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

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, felice said:

Why not give a big chunk of the Negev to Palestine instead? A larger amount of land gets transferred, but an order of magnitude fewer people are affected, and nobody is forced to move as long as they're ok with becoming citizens of Palestine (though I acknowledge that moving may well be a much safer option). And potentially some of the settlements in the West Bank could stay in exchange?

That creates the same problem as having a Palestinian state that includes both Gaza and the WB. You would still need to enter another country to get to the other side of yours and those areas would be open for further conflicts.

And it's also worth noting that if that section of the WB isn't given to Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews would be forced to move if they want to still be Israeli citizens, and frankly you should want them to move. Having them stay in a new Palestinian state just opens up the potential for a civil war, and hard liners in Israel would happily back them if that were to play out.

[Clueless Northman]

4 hours ago, Alarich II said:

The problem with that is probably access to the red sea and the city of Eilat. Realistically, Israel will not accept any solution that would split their territory or leave important parts of it indefensible in the event of a conventional war (which is why they will not give back the Golan heights either). 

Having a fully independent West Bank is way worse than that, strategically speaking. Heck, giving up Gaza would be far less damaging than any of these.

That's the tricky part at the end of the day. Whether a 1 or 2-state solution, Israel has to be able to have a level of trust towards Palestine - which is a pipe-dream right now, obviously -, otherwise it will stay on the current (probably doomed) course. This means Palestinians have to not have reasons to hate Israel anymore, which would be quite an achievement.

In the quite unrealistic hypothesis that Israel taking control of Gaza and giving up parts of Israel propre to enlage the West Bank, at least Palestinians should ask IDF to let all the settlements intact, because there's so many of them right now that they could probably house the entire population of Gaza (Palestinians are growingly used to densely inhabited homes, and these would be in far better conditions than what currently passes for houses in Gaza or even in most of the West Bank).

Alas, I just can't see a way forward towards an improvement right now. Even if both sides have plenty of faults, one thing remains: when you want to make some reasonable deal and not a mere extorsion, then the one with the strongest hand has to move first, as a gesture of goodwill, and has to agree to a deal far less advantageous than its superior position would allow. Of course, the weaker side has to understand this is goodwill and not showing weakness - in which case the weaker side will try to push further.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, felice said:

Why not give a big chunk of the Negev to Palestine instead? A larger amount of land gets transferred, but an order of magnitude fewer people are affected, and nobody is forced to move as long as they're ok with becoming citizens of Palestine (though I acknowledge that moving may well be a much safer option). And potentially some of the settlements in the West Bank could stay in exchange?

This was addressed previously. The Negev is basically a desert, so the value of going to live out there is not massively appealing compared to the more fertile West Bank (the name refers to the west bank of the Jordan River, something lacking in the Negev). Obviously with modern technology and resources you can make it liveable, like people living in Arizona or something, but that's very technology dependent and expensive. Also, with global warming likely to get significantly worse before it gets better, living in a region that is only marginally habitable is not a great idea.

More pertinent, there is a major Israeli port and city on the Gulf of Aqaba (a marginal of the Red Sea), Eilat, far to the south. Cutting Eilat off from the rest of Israel is a non-starter.

It does occur that the occasionally-mooted and recently-popular-for-Ever-Given-reasons Israeli Canal might work to their advantage here. If you build the canal from Eilat to the Mediterranean, mostly across the Negev, you could help green the southern part of the country and create a potential hard border, beyond which you could negotiate for new Palestinian settlements in no-longer-shithole country as part of land swaps for Israeli settlements in the West Bank (at least those near the border). The canal would be very expensive but if you could make the economic argument for it (providing a second link from the Med to the Red Sea) as well as it serving a political argument, you could make a case for it. That's not really a serious option on the table right now though.   

Quote

And who builds the tunnel? Who regulates it?

America. Or even just Trump. He proposed it in his 2019 peace plan, after all and the tunnel would only need to be 20-25 miles long (shorter than the Channel Tunnel). It's perfectly doable and not outrageously expensive. Have Americans dig and built it and hugely reinforce it so someone can't stop halfway through and dig out into Israeli territory, have the two ends deep in Palestinian territory, have CCTV cameras every 20 feet with a feed into Israeli police (or a UN-provided security office for that matter) and Bob's your uncle.

