Wouldn’t it be ironic if Netanyahu’s pigheadedness was the impetus behind the thing Netanyahu most fears, the creation of a Palestinian state?
That would be quite ironic. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s likely. In fact, quite the opposite - I think that the recent horrors in Israel and Gaza have all but put a stake into the peace process.
Israel won’t return to the peace process until Hamas is obliterated. That will probably take years, and will kill enormous numbers of civilians in Gaza. That will end up destroying Palestinian support for a two-state solution. The current war has also revealed that global support for a one-state solution was very prevalent - there’s a lot more sentiment that all of Israel is illegitimate than I think Israel imagined.
If a two-state solution won’t ever satisfy the Palestinians and their supporters, and a one-state solution will never satisfy Israel, then the current deadlock will continue for quite a very long time.
4 Likes
Of course it will - as long as it’s their state.
In their settlements in occupied territory, they are doing exactly that.
From the river to the sea, Israel’s territory it will be - seems to be their motto.
To clarify - the one-state solution that some Palestinians, and some of their supporters, advocate is one where all of the people living within the borders of the former British Mandate are included within the society, with a Right of Return for those currently outside the area. That is not an outcome that will satisfy Israel - even the religious faction that wants to annex the West Bank.
1 Like
Ayup, because of the demographics. As some have observed, Israel can either be a democracy, with a guaranteed, perpetual Jewish majority, or a Theocracy, where only Jews have a vote. The numbers say the fist case is a no-go, with a significant Pal population, because of their birth rate. The second case is an apartheid state with a privileged minority ruling a majority with second class status.
Steve
3 Likes
Only if there’s a Right of Return for Palestinians, or a one-state solution.
Jews are about 3/4 of the citizens of Israel, while the 1.6 million non-Jewish Arab citizens (mostly the descendants of those who didn’t leave in 1948) make up about 17%. The birth rate of Israeli Jews and Arabs isn’t all that different - Israel’s got the highest fertility rate of any OECD country. So if you set the borders where they are today (or the Green Line or something approximating either one), and allowed Israel to control who immigrates (as all countries are permitted to do), Jews would remain the majority there indefinitely. It would be a democracy (all citizens allowed to vote) and majority-Jewish.
It’s only if Israel were required to allow Palestinians who are not presently citizens of Israel to immigrate, or expand the borders to include Gaza and the entirety of the West Bank, that you would end up with Jews no longer remaining the majority. Which is one of the main reasons why allowing all Palestinians and their descendants to move back to Israel (under either a two-state or as a one-state solution) has never been resolved in any peace process.
5 Likes
I remember Menachem Begin insisting Israel was entitled to all of “Judea and Samaria”, ie all of the west bank. Israeli actions since then indicate that narrative is still in force. Problem is, the area is full of Pals. For Israel to realize it’s territorial ambition, without sharing the vote with the 3M resident Pals, requires either an ethnic cleansing operation, or an apartheid state, because 3m on the west bank, 1.6m in Israel, and 2.3m in Gaza, doesn’t leave perpetual superiority to the 7.145m Jews in Israel.
Steve
I do not know if you are Jewish but if not you are wrong about that. The history is not forgotten. Jews do not expect the world to agree at all.
This is about democratic republics v dictatorships. Those against Israel go to extreme pains to try and deny Israel is a democratic republic. The Jews in the US are very mixed about how far to the right Israel is. Now the Jews in Israel are mixed about it as well. That is a democratic process.
The few voices in congress against Israel remind us that some will forgo the US Constitution’s prime need for a democratic republic because of indoctrination into nonsense spouted by dictators.
If the Arab world faced how destructive their dictatorships are a lot of problems would be solved. In fact, the Palestinian issues would be solved in several ways.
Outside of Jordan there are no Arab populaces as a whole that embrace powersharing internally in their own countries. How can any other country truly or really work with them at all? There is no such thing on a truthful level.
We are getting a lot of opinions from Arab immigrants that this has been a huge human catastrophe. It is now. The locking of people on Gaza is prior as well.
The real catastrophe is reliving colonialism and every slight to man as if a dictator should run countries. There is plenty of bloodshed in each of those countries conveniently ignored
The Ukraine-Russia War is interesting. It is costing us far more. It is far more significant. Ukraine has only finally dabbled in democracy. In fact outside of the West, most nations that are run by dictators wish Ukraine was done and buried because they need the harvest not the politics of a democratic republic.
What I am saying is consider the source when an immigrant whose indoctrination is authoritarian goes on and on about his or her needs for the homeland. It is totally crap for the rest of us.
