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So I was doing some reading on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. I was vaguely pro-Israel before with disclaimers on how both sides are bad (like most others here I presume), but I just felt more and more pro-Israel the deeper I read (I'm not trying to astroturf, this is my true feelings on the matter). The Israeli demands during the 2000 Camp David Summit seem reasonable. The Palestinian leadership seem weirdly comfortable with ridiculous conspiracy theories about Israel trying to undermine the Al-Aqsa Mosque etc. The ban on non-Muslims from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the ban on non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount, are both reprehensible. Every nook I look into, it seems like I support the Israeli side and the "both sides are bad" cases that I expected to find is largely missing.
Has anyone else had the experience of their position markedly shifting as the read up on the issue? Are the Israelis just better than PR, cunningly doing bad things to the Palestinian side under the radar, while counting on that the Palestinian reaction will be performed with much worse optics? What's the best moderate Palestinian take on an acceptable solution for a workable two-state solution?
Also, what are your predictions for the evolution of the conflict. Say that the year is 2043 and condition on no end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: what does the conflict look like then? It seems unlikely to cool anytime soon, and the long run seems like a race between Palestinian demographics and Israeli economy, where I think Israel has the upper hand, especially if they are liberal with technological mass surveillance.
The worst thing we (Israel) did was conquest of land but not people in 1967. In 1947-48, our war of independence (and Palestinian catastrophe) we transferred many Arabs out of our conquered territory - by force and fear. Those who remained had marshal law imposed on them, gradually released until finally it was cancelled in 1966, but they were citizens with voting rights at least. Their current situation is not perfect, but it's leagues and miles better than the situation of their fellow Arabs across the 1948 armistice line.
When we took the land up to the Jordan river (Judea and Samaria, aka "the west bank") and the Gaza strip, we did not annex that territory and did not grant the Arabs there citizenship. You see, there were simply too many of them. Had we granted them citizenship, we would have annihilated ourselves. We also did not kick them out (well, not enough of them anyway), what with them being innocent civilians and all. So since then and up to today, these people live in limbo - they weren't given the final word on their status. They belong to no country, they are not masters of their own destiny and land, they basically have nothing. They can't even surrender, since they've already lost.
Meanwhile, various governments in Israel started building in the conquered (but not actually annexed!) territory, making separation ever harder. At this point in time, the whole thing seems lost without drastic action. Someone has to get out. Either we, or them. They don't have the power to move us, and we don't have the heart to move them. It's a quagmire we can blame only ourselves for.
"Low intensity conflict", at least until something really bad happens. All-out war that will see most Arabs moved to Jordan is probably the best-case scenario, but I don't see it happening.
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The older I get, the more I realize I just don't have the mental or emotional energy to try and figure out who the good guys actually are in any of these things. So, my position has markedly shifted from "pro-Israel because based on everything I've seen and read about the conflict, Israel are the good guys" to "pro-Israel because Israel looks like civilization and Palestine looks like hell." I find it far easier to identify with Israel and Israelis; they look and act more like me than the other side. Simple as that. Pure tribalism.
Good lord this blunt honestly is a breath of fresh air. Comments like yours are why I love this damn place.
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My take is that Israel exists by right-of-conquest.
The point of right-of-conquest isn't that it's morally right - often it's morally wrong. The point of right-of-conquest is that at some point wars have to end because the alternative is that wars don't ever end, which is much worse. At the end of the day you have to call a ceasefire, negotiate a treaty, redraw the map, and let everyone get on with their lives. The alternative is to live in a state of neverending war.
The Palestinians have had more shots than most would-be countries get. They could have won their initial civil war, but they didn't. They could have protested nonviolently and kept the moral high ground, like India, but they didn't so they can't win with the moral high ground. They could have lost their war but negotiated a treaty that gave them the freedom to win their freedom, like the Irish, but they refused to accept any treaty so they can't do that. They could have won their independence in a war waged with the help of their foreign allies, like the Polish, but their foreign allies lost that war so that's out, too.
That's it. Like I said, that's more shots than most would-be countries ever get. Sardinia doesn't get to be independent, Quebec doesn't get to be independent, Catalonia doesn't get to be independent, the Confederate States of America don't get to be independent, Wales doesn't get to be independent, Tibet doesn't get to be independent, and now Palestine has unofficially joined the ranks of countries that tried to become independent and failed. That's life.
Independence is a privilege, not a right. At some point, for the sake of those still living, you have to let the war end so that those still living can live in peace. Everyone has land claims. Everyone has grievances against the central government. What everyone does not have is the right to continue a lost war through terrorism.
I expect that the status quo will continue for the foreseeable future, to the detriment of the Palestinians, because the Israelis have no reason to make any more concessions than they already have. The Palestinian people have a choice: Make peace or live in war. They should make peace.
The case for a right-of-conquest is seriously undermined by the fact that Israel owes its existence - its entire conquest as such - to foreign powers and continued foreign aid in its defense, and foreign intervention in destabilizing or outright destroying its adversaries. The subsequent ethnic cleansing is not a conquest, it's just the spoils of the Western conquest on behalf of the Jews.
Israel has been unable to resolve the Palestinian question, and the failure for any peace is another blow to acknowledging any sort of conquest. They are pursuing a longer-term solution of resettlement but they simply have not been able to solve the problem with any resolution that could rightfully be called a conquest.
Agreed- if the Zionists want their state in the middle of hostile territory surrounded by enemies on all sides, they can defend it themselves, and they have no right to demand the rest of the world works towards the security of their state. All it has earned the United States is the enmity of the Arab world, foreign entanglement in Middle East wars that are not in its interests, and general destabilization of the Middle East which has been a strong contributing factor to refugee crises which are saddled on the European sphere due in no small part to international NGOs and lobbying efforts.
Israel hasn't exercised right-by-conquest, it's exercised right-by-political-influence-in-the-West, and that's why there's been no resolution to these decades of problems.
No? The case isn't undermined by the fact that Israel has allies. Why would it be? It would be seriously undermined if Israel didn't have allies. Allies make you stronger, and right-of-conquest is about being strong. This isn't some kind of faux chivalry thing where it only counts if it's a fair fight between equals.
