Is Israel war coming to an end?

We are already giving that amount. I am talking bout pulling money.

You are not opening your eyes. Violence will esculate unless it is met.

You are assuming people want to get past their problems. That is never true in life.

It’s not enough for them to take on the negative impacts of assisting Israel in the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Plus, they know we’re not pulling their aid as a threat to induce this favor, because there are other favors that are more important to us (again, seeking their cooperation in security agreements on Iran or for oil flows). You can only fire that gun once - and we’re not firing it for a Palestinian exodus.

My eyes are open. I don’t deny that there will continue to be violence, or even that it will escalate. It has been escalating, after all. I merely doubt that there is any alternative to the violence.

Quite the contrary. I don’t assume that people want to get past their problems. The history of the region is full of past wrongs, real and perceived and underestimated and exaggerated. Many of the stakeholders are very much not willing to get past those things. Hence, the current conflict and bloodshed.

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We seem to have pulled it repeatedly for decades. If we stop the dictator falls.

Might as well ship some folks out. Makes it less violent.

For the readers…Israel is the least violent of the bunch. Whether we are talking the Middle East or Europe. The Palestinians are not that violent either.

Only for modest things. We’ve provided U.S. aid for decades, but it’s not like Egypt or Saudi Arabia does everything we want them to do.

Except for the fact that doing so constitutes the crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing. You don’t get to “ship out” the civilian population of an area just because you want to make it more docile. Displacing civilian populations can be consistent with the laws of war when it is the foreseeable but unavoidable consequence of actions against a belligerent force, but you can’t permanently and intentionally relocate a civilian population out of an area just to make it easier for you to administer for your own people.

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Close to 2 million yes. Less than one million no.

Yeah, it is. You can’t do forced relocations of a sizable proportion of a population just to make it easier for you. Any widespread or systematic intentional depopulation or deportation of an identifiable group within an area is a crime against humanity. Intentionally moving out several hundreds of thousands of people from a small area would certainly qualify - again, that’s why the charge is being levied against Israel today. Israel’s defenses against that charge (namely that these are not intentional efforts to remove the civilian population but are instead the consequences of a legitimate military action against a hostile belligerent force) completely disappear if they just intentionally try to move a half a million people out of the country.

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The US does this all the time.

No, we don’t. This definition does not cover the deportation of people who are present in a country in violation of immigration rules.

You can’t go into an area where all the people are lawful inhabitants and start systematically expelling them out to other countries as a way of controlling the population. That’s a crime against humanity. We’re not going to get other countries, either in the region or in the west, to go along with it. It’s just not an option for Israel.

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Okay conceding.

But

We can stop Hamas. The tribal leaders see Israel differently. Tribal leaders do work historically worked with Israel. Jordan a democracy, works with Israel. It is possible for the tribal leaders or a democracy they set up to work with Israel.

I think Gaza should be expanded into the southern desert, but only with very long-term peace.

There are no more “tribal leaders” among the Palestinian population any more. The tribal form of societal structure has long passed away, apart from some minority populations that still structure themselves that way like the Bedouins. There isn’t a dormant group of tribal elders that have any basis for asserting leadership in a post-Hamas environment (or in the West Bank as an alternative to the PA or other groups).

Jordan works with Israel because its people do not have a deeply fundamental and unresolved conflict with Israel over critically important issues. The Palestinians do. So it’s simply not the case that eliminating Hamas will resolve the conflict, sadly. It’s not a dispute that’s been manufactured by a party or organization as an artificial mechanism for staying in power. It’s a very real dispute, so any party or organization that comes into power in the region will be shaped by and further the dispute.

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The problem is Hamas won’t resolve the conflict.

You are assuming too much about Palestinian society.

Google AI
Yes, Palestinians, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, still have a tribal and clan-based social structure, although its influence varies and has evolved over time.

Here’s a breakdown:

1. Clans (Hamula):

  • Significance: Clans, or “hamula” (plural “hama’il”), are a crucial part of Palestinian society and local politics, often more significant than tribes, particularly in rural areas.
  • Structure: A clan consists of multiple extended families (a’ila) who claim a shared male lineage and are linked by the father’s line.
  • Functions: Clans provide security, manage shared resources (though less common now), and have adapted to manage finances and investments collectively.
  • Political Role: Clans have been integrated into Palestinian governance structures and can play a significant role in local disputes and politics, according to Brandeis University.

2. Tribes:

  • Bedouin Tribes: Some Bedouin tribes, like the Jahalin and Azazme, still exist, primarily in the West Bank and Gaza.
  • Reduced Importance: While tribal affiliations exist, their political and social influence is generally less pronounced compared to clans.
  • Sedentarization: Many Palestinians of tribal origin have become more sedentary due to modernization and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

3. Notable Families:

  • Elites: Certain prominent families have historically played a role in Palestinian society, sometimes specializing in specific occupations or holding influential positions.

