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This argument flies in the face of facts and history. There are several independent Muslim Arab states in the region; Israel is a tiny portion of the region, smaller than many American counties. "Independent Palestine" is a call for a Muslim Arab country specifically in Gaza and the West Bank, which was granted in the Two State Solution, and refused by the Palestinians. Palestinians still refuse it as a solution. Give them a two state solution, and within half a generation they will be raiding Israel from behind their "borders," calling yet again for the extermination of the Jews. How do we know this? Because they keep doing it.
Not only that, but a substantial percentage of Israeli nationals are Muslim Arabs, from when Israel tried to just allow Palestinians to choose to participate in a liberal democracy along with the rest of the developed world. Some took the offer, and are pretty universally better off for having done so. I have known a few Palestinian Israelis, and they were not "second-rate residents" in any sense but perhaps the fact that they lived in an officially Jewish nation--not unlike the Jews and Christians who are sometimes permitted to live in officially Muslim nations, except for the part where Jews and Christians are generally treated far worse in Muslim nations. Rural Americans in many states often have less political power or self-determination than Palestinian Israelis.
Attitudes like yours toward the conflict in Israel strike me as the most absurd exercise of both-sides-ism in modern history. Israel has taken every reasonable avenue, and perhaps some unreasonable ones, toward peace and coexistence. Every olive branch they have extended has been sharpened into a stake and used to murder their children. In some ways Israel may be the single most Christian nation ever to exist, so far has it extended forgiveness and amnesty to the descendants of the Muslim Arab colonists who live within their borders.
I've lived through this cycle so many times I've actually lost count, but it repeats like clockwork. Every time it looks like we're going to get "peace in the Middle East" at last, the Palestinians sabotage it (usually, with financing and support from other Muslim nations). "Independent Palestine" is a canard, code for "death to Israel," because coexistence is not on the menu, and as long as Muslims are religiously committed to reclaiming every inch of their holy lands, it never will be. Israel's Muslim neighbors wish to see it destroyed, and Palestinians are the stooges they have been using to pursue that goal for longer than most Mottizens have been alive. Nothing has changed, nothing is new. I feel bad for the Palestinians, they are being used harshly by bad actors. But they have had many opportunities to escape the cycle, and they have squandered them without hesitation.
I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make.
"Why should there be another Muslim Arab country?" is a loaded question. It's like asking, "why should Panama exist when there are many other Latin American countries?"
Again, "granted" is a loaded word. From the viewpoint of the Palestinians, they weren't granted half of Palestine, half of Palestine was taken from them and awarded to Israel. Why should the UN decide that Palestine should be divided 50/50 just because Jews owned 6.6% percent of the land?
Palestinian Israelis are not second-rate residents (other than some humiliating restrictions like not being able to own their old homes), but West Bank and Gaza Palestinians aren't Palestinian Israelis, no one offered them this option. "Other countries treat their minorities worse, why shouldn't Israel be allowed to do this?" is a question that should be reversed, "why don't we apply the same rigorous standards and demand BDS against Saudi Arabia, Estonia and the PRC?"
Every reasonable avenue other than founding their nation somewhere where the natives were fine with it. Yes, they are much better stewards of this land than the Arabs, but that's saying you shouldn't complain that you woke up with a kidney missing just because Terence Tao was the recipient.
I find your responses uncharitable and probably disingenuous. You seem to simply be engaged in motivated reasoning toward a preferred outcome, rather than attempting to take a view of the whole situation.
No. The question is not whether Palestine should exist or not. The question is whether Palestinians should be empowered to exterminate Israel, and aided by the world in their mission to do so. The answer is "no." Your response was, "but what about independent Palestine" and my answer was, "I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make."
I don't really care about their "viewpoint," especially when it is clearly ahistorical. But even if they weren't the literal and ideological descendants of colonists now complaining about being colonized, it wouldn't matter: Israel is there, now, and has been for a long time, and the actual options are (A) stop the Palestinians from occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge or (B) allow the Palestinians to continue occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge, and in turn get murdered right back. "Two peaceful states getting along peacefully" is a much better option! But it will never be on the table while the Palestinians and their useful idiots continue to chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine is for Muslim Arabs."
