Israel: When the Drums of War Have Reached a Fever Pitch

[A True Kaniggit]

Just now, DMC said:

Nah, no hilarious video.  It's just me being a dork - it was a main storyline in the end of the 5th/beginning of 6th seasons.

Oh, OK. Then barring the introduction of a snap chatting teen running me over, I'll get the reference eventually.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Oh, OK. Then barring the introduction of a snap chatting teen running me over, I'll get the reference eventually.

So...50/50 chance?

[A True Kaniggit]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

So...50/50 chance?

Perhaps. Is SnapChat still popular?

I stole that joke from BoJack Horseman.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Perhaps. Is SnapChat still popular?

 

Fuck if I know.

[Arakan]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which again gets to the heart of everything, will Israel remain as a Jewish state? If your answer is "no," then there's nothing to discuss. 

Are you aware that you are speaking of an ethno-nationalist ethno-state? Are you aware that Israel and how it „deals“ with its own Arab Israeli citizens and the Palestinians has become the wet dream and blueprint for every far right extreme group around the globe, even in your Country? 

Are you aware that a significant number of Jewish Israeli intellectuals and Jewish intellectuals around the globe question the very legitimacy of an ethno-state in the 21st Century? Israel has to develop like every nation has to. 

[Arakan]

Speaking of „relocation“ etc 

Are you People aware that you basically propose ethnic cleansing? The majority of people living there will not voluntarily move. 

[Fury Resurrected]

3 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Speaking of „relocation“ etc 

Are you People aware that you basically propose ethnic cleansing? The majority of people living there will not voluntarily move. 

This is a good point. People who have stayed in Gaza and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank haven’t stayed there through all that they have already seen to leave willingly. And how humane is it to ask them to leave after all they have sacrificed to stay?

[A True Kaniggit]

9 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Speaking of „relocation“ etc 

Are you People aware that you basically propose ethnic cleansing? The majority of people living there will not voluntarily move. 

I can't help if you want to look at it as ethnic cleansing. When I brought up the proposal of getting Israeli settlers out of the West Bank while compensating them with monetary incentives, it was with the caveat that those who chose to stay behind would live under the jurisdiction of the new Palestinian state. That would be up to them.

4 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

This is a good point. People who have stayed in Gaza and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank haven’t stayed there through all that they have already seen to leave willingly. And how humane is it to ask them to leave after all they have sacrificed to stay?

See above. They would stay if they wanted to. 

[polishgenius]

24 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Are you aware that a significant number of Jewish Israeli intellectuals and Jewish intellectuals around the globe question the very legitimacy of an ethno-state in the 21st Century? Israel has to develop like every nation has to. 

 

Surely though you can understand why Jewish people feel they need a state that is theirs to feel safe, given the history. The 'are you aware of Jewish intellectuals' is a spectacular form of only listening to those in a group who agree with you, too.


Obviously what Israel is doing is horrifying and cannot (but will) be allowed to continue, but it can't be stopped via means that lead to another genocide against Jewish people, and as Tywin pointed out any ansdwer which makes Jewish people not the majority in determining power in Israel has a very high chance of leading to that.

 

18 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Are you People aware that you basically propose ethnic cleansing? The majority of people living there will not voluntarily move. 

As far as I can see at no point did Tywin suggest forcing out people who don't want to be moved. In fact he went to pains to say there shouldn be every effort to encourage people to move, and so did ATK. I think this is a pipe dream and you're right that there is no way everyone will accept even the most generous incentive, but accusing either of them of proposing ethnic cleansing is just being deliberately confrontational.

[Fury Resurrected]

12 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I can't help if you want to look at it as ethnic cleansing. When I brought up the proposal of getting Israeli settlers out of the West Bank while compensating them with monetary incentives, it was with the caveat that those who chose to stay behind would live under the jurisdiction of the new Palestinian state. That would be up to them.

See above. They would stay if they wanted to. 

That doesn’t seem like a condition likely to get agreement from Israel.

[A True Kaniggit]

5 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

That doesn’t seem like a condition likely to get agreement from Israel.

Highly unlikely. As polishgenius mentioned. "pipe dream"

But we're trying to make a Israeli/Palestinian peace treaty here. What would you suggest?

If the voluntary leaving of Israeli settlers is impossible, then the Palestinians would have to choose to cede those settlements in the West Bank. Is that any more likely? 