The whole point of my argument about right-of-conquest is that, when it comes down to the quality of life of the people who actually have to live there, it doesn't matter how you came into possession of your new territories. Right-of-conquest is just an acknowledgement that you do possess those territories and that you aren't going to give them back, so the sooner everyone accepts that the sooner everyone can get on with their lives.
At the end of the day, most of the borders that we accept as lawful were only drawn over the strenuous objections of the defeated. Having allies often helps you win, and many of the borders that exist today were drawn by coalitions of powerful nations. The Dutch are independent from their larger neighbours, France and Germany, in large part because the British kicked the French out in 1815 and the Germans out in 1945. The Dutch certainly didn't defeat either France or Germany in some kind of absurd no-allies-allowed fair fight. They made a strong ally over religious ties and shared interests and that strong ally backed them up when it counted.
Almost all modern wars are fought between coalitions of allies, and both the Israelis and Palestinians have drawn on coalitions of more powerful allies in their various conflicts - just as Israel's allies often draw on its support in their various conflicts. In fact, if anything, Israel is almost unique among modern nations in that it fought some of its wars without the support of allies, an extremely rare event in the modern era.
The alliances among European powers have always been motivated by mutually beneficial arrangements. Shoring up strength, border security, weakening a common enemy, avoiding a two-front war... Israel's conquests provide none of that to the United States. During the Cold War there was maybe an argument to be made, but with the benefit of hindsight there is no question that this "alliance" has done more harm than good for the average American person, notwithstanding the average American political leader who has undoubtedly benefitted from vocal support of the "alliance".
There is a strong case to be made (included summarized elsewhere in the thread) that the "alliance" with Israel was and continues to be motivated by Zionist influence in American government and culture rather than any commensurate strategic benefit. The Palestinians are not our enemies, at least they weren't until the alliance with Israel.
More importantly, Israel has failed to resolve the Palestinian question after decades of military dominance and occupation. And it has failed to do so at enormous cost to the rest of the world and in particular the European sphere. Middle Eastern wars have been disastrous for the West, and hot conflict with Iran is looking more likely than it did a couple of years ago. None of this is in Western interests, this "alliance" is a farce.
Western interests should compel a single-state solution precisely because Jewish nationalism has failed to conquer in the most meaningful sense of the word. There are too many uncertainties, instabilities, and externalities hanging over the Israeli occupation to humor the notion of "right of conquest". If they declare such a right then the West should withhold further military aid and maintain neutrality.
Well, the foreign policy administration of the US Government disagrees with you on that. Now-President Joe Biden once made a speech in which he argued that Israel is "The best $3 billion dollar investment we make," and that “If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved.”
You could argue that he was lying for some reason, and that he actually thinks Israel is a bad investment but is trying to mislead the American people. That strikes me as a bit too conspiratorial to be true. I don't think the US Government has that many layers. It would require that Joe Biden, current president of the United States, is funnelling huge amounts of government money into a project that he secretly believes is bad for America, in order to support a foreign country, for some reason. You could also argue that he thinks that what he's doing is right, but that he's wrong. That's certainly possible, but then it becomes self-defeating; if the United States supports Israel because the President thinks that's good foreign policy, but he's actually mistaken, that would be pretty normal. World leaders sometimes make mistakes. It certainly wouldn't make the alliance somehow illegitimate or unworthy of consideration.
Supporting Israel is in-character for the USA. They support lots of countries in order to spread their influence around the globe. They've supported South Vietnam, South Korea, West Germany, Taiwan, various South American military dictatorships, and let's not forget about Ukraine. They've put bases in Canada, Japan, and Germany. They like to have leverage they can use to exercise control. None of this means that South Korea ought to give up and let Korea be reunited under the Kim family, or that West Germany should have fought a one-on-one grudge match with East Germany to decide once and for all who should get to form the united German government. The whole point of American power is that they can use their advanced training and military hardware to pick winners, ideally without putting American boots on the ground.
You're saying that "Western interests" should "compel a single-state solution," but, like, why? The Palestinians have nothing to offer the West. The result of a one-state solution would be a sudden regime change as the Islamist majority inevitably elects a new Islamist government in the new state of Palestine. Do you think refugee crises and regional instability would be less likely after a genocidal Islamist government takes over a previously Jewish-majority nuclear power? If so, why?
If there's one thing you can say about Israel, it's that they definitely won't nuke Istanbul. I could not say the same about Hamas.
I am aware that the foreign policy apparatus of the US Government disagrees with me, but that's sort of begging the question. Look at, for example, the mass overrepresentation of Zionist influence in the architecture of the Iraq war. So saying something like "the foreign policy administration of the US Government disagrees with you" doesn't really engage my argument that American foreign policy interests are captured by Zionist influence, and a massively disproportionate of American foreign policy elites have strong loyalty to a foreign power! When in history would that sort of dual-loyalty be tolerated?
Joe Biden pandering to Israel by boisterously claiming that billions of dollars in handouts to Israel is the "best investment we make" would be strong evidence for my conclusion. Interesting that Biden symbolically downplays American interests and domestic investment by calling its handouts to Israel as the "best investment it makes."
I do agree, though, that American support for Israel is in-character for the USA. After all, there is probably no demographic more supportive of Israel than white Evangelicals, and that support is at its foundation built on superstitious belief in biblical prophecy and a subsequent high-regard for Jews as God's Chosen People... But the regard that white Evangelicals have towards Jews and Israel is not reciprocated, as there is no demographic that Jews hold in lower regard than white Evangelicals. The foundation for this "alliance" does not at all rest in sober-minded, strategic vision.
It's motivated by lobbying efforts of a a hugely influential portion of the American elite with dual-loyalty, combined with a religiously-brainwashed American base of support that blindly supports Israel based on biblical prophecy. It's in-character for the USA, but it's an indictment of that aspect of an American culture rather than a rational justification for the state of affairs or an explanation for why this alliance is so strategically important.
Those things have been the outcome of decades of the status quo. Zionism has had ample time to solve these problems and demonstrate its value as an allied stabilizing-force in the region, but it's utterly failed in that task. The future is not looking better. Why would we double down on just constantly deferring to Israel's insolence? I don't see an Islamist government as a likely outcome of a single-state solution. There are other compromises like Jerusalem being internationally administered.
