This is a refreshed 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.
I am by no means an expert, but I think this relates to the idea of Greater Israel. There even was an attempt to do that by Ariel Sharon in 1980ies at least according to Darryl Cooper of Martyrmade fame. The plan was to ethnically clense Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank as well as from Lebanon. Make Lebanon a Christian ally state and drive all the refugee Palestinian population to Jordan, where they can have their revolution creating a new Palestinian state by overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy, which was imported by Brits in 1920ies anyway.
It is not without precedent - something similar happened to Germans after WW2. Not many people know about it, but Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers "to the left" and anexed/incorporated some lands into Russia//Ukraine at the expense of ethnically cleansed Germans from historically German cities like Breslau/Wrocław or Königsberg/Kaliningrad etc. The same happened in Czechoslovakia where millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed and relocated to Germany, Germans who lived there for literally centuries. Poland and Czech Republic became ethnically homogenous countries.
The analogy would be treating Gaza/West Bank as something akin to East Prussia or Sudetenland while Jordan - or any other Arab state for that matter - plays the role of post-war East or West Germany or Austria. So you will have two state solution in the end. And ideally nobody will bat an eye, the ethnic cleansing of Germans is nothingburger today. Nobody gives a shit, there is no whining on some supposed wound on the soul of Czech or Polish or Russian nation or anything like that. Most people don't even know this and life goes on, there is enough to do in the respective countries and the mutual relationships are cordial enough, event outright friendly.
The Germans whined about it for years but couldn’t do anything while they were literally under military occupation and their former lands were themselves part of the Soviet empire. But official policy in the CDU, which dominated postwar German politics, was that those lands should be returned as late as the 1980s. What settled it was that the occupying powers agreed to reunification only if the claims were dropped.
As an aside, the Lebanon stuff is always interesting. As early as the 1950s the Israelis offered to carve out a Christian state, but the Lebanese refused, believing they could maintain control of the whole thing, which obviously didn’t work out (and obviously there were internecine disputes between various Christian groups). It’s pretty sad actually.
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Notes -
I am by no means an expert, but I think this relates to the idea of Greater Israel. There even was an attempt to do that by Ariel Sharon in 1980ies at least according to Darryl Cooper of Martyrmade fame. The plan was to ethnically clense Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank as well as from Lebanon. Make Lebanon a Christian ally state and drive all the refugee Palestinian population to Jordan, where they can have their revolution creating a new Palestinian state by overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy, which was imported by Brits in 1920ies anyway.
It is not without precedent - something similar happened to Germans after WW2. Not many people know about it, but Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers "to the left" and anexed/incorporated some lands into Russia//Ukraine at the expense of ethnically cleansed Germans from historically German cities like Breslau/Wrocław or Königsberg/Kaliningrad etc. The same happened in Czechoslovakia where millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed and relocated to Germany, Germans who lived there for literally centuries. Poland and Czech Republic became ethnically homogenous countries.
The analogy would be treating Gaza/West Bank as something akin to East Prussia or Sudetenland while Jordan - or any other Arab state for that matter - plays the role of post-war East or West Germany or Austria. So you will have two state solution in the end. And ideally nobody will bat an eye, the ethnic cleansing of Germans is nothingburger today. Nobody gives a shit, there is no whining on some supposed wound on the soul of Czech or Polish or Russian nation or anything like that. Most people don't even know this and life goes on, there is enough to do in the respective countries and the mutual relationships are cordial enough, event outright friendly.
The Germans whined about it for years but couldn’t do anything while they were literally under military occupation and their former lands were themselves part of the Soviet empire. But official policy in the CDU, which dominated postwar German politics, was that those lands should be returned as late as the 1980s. What settled it was that the occupying powers agreed to reunification only if the claims were dropped.
As an aside, the Lebanon stuff is always interesting. As early as the 1950s the Israelis offered to carve out a Christian state, but the Lebanese refused, believing they could maintain control of the whole thing, which obviously didn’t work out (and obviously there were internecine disputes between various Christian groups). It’s pretty sad actually.
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