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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   35311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I don’t think this will happen, but it is a step toward my “preferred deal”, which is that Saudi Arabia takes control of Gaza and Area C (and possibly some of areas A + B) as an “Emirate of Palestine” under the suzerainty (and effective direct control) of the kingdom.

A resolution to the Palestinian question has 3 core roadblocks:

  1. It is politically untenable for Egypt or Jordan to resettle Palestinians (even if the governments wanted to, which they don’t) without the state being overthrown. Not only do the locals and governments not want them there (Egypt having dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood for decades, Jordan having been almost overthrown by Palestinian refugees), but the humiliation to the Arab world would be too much to bear and the states would be rendered catastrophically illegitimate in the eyes of the people. Even if the US somehow forced them to do it, it’s likely we would then have to directly and militarily defend one or both governments against populations hostile to them indefinitely.

  2. An independent Palestine has no safety mechanism against a Palestinian chim uhh decolonialist uprising other than Israeli invasion or carpet bombing, which raises the stakes and would lead to endless geopolitical tension without an off-ramp. It is therefore critical for another Islamic, preferably Arab, army, to take on the duty of pacifying the Palestinians when they start agitating too harshly or when various local terrorist groups form. Arabs and certainly the global Ummah don’t give a shit when Muslims oppress each other, so this is what has to happen.

  3. The extremist religious zionist settlers will advance until they are stopped. They are unlikely to invade the sovereign territory of Saudi Arabia, even guarded by the Saudi military. This provides a good way of slowly removing some of the more embarrassing settlements and permanently avoiding further escalation. The IDF will always find it difficult to police settlers given they’re a growing and valuable political constituency; the Saudis won’t.

How do you expect Saudi Arabia to project enough force to control Gaza? Are Israel and Jordan going to grant them a military corridor?

Certainly Israel would under this arrangement. Troublemakers would be quickly killed, and the Ummah wouldn’t care because the oppression was done by good khaleeji Muslims.

  1. Israel is an unsustainable state. Their population minus Palestinians and ultra orthodox who are a net drag on society is equivalent to that of Denmark and their land area is equivalent to New Jersey. At the same time they are more or less at war with everyone around them. They have two million Palestinian citizens that fundamentally hate them and they are at a numerical disadvantage compared to the Palestinians.

They are in a similar situation to south Vietnam, the Rhodesians or the French in Algeria. Their state is inherently going to be stuck in a mess that is slowly going to bring it down.

The idea of resettling the ghetto population of Europe in Palestine was incredibly poorly thought through. At least the British chose Australia to dump criminals in which was far more viable as a state.

South Vietnam did not fall due to an insurgency, it was conquered- after fending off a previous invasion functionally on its own so its backer concluded it didn't need help. There wasn't anything historically inevitable about this- absent politically driven leadership changes in the South Vietnamese army they might have beaten back that invasion too.

The Rhodesians were fine until they got sanctioned and embargoed. There would still be a Rhodesia if they could have imported weapons.

And Rhodesia would be a great place to visit.

They have two million Palestinian citizens that fundamentally hate them

They in fact don't hate them. Unsurprisingly, Israel is one of the best places in the middle east for Arab citizens too.

Please avoid using google amp links. It's bad for a lot of reasons.

Agreed. Unfortunately, it's really good for convenience.

I don’t know why you’re replying to me, I said here just last week that Israel was likely doomed.

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