Do I think Israel will nuke Istanbul? No. Do I think Israel would turn the Middle East to glass before it faces a genuine military threat? That's possible enough to scare me far more than Hamas nuking Istanbul. And it's scary because I know I cannot trust the American foreign policy apparatus to stop Israel from taking the entire Middle East down with it if it faces an actual threat to its "conquests."
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Underrated post. I've kind of had this notion in my mind for a while but seeing it written out really put words to something that was just a feeling before. This sentiment comes up for me most often when I hear about indigenous land acknowledgements before speeches or whatever. It makes me cringe. Why? Because the conflict is over. They were conquered. There will not be a successful independence movement in any of our lifetimes. Let's move forward.
"Land acknowledgement" is just Newspeak for "statement of conquest".
The conquered aren't the indigenous; the conquered is you (because they're claiming the right to say who owns what- the definition and sole privilege of conquerors).
They know what they're doing. And, should you thus treat them how any enemy soldier deserves to be treated when it plants its flag on your land, you'll quickly discover that what they're claiming is true.
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As @Bleep and @RandomRanger point out, you need to go further back in time and learn about the late 19th/early 20the century roots of the conflict. The tl;dr is Palestinians and a few Sephardic Jews were living in Palestine. European Jews were feeling pressure to assimilate or leave due to rising ethno-nationalism in Europe, and so a bunch of rich and/or ideologically zealous European Jews orchestrated a migration to Palestine where they dispossessed the locals of their land and rights using salami slicing tactics. Tensions flared but the British usually came down on the side of the Jews who had high level advocates in the British govt and had way better PR. Some zealous Zionists and Jewish Communists came from Europe and formed a hard core of Jews willing to push back against Palestinian attempts to take back their land. And then the violence escalated higher and higher on each side until you had Palestinians bombing markets full of Jewish families and Jews blowing up school buses of Palestinian children. And so on for the last 7 decades.
Though both sides are covered in blood at this point, to me it's clear that the Jews showed up and essentially invaded Palestine. Was it done "legally?" Probably. But I don't think I'd just shrug my shoulders if my government decided to sell large parts of my city to, say, a bunch of rich Chinese looking to settle new land. The end result would be the same, regardless of legality.
In my country, large parts of several major cities actually have been sold to rich Chinese looking to store their wealth somewhere the CCP can't get to it. This has materially harmed many of my countrymen by exacerbating the housing crisis and driving up rents. Yet, somehow, it never occurred to any of us to resort to terrorism. Given a choice between coexisting with some rich Chinese and starting a civil war, we did in fact choose to shrug our shoulders.
Nonviolence is almost always an option, and moreover it's almost always a better option.
I strongly disagree with the equivocation between immigration and invasion. There was a legitimate transfer of land-ownership from absentee landlords to immigrants looking to settle. It is a sad fact of life that many of these purchases involved the eviction of previous tenants, but that doesn't justify violence. You don't get to own land just because you live there, and I don't want to live in a world where every aggrieved tenant can start a civil war over every land sale.
My understanding was Palestine didn't have a property system analogous to western country systems. That the land owners were more like (charitably) feudal administrators over their land, and when they sold that land there was some expectation that the tenants had a remaining claim on the land. So it's not like Chinese immigrants coming in and making consensual trades for single houses, but more like (charitably) they gave the Mayor a few million dollars to overtake mayoral duties, and then they referred a la Hitchhiker's Guide to Property Rights to some Alpha Centauri law that administration of the city means full rights to all houses within and out you must go.
An expectation that tenants have some remaining claim on the land they live on after it's been sold is worth exactly as much as the paper it's not written on. On every continent, the imposition of modern property rights involved the dissolution of these supposed expectations without compensation. It happened in Britain with the Enclosures, in China and Russia during their respective Communist takeovers, and in the Americas when the colonial governments got out their maps and started drawing rectangles so they could sell them to people.
In fairness to the former tenants, this dissolution often caused mass human suffering. In fairness to everyone else, there was no vote to give these arbitrary land-based privileges to that particular handful of tenant farmers. Neither the people at large nor the governments in charge agreed to perpetuate any such rights. You can't run a modern state on vague feudal expectations.
It would be arbitrary and unusual to single out this one strip of the former Ottoman Empire to operate under the rules of the feudal system when practically every square inch of the rest of the world had either been converted to private property or was in the process of being converted to private property.
The privilege of forcing other people to live according to your arbitrary and whimsical ideas about property rights is exclusively reserved for those too well-armed to evict.
You seem to be severely underestimating the extensive use of customary land tenure throughout the world today as well as the increasingly conscientious approaches governments have taken when introducing land titling and property right acknowledgements for those lands. There is not one way to implement these changes, and yet you take some of the worst examples from history and seem to say this is just how it need go.
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I can't really do anything with that information. I do get that there's historical bad blood (duh). In a way, it would have been better if the Jews hadn't been so ideologically commit to settle the region of Palestine. (But wouldn't that alt-history most likely end with more Jews staying in Europe for the Holocaust? That doesn't seem optimal either.) But in the world we live in, there was and is a significant amount of Jews with high ideological commitment to live in Palestine. They semi-legally "invaded" the territory (as did many Arab immigrants during the relevant years). After much turmoil, the Jew came out on top. It still seems bad to me that Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, and that the Palestinian leadership rejected the 2000 Camp David proposals and went for a second Intifada instead. Knowing that people migrated in 1870 doesn't change my opinion much.
You can understand the conflict in the proper context instead of falling for a false sense of balance ("historical bad blood"). Do American Indians have "historical bad blood" with white settlers? In a disingenuous sense, yes. But it's more correct to say that the Indians are aggrieved at the conquest and loss of their lands than to imply it's some sort of "Hatfield and McCoy" situation where they've just "always been killing each other."
It would've been bad for the Jews had more of them been within Hitler's grasp, yes. But why should the Palestinians pay the price? Would you give up half of your country to the Tutsi to save them from the Hutus? Why not?
In the world we live in, the Soviets decided to take over Eastern Europe, create a bunch of puppet states, and bus in a bunch of Russians. It still seems bad to me that local languages are spoken and that Russians face discrimination. Knowing that Soviet tanks rolled through the streets in the 1940s doesn't change my opinion much.