Except we're not dealing with a human being here, we're dealing with nation-states and identity groups. There are so many problems with nation-states, and identity groups are, if anything, worse. The original expulsions were horrible and shouldn't have happened, and under the standard of modern liberal democracies likely would not have happened. But the empires of yore worked differently. The Muslim Arabs in Palestine weren't sovereign, and had never been sovereign.
Again: insofar as they seek full freedom and self-determination, I'm pretty open to that. But it can't be on "by murdering everyone else in the region" terms, and they have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling or incapable of accepting those terms.
My honest and heartfelt position is "a pox on both their houses, what I think about this conflict doesn't matter a bit and the farther I stay away from it the better". But any attempt to take a view of the whole situation is impossible without trying to steelman the positions, and I was trying to do this with respect to the Palestinians.
Why not? After all, we're letting Israel do the same. Letting Israel control where the Palestinians are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on is symmetrical to letting the Palestinians control where the Israelis are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on. Why not push the Israelis that don't accept Palestinian supremacy into Jewish enclaves and watch them elect Otzma Yehudit and start bombing the Palestinians with improvised FPV drones? Yes, Palestine would be a much worse place to live in than Israel, but that's not a meaningful way to decide which side to support. After all, there are lots of mismanaged countries, but we no longer let the Netherlands take over and manage them.
I don't think it's a "steelman" to soften their actual beliefs, though. They want all the Jews to either leave Israel or die. They are quite explicit about this. They literally make children's shows teaching this. To steelman that view requires you to elaborate reasons why, all things considered, this is a reasonable view to hold. Your response appears to be something like "there's no meaningful difference between Israel's government and Hamas, so their positions are just equally bad." That's not a steelman, that's ignoring inconvenient facts in hopes of strengthening an objectively outrageous position.
Bullshit. In the first place, there never was a "Palestine" to exterminate. Furthermore, the Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated their ability, if they so chose, to militarily conquer not only Israel itself but much of the neighboring territory as well. Israel has treated the Palestinians with kid gloves for decades.
More bullshit. There's nothing symmetrical here; the Palestinians wish to kill all the Jews. Do you seriously not understand this? If Israel's goals were "symmetrical" to those of the Palestinians, all the Palestinians would already be dead. You are not steelmanning anything, you are literally making shit up.
How the fuck is that not meaningful? That is often, perhaps always how nations decide "which side" to support (though nations are also at times wrong about what will make something a "worse place," in the end).
But never mind that; we have an absolute laundry list of economic and political reasons to support a productive and educated first-world democracy over a couple of terrorist cells whose aspirations toward theocracy are often not only explicitly anti-Israel, but explicitly anti-American. To say nothing of the events of October 7, which are independently sufficient evidence that every civilized person everywhere should regard Palestine as, if it is a state at all, only a terrorist state.
Palestine is not a country in any particularly meaningful way, and it never has been. It is two separate terrorist groups living on the largess of other nations within the borders of Israel, actively oppressing their own supporters for theological reasons. Writing as though we were dealing with an oppressive colonial nation-state and its equal-but-opposite conquered territory demonstrates either ignorance, or willful ignorance.
And the IRA wanted Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland. And this you may note has not happened. What the goal of an organization is and what they can be persuaded or forced to accept can be very different things.
Your pov would tend to indicate that a peace process would be pointless in NI because the stated objectives of each side were contrary. Well yes, that is why it has to be a negotiation!
What is probably true is that support for Hamas from within Palestine has to reduce. That was the problem the IRA faced, the slow removal of discrimination against Catholics, meant fewer and fewer of them had strong reason to support the IRA, rising living standards made them wealthier and then the IRA made a few clear mis-steps which crushed their support among their own demographic. That is why the IRA in 98 accepted a deal they had been offered and rejected 20 years earlier. The fact Hamas and the PA rejected a solution in the past does not mean it will never be acceptable to them.