If not, conflict is inevitable.

But I'd think luring a few hundred thousand Israeli settlers away with 4-6 years pay in a large cash settlement is more likely to succeed.

 

Edit:  Damm. I must finally succumb to that scary death like state we refer to as sleep.

I’ll return to discuss more if I awaken.

And I'm up.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

"Sleep is the brother of death"-Muhammad (PABBUH)

I'm actually in Israel* but as an Arab Muslim my experience wouldn't match someone like say Tywin's.

*dual-citizen just to be clear

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

If the voluntary leaving of Israeli settlers is impossible, then the Palestinians would have to choose to cede those settlements in the West Bank. Is that any more likely? 

I'm pretty sure that Arakan was talking about Palestinian's moving.  Not Israelis.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Padraig said:

I'm pretty sure that Arakan was talking about Palestinian's moving.  Not Israelis.

Both would have to move, and that's why Arakan can't understand this topic. He only can see one side.

5 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

This is a good point. People who have stayed in Gaza and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank haven’t stayed there through all that they have already seen to leave willingly. And how humane is it to ask them to leave after all they have sacrificed to stay?

Likewise if you go the other way the end game is going to either be a massive conflict or you're going to force basically every Jew to flea Israel. It's disingenuous not to recognize that.

[Werthead]

 

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If you're opening bid is to say it's simple, there will never again be a Jewish state, good luck negotiating that one. 

Not sure what you mean here.

Israel has a very large and overwhelming Jewish majority within its 1967 borders and would continue to be a viable state within those borders. Indeed, the repatriation of half a million Jewish settlers to Israel proper would bolster the Jewish majority for some considerable time to come. Saying that Israel abandoning all claims to the West Bank would make it impossible to form a Jewish state is odd because it was one for twenty years before it claimed the West Bank.

The West Bank has almost six times as many Palestinians living there as Jewish settlers, and a population of 2.7 million would make it a viable state with multiple external borders (with Israel and Jordan). Palestine would be the world's 143rd largest country by population, with a marginally smaller population than Lithuania but a larger one than Namibia, Botswana and Luxembourg, all of which are viable states, and 163rd by area, larger than Trinidad or Samoa and significantly larger than Singapore.

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It was asking if it's been thought about rather than suggested, and if you knew the poster in question I was responding to you'd know he's well aware of how we group people into monolithic blocs. And frankly it's reasonable to ask about relocation simply because I'm skeptical there could be a non-contiguous Palestinian state. I'm for a two (or three) state solution, but I think for that to work people in general will need to be relocated (and that includes the illegal Israeli settlements). 

It has been thought about, just as it was thought about removing the Jewish population of the Palestinian Mandate to Madagascar or Alaska. It's a complete non-starter for the exact same reasons but with even greater force (there were only 630,000 Jewish people in the Palestinian Mandate in 1948, as opposed to 1.2 million Palestinians; today there's almost 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip).

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And frankly it's reasonable to ask about relocation simply because I'm skeptical there could be a non-contiguous Palestinian state. I'm for a two (or three) state solution, but I think for that to work people in general will need to be relocated (and that includes the illegal Israeli settlements). 

As noted above, there is no logical reason the West Bank could not function as its own Palestinian state if, y'know, someone else wasn't trying to colonise it by the back door. And front door. And skylight. The Gaza Strip is a lot more of a headache.

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Would anything in negotiations ever convince Israel to abandon/withdraw the settlements in the West Bank?

Well, sanity. And there's plenty of moderate Israelis who would be more than happy to withdraw from the West Bank and let the Palestinians have it. They seem to be in the minority at the moment, however, and the status of Jerusalem remains contentious.

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Would it make Israel a Jewish minority state if it only included people who left at the start of the conflict?

If we're saying people who left in 1948, then clearly a large number of those people have died; even those born when the exodus took place would now be in their seventies. There's also not a clear consensus even in Palestinian circles: hardliners think it should be all descendants, which would be several million people, whilst moderates prepared to sacrifice the hardline position in negotiations might argue only for direct children and maybe grandchildren, which would be a smaller but still nontrivial number.

The "right of return" to Israel proper I think we also have to accept is never going to happen. Allowing them to return to a viable Palestinian state would be possible, but they'd have to be careful about how to handle it. Morally, the Palestinian Authority might feel it would have to accept returnees immediately, but that could overwhelm their infrastructure (which is not in a great state as it is).

