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I didn't really participate in the Israel-Gaza megathreads while they were live, for the same reason I don't participate in threads about crypto or YIMBYism: it wasn't a topic I knew much about, and I wasn't especially interested in educating myself. As an undergrad I'd attended a pro-Palestine march or two, and harboured some lingering vague, passive, semi-ironic anti-Zionist sentiment as a consequence; I was vaguely aware of the general contours of the history of the Israeli state (Six-Day War, USS Liberty, compulsory military service for men and women); I'd seen Waltz with Bashir many years ago; I recognised the names Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and PLO; and was under the general impression that a two-state solution would be in everyone's best interests, although I had absolutely no idea what this would look like in practice. While the megathreads were live, the word "Nakba" would have meant nothing to me, and I can't even say with confidence that I knew at the time that Gaza and the West Bank were non-contiguous.
I think my attitude of willing blissful ignorance changed when @ymeskhout posted his article "The Jewish Conspiracy to Change my Mind" and its followup. Like me, he approached the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a position of relative ignorance, and after doing some research came away far more sympathetic to the Israelis than the Palestinians.
While Israel-Gaza may not have had much staying power on the Motte as the Current Thing™ (there were only four megathreads posted a week apart), it's been a fairly durable Current Thing™ in the popular discourse, and looks to remain that way for the foreseeable, perhaps at least as long as the Ukraine war did before it. As a result of this, it's hard to avoid encountering new perspectives on the conflict, and I'm finding myself reading countless articles about it every week. Wary of echo chamber dynamics, I'm making a conscious effort to force myself to read articles which are less sympathetic to the Israelis. I've found Freddie deBoer's takes unnecessarily combative and employing some rather queasy Fanon-esque mental gymnastics, but found Sam Kriss's articles on the topic to be some of the best of his I've read. I admire that he's demonstrated an ability to do what so many outspoken anti-Zionists seem unable or unwilling to do: express deep-seated sympathy for the Palestinian cause, up to and including denying the right of the state of Israel to exist, while also acknowledging the shocking brutality of Hamas's combat tactics and condemning them without reservation.
One such Kriss post, "Against the Brave", takes as its thesis that both the Israelis and Palestinians should be ashamed of the horrific, unspeakable cruelties they've inflicted on one another over the decades, and that a shared acknowledgement and a shared shame is the only path towards reconciliation. I noticed that this post was liked by @ymeskhout himself, which got me wondering if, seven months into this conflict, his attitudes have changed since he wrote his "Jewish Conspiracy" posts. More broadly, have any of you changed your minds on any key aspects of the conflict since October 7th? Did any of you think a two-state solution was viable within a generation, but no longer think so (or vice versa)? Has the conflict changed your opinion of Netanyahu, for better or worse?
I don’t think there’s an issue imposing a Palestinian state upon the Israelis. Many in Israel would welcome it. The issue is with how that Palestinian state was structured, who ran it, how it was governed, and how the deep-seated Palestinian desire for revenge was tackled.
As it is, Independent Palestine would be declared, elect Hamas or equivalents, attempt a military campaign against Israel, be destroyed and be occupied. <— You Are Here etc etc. The only way to avoid this scenario is for the Palestinians to be ruled by someone who can actually control them. The Western powers, for all their moral frustration around Rafah, are unwilling to do this or to finance it; colonialism is in any case a tricky business. The Muslim countries don’t want to be seen dealing with Israel too openly, and besides Palestinians have caused many of them issues over the years.
Israel isn’t big enough, rich enough or politically powerful enough to attempt an Uighur-level pacification of Palestinians, even if it wanted to (which it doesn’t, really). The traditional, biblical outcomes of this kind of tribal conflict are off the table (at least for Israel) for reasons of modernity and geopolitics.
On the far left the solution is obviously to just make all Palestinians (including foreign descendants) citizens, rename the country Palestine and hope that everything surely works out. On the center left, it’s even more vague, essentially some version of withdraw, ‘accept’ a Palestinian state, pull back settlers and hope for peace. (See above.)
So there aren’t really any solutions. One can’t really fault the Arabs for refusing to accept the Palestinians, since they dislike them for many of the same reasons the Israelis do (violent, vengeful, doesn’t understand when it’s beat). On the Israeli side, “apartheid” was not the status quo for reasons of racial hostility, all the checkpoints and walls and restrictions on Palestinians entering Israel exist solely because of repeated Palestinian terror attacks against Israel citizens.
On the Palestinian side it is hard to find any logical undercurrent, but we might assume that - somewhere within - they truly and actually believe that the Jews might one day pack up and go home. That seems unlikely to me. The French in North Africa still had France, at least then. The white Rhodesians and South Africans made up less than 10% of the population, they were fewer than 4% in the former case and they were politically divided in the latter. The Israelis are half the total population and consider Israel their homeland. They will fight to the end.
On the Israeli side, there is a fair amount of exasperation. “We lived in exile for 2000 years, so can you” is a sentiment I have heard on a number of occasions. When that classic trope of the nature documentary, the old king, the patriarch, being supplanted by some younger challenger who beats him in combat, steals his territory and females, and sends the elder male into exile, occurs, we accept it as part of the cycle of life in nature. Nothing that has happened in Israel is uncommon in human history. Countless peoples are conquered by those more advanced and more capable. That is life.
Most Israelis don’t care what happens to the Palestinians, but they wish for them to stop being a nuisance. Economic growth has been tried and has failed. Ideological indoctrination would be unacceptable to the Palestinians or the wider Muslim world. What does that leave?
It’s worth noting that states which successfully rule over populations similar to the Palestinians do not do so with rainbows and kittens. Any solution which contains the Palestinians will likely be unacceptable to the left.
If the Palestinians end up being oppressed by other Middle Eastern Muslims, the left will look the other way.
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