The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran appeared to blame Israel for its escalating conflict with Hamas on Saturday. The Palestinian militant group launched a mass attack on Israeli forces …
While the creation of Israel on already-peopled land is obviously the "original sin" of this conflict, at this point both groups believe that their existence is at stake and neither are just going to go away or surrender. There will never be peace between them.
In Punic Nightmares, Dan Carlin quotes an ancient proverb to the effect that a war is not over until the losing side admits defeat. That is why the Allies in WW2 insisted on unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan. Maybe the Israelis and Palestinians need to fight it out until one side surrenders unconditionally and accepts the other as the legitimate government.
"Fight it out until one side surrenders unconditionally" my dude you are out here calling for millions of deaths, you can't be serious. Genocide is not the only path to peace.
Maybe listen to Dan Carlin's "Logical Insanity" episode to get an idea of how your proposed solution would spiral out of control.
I'm not calling for genocide. You made that up and should apologize. Did the Allies genocide Germany and Japan? No, they did not.
Obviously, war is horrific. Israel and Palestine have been in a low-level war for many decades now. No peace plan, foreign mediation, or negotiation has settled it. What's your genius solution that no one else in the world has thought of?
My preferred solution is not novel or genius, it is the international consensus: A two state settlement on the international border (green line) with mutually agreed upon land swaps. This is the solution with consistant and overwhelming international support, just look at the UN votes on the subject over the past 5 decades.
Unfortunately due to their overwhelming military superiority, Israel will not agree to this in the short term. This military superiority is a gift from the world superpower: having a client state in the middle east is very valuable to US economic interests. This is why you often see votes in the UN with a result of something like 161-2 (Israel + US vs. the rest of the world).
So I believe the larger question is how to stop the United States military industrial complex. And I'm sorry but I don't have a solution for that. Just like we are willing to fight Russia to the last Ukranian life, we are willing to turn a blind eye to Palestinian death as long as Israel keeps spending billions a year on helicopters, tankers, naval guns, and so much more.
I think the point they were trying to make is that this solution is great in theory, but due to the reasons you have pointed out does not actually work in practice. What happens in practice is everything that has led us to this point. They were not intentionally calling for genocide IMO, but misguidedly floating the idea of a less protracted end to the conflict.
I think there was a failure to demonstrate that lack of protraction and I think glossing over the allies dropping two atomic bombs on Japan and killing half a million people speaks to the weakness in justifying it with that comparison.
That's not to say there's no substance to it at all, but this isn't the right case for it.
There is no surrendering here. You’re talking about a region where these “two” peoples have been fighting for three thousand years. If they were capable of sharing or conceding, they might have found a way to manage in the last couple millennia.
Israel feel like it’s their rightful land, which can be up for debate depending on who you are, but Muslims in the area also feel that it is their rightful land. Israel refuses to share the land, but then can you blame them when the Muslims (particularly Hamas) have a goal of eradicating them. I’m black and that’s much like asking me to “just get along” with the Nazis next door who constantly advocate for the US to be a white ethnostate. On the flip side of that, is it fair for me to completely segregate anyone who doesn’t look like me or worship like me just because there’s an amount of “them” who might be Nazis?
There’s a way that they could both live in the land, but it’s going to take a major change in leadership (seriously, why is Netanyahu still there?) and a change in the minds for “both” sides that accepts that either they share or they’ll both be destroyed in the end.
I actually largely agree with you, including the fact that Netanyahu is a turd, but I think you are wrong that there is a way for these two states to live on the same land.
The end-point that most experts say is inevitable is a two-state solution with both sides agreeing on the others' right to exist. So, how do we get there? Well, why did Germany and Japan surrender at the end of WW2 rather than continue to fight forever? What would recreate the conditions that allowed WW2 to end?
At the end of the day, Israelis and Palestinians need two things: first, they both need somewhere viable to live under their own government, and second, they both need to be so sick of war that they are willing to compromise. Neither side is anywhere near that point.
Some people just reflexively say no to war, no matter what. However, since you brought it up, the black experience in the US is actually appropriate to raise. The US did, in fact, fight a civil war to end slavery, and it was the most intense conflict the US has ever fought. Without protracted suffering, I do not believe that Israel or Palestine will summon up the willpower to choose better leaders and compromise. Do you disagree?
Oh they absolutely will both experience extreme suffering as this drags on and on.
I think the likely conclusion is that the US will unfortunately put troops on the ground and settle it; maybe just temporarily.
But you’re very right that they all need to be sick of war, and I don’t think that either “side” is there yet because it hasn’t really been a full-scale war since the 1940s.
The way that most civilized nations have multiple peoples living under the same nation is a clear seperation of church and state. What Muslim is going to live under Jewish rule? What Jew is going to live under Muslim rule? Or even if the split the land down the middle and run each side independently, there is still the threat of conflict.
Theoretically they should be able to live under one nation as long as the state passes no laws that prohibit religious freedom. Works for the rest of the world.