The problem is of course, is that the UK had to dial back their aggression against the IRA and Catholics for that slow boil to subside. They had to do that BEFORE the IRA were willing to negotiate. Even when that meant the IRA was able to operate more freely. Internment was working to reduce the number of attacks, but it was also radicalizing more Catholics. The Peace process could never have gotten started with it still in place.
The playbook from Israel would probably have to include stopping or curtailing the various settler issues, lifting the various controls on who and what they allow into Palestine and to go hands off. To be clear that would almost certainly mean in the short term more attacks, more rockets, more Israeli deaths. And they would have to do this without retaliating beyond those that actually carried out said attacks, and not treating them as attacks from a nation but simple criminal cases where you arrest and prosecute the offenders. Turn it into a police action not a nation state one.
Then in about 20 years or so, time and a slow reduction from boil to a simmer, would have slowly reduced the hate and anger levels. Now the question would be, why should Israel be the one that would have to accept these risks for some uncertain reward of possible peace. And the answer is they don't. But unless they are either willing to genocide or be willing to sacrifice, then this situation is just going to repeat forever. And as the richer, more powerful state with vastly greater state capacity they are the only ones that stand a chance of doing it. The IRA were not capable of the unity that would be required for them to have played the British role in the peace process, as demonstrated where they immediately split into a multitude of fractured squabbling "Real", "True" IRA's.
Does Israel have to play that role? No. Are they morally required to? No. Are they the only ones who can? Yes.
Regardless of the moral situation, I really think the only long term solution is going to require Israel to be willing to absorb attacks, even though morally they are under no real requirement to do so. Probably it will pay off for them long term, but that is a very, very hard sell in the now. If Israel or the US can also put pressure (or outright bribe) Egypt to send in peacekeeper troops so that Muslim police can catch and punish Muslim perps then so much the better.
The IRA wasn't the catspaw of multiple Muslim countries populated by people with a millennium-old grudge against any non-Muslim living within the boundaries of the fullest historical extent of the caliphate.
I mean--genocide either way would also be a long term solution, and it is the one to which the Palestinians have repeatedly returned despite the number of times Israel has unilaterally assumed the cost of de-escalation.
The IRA comparison is misleading at best, because Muslim extremists are a totally different kettle of fish. I simply cannot take seriously any analysis of what Israel should or should not do that does not 100% foreground the deep religious commitment of these people to the specific proposition that the Jews should die:
The IRA wanted a certain political outcome, and weren't much bothered by the idea of killing to make that happen. But "independent Palestine" is not really the goal; it is at best instrumental to the goal of removing unbelievers from holy lands by any means. Persuading them to accept a different goal means fundamentally altering their religious convictions--not something Britain really had to achieve with the IRA.
My credence on the possible success of your proposed plan is less than 20%. Pre-October, I might have given you even odds, but murdering a thousand people in a single night, raping women, kidnapping hundreds of civilian hostages, that's way past IRA shit.
The IRA was funded varyingly by the USA and the Soviets. As cats go, I think they outrank the Muslim Middle East.
And absolutely, my plan is contingent that Israel is unwilling for whatever reason to go full genocide. That would indeed be a final solution. Which is one of the reasons they almost certainly will not do that. America being their supporter is another.
And I also agree that my plan is more likely to fail than succeed. This is not an easy situation to resolve. Contingent on Israel not being willing to commit genocide, what plan do you think has the best odds for success? I can't think of many. Short of kicking the can down the road again at least.
As for the Islam thing, well while my expertise is more Pakistan than Palestine, my experience is that absent the direct pressures to increase religiosity (and again we see the same thing in NI, where both sides are more religious than the norm), that will fall away, if there are fewer trigger events for Hamas to rally them around. In other words they are not angry at Israel because they are Muslim extremists they are Muslim extremists because the conflict with Israel (and the West more broadly) is used as a recruiting tool and to reinforce the in group.