You can't just arbitrarily draw a line and ignore all history before that point and expect to understand anything. I'm not on favor of affirmative action or reparations, for example, but I would never deny that to understand black Americans you'd need to know about slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era, effects of Great Society, crack epidemic, etc. It would be foolish to simply say "blacks and whites have always hated each other, blacks are rioting in the streets and whites aren't, ergo blacks bad." It's more complex than that and context matters.
My point is that the historical context helps with understanding, but that it doesn't really help me much on what action to take or what policy to pursue.
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There are some elements of this. Israel occasionally does shitty/illiberal stuff that isn't widely publicized. There's a specific flavor for these activities. They're all too complex to explain in a tweet, so the masses of lefty Palestinian propagandists can't describe them effectively and Israel "gets away with it".
That being said, it still pales in comparison to the absurdly violent and irrational behavior of Palestine. All it really does is prove that the whole situation does retain some elements of ambiguity and moral greyness.
I can see how this could be an effective strategy on the part of the Israelis, but The Motte seems like an ideal place to pick a few choice anecdotes in a longer form to sway readers. I, at least, would be interested in reading a few examples.
Conversely, appealing to an amorphous blob of never-enumerated misbehaviors is also a fairly common media strategy (see "X is problematic" in recent years).
Is it not rational to assume that any state actor will make missteps, especially in a highly-contentious area like the middle east? I'm not going to go on a deep fact-finding mission with rich sources but:
Slaps on the wrist for IDF soldiers committing (in my mind) significant offenses.
Disproportionate retaliation during conflicts where palestinian losses are 1-2 orders of magnitude greater and include non-combatants. I seem to recall a cycle of violence where ~ 20 israeli soldiers were killed vs 2,000 palestinian deaths (mostly combatants, some civvies).
General discrimination and tiered citizenship for arab citizens, with a lot of complex court and legal wrangling to justify additional settlements or evict arabs.
You can push away 1 by saying "well every armed conflict has some psychos in it". Item 2: the indiscriminate (being extremely charitable) targeting of israeli civilians by palestine justifies a great K/D, plus Israel can't help having an effective military. Number 3 can be excused by pointing out that a lot of these racist policies are extremely effective at preventing terrorism.
These are pragmatic approaches for a state surrounded by various actors who want them wiped off the planet, sure. What you can't say is that any of these things could be classified as a liberal policy.
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This has largely been my sentiment on the topic for as long as I can remember - "boy, it's a real shame that there's absolutely nowhere for Arab Muslims to go". The continued refusal on the part of Arab Muslim nations to provide sanctuary to Palestinians highlights their desire to keep the conflict going for political reasons. It probably is wildly unfair that the Israelis were given that strip of land, but oh well, such is life, there's a pretty obvious resolution path that doesn't rolling that back.
While I think it's probably the case that the only true long-term resolution is a three state arrangement with Egypt annexing the Gaza Strip and Jordan the West Bank, I also accept that neither of those would be popular right now because neither of those countries is on good terms with the Palestinians. Arafat was involved with a 1970 attempt to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, and Hamas in Gaza occasionally shoots at the Egyptians (who also maintain the blockade) too.
While the Israelis are not completely innocent in the conflict, it does seem like convincing a fractured Palestinian leadership to adopt peaceful resistance strategies is the only alternative to the current status quo.
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The fundamental problem is that Palestinian social and political organization makes them an impossible group to deal with. They raise their issues by killing civilians, so the only thing they have to trade is an offer to stop killing civilians. And that is something their sociopolitical structure cannot deliver. They don't have a unitary government, and both their governments are former/current terrorist organizations, and both contain active terrorist arms. If they crack down too much, a new organization just forms and starts killing jews. Essentially, whoever is killing people is the government of Palestine.
Israel has its atrocities and shady dealings and all sorts of corruption, but it's the same sort of thing every country has. A government is force, theft and violence. Any other country in Israel's place would have ethnically cleansed or essentially imprisoned all the Palestinians decades ago, and we know this because all the other countries that had a population of them did that. Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt.
The Israelis suppress the Palestinians by killing civilians, regularly, including their government leaders, and in far greater numbers.
In fact, blatant terrorism is how Israel was formed to begin with.
If Israel kills enough Palestinians, including gutting their "leadership" by killing them, a new organization forms and "starts" killing Jews.
Well yeah, that's typically how people being killed respond.
When Israel does this, it's justifiable or at least understandable. When hardline leaders and governments are elected in response to Palestinian attacks, and starts killing Palestinians, it's justifiable or at least understandable. When Palestinians do anything remotely similar, it's terrorism. When Israel kills government leaders leading to people taking over who will respond to those killings, it's even more evidence of terrorism or whatever.
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That's a dumb map. It acts as though Area C = Israel, Area A/B = "Palestine". It's one of the few things I'd actually label "misinformation". Here's a map that get the point across, but is true (green = settlement bloc). Here's a map of trump's proposed division.
A possible offer for a two-state solution would be to offer the Israelis in would-be Palestine citizenship. Why must they be cleansed?
Yes! I agree with your overall point. I included both trump's map it as well as a map of the settlements since they make the same point without pretending that all of area C is annexed to Israel.
It's a better, and more likely acceptable offer than a one-state solution. It also shows some good will, in that maybe Palestinians aren't so terrible that they literally can't stand having a single Jew in their territory. This would be a change from their position in '48, when they (but primarily the Jordanian army) did cleanse every last Jew in the territory.
They would be analogous to Israeli Arabs - a large ethnic minority with strong cultural ties to a different state.
What I don't understand is how you can both think that Palestine cannot tolerate a small minority of Jews without discriminating them or taking their land, but at the same time think Israel should accept a one-state solution where all Israeli Jews become such a minority.
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This pretty much encompasses three outcomes
Ethnic cleansing of Jews
Genocide of Palestinians
Genocide of Jews
("Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians" is out because there's nowhere for them to go)
So which of these is just?
And then they vote to get rid of the Jews.
You could end up with a power sharing agreement like Northern Ireland. So that you essentially have an interlock on big changes where both sides have to agree. Now that often means big changes just don't happen and that the executive itself might not be able to agree who is in charge. But that means no one can then issue (legal) orders to your military to begin ethnic cleansing. If you know you have a deep divide between communities you can build your governmental model around that. Your prime minister and deputy always having to be from opposing sides, your cabinets having to be equally divided etc., the executive only being able to sit if both sides agree and so on.