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So any two-state solution would see Israel looking to maintain the de facto ability to intervene on Palestinian territory if they felt it necessary to guarantee their own security. That would be really hard for any notionally independent country to accept. 

This is a problem but I don't think it's a majorly decisive one. An independent Palestine would probably be dirt poor for many, many years after its founding, unlikely to be able to afford any significant military hardware and still well within range of Israel's defences. Israel would retain the ability to launch military strikes on Palestine at its leisure and the merest sign of provocation. Israel and/or the US could also threaten military strikes on Syria and Iran if either country tries selling or donating missiles, AA systems or artillery to an independent Palestine.

On a purely neutral level this sounds like an outrageous violation of what would be sovereignty but in light of the very real historical and currently extant threats to Israel, Israel would effectively remain in full military control of the situation, as it is now. The advent of drones, artillery with truly stupendous range (outweighing any benefit from controlling high ground), satellite observation and sophisticated stealth aircraft, there is no real military advantage that Israel is giving away to a future Palestinian state. The Golan Heights is another matter, but as far as can be told, Palestinians in general don't really seem to give much of a toss about the Heights, at least nothing like on the level as the WB and Gaza.

[Spockydog]

You know, imagine the problems in this world that could have been avoided if the Jewish people had been given land that didn't already have people living there. 

Why couldn't the US have handed over a small corner of its vast and fertile lands to the Jews? Oh, that's right, because they had to have Israel because of a bunch of ancient stuff relating to some imaginary sky dude. 

Carry on. 

 

 

[baxus]

In all fairness, there was a lot of imaginary sky dude related hostility and conflict in that area even without the state of Israel.

[Fragile Bird]

26 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

You know, imagine the problems in this world that could have been avoided if the Jewish people had been given land that didn't already have people living there. 

Why couldn't the US have handed over a small corner of its vast and fertile lands to the Jews? Oh, that's right, because they had to have Israel because of a bunch of ancient stuff relating to some imaginary sky dude. 

Carry on. 

 

 

It's always bemused me that some of the same people who mock Christians as believers of "Santa Claus in the sky" have no problem with Israel being claimed by Jews because God gave them the land. I have no problem with people saying their country is the place where they historically lived for centuries. Telling the Italians or the French or the British they can pack up and move elsewhere doesn't work either. I'm not sure of the "we are the indigenous people" argument though, because there's too much evidence other groups lived there the same time as well, which goes to the root of the problem, right? I think most of the other Muslim countries don't agree with what Israel has said for a long time  ("why doesn't X country give Palestinians a homeland, they have lots of territory") because Palestinians never lived there, they lived in Palestine and want to continue to live in Palestine.

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Leap said:

Do these people really exist, though? There's a historical rationale behind Zionism that doesn't require you to believe mythological aspect of it, and probably a lot of Jews don't. It's not exactly fertile comic ground to mock Jews for something you otherwise agree with, or aren't sure of. I don't think the contingent of people who mock Christian beliefs are really hypocritical for withholding that mockery from Jewish people on the specific issue of whether Israel should exist. I think that would be in pretty poor taste in a way that mocking Christians for their beliefs, while obnoxious, is not.

Do try to use the whole quote.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

You know, imagine the problems in this world that could have been avoided if the Jewish people had been given land that didn't already have people living there. 

Why couldn't the US have handed over a small corner of its vast and fertile lands to the Jews? Oh, that's right, because they had to have Israel because of a bunch of ancient stuff relating to some imaginary sky dude. 

Carry on. 

They did talk about it. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a very interesting novel about what would have happened if a Jewish homeland had been settled in Alaska rather than the Middle East.

Ultimately a lot of Jewish people did already live in the Palestinian Mandate, although they did not make up the majority, and there were Jewish-majority or wholly Jewish towns and cities in the area when and long before Israel came into existence (the attempts to create a map in 1948 already gave the majority of modern Israeli territory to the Jewish inhabitants anyway, because they were the only ones living there or formed the overwhelming majority). And as others have noted, it's not the case that Jewish people were forced out of the region many centuries or millennia ago, large numbers were forced to flee in relatively recent times as well, under the Ottomans (i.e. within the same window that colonisation or forced diasporas are still regarded as problematic for, for example, the Irish).