Again, I'm not saying there are high odds, but my experience with Muslims is that most of them are about as much Muslim as most of the Christians I know are Christian, i.e. not very. But the conflict with Israel is used as weapon to propagandize young Muslims. If you can de-escalate that, then you can also make that weapon less potent. This whole thing is a cycle that feeds on itself.
Islam is not really the issue here, it's a symptom not a cause. I've been in contact with extremists of all stripes (the precursor to Prevent when I worked in government) and most extremists are very similar. The cause is malleable. It is almost always some event or situation that causes their transfiguration.
That said, I would completely agree that trying to crack open the rest of the Middle East so as to try and stop some of that support and direction would also be helpful. Many of the Arab nations are willing to use Hamas as a weapon against Israel but are not exactly friends with Palestinians. Iran is also an entirely different kettle of fish, but it's probably possible to try and split their attention as well.
"But realpolitik interests have largely taken over since the late 1980s. Iran gradually came to support Palestinian armed groups as an integral part of its regional security policy to contain and preoccupy Israel which, along with the United States, it has long perceived as the greatest threat to its security and domestic stability. From this viewpoint, a group’s Islamic credentials (or lack thereof) mattered less than its willingness to confront Israel. As a result, for many decades Iran, a self-styled Islamic Shia republic, has supported a plethora of secular, leftist, and Sunni Islamist groups."
There are some wedges there, Iran cut funding to Hamas after a spat over Syria before, so it isn't impossible for this to happen again. And note how while the pretext is a shared religion, it is very much realpolitik concerns that drive Iran. Same way the US supports Saudia Arabia despite the clear cultural and religious differences.
Again to be clear I am not saying this has a huge chance for success, in fact I would say your initial pre October 7th 50-50 shot would have been very charitable even then.
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No, the steelman is, they were there first, so their impolite request that those who arrived later leave or die is more reasonable than "we believe our ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, so move over, you Arabs are all the same anyway". If some Seminole terrorists start blowing up retirees in Florida, my reaction will not be 100% "what fucking savages", but "they kinda have a point" as well.
Just because they didn't have a flag doesn't mean it didn't exist.
They weren't there first. Why isn't your reaction to the (re)creation of Israel, "what fucking savages" but "they kinda have a point" as well? Because 2000 years is longer than 400? Or 50? My whole point is that it doesn't matter if the Palestinians "kinda have a point" about being told by their government, "sorry guys, time to move." What matters is what they do about that; what they have repeatedly chosen to do about it is not to pursue peaceful solutions, but to pursue the solution "murder as many Jews as we can, say we're sorry so the international community suppresses Israel's response, then prepare for the next opportunity to murder as many Jews as we can."
You have assiduously avoided addressing this angle, at all, in your responses. This is, at best, a botched "steelman" grounded in simply omitting relevant facts. What it feels like is just completely dishonest engagement.
Ah. Well, if stand up comedy is the level at which you engage with history, that would explain a lot of what you've written here.
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence was written in 1988. Prior to that, both Arab and Jewish nationalists in the 20th century helped to overthrow the Ottoman Turks in hopes of creating their own nation, but Britain and France did not follow through on those expectations. The region has been ruled from afar for just about all of recorded history, albeit mostly by Jews, then Muslims, and occasionally Christians. Although many Jews were driven from the region by Hadrian (and others), there were always some who remained. By the early 19th century, many had begun to return.
But once more (since you're apparently ignoring it every time I write it anyway): it doesn't ultimately matter who has or had a flag, or whose ancestors were from where (though don't think I don't notice the rhetorical trick of making conveniently inconsistent claims about what counts as being somewhere "first"). What matters is that there is a group of terrorists pretending to be a "nation" for the express purpose of killing as many Jews as possible, and that this is (contra to your bizarre claims) in no way "symmetrical" to a democratically elected government doing what it can to respond to the mass murder and rape of its people by Muslim Arab terrorists pretending to be a "nation."
I think you have it backwards. Their express purpose is not killing as many Jews as possible, it's the only means that is left to them that has a non-zero chance of succeeding for the purpose of creating a sovereign Palestinian state. If the next PM of Israel says, that's enough, this whole idea is stupid, I've bought the Gascoyne from Australia, we're packing up and moving there, do you think Hamas will complain that they have no way to obtain Australian visas to continue killing as many Jews as possible?
