow the UAE establishing diplomatic relations with Israel heralds the battle of Armageddon?

Oh, I bet I know what it is. Is this the "pact with death and hell" that Israel is supposed to make? Kind of underwhelming for a pact.

I think they are foaming because it doesn't comport with their view. Peace is not the way to Armageddon.

Personally, I think the pact represents a temporary, though laudable, attempt at normalization.

I doubt it will last extraordinarily long. In my humble opinion, radical elements will eventually prevail, unfortunately.

On the other hand, Israel's and Eqypt's peace has lasted much longer than one might have expected, so perhaps this will do so as well.

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  • 1 month later...
On 11/22/2020 at 12:51 PM, The Nehor said:

Resurrecting this It now looks like this was less of a peace deal and more of a sop so the UAE could get access to US weapons. Israel is now concerned about the volume the UAE is looking to get.

I'm pretty sure every single peace deal in the middle east is a sop of one kind or another. Whether the peace lasts is the important thing. The only peace that can last is one that provides benefits to both parties -- and if a quid pro quo is required to keep the peace, then I'm for it.  Along that front, UAE is unlikely to be obtaining weapons to invade Israel. I think the principal concern is the provision of such weapons to terrorist groups. Would the UAE be likely to do this? I don't know. I think they are more likely to be worried about internal threats.

If prophecy is to be believed, that region is heading for a major donnybrook anyway. Will it be sooner, or later? That's the question.

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On 11/23/2020 at 1:49 PM, Stargazer said:

I'm pretty sure every single peace deal in the middle east is a sop of one kind or another. Whether the peace lasts is the important thing. The only peace that can last is one that provides benefits to both parties -- and if a quid pro quo is required to keep the peace, then I'm for it.  Along that front, UAE is unlikely to be obtaining weapons to invade Israel. I think the principal concern is the provision of such weapons to terrorist groups. Would the UAE be likely to do this? I don't know. I think they are more likely to be worried about internal threats.

If prophecy is to be believed, that region is heading for a major donnybrook anyway. Will it be sooner, or later? That's the question.

It just seems a fairly meaningless peace. I agree the UAE is unlikely to threaten Israel directly. The UAE is not a direct enemy to Israel. Some talk the rhetoric of being against Israel but the UAE is primarily concerned with Iran. I admit I am very much concerned that the UAE would sell to terrorists. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia let alone of foreign-purchased weapons "slip" into terrorist hands.

They might be heading for a conflict but I am not convinced prophecy is license to do what ever. I would rather not be arming people in that conflict.

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On 11/25/2020 at 3:39 AM, The Nehor said:

It just seems a fairly meaningless peace. I agree the UAE is unlikely to threaten Israel directly. The UAE is not a direct enemy to Israel. Some talk the rhetoric of being against Israel but the UAE is primarily concerned with Iran. I admit I am very much concerned that the UAE would sell to terrorists. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia let alone of foreign-purchased weapons "slip" into terrorist hands.

As we should be.

On 11/25/2020 at 3:39 AM, The Nehor said:

They might be heading for a conflict but I am not convinced prophecy is license to do what ever. I would rather not be arming people in that conflict.

License? Of course not. Besides, the ones most likely to initiate the conflict don't hold to the prophecy.

The funny thing about peace, is that while it is definitely preferable, it is not always the best policy. But knowing when war or the threat of war is the best policy can be very difficult.

Much is made of Prime Minister Chamberlain's claim of having achieved "peace in our time" at the Munich conference in 1938 -- in which he basically gave away the first bites of Czechoslovakia to Hitler -- as a weak and useless appeasement. If Chamberlain had held firm and threatened war if Germany didn't back down, he may very well have delayed the second world war by some years. And even earlier, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland (the part of Germany next to France that was made a demilitarized zone in the Versailles Treaty), France and Britain should have immediately intervened militarily by sending troops across the border into the Rhine to stop the remilitarization. A show of force then would have stopped that remilitarization. Britain and France did not know that Hitler had given orders that in case of confrontation, his troops should stand down and retreat. If that had happened, would WW2 have been prevented, or made less destructive? We cannot know. But the failure (due to fear of war) gave Hitler the clear idea that he would not be opposed, and this led to his gobbling up, first the Rhineland, next Austria, then the ethnic German part of Czechoslovakia, and finally all of Czechoslovakia. All before WW2 started.

On the other hand, it's also possible that anything that caused Hitler not to overreach as soon and as far as he did would only have condemned Europe to a more slowly growing Nazi empire, and a successful German nuclear weapons program, hidden safely behind a Nazi version of an iron curtain. And perhaps things would have been far, far worse.

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