The main issue is that like with NI that agreement would have to have the support of external sponsoring entities. For NI that is the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom (and the weight of the United States pushing on both), so that those internal have some level of trust that they will be supported should their opponents betray the deal.
For Israel/Palestine that would presumably have to be the United States and maybe Egypt or a Pan-Arab alliance of some kind. But given they would be the proxy supporters of Palestine/Israel you then need a third party to fill the US role in the Good Friday Agreement of facilitating the negotiations and putting pressure on both sides to deal. The US was a good fit there because it has historical political ties to both the Republic of Ireland and the UK. I am not sure who could fit the role for the US and an Arab political alliance. It would need to be a nation trusted by the Arab nations and the US both, and who cares enough about peace to work on it.
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Some people can. Others cannot. The groups in question here cannot.
Only works if both groups are committed to those systems. If they are not, they will simply be ignored. Procedural controls are only as good as those implementing the procedures.
Yes, and the Palestinians have consistently chose "being poorer" over "not killing Israelis".
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This seems totally unworkable to me. Why aren't you addressing the glaring counterargument: This would make Jews a minority with a high likelihood of mistreatment ("it can work pretty well" is hardly reassuring)?
You admit Israel holds all the cards here, so, uh, why should they do this as opposed to their current strategy of ‘ethnically cleansing the Palestinians just slowly enough that their western backers can pretend not to notice’? There’s nothing in it for them.
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That currently the Arabs are the (bare) majority (still, I think?) of the whole territory with an evident reality of mistreatment?
So you're making some kind of platonic case: It would be better for the Arab majority to mistreat the Jewish minority that the current situation where the Jews mistreat the Arabs? Even if that's true in some platonic sense, it's still unworkable, the Jewish side will never agree to become the mistreated minority because of pure platonic reasoning.
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So, does Israel have a case? Is Israeli behavior justifiable?
It depends on your premises.
1/If you believe in individual human rights, if you believe that murder is wrong, torture is wrong, imprisonment without trial is wrong, taking someone land and property without compensation is wrong, destroying people's houses and other collective punishments are wrong, then Israel is wrong.
2/If you believe in collective national rights, if you believe that land belongs to nation that lives there and foreigners showing up uninvited in someone else's country are wrong, then Israel is wrong.
3/If you believe in authority of United Nations, then Israel was right 76 years ago and is wrong ever since then.
4/If you believe that Bible is literally true, that Biblical laws are eternally binding, if you believe that Land of Israel was given by God to Hebrews for forever and ever, then Israel is wrong (for leaving any Palestinian or their livestock live).
5/If you believe that only right is might and only law is law of tooth and claw, then Israeli behavior is fine (and Palestinian terrorism is too).
This highlights a general disagreement I see. Pro-Palestine arguments are often based on high principles of human rights, international law, democracy, etc. Pro-Israel arguments are often based on pragmatism, political reality and a flavor to might-makes-right. The second kind of argument just clicks better with me, I guess this might be some moral foundation kind of thing. I can see the morally pure argument for fighting the Dane until he gives up all he has unlawfully taken. But the Dane seem to be well settled and well defended, and if your side would have won the wars of yesteryear, then you would be the ruler of Denmark today and you would be equally unwilling to give back to the Danes all that you'd taken from them, so at some point it's just time to accept reality and move on. (It's easy to claim the moral high ground and lofty principles when you are in a position without power.)
Or maybe I'm just unconsciously seeking out the arguments I like from the side I unconsciously want to like and the arguments I dislike from the side I don't want to like.
You're missing one possibility: you like the argument that might is right, because the natural reaction of the powerless is to suck up to the mighty.
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The "high principled" pro-Palestine arguments do better to outline flaws in those principles than they do to support the Palestinian case. The "democracy" argument comes down to two wolves complaining that the sheep isn't on the menu (granted it's a very tough and stringy sheep with big horns). The "human rights" argument has to turn a blind eye to the point that a lot of the claimed "human rights violations" exist because when relaxed, the Palestinians use the opportunities granted to kill more Israelis.
Utterly meaningless aside that has shown up in several of your posts. If I punch you in the face and declare that I'm going to take your home from you by force of arms and then evict you with the help of a bunch of my well armed friends, do I then get to talk about how morally correct I was to do so because you keep trying to punch me in the face and take back your house? Your argument here only works because you remove those incidents from their historical context, and one can use the exact same technique to make all kinds of incorrect arguments (like my one above).
This amounts to an argument that it's right for the Palestinians to ethnically cleanse the Israelis. Which is an argument you can make, but it fails to sound as highly principled as the usual "human rights" arguments.
"Divorcing individual events from their historical context allows you to make nonsensical claims about morality" is incredibly far removed from "It's ok to genocide the jews" and I'm honestly surprised that you read that out of my post. You're putting an incredibly inflammatory comment in my mouth, and I can't see any reason for it.
Your analogy "If I punch you in the face and declare that I'm going to take your home from you by force of arms and then evict you with the help of a bunch of my well armed friends, do I then get to talk about how morally correct I was to do so because you keep trying to punch me in the face and take back your house?" directly implies that yes, it is OK for the Palestinians to "take back" Israel. I did not say "genocide", I said "ethnically cleanse". If this were to happen and somehow you were to keep the Jews from fighting back, most of them would probably leave rather than be genocided.
No, it does not. It implies that choosing an arbitrary cut-off point for your moral condemnation is bad and can be used to justify any kind of dishonest conclusion, in the same way that it is an abuse of statistics to start comparing islamic and right-wing terrorism from the date of September 12, 2001. What I am saying is that your argument is useless when it comes to gaining additional clarity on the situation, and if you want to accurately apportion blame and determine who is in the right you need to look at these events in a larger historical context. Maybe the people with the best claim to that land are the French descendants of the Knights Templar - probably not, but my point is that your argument prevents this from happening and obscures the truth of the matter while making one side look better than the other.
This is an absurd level of hairsplitting and even just looking at wikipedia (lol) the picture provided for the ethnic cleansing article is of an event described as a genocide. Is this really the quality of argument that you want to make?
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I settle on the same basic positions without having any particular affinity for Israel or the claim that it should be a Jewish homeland. I generally oppose modern invasions, but regard references to who should own something based on a generations old war to be worth not much more than an eyeroll. OK, sure, it's not fair that the United States drove Indians off of land that they occupied - now what? I don't care, it's American property and I have zero interest in land acknowledgement.
