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This most likely wasn't Hamas, this was Hezbollah, which has been steadily escalating with Israel for internal political reasons.
The numbers game is a bit different because Israel can and does credibly promise to incorporate other groups into the colonial majority, which Apartheid could not do. "Be loyal to us and get autonomy and first class citizenship in a first world country" is a great offer for your average middle easterner and Hezbollah only has support from one of Lebanon's multiple major ethnic groups.
Israel will never give citizenship to substantially more Arabs than its current ratio of around %20 Arab citizens. That would be totally suicidal, nobody in the country supports such a thing and it’s simply a fake solution made up by westerners (just like the “2-state solution”) to avoid thinking too hard about the unpleasant implications of the Israeli state.
Israel officially doesn’t consider Maronites or Druze to be Arab.
Interesting fact. Then I revise my sentence to: Israel will never give citizenship to substantially more Maronites or Druze either.
Why not? Israel has plenty of demographic cushion based on the fertility rate, going from 80% Jewish to 60% Jewish citizenry isn't existential and Maronites and Druze won't necessarily caucus with Muslim Arabs.
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Why is it an "unpleasant implication of the Israeli state" that Israel wants to keep its Arab population from not growing much beyond 20%? Is it an unpleasant implication of the Iranian state that they probably don't want a 20% Jewish population?
For any country wanting to be a powerhouse in commerce, it is perhaps necessary to become cosmopolitan and tolerant, but for countries that can see themselves doing no better than wallowing in third world poverty, there is no incentive to do that, so perhaps that is why it's embarrassing for Israel, which aspires to the former, to be somewhat ethnically supremacist but not for hopeless backwaters like Iran.
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Because it means the remaining Arabs will have to either be somehow deported, or live under a permanent apartheid/occupation regime.
No Iran doesn't want a 20% Jewish population I am sure. But then Iranians didn't settle in a land exclusively inhabited by Jews in the 20th century and then spent the last century in a struggle to take over the said land. So the comparison is really pointless and distracting.
In fact there are approximately zero comparable cases to Israel's ethnic problems in the last century which is the exact thing that makes it such a hot-button issue.
The words occupied and apartheid don't mean what you seem to think they mean. Gaza wasn't occupied or under any form of apartheid under the standard definition of those terms between 2005 and 2023. And who was planning to deport them before recent hostilities?
Israel tried to give Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. It unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt. That's not the behavior of a country consistently struggling to take over land. Again, these words don't mean what you seem to think they do.
The only thing that makes Israel's case unique is how benevolently they treat the other ethnic groups they share the region with. I can't think of a single other nation in history that, were they in the same position as Israel is now, wouldn't have crushed the Palestinians decades ago. I can only assume you're aware of how the Romans or Ottomans handled hostile activity in the Holy Land. Do you honestly think the case of Israel is the first time in history one ethnic group has achieved dominance in a particular region at the expense of another? How do you think Australia and America became full of white people?
When Israel was much more of a liberal western oriented country, its western supporters had an easy time wordcelling such arguments. It’s definitely not that country anymore and this is broadcasted very effectively to rest of the world thanks to online video sharing.
Israel created massive refugee camps of the native population of its lands and then tried to dump the problem onto the neighbouring Arab states. I can’t gather a lot of sympathy for them for failing at this and having to deal with the consequences of its actions. Also it lost Sinai in a war (incidentally: a war that displayed how extremely vulnerable the country is if its enemies can act with even a tiny bit coordination. Israel’s short sighted and frantic actions are pushing its enemies into such coordination right now)
And your last paragraph is quite telling unfortunately. I mentioned “20th century example” on purpose, as you might be aware that since mid century a western taboo emerged against conquest and ethnic cleansing. Ironically this taboo is what sustains Israel ever since as many western states and peoples feel very bad about what happened to the Jews and thus give Israel massive amounts of material support and turn a blind eye to break the same rule within limits.
If the world started operating on pre-20th century assumptions of ethnic conflict again, Israel would have a free hand to exile or kill the Arab population of course. But then it could also not expect much sympathy or support from the West when the hundred fold more populous enemy surrounding it did the same to Israel. So be careful what you wish for.
I'd say it was the invading Arab armies in 1948 encouraging Arabs to leave their homes to make fighting the Israelis easier that are more responsible for the "massive refugee camps". But even if, for the sake of argument, we put all the blame on Israel, it's significantly less brutal than what the colonialists in Australia or the USA did. Maybe you wouldn't have much sympathy for them either if Native Americans started massacring thousands of American civilians. But I'm skeptical you'd be as energised about that as you are about Israel.
AFAIK Sinai was given back in the 1979 Camp David accord, 6 years after the Yom Kippur war ended with the international community begging Israel not to march into Cairo and occupy it militarily. I guess you could look at that and reduce it to "Israel lost Sinai in the war" but that's a pretty motivated description of events. In any case, I wouldn't look at that as an example of how much danger the Arabs pose to Israel.
Is your suggestion that Arabs are holding back from trying to destroy Israel due to respect for 20th century norms of handling ethnic conflict?
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If it is not, it is not because Israel has changed.
Israel has changed an incredible amount demographically as a result of its mass immigration approach and birth rate imbalances. This is reflected in every aspect of its politics and society.
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Various Soviet attempts to settle ethnic lands with white Russians might be the closest.
I think the more ‘optimistic’ Israeli position is that the Arab birth rate continues to fall to match the rest of the region, first to replacement rate and then below it, while the Jewish birth rate remains substantially above replacement. That of course only means the issue for Israel will be domestic with the Chareidim, rather than with the Arabs, of course.
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