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4) I'd assume the West Bank and Gaza strip must be united in some way. Aside from the Berlin Airlift drama, West Berlin had a supply route through East Germany to gain supplies. I'd assume an interstate connecting the two with the exits being Palestinian territory should fit the bill.

Edit: 

 

The West Bank and Gaza have developed in different directions and developed somewhat different cultures, since travel between them has become incredibly difficult, so whilst the people in both territories are Palestinian, that doesn't necessarily mean they'd both have to be part of the same state (and, politically, Hamas are a much bigger deal in Gaza than the West Bank, so Fatah and the Palestinian Authority might privately note that ditching Hamas and not having to deal with them at all might not be the worst outcome). Each becoming their own state is a more complex issue because Gaza is a hell of a lot smaller and much more densely populated than the West Bank, making its economic development and viability more difficult. Israel certainly would not tolerate the two being linked by a strip of Palestinian territory, as that would divide Israel in two.

That also identifies a problem in that the Palestinian Authority and Israel could negotiate a great peace deal tomorrow, have it all nicely set up and then Palestinian hardliners could use the relaxation in tensions to go on a killing spree in Israel which was not remotely supported by the majority, and both Israel and the PA know that.

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5) Jerusalem. I'd suppose at this stage it would have to be the capital of both countries.

The original proposal - Jerusalem as an open, UN-administered city with free access for Jews and Muslims - is probably still the best compromise, with a tweak that Israel can declare it their capital (but to all intents rule from Tel Aviv) and Palestine can do the same (but to all intents rule from Ramallah, which is not far off becoming a suburb of Jerusalem anyway). Again this a reasonable compromise that the hardliners on both sides are not really interested in. There would also be practical issues.

 

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Are you aware that you are speaking of an ethno-nationalist ethno-state? Are you aware that Israel and how it „deals“ with its own Arab Israeli citizens and the Palestinians has become the wet dream and blueprint for every far right extreme group around the globe, even in your Country? 

Are you aware that a significant number of Jewish Israeli intellectuals and Jewish intellectuals around the globe question the very legitimacy of an ethno-state in the 21st Century? Israel has to develop like every nation has to. 

 

Whether it was right or wrong to found Israel in the manner it was, is a ship that sailed in 1948. The circumstances of the Holocaust and the devastating loss of life and existential threat represented to the Jewish faith did create a very singular set of circumstances which are hard to emotionally understand now.

Israel exists, it is here now, it's not going anywhere and it has the military and economic power, and support of powerful allies, to ensure it will remain extant. So going down that rabbit hole is pointless. We have to deal with reality, not an alternate universe where that never happened.

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If the voluntary leaving of Israeli settlers is impossible, then the Palestinians would have to choose to cede those settlements in the West Bank. Is that any more likely? 

If not, conflict is inevitable.

But I'd think luring a few hundred thousand Israeli settlers away with 4-6 years pay in a large cash settlement is more likely to succeed.

 

It's worth noting that most Israelis living in West Bank settlements, where they voluntarily face significant restrictions on their freedom, tend towards being hardcore nationalists in favour of annexing the entire region. You don't go and voluntarily live in "enemy territory" if you don't think you have a God-given right to be there. Being offered cash as an incentive to leave is not likely to work. Maybe it would convince 10% of the settlers to leave, but the rest would stay put and would not, under any circumstances, accept Palestinian governance. The Israel government would have to go in and force them out, and it had enough trouble convincing the 8,000 settlers in 21 settlements in Gaza to go (paying them $200,000 per family). Convincing 400,000 people to leave the 134 settlements in the West Bank will be much, much harder (the largest settlement has a population of 73,000) and vastly more expensive. There would be bloodshed.

[Gorn]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The starting point is what I've brought up a few times: a Jewish state. If you are advocating for a path that logically leads to the end of that, good luck ever solving the issue. I'm not very ideological on a lot of Israeli issues, but that's a hard red line for me, and for those who don't understand why I'd suggest they really spend a lot more time reading about the long, long, long history of atrocities committed against Jews and then start to empathize with why they might want a small piece of sovereign land for themselves. It can feel like everyone basically hates us for just existing, and that is a narrative that spans thousands of years. 