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Leap said:

Is it relevant?

Yes it is relevant. Jews belong in Israel, it's their homeland. It's also the homeland of Palestinians. Where exactly did I say I was mocking Jews or didn't believe they had a right to exist? I didn't say anything about hypocrisy, that's your word, I said it bemused me.

And exactly why would it be obnoxious for asking why Jews believe in Santa Claus in the sky but not for asking why Christians believe in a dude in the sky? Quote: "I think that would be in pretty poor taste in a way that mocking Christians for their beliefs, while obnoxious, is not." Why is that, exactly? Please explain. I ask that very sincerely.

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

You know, imagine the problems in this world that could have been avoided if the Jewish people had been given land that didn't already have people living there. 

Why couldn't the US have handed over a small corner of its vast and fertile lands to the Jews? Oh, that's right, because they had to have Israel because of a bunch of ancient stuff relating to some imaginary sky dude. 

Carry on. 

 

 

Hey here’s a reminder that the vast and fertile lands of North America also had people living there.

[Clueless Northman]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Ultimately a lot of Jewish people did already live in the Palestinian Mandate, although they did not make up the majority, and there were Jewish-majority or wholly Jewish towns and cities in the area when and long before Israel came into existence (the attempts to create a map in 1948 already gave the majority of modern Israeli territory to the Jewish inhabitants anyway, because they were the only ones living there or formed the overwhelming majority). And as others have noted, it's not the case that Jewish people were forced out of the region many centuries or millennia ago, large numbers were forced to flee in relatively recent times as well, under the Ottomans (i.e. within the same window that colonisation or forced diasporas are still regarded as problematic for, for example, the Irish).

Jewish population received a massive boost since the very end of 19th century. Before that, and since 136 AD, the place had quite a small Jewish population compared to the total population. One can suspect that many of the current Palestinians were originally Jews who converted or faked conversions to Christianity and possibly other faiths under Hadrian, to avoid being expelled - would fit with the quite close DNA between Israelis and Palestinians, odds are that both were basically Hebrews once, and Canaanites before that.

If we were all calling dibs on places where our ancestors lived 1800 years ago, the world would be a complete mess. The biggest issue was that there wasn't any place at all with a Jewish homeland and Jewish home rule. Had part of Bavaria, Silesia or Galicia actually become an autonomous Jewish area in the 19th century (places with a far higher share of Jewish people than Palestine at the time), a lot of recent troubles might have been avoided. Though obviously I can easily understand why, after 1945, many Jewish people wanted to have a wide sea between their country and such places (not even taking into account the ancestral homeland aspect).

At the end of the day, I think people are entitled to have their own nation, their own independant, self-governing and safe country, but I don't think people should be fully entitled to decide on their own where they want to settle - and this applies to what happened in mid-20th century as well as the previous centuries of various colonial expansion. But well, that's quite the past and there are some facts on the ground now.

[felice]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

That creates the same problem as having a Palestinian state that includes both Gaza and the WB. You would still need to enter another country to get to the other side of yours and those areas would be open for further conflicts.

I meant everything south of a roughly V-shaped border, not just a corridor across the middle. Yes, that includes Eilat - asking Israel to give up that small town is a much smaller ask than for the Palestinians to give up the entire Gaza strip as you suggest.

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And it's also worth noting that if that section of the WB isn't given to Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews would be forced to move if they want to still be Israeli citizens, and frankly you should want them to move.

Yes, I have no problems with kicking out all the WB settlers, they know perfectly well they had no right to be there in the first place. But as a compromise, potentially some settlements could be transferred to Israel in return for the Negev, in places where it doesn't require an unreasonable convoluted border or disproportionately cut Palestinians off from natural resources.

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

This was addressed previously.

Before Tywin suggested the evacuation of the entire Gaza Strip.

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Negev is basically a desert, so the value of going to live out there is not massively appealing compared to the more fertile West Bank (the name refers to the west bank of the Jordan River, something lacking in the Negev).