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Well, we are hardly breaking ground with this thought, but the UN's position is schizophrenic. You can't both hold the position that a nation has a right to exist, but also insist its borders must be maximally indefensible and that it cannot expand them (as all nations have done) following a successful defensive war.
the maximally indefensible borders which they "defended"?
Because their opposition was a bunch of clowns.
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Yes, those ones. Had they just hung tight and said, "well, surely that massed formation poses no threat to us, they are on their side of the border and can form up as they like", Israel would have been in quite the pickle. For those not familiar with the relevant context:
Perhaps the pre-1967 borders would have been tenable with an internationally recognized demilitarized zone and UN guarantee of clear shipping lanes, but that isn't what was transpiring. Establishing a new, defensible border was a reasonable and normal reaction to the Arab offensive.
you cannot claim something is maximally indefensible when you successfully defend them
I think I addressed this objection, but to try to rephrase - the indefensibility of the borders put them in a position where the only feasible approach was a preemptive strike across those borders as a response to buildup and economic pressure. They could not have taken a strictly defensive posture from the prior position, which leads to an unstable equilibrium.
It is correct that it's not "maximally" indefensible though, granted, I'm sure we could draw borders that were even less defensible.
you cannot claim borders are "maximally indefensible" to the point where it contradicts any ability whatsoever to exist at all while doing just that
that was the approach they took, that doesn't mean it was "the only feasible approach" and otherwise would have resulted in defeat, i.e., the inability to defend the "maximally indefensible" borders
edit: Israeli wants are simply relabeled as necessities
if you look at Palestine, their borders are more "indefensible" and yet that doesn't mean they get to claim by necessity to make their borders "defensible" otherwise you are denying their "right to exist"
Cool, that's why I didn't claim that and stated that the poster who did was incorrect. I'm glad we could come to an accord on the matter.
Yeah, it does. Palestine is being denied a right to exist. It doesn't exist as a stable entity in any meaningful sense and a significant part of this is that it lacks a coherent, defensible border or the means to create and enforce such a border.
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Unlike some others here, this is also what happens whenever I learn more about the conflict. Its like seeing a very mean small dog attacking a large dog that occasionally bites back, and obviously it hurts more, but the little dog doesn't learn. Then every once in a while the little dog gets a gang of dogs together and the big dog actually gets serious and they all get chomped. And the stupid little dog's play is always "I'm little the people should let me bite your tail all day, even though they know I'd kill you if I had the chance."
Sure, but now assume the big dog illegally occupies the little dogs territory, what's the little dog supposed to do? Slink off without without fighting back?
Would you give the same advice to Ukrainians currently fighting against Russian invasion? Russia being the big dog, it would be improper for the little dog Ukraine to bite back; they should just give up their country to the bigger invader.
The entire justification of Palestinian violence is that Israel is illegally occupying their land, which is true by pretty much any standard except “land belongs to whoever is strongest enough to hold on to it” but if that's your philosophy, you'd better support the Russian annexation of Crimea too.
Make a realistic compromise proposal, like the Camp David Accords. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" just isn't happening, it isn't in the cards. The US and Israel would be happy to create a compromise where Palestine accepts becoming its own proper state, smaller border because they've lost territory due to Israeli settlement, and Palestine stops launching missiles at Israel; and in exchange, they get billions of dollars poured into them to build infrastructure.
The current situation where Palestinians live in poverty and missiles occasionally get launched at Israel and Israel occasionally launches missiles back is not good for anyone. But no Palestinian government has ever offered any deal that's even come close to being something the Israeli government could agree to.
So put your cards on the table. Ukraine should concede Crimea to Russia, yes? It's unreasonable of Ukraine to insist on restoration of their original borders when Russia has historical ties to Crimea as well has having effective control over it for more than 6 years at this point. So by your own logic, it's Ukraine's fault that they're at war with Russia, because they don't want to negotiate peace by sacrificing their territory to the invader, which is an unreasonably inflexible position for a country that is being invaded. Did I understand your position correctly?
But for sake of argument, let's assume Palestina is willing to compromise. Do you think Israel would accept the original 1947 borders assigned by the UN? Or the 1949 green line which assigned the Golan heights, the Gaza strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Palestina? I think there is no chance they would. This makes it obvious that Israel is just as guilty, if not more so, of obstructing a peaceful solution.
I think Ukraine has a much better chance at regaining their full sovereignty through military force than Palestine does though, so Russia would have to give a lot in their compromise. In my view there's a very low chance that Palestine's current strategy will even reverse the Israeli settlements, let alone lead to something like a single state that's majority Palestinian, or a two state solution with the 1948 borders. But I think there's a good chance Ukraine's current strategy will push things back to the 2021 scenario, and possibly even back to 2013 borders.
6 years is a lot less than 60 years. If Russia held onto Crimea for another 50 years, I would say Ukraine at that point should give up on ever reclaiming Crimea. I'd also say Taiwan and China should both give up on ever unifying, and North and South Korea should also both give up on ever unifying.
The current war started from Russia pushing far further than Crimea, not by Ukraine refusing to acknowledge Russia's sovereignty over Crimea.
I do not think Israel would. But I think asking for those, at this point, is asking for too much. Palestine went to war with Israel to try to expand their borders, and Palestine lost; there are consequences for losing wars like that.
I think these sorts of problems are tricky because there are a few different lenses to view this through. One lens is, what is the best possible world, even if it's totally unrealistic? Like say I was Prime Minister of Israel and magically had 99% popularity and for some reason 99% of the Palestinians also loved me and would go along with whatever I said in the short term, what solution would I propose that would lead to the best utilitarian outcome? I think I'd want all Israelis to leave the settlements, Israel signs a binding treaty guaranteed by a bunch of countries that they won't do any more settlements, Palestine gets that land back and is officially recognized by everyone as an independent country, Palestine's military is still limited for the next ~15 years, and Israel and the US pumps a ton of money in aid and infrastructure into building up Palestine.
But that just wouldn't ever happen. So another lens is, what is the best world that's remotely possible to actually happen and we should be striving towards making? I think it would be something like the Camp David Accords, where Israel gets to keep a lot of the settlements still. Because realistically, Israel is in a much stronger negotiating position than Palestine.