Let's consider a hypothetical case. Due to a long, long, long history of atrocities committed against Native Americans, the UN and the rest of the world decide that the US should be a Native American ethno-state. You and anyone else who doesn't have Native roots need to leave and never return, because there is a risk of those atrocities repeating themselves unless they have a firm majority of population. Maybe there's a compromise that relocates you from Minnesota to Mojave desert.

Would you be OK with that or consider it fair? Would your neighbor that owns 20 guns be OK with that? After all, you could move to Canada, Australia, or a bunch of other places with similar culture and language.

[Gorn]

Edit: double post

[Bael's Bastard]

The "right of return" demand is intended to create Arab majorities in both Israel and a Palestinian state. Hence, the demand is inherently anti-two states, despite occurring in the framework of two state negotiations. It would be like Israel demanding that Palestinians accept a right of return mechanism for millions of Jews into Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which we all know is a non-starter that would never be accepted. So too is the demand to return to Israel. And it is not just the demand of groups like Hamas, it is the central Palestinian position, and the excuse Arafat and Abbas used to reject peace offers that went beyond any offer Palestinians had ever or could ever have hoped to get from Israel.

The vast majority of Jewish settlers (70-75%) live in and around Jerusalem, in the main blocs that pretty much every negotiation has acknowledged would be retained by Israel in return for land within Israel. They are on about 5-7% of the WB lands. Additionally, many traditional and secular Jews live in settlement blocs for no other reason than prices and space. The idea that settlements are all just a bunch of religious and/or nationalist extremists is a caricature detached from reality. The left in Israel was extremely invested in the peace process until the Second Intifada, but the rejection of peace with suicide bombings shattered them, and they mostly have switched to focusing on other, internal issues until a peace partner arises.

As we see in this thread, no shortage of people throwing around words like ethnic cleansing, especially people with no connection to either Israelis or Palestinians, are perfectly fine with ethnically cleansing Jews from Jerusalem and a future Palestinian state. A quarter of Israel's population is mostly Arab Muslim and there are still major issues as seen with recent Jewish and Arab extremist mobs in Lod and Bat Yam, but Zionist/Israeli Jews have adamantly wanted Arabs to remain and be part of Israel from the beginning. The Palestinians and Arab armies, on the other hand, ethnically cleansed every Jew from Jerusalem, Gaza, and WB. They couldn't even accept the 10k Jews the Arab Palestinian state was supposed to retain. There is a long long way to go, but on the other side, the Palestinian position is no Jews in the state of Palestine. No matter how they word it, the bottom line is they want all Jews ethnically cleansed from the West Bank.

[Bael's Bastard]

17 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Let's consider a hypothetical case. Due to a long, long, long history of atrocities committed against Native Americans, the UN and the rest of the world decide that the US should be a Native American ethno-state. You and anyone else who doesn't have Native roots need to leave and never return, because there is a risk of those atrocities repeating themselves unless they have a firm majority of population. Maybe there's a compromise that relocates you from Minnesota to Mojave desert.

Would you be OK with that or consider it fair? Would your neighbor that owns 20 guns be OK with that? After all, you could move to Canada, Australia, or a bunch of other places with similar culture and language.

The partition plan drew borders around existing populations and was designed to keep everyone in their homes (including 400k Arabs in the Jewish state and 10k Jews in the Arab state), so your hypothetical has no resemblance to reality. The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was never based on removing anyone from their home or land, was never necessary or desired, and the only thing that caused displacement was the Palestinian and wider Arab state wars to destroy Israel. 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That also identifies a problem in that the Palestinian Authority and Israel could negotiate a great peace deal tomorrow, have it all nicely set up and then Palestinian hardliners could use the relaxation in tensions to go on a killing spree in Israel which was not remotely supported by the majority, and both Israel and the PA know that.

 

If there were to be peace, I think it would need to be contingent on the hard borders remaining in place for now, and maybe for decades or indefinitely. It's the only way Israel can be assured of their own security. Which means, if the West Bank and Gaza were to become a single state in a peace deal, (which I'm not positive they would be because of the Hamas-PA divide) the only way to physically connect would have to be by tunnel. Get the machines and engineers who built the Channel Tunnel over there and sort it out, and put all the maintenance access points in Palestine. 

Of course, the problem is that would probably be very expensive. More than Palestine could easily afford, and Israel would want yet another concession in exchange for paying for it themselves.