That's what makes it reasonable to ask Israel to give it up - the goal is to create a contiguous Palestine, more than new places for Palestinians to live.

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

More pertinent, there is a major Israeli port and city on the Gulf of Aqaba (a marginal of the Red Sea), Eilat, far to the south. Cutting Eilat off from the rest of Israel is a non-starter.

Eilat would need to be transferred to Palestine. It's more reasonable than asking Palestine to give up access to the Mediterranean and become completely landlocked. And the current residents aren't illegal settlers, so it's more plausible that they could continue to live there peacefully afterwards (though I have no idea if "more" is "sufficiently").

[Kalbear]

20 minutes ago, felice said:

Before Tywin suggested the evacuation of the entire Gaza Strip.

I for a second got confused and thought you were talking about book Tywin, which would be super fitting for this specific request

 

[Ser Reptitious]

21 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's not that it can't be done, but each situation is different. By having a non-contiguous Palestinian state you're inviting all kinds of scenarios which could lead to more violence. 

Just for starters, how do you think most people would travel between the two? 

Yes, if an actual lasting peace could be achieved it might work, but that level of peace could literally take generations to achieve. In the meantime an isolated Gaza is just inviting more opportunities for violent outbreaks. Realistically it makes more sense to take a path that reduces the breaking of a peace treaty before the fruits of it can really be observed.

Both, but they're on different tracks. So to touch on something you asked before, I think the scenario of Gaza as an independent micro-state would most likely happen if Hamas and the PA broke ties. That obviously wouldn't work for Israel because the Hamas issue would still be unresolved. But say the Hamas issue was resolved and it was left on its own. Gaza would need so much sustained funding, possibly for decades, and at some point it may be hard to find people willing to foot that bill. I shouldn't go so far as to say it's impossible, but it would be damn near close to impossible unless everything broke the right way.

In a vacuum I am not a fan of relocating people, but in this specific instance it may be the best path moving forward. You just have to make sure the incentives to do it are very generous for the people being asked to pick up their lives and move. 

I think Kalbear and Mormont already answered some of this (particularly with regards to travel between the two entities), but at the end of the day what baffles me about your proposal is that you keep talking about an independent Gaza outside of full peace being achieved (and therefore being a problem for Israel), while on the other hand pushing a very drastic solution (relocating the entire population of Gaza - with their consent) that obviously also could not possibly be achieved outside of a complete peace agreement. 

So basically we are talking about what to do with Gaza once peace has been achieved (since your proposed relocation scheme could never happen otherwise).

Then why not give some of the other options a try at that point? You seem to take the position that relocating about 2 million people (a notable number of which, even if massively bribed with benefits, might very well still be reluctant - or outright refuse - to go along with this) would be the simplest/easiest option compared to the others that would be on the table by that point, instead of being one of the most difficult. 

[Frey family reunion]

6 hours ago, baxus said:

In all fairness, there was a lot of imaginary sky dude related hostility and conflict in that area even without the state of Israel.

Isn’t it strange that for most of us, even if we believe religion is total hogwash, we still identify with a “religious” grouping of people?  I understand that to be considered Jewish, you technically have to have a maternal line dating back to some time in the past, so I guess you could distinguish that a bit. 

But while I was initially raised Methodist, I then was, um, converted I guess to Catholic, and while I think it’s all a big laugh, I still kind of identify myself as Catholic.  Probably because culturally, being Catholic is more fun then being Methodist, which is about as boring a religion as you can possibly get.  

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Isn’t it strange that for most of us, even if we believe religion is total hogwash, we still identify with a “religious” grouping of people?

This is why religiosity is generally a more useful and descriptive indicator than simply religious identification.

[Frey family reunion]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is why religiosity is generally a more useful and descriptive indicator than simply religious identification.

Yea, and the fact that I've never been repressed or targeted for any present or previous religious affiliation allows me to be more laissez fair about it.  I understand that.  It still sticks in my head, I think it was the Diary of Ann Frank, but I could be misremembering, a bit where someone who was placed in one of the ghettos was quite indignant because he didn't consider himself jewish, yet the fascist government did.  Then of course things got even darker.  