But if absolutely nothing else, I think Palestinians need to actually come out with a proposal for peace. Would Palestine even actually accept the 1947 borders themselves? There can't be any sort of compromise until Palestinian leadership comes forward with concrete demands. That they don't is fairly damning in my eyes.
Sure, but that's mostly because the U.S. and the West heavily support Ukraine, while sanctioning Russia. If the U.S. and the West heavily supported Palestine and sanctioned Israel, Palestine would stand a much better chance of repelling the Israeli invaders too.
You realize this is kind of circular reasoning right? “We support whichever side has a chance to win” combined with “whichever side we support probably wins” means you can choose which side to support almost arbitrarily.
Sure, but the attitude has been unchanged for the past 30 years or more. How many of the people condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine are on record stating that “I don't think Russia should have annexed Crimea but if they hold onto it for another 24 years they are allowed to keep it”? That certainly doesn't seem to be Zelenskyy's position, but I also don't hear Zelenskyy criticizing Israel for using effectively the same strategy in Palestine. It's self-interested hypocrisy.
And Israel is literally raiding Nablus as we speak, a city deep within internationally recognized Palestinian territory. How is that any different?
Not to rehash the entire history of Israel, but there were no Israeli borders when Zionists declared a Jewish state in the middle of a predominantly Arab area. The surrounding Arab countries (Palestine did not exist as a nation when Israel was founded) didn't take kindly to that and invaded. Yes, they lost, but again: this is basically the same argument of “might makes right”. And to repeat my position: if that's your view, then you cannot moralize about Russia occupying Crimea or Donbas.
If the Mormons declared Utah a Mormon state and drove out all the non-Mormons, would you think it strange if the U.S. sent in troops to take back the land? And if the Mormons somehow managed to defeat the U.S. military (let's say, with help from Mexico and Canada) and captured Colorado, Arizona and Idaho in a counter-offensive, are they now justified in keeping that land because there must be consequences for losing a war?
I'm just asking for some consistency here; I feel like most of the arguments people use in favor of Israel illegally occupying Palestine wouldn't fly if it was any other country invading and occupying any other country, and especially not for Russia illegally occupying Ukraine. I still haven't heard an argument how the situation is fundamentally different.
I don't think the logic is circular. We support Israel for other reasons. Similarly for Ukraine. I am not saying the US should provide military arms to Israel because Israel is stronger than Palestine; I think the US should provide military arms to Israel because they are important ally against Iran. And I think the US should provide military arms to Ukraine because they're an important ally against Russia.
Those countries being in those strong positions changes how other nations should act. When Palestine launches missiles at Israel, I think it falls under Talleyrand's quote of "it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake". Palestine gains nothing besides a feeling of self-righteousness by continuing the conflict. Ukraine does gain a higher likelihood of retaking its territory by continuing the conflict.
I think time changes things. If I was alive in 1945 and in the British government, I might speak out against carving out territory to form Israel. But 80 years has passed, things have changed. Like say we magically discovered a new continent in the Pacific Ocean with primitive peoples in it; I would speak out against modern nations conquering it by force and moving their inhabitants to reservations. And if it was conquered, I would want the conquerors to reverse their decision and give the land back. But it happening recently is important; I do not think the modern US should give back land it conquered 150 years ago to natives, or that modern Russia should give Siberia back to the natives there.
What are your opinions about what should be US policy regarding Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia?
It would be nice to hear those reasons rather than the usual “of course invading another country is bad!” which is clearly not an issue when it concerns Israel, so it cannot be the true reason for opposing Russia. (That's assuming a lot of the Ukraine supporters are also Israel supporters.)
I don't disagree; at some point it's better to bury the hatchet.
But Israel is unique in that it's probably the only country in the world that has been flagrantly violating international law virtually non-stop since its inception. It's one thing to forgive someone who mistreated you 60 years ago, but quite something else to forgive someone that has been mistreating you continuously for the past 60 years and shows no willingness to do better in the future.
The U.S. should support Ukraine to defend against the Russian invasion, and stop supporting Israel until they withdraw within their internationally recognized borders. Opposing one invader and supporting another is a morally bankrupt strategy (I know, it's unreasonable to expect moral principle from any government, but you asked for my opinion, so I gave it to you).
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If I rephrase that with Russia and Ukraine, would you agree?
I think it'd be the first step at least. I think Ukraine has a much better chance at regaining their full sovereignty through military force than Palestine does though, so Russia would have to give a lot in their compromise. In my view there's a very low chance that Palestine's current strategy will even reverse the Israeli settlements, let alone lead to something like a single state that's majority Palestinian, or a two state solution with the 1948 borders. But I think there's a good chance Ukraine's current strategy will push things back to the 2021 scenario, and possibly even back to 2013 borders.
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That's what they say, but I don't believe them. They are more akin to Russia in their situation IMO. Intentionally cartoonishly evil.
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the little dog should learn and just die off and save the big dog the trouble
This comment feels like it's in bad faith, to me. I think the little dog should make a positive argument in favor of its position instead of being sarcastic and disingenuous.
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Traditionally, that would be an option. The little dog continues to exist solely because of historically anomalous forbearance.
Of course, the big dog only continues to exist because of an enormous flow of tribute and materiel from western powers - and while that's also "historically anomalous" you can look up the kingdoms of Outremer to see what happens when those flows get cut off.
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They could just stop biting the big dog. Except that it seems they can't... but the big dog is not to blame for that.
right, they could just be pushed off by the big dog and die off and save the big dog the trouble
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What about the whole 'let's take and annex Palestinian land' element? If you look at a map from the 1930s onwards, over time the Palestinians lose more and more land. They have a very reasonable claim to all of that land that's no longer theirs, Al-Aqsa mosque, East Jerusalem and everything else. Not only was that land recently lost, there are still large numbers of Palestinians nearby who've been displaced from said land.
Yes. The Israel lobby is tremendously influential and effective. I've posted about this before, it's mostly excerpts from Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby plus some other aspects of their influence.
https://www.themotte.org/post/240/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/46113?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/205/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/37000?context=8#context
Chapter 7 of said book is specifically about the Israel lobby interfering with efforts to create a peace process.