And since it doesn't matter who was there first, then both nations have an equally valid claim to the land and can fight each other to their hearts' content. Just because Hamas cannot afford a proper army doesn't mean they aren't allowed to resist.
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Exceptionally bad example, since the Seminoles post-date European colonization of Florida.
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Palestinians are uniquely unsympathetic to me because they have not only spitefully rejected every overture of peace extended to them, but also actively harmed literally every ally they have ever had.
Its one thing to hate Israel and its supporters so much that you pledge eternal uncompromising war and employ every single dirty trick ever (hiding weapons in civilian areas, exploiting lawfare, abducting civilians, saying one thing in english and another in arabic, THE LIST GOES ON FOREVER) to maximize sympathy for yourself. Fine. Fight, play dirty, still lose, reee, repeat. Your funeral.
But the Palestinians actively fucked or tried to fuck everyone that tried to help them. Black September in Jordan, Palestinians in Kuwait supporting Saddams invasion, Palestinians aiding the Sinai militias against Egypt, fomenting the Lebanese Civil War... the only place Palestinians haven't fucked up in the region is Syria, and thats because it is hard to differentiate Palestinian caused chaos amidst the maelstrom of fuckery there.
This isn't even including the list of international terrorist attacks where Palestinians have attacked non-Israeli (geographic or ethnic) targets. Islamist terrorism is already shitty enough for being an exported political ideology, but Palestinian specific terrorism is the only instance of a domestic issue extending violence far beyond its borders. Palestinian people in Palestinian organizations have engaged in cross border murder of non-Israelis. Killing RFK, bombing of various civilian jets, etc etc etc etc. The list is long and infuriating and all for naught, so its just violence for the sake of violence. FARC hasn't attacked outside Colombia, Shining Path didn't kill random Europeans, Naxalites are unknown outside of India, IRA didn't bomb Germany, even the Cartels restrict their international violence to others In The Game. Palestinian (and broadly speaking Muslim) terrorists are the only ones that regularly kill noninvolved externals, with the (not very good) justification that everyone who is attacked is actually a zionist sympathiser who deserved to be killed.
Most sympathy for Palestinians arises from an overabundance of empathy: well if I were such a dickhead it MUST be because I was so massively aggrieved, therefore the Palestinians must be uniquely special in their suffering. The presumption that Palestinians want peace works backwards from this overempathetic viewpoint: if I had peace I won't be a dickhead, so the Palsatinians just need peace to not be dicks.
This is a reversal of causality. Palestinians don't have peace, BECAUSE they are irredentist incompetent dickheads. Fatah-Hamas war kicked off 10 seconds before the elections were concluded and both sides hate each other to this day. If the Palestinians are dicks to themselves, are dicks to their allies, dicks to uninvolved externals and incompetent dicks to their enemies, perhaps it is best if the prophylactic of sympathy stops being lavished on them so they can finally stop trying to shoot their load.
It doesn't affect your overall argument, but the IRA did bomb British military bases in Germany and, occasionally, British embassies in continental Europe. The most successful attack was the Rheindahlen bombing which injured 27 Germans who were visiting a British military base, and would have killed most of them if the IRA had been more competent in placing the bomb. The only non-Brit killed was a locally recruited servant who shot accidentally when the IRA assassinated the British ambassador to the Netherlands in 1979.
TIL
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Most people claiming to be sympathetic to Palestinians don't care particularly about Palestinian lives, rather they passionately hate Jews/Israel or are virtue signalling. If it were actual empathy you'd hear at least some of them call for Hamas to release the hostages, or stop storing explosives in hospitals, or any number of other things that would mean fewer Palestinians would die. They don't though, because damaging Israel is more important in their eyes (to the sense they accept Palestinian infants dying as a core part of this strategy) or because they're more interested in loudly showing their support for The Right Side for social purposes.
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