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.
What is the advantage of nobility that you would expect here, say if we instead imagined a scenario between two advanced alien species with incompatible terraforming needs fighting over a planet? The only one I can think of is that the noble/sentient/advanced combatants are supposed to be able to arrive upon a mutually-acceptable compromise rather than continuing negative-sum war - and here the combatants in the Middle East, taken as whole polities, strike me as more beast than man in a way that is an all too common downside of entities that are pluralistic (whether it's the democratic or the anarchic sort of pluralistic), in that they do not actually have the collective executive function to actually make credible promises.
Supposing an Israeli government entered some agreement with Palestine that involved them keeping enough land and freedom that they can expect a reasonable existence going forward, what is to stop an internal competitor who tells the Israeli people that they do not have to settle for less to upend the fragile balance of power and take over with an agenda of ignoring the agreement? Conversely, we already know how effective any Palestinian promises of bringing their own terrorists under control were, and presumably any serious attempt by Abbas to crack down on or even merely deliver Hamas to the Israeli blade would just result in his own swift elimination.
West Bank vs Gaza strip
My impression is that the West Bank is also simply less squeezed: unlike Gaza, which is essentially an overpopulated open-air prison, they still have some measure of usable farmland relative to the amount of population, and Jordan might also be a more helpful neighbour than Egypt.
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Notes -
What is the advantage of nobility that you would expect here, say if we instead imagined a scenario between two advanced alien species with incompatible terraforming needs fighting over a planet? The only one I can think of is that the noble/sentient/advanced combatants are supposed to be able to arrive upon a mutually-acceptable compromise rather than continuing negative-sum war - and here the combatants in the Middle East, taken as whole polities, strike me as more beast than man in a way that is an all too common downside of entities that are pluralistic (whether it's the democratic or the anarchic sort of pluralistic), in that they do not actually have the collective executive function to actually make credible promises.
Supposing an Israeli government entered some agreement with Palestine that involved them keeping enough land and freedom that they can expect a reasonable existence going forward, what is to stop an internal competitor who tells the Israeli people that they do not have to settle for less to upend the fragile balance of power and take over with an agenda of ignoring the agreement? Conversely, we already know how effective any Palestinian promises of bringing their own terrorists under control were, and presumably any serious attempt by Abbas to crack down on or even merely deliver Hamas to the Israeli blade would just result in his own swift elimination.
My impression is that the West Bank is also simply less squeezed: unlike Gaza, which is essentially an overpopulated open-air prison, they still have some measure of usable farmland relative to the amount of population, and Jordan might also be a more helpful neighbour than Egypt.
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