Reply #14

The political administrations of Western democracies say many things. That does not make them legal or illegal. Even the ICJ only issues advisory opinions that are not enforceable. There really is no world court that any state must accept its rulings on these things. Even UNSC resolutions comes down to whether any UN member state with a large military is willing and able to take on the enforcement. That's even less likely now than it was ten years ago. When anything like that even seems possible, the UNSC resolution is vetoed by one side or the other.

Assad is over there slaughtering hundreds of innocent civilians every day and the enlightened West is peeing all over themselves. If they allow Assad, a military dictator to do this, do you really think the West has the stomach to militarily attack Israel for building apartments in a stateless territory from which they've been repeatedly attacked? Do you really think Obama has the balls to do that?

And so in this enlightened world that appeasement of dictators and aggressors has brought us to - states and non-state entities, dictatorships and terrorist regimes are pretty much free to do what they wish - like fire rockets, mortars and machine guns into civilian areas of UN member state like Israel. Added: And then the ever-so-just UN passes GA resolutions condemning Israel for defending itself.

When states do attempt to operate within some international legal framework - even though the law is anything but clear and unambiguous on those things - they do so voluntarily - like Israel has finally done regarding the settlements.

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"You said that giving them (the Palestinians) a great deal of autonomy in their majority areas seemed like a reasonable approach to you."

Yes, a reasonable approach in their non-state territory until they agree to negotiate permanent borders and an end to violence against Israel. At that point they may be deserving of statehood there - which provides full autonomy. Like Israel enjoys.