Israeli officials are facing backlash after years of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu quietly allowing Hamas to remain in power.
But reporting in the New York Times has revealed that Netanyahu’s government was more hands-on about helping Hamas: they helped a Qatari diplomat bring suitcases of cash into Gaza, indirectly boosting the militant organization, according to the report.
The calculus — the Times reported on Sunday, citing Israeli officials, Netanyahu’s critics, and the man’s own reported statements — was to keep Hamas strong enough to counteract the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, allowing Netanyahu to avoid a two-state peace solution and keep both sides weak.
Israeli security officials got it wrong; they didn’t think Hamas was capable, or even interested, in launching a large attack against the Jewish state.
Israel’s existence is propped up solely to pander to the “authority” of the religulous. The creation of Israel was an attempt to make the Bible be true. This is the shit that happens when you believe that book - not only do you immediately and ultimately betray the principles in that book, but you discredit it utterly as well, which it richly deserves.
I am reading a book on the last hundred or so years of Zionism. It is really depressing, it is basically a product of European imperialism and racism. Europe was happy to fund Israel so they could do something with the Jews…
The nascent Israeli’s also kicked Palestinians off of their land and murdered them with paramilitary groups and then had Europe retroactively say it was ok because it was the Jewish homeland. Not to say the Palestinians didn’t as well, but I can’t say I blame them, they were getting invaded and killed and had their land taken.
At this point the only “moral” path forward in my mind is a secular single state managing the region. That is never going to happen until the United States stops seeing Israel as the useful idiot projecting Western power into the region.
In a theoretical situation, I’d completely agree.
But at this point, realistically, the situation is so fraught that I don’t think there’s a single authority anywhere on the planet capable of forming, administering, or managing that theoretical state.
You certainly couldn’t have Israelis or Palestinians running it, and every other solution would, by default, mean it would be a region ruled by a government not of or by the people…which would make it exceptionally difficult to convince those people that it was, in fact, for the people.
Basically, any individual or small coalition of nations trying to effect this solution would be, in essence, colonialism/hegemony, since as much as the Israelis and Palestinians don’t want each other running things, one thing they’d likely agree on is that neither of them want a foreign power running things. (Perhaps they might be okay with it, depending on which foreign power, but then we’re back to the issue that no one power would be agreeable to both parties.)
While it’s still nigh-impossible, really the only possible way this could happen would be a sort of UN peacekeeping administration, but that would likely be a huge negative impact on the Israeli side, so they wouldn’t be likely to go for this anyway. Even if you do let these people have some sort of democratically representative seat at the table, it’s either population based, favoring Israel, or it’s not, and it’s just a same-number deal, favoring Palestine. Or they’re non-voting members of that leadership group, which neither side would stand for, effectively giving up sovereignty.
There might be room for some sort of UN government in which there were two chambers like the US legislature, one scaled for population, the other not, but with a certain amount of seats…and explicit veto powers… residing with a UN contingent…but again, this is a theoretical solution that Israel is not ever going to stand for.
The only thing I could see bringing them to the table would be if all their Western allies made all aid contingent upon their cooperation. But that’ll never happen because of the value of the Western ally state in the Mideast, no matter how troublesome they may be.
So ultimately, we’re left with a situation where innocent lives are so comparatively unimportant to the governments who could do anything about it, versus the value of their alliances, that the incentive to stop the bloodshed isn’t as great as the incentive to keep it going…and that calculus is not likely to significantly change in the near future.
It’s definitely possible. South Africa managed it. All the black people didn’t kill all the white as soon as they got democracy, and in fact, white people kept a lot of the power, land, and money after lol. You just require a strong Constitution, international support and diplomats at the table, and a peace and reconciliation commission to push peace and moving forward over revenge. Create strong protections in the Constitution and some UN oversight for a bit and you should be fine. Have the new government, now a coalition of the former Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority government, work together with the international community to remove Hamas. Have all that international aid build up the run-down Palestinian parts of the country, like in Gaza, so they stop having power problems, have drinkable water,and not bombed buildings. (The PA fought a civil war against Hamas before, and Hamas has less than majority support in Gaza, so plenty of Palestinians would fight them to keep peace if the quality of life without their interference was better.)