For instance after 9/11 Bush tried to pressure the Israelis to find an agreement with the Palestinians so there would be less Islamic terrorism and anger about their treatment (one of the many strategic problems Israel creates for the West). The Israelis used their influence to bully Powell and induce the President into backflipping back into knee-jerk support for whatever they were doing, plus another peace-plan that was cunningly devised to freeze the issue in such a way that they could advance 'facts on the ground' like building a security fence that enclosed yet more Palestinian territory. Some excerpts:
I found Mearsheimer's book very convincing. It lays out nigh-endless Israeli perfidy and exploitation of the US. They make a lot of Arabs angry with the US (including Osama Bin Laden), make it hard to work together with other Arab countries, they undermine nuclear non-proliferation and incite a nuclear Iran, they receive extremely disproportionate amounts of aid, including military aid, send US technology to China, spy on the US, bear major responsibility for the Iraq War and so on. They get away with all of it due to their immense political and media influence.
Israel became independent in 1948.
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The settlement issue is a counterexample, this actually reflects badly on Israel when I dig down. I guess the settlements is a way to apply pressure to show that the Arab negotiation position is only going to get worse (beyond the obvious religious dimension that seems to be the main driver). But the ethical thing is to not press the winning hand, and relations would likely have been better today if the settlements on the West Bank had been limited.
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The deeper you read what?
I went from cheering "The Case for Israel" by Alan Dershowitz to not caring to take a side after reading 4-5 other books, e.g., Coming to Palestine by Sheldon Richman. The more I learned about the conflict, the less pro-Israel I became. Everything I had read about the conflict thus far turned out to be essentially a surface level PR gag to put Israelis in the best light possibly by essentially leaving out the context and specifics of conflict as well as caricaturing Palestinians and their leaders. The 2000 Camp David Summit being a great example:
Demands sounds about right. The Israel's offer was Palestine gives up its internationally recognized title to broad swathes of land and agrees to severely restrict the number of people who could claim a right of return (which in hindsight given Israeli "courts" adjudication of such matters is properly characterized as "no"). Israel's offer wasn't even the bare minimum of internationally recognized laws and rights. In this context, their offer was Palestine gives up most of what its owed under international law and Israel gives up a bit of what wants with the promise that it totally, for sure, and definitely won't just do it anyway once things cool down a bit. As Norman Finkelstein put it, "Subordinating Palestinian Rights to Israeli 'Needs.'"
The Palestinians wanted compensation when it compromised on its rights. Israel wanted compromising on the full extent of its wants to be "compromise."
And that cycle has been pretty much repeating itself for 70+ years. Israel kicks Palestinians into a corner by stealing, Palestinians bite back, Israel steals more land "for security." Palestine compromises, Israel does something for a while in response, like making a huge PR debacle around removing a single tiny illegal settlement, while expanding settlements elsewhere. Israel opens new settlements, their settlers attack Palestinians and take their houses, Palestinians fight back, Israel suppresses them and steals more land "for security."
To be frank, I don't care to take a side and would prefer to stay out of it entirely, but the sheer amount of lying and gaslighting about the conflict by Israelis, the US gov, and politicians aimed at the US population is absurd.
there is no two-state solution; a two state solution is Israel dominates and occupies the other "state" which has no sovereignty
the best solution is let Israel formalize their occupation and give Palestinians citizenship
Israel repeats the cycle I described above slowly strangling and dispossessing Palestinians until they get another excuse to jump forward to full takeover and expulsion "for security" from the sea to the Jordan river.
Generally what turns people anti-palestine tends to be Palestinian misbehavior rather than Israeli behavior.
and typically knowing little at all about Israeli behavior
Can we just give the whole thing to Jordan?
No, actually. The Jordanian king doesn't want any more Palestinians.
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The international law here is in fact trickier than appears at first blush. There are legal arguments on both sides. Add in that international law itself is somewhat underdetermined I think it’s probably wise to adjudicate the conflict aside from int law.
law gets messy and there are legal arguments on both sides of most issues, even ones which have broad consensus like many of the issues which were being discussed at the Camp David Summit, including ones with holdings from the international court of justice
you can simply assert they don't matter, and that's fine, but that's a different argument
No. I’m saying that international law is different compared to most law. There is no final arbiter. Hell, the ICJ isn’t even respect by major countries including the US. Moreover, international law is so custom based and a lot of these customs are still relatively young and not litigated.
This is to say that when dealing with a very underdeveloped customary law legal arguments appear weak to me.
you can say these things are little more than letters to santa without enforcement (motte), which is true for any "law," but the law's application to many of these topics isn't tricky or complicated (bailey), especially those ones which went before the ICJ, and many of the customs in the law were incorporated from international agreements and principles far older
That would be the same ICJ that has no jurisdiction over Americans, as the US is not a party to the Rome Statute.
so what?
the rome statute has to do with the criminal court
Yeah, I accidentally crossed up the ICJ and the ICC, though as it happens, the US has some issues with both. One of the difficulties with the ICJ is that it can't really bind permanent members of the UNSC, since they can just veto enforcement of its rulings.
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Why do you consider this reprehensible? Banning outsiders from sacred places used to be the norm. Mormons still do this for tabernacles after consecration, iirc
Because the Temple Mount is sacred to other religions including Jews.
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My journey was the opposite of yours - I became less and less favourable of Israel as I learned more about the history of the region, and the connections between it and my own society. I can even point at annoying trends and negative aspects of my own nation where greater costs are imposed so that the owner of socially important infrastructure can continue to provide financial support to Israel. My own life is made worse and resources are extracted from my society in order to subsidise that nation, and quite frankly I don't think that support is a good deal.
That said, I'm not particularly motivated to care about the situation beyond minimising my own contributions to the Israeli project. My favourite piece of writing on the topic is the following piece from John Michael Greer, and the parallels he has sketched out are both rather interesting and what I'd come up with if I made a prediction as well. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-21/in-the-twilight-of-empires/
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Things going on as usual with nothing big happening - Western "left", Arab and Muslim "brothers" and world "public opinion" slowly lose interest, Palestinians are slowly strangled and squeezed out village by village and house by house ... until something big happens and Israel uses it as excuse for dealing with Palestinians in swift and properly biblical way.
"The world" issues some strongly worded protest letters and in few years forgets about the whole thing.
Game over.
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