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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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The issue is the settlements. Israel has used decades of de facto control to swiss cheese the West Bank to the point where establishing real borders would create an enclave hell that is completely intractable. There is no way for those borders to work. And making them workable would displace a million+ Israelis in a way that is politically and probably militarily impossible. Due to a deliberate policy to make it so, there is absolutely no way to physically separate the Jewish and Arab populations of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with a real border.

  1. 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.

  2. A possible offer for a two-state solution would be to offer the Israelis in would-be Palestine citizenship. Why must they be cleansed?

Trump's proposed division kind of proves my point.

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.

I mean, if Israel were to relinquish all the settlements and put the settlers in the position of keeping their homes but being subject to Palestinian sovereignty, or giving up their homes, that would be theoretically workable. But I don't see them ever agreeing to that, since it would screw over the settlers so incredibly hard.

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.

And if you have a state of Palestine which is separate from (and likely at best on cold terms with Israel), you'd be talking about a very small minority that would likely be subject to a lot of discrimination and attempts to take their land. And assuming they retained their Israeli citizenship also you basically have a recipe for open warfare.

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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