1 Like
Begin’s been dead for thirty years now, and Israel hasn’t made any steps to formally annex the West Bank (despite the fact that the far right religious faction would sorely love that). For exactly the reason you mention - the area is full of Palestinians that Israel does not want to bring into Israel proper. Begin, being a creature of his time, may have believed that the Palestinians in the West Bank would eventually give up and be willing to become Jordanians (as they were between 1948 and 1967). Modern Israelis, even the far right religious ones, are under no such illusions.
3 Likes
I am Jewish, and I have had many conversations about this with lots of other Jews here in Miami (one of the larger Jewish communities in the US). Most of them were very surprised and dismayed to see the depth of support for a one-state solution being expressed within the progressive left. Especially the ones who are themselves very progressive. They knew there was more support for creating a Palestinian state than there was, say, a generation or two ago - and certainly disgust with the Netanyahu administration. But not that there was such broad support for a Palestinian state to supplant, rather than coexist with, Israel.
2 Likes
Anecdotally, Fox News viewership is up a lot amongst Jews in the Chicago area.
DB2
That might be them overstating it. I think those who want a single-state solution do not necessarily see it as supplanting. The dynamics are lost on them. Leading with the heart over humanity instead of the head over ruin.
Actually I have to say I have found both the right and left among Jews in America to be a pain on this. As much as Bibi in his arrogance. There has been a dearth of good messaging. I am not talking propaganda. I am talking just reasoning before the American public. Instead we have the nightly news focused on our problems in the ME to the exclusion almost of how bad the rest of the ME is. It is like Muslim nations internally do not exist to Americans because their internal affairs are not commented upon in the nightly news. If Americans saw that side of things this would all be seen differently.
One of the things I am sensing, the vast majority of Americans watching the demonstrations think how Arabs come from dictatorships and then want to only cheer nonsense for their causes makes most of us sick. Really the Arab community needs to straighten out the countries back home. There is puke everywhere. There is a big backlash here by most Americans. Progressives have actually split on this issue. One of my sisters totally recoiled right off the bat. For years I could not talk Israel with her. Now she has converted away from Progressivism.
Arab Americans are saying where is the free speech? The response is garbage speech is debated in earnest. There is no comeback for that. We are not waiting for free speech. We are demanding our position.
Biden and now Obama are only pandering not to lose a vote. The anti Israel folks do not believe them for a minute. The vote is lost. That group won’t vote this election. Totally turned off go home to a dictatorship if you do not want to be involved in open societies. The attitudes are where the dictators come from.
1 Like
Perhaps some, but not all. There are certainly some idealists who think that a single, pluralistic country encompassing the entire Mandatory area including all the existing population and those Palestinians returning from abroad could function as a mutlicultural western liberal (small-“l”) democracy. One of our closest friends (who is Jewish, BTW) falls into that category.
But not all of them. Some of those who regard Israel as a settler colonial state regard all of the Jews who immigrated there or who descended from immigrants over the last 140 years are illegitimate occupiers. Decolonization doesn’t just mean ceding control - it means leaving. Bodies moving. Getting the Jews out of the area, whether by force or fear.
1 Like
I saw this piece on the wire yesterday, and may have mentioned it in passing on one of these threads.
Fox Noise has always built it’s brand by telling viewers what they want to hear, regardless of truth or their “fair and balanced” tagline, that they abandoned some years ago.
Given that Fox Noise lead the anti-Muslim shrieking, at least since 9/11, it would follow that they would support anyone who is killing Muslims. As someone said, a long time ago, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
This paragraph from the NYT piece would qualify as “the most interesting/surprising thing you learned on line lately.”
“Fox News — with the largest audience in all of cable television in recent years — draws a sizable number of Democratic and liberal-leaning viewers. Among viewers who are 25 to 54, the demographic most important to advertisers, Fox News had more people who identify as Democrats watching in prime time than either CNN or MSNBC, according to Nielsen data through August.”
DB2
Doesn’t surprise me. As noted before, when I had cable, I watched O’Reilly and Hannity, because I wanted to know what was being said beyond the fringe of reason and reality. I went to Romney and Kasich speeches, and a meet and greet with a GOP candidate for Michigan Gov, who was parroting that line about “the US is a republic, not a democracy”, even though he, unlike others of his ilk, did concede that the US uses “democratic processes”. Most people who spout that “…not a democracy” line treat republican structure and democratic process as mutually exclusive.
Steve
2 Likes
Power in the US sees it as a democratic republic and major ally in an area of the world without properly working borders anyway.