Important Considerations:

  • Fluidity and Adaptation: While claims of common ancestry are central, clan boundaries can be fluid, adapting to circumstances like displacement and the need for support.
  • Modern Influences: Modernization, urbanization, and political movements like Hamas have impacted traditional clan structures, though clan affiliations remain significant for many Palestinians.
  • Variations: The strength and influence of clans and tribes vary across different regions and communities within Palestine.

In essence, while Palestinian society has evolved, clan and tribal structures continue to play a role in social organization, local politics, and providing social support networks, particularly in the absence of strong state institutions.

Not enough to materially matter for the purposes you’re describing. The tribes, which encompassed large collections of multiple family and kin-based clans, didn’t really survive the Egyptian and Jordanian periods and the assertion of nation-states as the main organizing principle of Arab society (incompatible with Jordan’s monarchy and Nasser’s pan-arabism).

The clans persisted, and had moderate political power (as opposed to social or economic influence) back in the day…but they’re much smaller than tribes, and lack the ability to meaningfully step into any type of governance role. They’ve also long been marginalized by both the nationalist movement and the organs of a modern state. With police/security, judicial, and social service functions having long ago been removed from the clan level and transferred to the Palestinian governmental organization, those groups are no longer a strong locus of political power.

So no more so than a powerful political family (like, say, the Kennedys) would be a meaningful alternative to an actual political structure in the U.S., the clans aren’t in a position to step into a leadership vacuum in Palestine in any useful way.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/relying-on-local-clans-to-run-postwar-gaza-should-be-off-the-table-experts-warn/
https://archive.ph/8tB9l

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A long thread exploring what I see as a small part of the vast array of fantasies people have about Israel/Palestine and neighbors.

I think, at some time after the assasination of both Rabin and viable hopes of reconciled peace, by Israeli nationalist radical maniacs, the situation fell into “no peace possible” for multiple suffering generations.

Bloody existential combat tends to do that — see Carthage vs Rome, as a for instance, and Athens vs Sparta (that one only extinguished by Alexander overpowering everyone).

My friends of all ethnicities and passports there have had my intense verbal and monetary encouragement to leave, just as if it were a house afire and no fire department with water in the area.

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Sure. But major contributing factors have also been the role of Iran, which has a strong security interest in continuing the conflict, and the ascension of Hamas through a combination of ordinary political processes and violent conflict. All make a toxic combination to ensure that no peace is possible.

There’s a grim, pessimistic part of me that believes that peace may never have been possible: that the “right of return” would have always prevented a lasting peace. The Partition of India is instructive - it was horrible, disruptive, and bloody…but it was final, and it enabled the creation of two separate but durable nation-states that were able to have an uneasy coexistence because neither claimed a right to the territory of the other (the disputed border areas notwithstanding).

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Pretty sure there are some native Americans and indigenous Canadians who would disagree with that pithy denial.

Clearly, just round them up based on race, put them in reservations, make assimilation exceptionally difficult, allow them to run their own affairs, mostly (unless it conflicts with yours), wait 100 years, and voila: compliant herds, almost invisible and with almost no violence.

I guess it would help if the world wasn’t so woke, to coin a phrase.

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We did, but now we don’t. Given the direction of our country - maybe we would, hopefully we won’t.

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I said we don’t. Not that we didn’t. In context, the poster appeared to be referencing our current activities on immigration enforcement, not the forced depopulations we perpetrated in the past.

As you intimate, the world has changed more than a bit since then. Under current political and international standards, no western country would be willing to facilitate Israel engaging in the forced depopulation of Gaza. They won’t regard our past atrocities as making that kind of action acceptable today. So pointing to those past horrors by the U.S. wouldn’t be a persuasive argument to convince a modern western nation to do likewise.

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Let’s pump the brakes a little.

We’re still a western country, no?

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Yes. The perils of dashing off responses too quickly.

Earlier, I had noted that no western country would accept a million refugees, because they would regard that as ethnic cleansing and have no part of it - and that only the U.S. might disagree with whether it was ethnic cleansing, but that the U.S. wouldn’t take them either because we’re not really in a “welcoming refugees” place right now. I should have maintained that distinction in this last post as well - the U.S. wouldn’t take them, but we’re the only nation that might consider it acceptable for this to happen.

But Libya isn’t going to take a million impoverished Palestinians, either. The U.S. might be talking about it with them, but there’s no way that they could handle that kind of inflow - or the political blowback it would create, especially given the internal disputes between the rival governmental bodies claiming to rule the country.

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