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Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.
Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.
War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?
This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.
There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.
Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.
Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.
You can't read history without coming across the names of long extinct tribes. It might be an exaggeration to say they were all genocided, many merely had their cultural identity destroyed through enslavement and conquest. All the same, there are no Etruscans, Gauls, Picts, Carthaginians, Trojans, and probably countless tribes, states and empires in regions without a written history. Imagine, for a moment, if they were all still among us, waging their 2000 year old grievances over minuscule patches of barren land the way Israel and Palestine are. Imagine if we were still arbitrating between extant Etruscans and Romans possession of the land north of the Tiber over a 3000 year history?
I won't claim some ability to arbitrate when, where or why genocide is necessary. But if you really think of a world without it, it's terrifying.
The etruscans and Gauls disappeared because they started going by ‘Romans’. It’s not an option for the Palestinians to become Israelis.
Yes it is? There's a sizeable Israeli Arab population. Cease the nonsense and they'd be better off
If every Gazan and inhabitant of the West Bank became a full citizen of Israel, there would no longer be a guarantee of a Jewish Israeli PM or President or majority in the Knesset.
There are currently 7 million Jews and 2.5 million others with Israeli citizenship. There are about 2 million Gazans and 2.7 million West Bank-ians. Add them in and give them voting power and suddenly there is a substantial non-Jewish voting block. (And then the wolves eat the lambs.)
It's one of those things everyone knows but not a lot of people make the point to explain. The Jewish Ethnostate depends on not integrating these people, or at the very least, integrating slowly.
They could, however, be called "Egyptians" with no major disruption to that polity, which many of them, or their ancestors, once were. The reason this doesn't happen is because having rump "Palestinians" as a grievance group is an intentional tactic.
They have been accepted into other Arab countries. I don't think it went with "no major disruption".
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That offer is not in the pipeline for the Palestinians.
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