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, felice said:

Eilat would need to be transferred to Palestine. It's more reasonable than asking Palestine to give up access to the Mediterranean and become completely landlocked. And the current residents aren't illegal settlers, so it's more plausible that they could continue to live there peacefully afterwards (though I have no idea if "more" is "sufficiently").

For Israel having military and civilian access to both the Red Sea and Mediterranean is a key part of their naval military defence strategy, so no, that's not going to fly either.

Just build the tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank, it would be much easier than these odd suggestions about forcing 2 million people out of Gaza - which will never happen - or drawing crazy-straw borders across the south of Israel. Or just reinstate the two old reinforced, dedicated security roads between the two bodies. They were a bit of a nightmare to maintain from a security POV, but at least pre-Hamas in Gaza, they kind of worked.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is a problem but I don't think it's a majorly decisive one. An independent Palestine would probably be dirt poor for many, many years after its founding, unlikely to be able to afford any significant military hardware and still well within range of Israel's defences. Israel would retain the ability to launch military strikes on Palestine at its leisure and the merest sign of provocation. Israel and/or the US could also threaten military strikes on Syria and Iran if either country tries selling or donating missiles, AA systems or artillery to an independent Palestine.

On a purely neutral level this sounds like an outrageous violation of what would be sovereignty but in light of the very real historical and currently extant threats to Israel, Israel would effectively remain in full military control of the situation, as it is now. The advent of drones, artillery with truly stupendous range (outweighing any benefit from controlling high ground), satellite observation and sophisticated stealth aircraft, there is no real military advantage that Israel is giving away to a future Palestinian state. The Golan Heights is another matter, but as far as can be told, Palestinians in general don't really seem to give much of a toss about the Heights, at least nothing like on the level as the WB and Gaza.

This is a restatement of the problem, rather than a reason why it isn't a problem.

An independent Palestinian state would have as its ostensible neighbour a country that can act militarily within its borders with impunity and will do so at will to prevent any attempt to develop anything that might even look like a defence (and probably for other reasons - control of water resources, for example). 'Independent' Palestine would be allowed to exist more or less on Israeli sufferance: it could not do anything that would even mildly annoy its neighbour. It's not just a violation of sovereignty, it's effectively a refutation of it.

A two-state solution needs to offer Palestinians some reassurance that the Palestinian bit of it won't be just a bantustan where Palestinians are permitted at Israeli sufference to scrape a hardscrabble existence on bits of land the Israelis didn't want anyway. Otherwise, what's the point of it?

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

This is a restatement of the problem, rather than a reason why it isn't a problem.

An independent Palestinian state would have as its ostensible neighbour a country that can act militarily within its borders with impunity and will do so at will to prevent any attempt to develop anything that might even look like a defence (and probably for other reasons - control of water resources, for example). 'Independent' Palestine would be allowed to exist more or less on Israeli sufferance: it could not do anything that would even mildly annoy its neighbour. It's not just a violation of sovereignty, it's effectively a refutation of it.

A two-state solution needs to offer Palestinians some reassurance that the Palestinian bit of it won't be just a bantustan where Palestinians are permitted at Israeli sufference to scrape a hardscrabble existence on bits of land the Israelis didn't want anyway. Otherwise, what's the point of it?

It's just a restatement of reality.

Right now, the United States can militarily intervene, at will, in almost any country on Earth without significant fear of casualties or serious repercussions. There's maybe a dozen to twenty countries it can't really do that to (most of them nuclear powers in their own right), and there's not much anyone can do about it, even if they want.

Israel is in the same boat in the Middle East. It can intervene or bomb Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq or most other countries in the region and there's very little they could do in response. The only countries that could present anything other than token resistance to an Israeli strike would be Saudi Araba, Turkey and Iran, and even then Israel can simply threaten them with the nukes it very definitely doesn't have.

An independent Palestine would be in exactly the same boat. That's just the reality of the situation. That's why the suggestions that Israel could keep troops inside a "sovereign" Palestine or prevent Palestine from having its own army are quite ludicrous. Israel would be the militarily superior power in any rate, it doesn't need to ask those things. An independent Palestinian state would be very much the inferior power in this situation and I don't think anyone is in any doubt about that.