Not at all. The conflict exists because the Palestinians have genuine interests that are not being met. They lack rights and freedoms in the political and legal systems that govern them. It also exists because the Jewish citizens of Israel also have genuine interests that are not being met, such as security and safety.
This is not an “accusation,” but a recognition that when you have two peoples that are claiming the same territory you will have conflict while those claims are unresolved.
Unfortunately this is playing out to a resolution that is ugly.
Hamas did nothing to work any of it out.
If you know a better solution what is it?
The Ashkenazi make these statements in nyc but nothing else
Andy
Again what is the alternative solution?
I don’t.
I’m in good company - the Middle East conflict has confounded diplomats and foreign policy bureaus for generations, now.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a genuine, material conflict between the perceived interests of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples that is real, substantive, and would persist even absent the specific groups that currently govern (or claim to govern) the Palestinian territories. I think pretending that everything would be fine if those current dominant minorities weren’t dominant any more is just that…pretending.
My own somewhat pessimistic prediction is that the conflict will simply persist - that a two-state solution will never be adopted, and neither “side” will ever accede to a single state that the other dominates.
I start with what are the alternatives and outcomes.
Hamas is trying to find enough bigoted people in the world to beat Israel
Israel can fight several of these wars or end the nonsense with hamas turned out for the tribes and close to 1 milliin Palestinians being forced out of Gaza.
Anyone know another way?
That’s what I said. Israel will be fighting several of these wars. They may be fighting for as long as they continue to exist as a Jewish state.
The other one isn’t an alternative, as Israel is learning. They cannot force a million people out of Gaza.
Which is why I think that, sadly, we may end up with the first option - since a two-state solution seems to no longer be on the table.
I explained it to you. Why would you not acknowledge it?
It is too early to know that.
Copy and paste it again.
No, it’s not. Because there’s nowhere for them to go.
Israel won’t move them into Israel proper, obviously. Moving them into the West Bank doesn’t solve any problems.
Egypt won’t take them, not in a million years. Neither will Jordan, or Syria. In fact, no other country would accept them, because intentionally displacing a million people out of a country is a crime against humanity, and none of the liberal western democracies that could accommodate a million refugees would be willing to be complicit in that - except for perhaps the United States, which might disagree that it’s a crime against humanity but would refuse to take them because we’re not in an “accommodating refugee” place in our politics right now.
So, no. It’s not an alternative. The only viable alternatives are:
Number 1 is obviously a plausible outcome (I sadly think it’s the overwhelmingly likely one). 2, 3, and 4 are all at least facially possible - but I don’t think any of them could happen within the next several decades.
It is too early to know that.
No, it’s not. I know that you’re intensely optimistic about how countries like Jordan or Egypt feel about this conflict, but this is simply unrealistic. There’s no country that would accept a million Palestinians displaced by Israel from Gaza. There’s no country that exists whose domestic politics would allow it, and no plausible scenario under which that would change. Believing this could happen is magical thinking.
Even if Hamas is put out, it won’t resolve the conflict, because “the tribes” (whatever you mean by that) will not agree to a resolution of the conflict. There have been parties that, in the past, have been more likely to negotiate with Israel - but there’s a very good reason why those negotiations have always failed to actually accomplish a peace.
Partially it’s because the two parties have inconsistent demands, and neither party will agree to give up those demands because they regard them as fundamental. This is the part you continually try to look past - the fact that there is a genuine conflict between the two groups that cannot be resolved in a win-win outcome.
And partially it’s because there’s no “the tribes” out there to replace Hamas. They’ve destroyed all of the organization and power structures other than themselves in Gaza. The PA has failed to construct an organization that has support and credibility among the broader Palestinian people in the West Bank. There isn’t an organization of “the tribes” that can step in and run things. There aren’t any more extant tribal structures (other than for a few minority populations like the Bedouin). These areas aren’t and haven’t been run in a tribal manner in quite a while.
You need to not negotiate things in a box and only think the six walls of the box are your negotiating room.
No one takes one million. But 20k times 5 and 30k times 10…in one year.
No one’s going to take any.
It’s not a matter of numbers. Their domestic politics won’t allow them to be complicit in ethnic cleansing. They’re not going to participate in helping Israel solve this problem by allowing Israel to force the Palestinians out of Gaza and/or the West Bank.
It is not genocide or ethnic cleansing.
Labeling things that aren’t is just politics.
It doesn’t matter what you or I think. What matters is what those countries think. The ones you are blithely assuming might be willing to take in tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The intentional forced displacement of a population from a geographic territory so that the displacing force can take over the land is literally the definition of ethnic cleansing. Today, the Israeli government has asserted that it is not intentionally trying to force all of the Palestinians out of Gaza - their intention is to attack Hamas. And because Hamas has integrated itself into a civilian population the displacement of that population is an unavoidable (and therefore legal) consequence of the legitimate engagement with a belligerent force. That is their explanation of why they are not currently engaged in ethnic cleansing, but rather legitimate self-defense.
We can parse the strength of that argument. But the argument disappears if the Israelis start to plan to deliberately move a million or more Palestinians out of the Gaza strip. The claims that Israel is already engaged in ethnic cleansing stem from some comments from right-wing ministers that support that idea (and therefore detractors argue that’s a confession of what the official intention is) - but any uncertainty about that will vanish if that becomes the official implemented policy of the Israeli government.
In that scenario, no western or Arab country will cooperate with the Israeli government in conducting the removal of the Palestinian populace. You casually mention figures involving fifteen countries accepting tens of thousands of Palestinians. I don’t think you could name fifteen countries that would do that.
They need US aid.
We do not see the jockeying behind the scenes.
You are assuming they are democracies.
I don’t assume they are democracies. I do assume that they don’t want to enrage the Arab Street. Nor do they want many tens of thousands of angry and war-torn refugees added to the population of said Arab Street.
They want U.S. aid, but neither they nor the U.S. care enough about helping Israel out of this tight spot enough for that to be a condition to U.S. aid that they land on. The U.S. is bargaining for many things in the region, and moving two million Palestinians into the small handful of countries that are seeking U.S. aid isn’t going to be among them. The various non-democratic rulers aren’t going to accept the Palestinians as a price for U.S. aid, and the U.S. isn’t going to charge that price instead of things that more directly advance our interests in the region.
So, again, no. This is a fantasy, a pipe dream. Israel can’t depopulate Gaza by moving a million or two Palestinians to any other country or countries - none would take them for any amount of aid that the U.S. government would be willing to offer.
Sure but dictators take money first. The old axiom money talks…blank walks.
Never stopped them before…did something change?
The alternative is bigotry. Again nothing changed.
I do not care. May be those involved would start to care.
Sure - for the right amount of money. But assisting the Israeli government with the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip would be an unimaginable ask of those dictators, so they would demand a massive amount of money to do it. And if the U.S. is going to pony up a massive amount of money for a favor from the dictators, they’ll be asking for a different favor (something having to do with either oil or Iran) than anything to do with Gaza.
The alternative isn’t limited to bigotry. Again, that’s closing your eyes to the fact that there are very real and important interests that are critical to both groups of people that are in irreconcilable conflict. Two peoples demand control over the same land, and believe that they are entitled to it to the exclusion of the other. While some (perhaps many) individuals among those peoples are also motivated by bigotry, there is always also a very real substantive conflict between what they want.
I’m not asking you to care. I’m just pointing out that this is a scenario where there’s not a magic bullet solution that everyone’s missing, where things get resolved if you can just remove Hamas from the board (a difficult but magic bullet solution). Which is why it is very much a possible, IMHO likely, outcome that the parties just keep fighting each other indefinitely for the ongoing future.