The only problem that I agree with is that Israel wouldn’t accept it. It would need to be a secular government, accepting of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. But the whole idea of their state is based on Jewish power and being in that place specifically for religious reasons. Sharing power and land with the people who originally lived there basically goes against the idea of its founding. You’d need a US that’s focused on peace in the region over power projection and who knows if that will ever happen. We’d need someone like Bernie to get elected, and a Congress with the balls to threaten to withold aid to them.
While I’m not saying it’s categorically impossible, and I agree that there are some parallels that could be drawn with South Africa, realistically there are several big and very relevant differences which unfortunately seem (to me) to make your theoretical scenario impractical and unlikely at best.
Very broadly speaking, the differing religions would be a massive, nearly insurmountable challenge on its own, but even if they could get past it, it would always be there, making any effort at resolving any issue orders of magnitude more difficult than it might otherwise be.
The immediate road block of course is also that each side wants as its main goal mutually exclusive things…and since they’re overwhelmingly likely to view all decisions through the lens of achieving those goals, there will never be consensus even on the most basic things.
And this has little to do with the US. This is a situation where, if it is to be resolved, I feel it would be best handled with as little direct US involvement as possible, instead channeling all formal interaction through the mechanisms of the UN. America has a rather poor record when it comes to nation building, and as far as Israel is concerned, most regional powers would likely assert that the US government is incapable of being a neutral mediator in the situation given their longstanding relationship with the Israeli government, and that any possible diplomacy they may attempt would be fundamentally and critically tainted by their history.
And honestly… they’d be right to make this objection. I cannot envision any scenario in which America attempts this delicate statecraft and does not compromise the effort by looking after its own interests in the process.
It’s also a very real possibility that any attempt at lasting peace that even shows a glimmer of potential will likely be intentionally sabotaged by regional neighbors. Nearly as much as the Israeli government wants to see the entire area controlled by a Jewish government, that’s how much many of the neighboring powers want to see that government eradicated and replaced with Muslim leadership. And if they can’t accomplish that, they’ll be content to simply play spoiler, and destabilize the region as they are now.
I’ve always found the religion excuse to be a scapegoat, an excuse to not try for peace. The fact is that people care about a lot of other stuff above religion, including food, shelter, water, quality of life, self-determination, hope, etc. The Palestinians would 100% make peace if they can have those things. People with differing religions live in the US, the UK, and all sorts of places. Hell, they lived fine together in that same area during the Ottoman Empire and before. There are even plenty of Christian Palestinians, too.
Sure there’s a lot of animosity now, but I bet in one generation of living together, they’d be mostly fine. Just look at the differences between the Civil rights in the 60’s, where you had various violent black liberation groups, Malcolm X saying the rift could never be healed and black people should make their own place in Africa, etc. And then there’s the 70’s and 80’s, where you started having the black friend in every movie, to today, where we had a black President. It’s not perfect, even now, but way better than the Palestinians in Gaza. Just let the kids go to school together for a few years lol.
Now there is a couple religious issues that will need to ironed out, but that’s where a strong, neutral hand is required. And i think a one state solution even helps some of those. Such as with a one-state solution, everyone gets Jerusalem and shares it. With a two state solution, you have to do this weird thing where ostensibly no one gets it, even though Israel has all the power over it.
Right now, they want mutually exclusive things in that Israel wants all the land and Palestinians want to live in the place they’ve lived for generations, as well as food, water, etc. Palestinians will shout from the river to the sea, but they’ve shown willingness to settle for a 2 state solution plenty of times before. On the other hand, Israel has no reason to similarly bend. But, if Israel didn’t have so much power because of the US, their position probably wouldn’t be so inflexible. They couldn’t afford to be, and then maybe we’d see some compromise.
I agree that the US would probably hurt more than help, though.
I think your view is overly optimistic and naive, but for their sakes I hope that’s how it goes down.
But if I was a gambler, I would bet all my chips against that being what actually happens.