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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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It's not a two state solution. That has become impossible. The best take I have is that a one-state solution is the only just outcome.

This pretty much encompasses three outcomes

  1. Ethnic cleansing of Jews

  2. Genocide of Palestinians

  3. Genocide of Jews

("Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians" is out because there's nowhere for them to go)

So which of these is just?

Given that, the only solution where the Arab residents of that land get to enjoy the benefits of being citizens of a liberal democracy, is that they are citizens of a liberal democracy jointly with the people who encircle them on all sides. And that means a one-state solution.

And then they vote to get rid of the Jews.

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.

Why do you assume those to be the only possible outcomes? Perhaps this paints me as naive, but I genuinely think people can live in a country together and have strong incentives to not do genocide.

Some people can. Others cannot. The groups in question here cannot.

You can make lots of super-majoritarian and explicit systems for protecting each group's rights.

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.

Genocide makes your country way poorer for a lot of reasons.

Yes, and the Palestinians have consistently chose "being poorer" over "not killing Israelis".

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