naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
It's not simply a lack of mutually acceptable terms, it's also a lack of trust. Israel in particular doesn't trust (probably correctly) that if they made concessions, Hamas or other Palestinian organizations wouldn't just use that to expand their offensive capabilities and continue pressing for their extermination. That, in turn, shapes what terms are acceptable. The Israelis aren't likely to accept anything less than the total disarmament of the Palestinians, a) which the Palestinians will never agree to b) the Palestinians fear (probably correctly) that even if the vast majority of them acquiesce, any violence from remaining hardliners will be used as a pretext for further tightening the screws.
If UN peacekeepers weren't famously useless, putting them along the Green Line and Jordan and using them to police Palestine internally for a few decades would likely work for Green Line borders. Except even these borders would require political (and effectively physical, given Rabin's example) suicide both from Israeli and Palestinian leadership: recognizing the border as final would require abandoning both Jewish settlements and Palestinian right of return.
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Notes -
It's not simply a lack of mutually acceptable terms, it's also a lack of trust. Israel in particular doesn't trust (probably correctly) that if they made concessions, Hamas or other Palestinian organizations wouldn't just use that to expand their offensive capabilities and continue pressing for their extermination. That, in turn, shapes what terms are acceptable. The Israelis aren't likely to accept anything less than the total disarmament of the Palestinians, a) which the Palestinians will never agree to b) the Palestinians fear (probably correctly) that even if the vast majority of them acquiesce, any violence from remaining hardliners will be used as a pretext for further tightening the screws.
If UN peacekeepers weren't famously useless, putting them along the Green Line and Jordan and using them to police Palestine internally for a few decades would likely work for Green Line borders. Except even these borders would require political (and effectively physical, given Rabin's example) suicide both from Israeli and Palestinian leadership: recognizing the border as final would require abandoning both Jewish settlements and Palestinian right of return.
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