naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
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Notes -
Doesn’t the solution to the Troubles and the Good Friday accord speak to an ability to accomplish the same through peace?
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
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Pinochet seems like another example though that was ideologically driven.
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To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
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I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
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Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/denmark-s-myths-shattered-a-legacy-of-dead-german-children-a-355772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
Carthage-like destruction is a fairly accurate summary of what the Allies did to Germany after WWII.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
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W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
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