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If the Palestinians were wiped out the Israelis would instantly be in a conflict with their next weakest neighbor (currently Syria) whereas if the Israelis were destroyed the conflict would be solved permanently. Seems to me like destroying Israel would be much simpler and result in a more permanent solution than destroying the Palestinians.
Are you suggesting that removing Israel from the Middle East would suffice to bring peace to the region, and that the various governments and power groups in the area would not engage in armed struggle with each other?
I am pretty sure that a big part of the reason there is so much anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) sentiment in the reason is that there are a lot of Arab groups which absolutely hate each other and the anti-Israel stuff is a way of trying to achieve some degree of unity.
I think one of the biggest reasons the neocons made policy mistakes is that they assumed that because the various unpleasant Arab/Muslim factions hate Israel more than they hate each other, they must hate us more than they hate each other.
In fact the secular Arab left (in so far as it still exists post-USSR and post-Saddam), the Sunni Jihadis and the Shia Iranian Mullahs all hate each other more than they hate us, and Israel is the only thing that comes close to uniting them.
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Yes, I think this is probably right.
An underappreciated historical fact that helps better understand the world that we live in today is that Arab Socialism, which wasn't as I understand it particularly devout, was all the rage during the Cold War...and Israel absolutely discredited it by refusing to lose to Egypt & Friends. The end result of this was a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist extremism, because if the Arab Nationalists are getting their posterior served to them by The Jews it's harder to believe in Arab Nationalism and easier to believe that you are being punished by God for forgetting His will.
It's very easy to predict kumbaya with This One Neat Trick but it turns out that history doesn't stop after you've pulled the trick.
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I don't know if it would be Syria, but you can bet that if the Palestinian Arabs disappeared, the anti-Israel types would find some group to use to go after Israel. Because clearly anti-Israel types don't care in the slightest about Palestinian Arabs themselves.
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There simply isn't an amount of money that could be given which would let Palestine vanquish Israel, so that's off the table. I'm assuming no third country is going to directly declare war on either side, here.
Plus, on the marginal balance, I'll go for the country where they don't throw me off buildings over the one where they do.
Though my ideal solution is that we pay zero money and completely ignore the entire situation.
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The current Syrian rulers are probably as pragmatic as the Jordanians and Egyptians and could manage to reach a peace. The Palestinians simply can't; as Bill Clinton said, killing Jews is their goal. And the Palestinians have famously stirred up trouble in Jordan and elsewhere; eliminate Israel and even worldwide Jewry and the Palestinians are still going to be a problem (unless the other Arabs just wipe them out too, which is a distinct possibility).
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Regional powers have dealt with the regional issues of their neighbors for millennia. That’s how it’s always been. Someone might say neoconservatism is just a modern reincarnation of that principle at work. It’s better to have a superpower that you can appeal to, to moderate and resolve problems between people; rather than having to reinvent the police force whenever there’s tension at play.
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