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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28926 thread views

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.

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Is a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict conceivable in this decade?

Warning: I know very little about the details or history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In business negotiations, there's a concept of Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA), which boils down to the range of possible negotiation outcomes that both parties would consider preferable to the alternative (i.e., preferable to a failure to arrive at any negotiated agreement).

Take the sale of a used car, for example. The buyer is willing to purchase the vehicle for a price up to $3000 (this figure is private). The seller is willing to sell for a price that's at least $2750 (also private). In this scenario, a Zone of Possible Agreement exists between $2750 and $3000, where both the buyer's and the seller’s minimal terms can be met.1

The important point is that any negotiated agreement will be somewhere in the ZOPA. The buyer's goal in the negotiation is to achieve an agreement on the low end of the ZOPA, and the seller's goal is to achieve an agreement on the high end of the ZOPA. It doesn't mean they'll arrive at an agreement, but at least both parties prefer to reach an agreement in the ZOPA than to not reach any agreement at all.

But not all scenarios admit a non-empty ZOPA. For example, if the buyer were willing to pay no more than $2000, then there is no ZOPA. Negotiation would be pointless.

Obviously, this framework tremendously over-simplifies the present conflict. Still, I don't know of a better one.

So, is there any conceivable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that both sides2 would prefer over continued conflict (hot or cold)?

My sense, unfortunately, is that the most painful concessions that can be extracted from either side would be insufficient for the other side.

And thus, war remains as "the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means."



[1] This example is the one provided at the link, modified slightly for clarity.

[2] One way in which this framing is an over-simplification is that it ignores that each side contains multiple relevant constituencies, each with its own preferences.

I think in normal circumstances, where the conflict is over land or resources, this would be a good framework.

The problem is that this is a religious, sectarian and ethnic war. Jewish holy writ considers Jews the chosen people and all others somewhere between subhumans and animals, to the point where when someone appeared claiming he had come to save even the subhumans and animals, they got the Romans to stick him on a cross.

And on the other side you have Palestine, not really Palestinians in the way the West thinks of them as citizens of a country, but the extremist wing of Islamic hardliners that have supporters all over the Middle East and are aligning their struggle with the destiny of Islam. Who also consider it divine will to murder non-Islamists and take their land, wealth and women.

What's the ZOPA in this case? Israel considers attacks on their country existential in a way that's hard for liberal-democrat live-and-let-live Westerners to truly understand. 9/11 gave America PTSD for a generation and that was a few planes and a building. Netanyahu has basically said nothing is off the table and you can expect Israelis to basically support whatever tools and methods he needs to sweep the Gaza Strip clean of Muslims. And Hamas and their supporters explicitly set out to kill as many Jews as possible and to claim tribal victory (with other goals, like throwing a rake in any potential Saudi-Israeli collaboration, drawing America into the quagmire at a moment when war materiel stocks are critically low, further destabilizing the Pax Americana being incidental). They are broadcasting their success. Killing Jews on camera and parading their hostages and victims on social media is like catnip to half the Muslim ME that has explicitly wanted Israel gone or at least curbstomped into being not a major player for generations, and acts as a recruiting tool for them (look what we can do!).

you can expect Israelis to basically support whatever tools and methods he needs to sweep the Gaza Strip clean of Muslims.

no, that will not happen and it is not viable to happen

It's not simply a lack of mutually acceptable terms, it's also a lack of trust. Israel in particular doesn't trust (probably correctly) that if they made concessions, Hamas or other Palestinian organizations wouldn't just use that to expand their offensive capabilities and continue pressing for their extermination. That, in turn, shapes what terms are acceptable. The Israelis aren't likely to accept anything less than the total disarmament of the Palestinians, a) which the Palestinians will never agree to b) the Palestinians fear (probably correctly) that even if the vast majority of them acquiesce, any violence from remaining hardliners will be used as a pretext for further tightening the screws.

If UN peacekeepers weren't famously useless, putting them along the Green Line and Jordan and using them to police Palestine internally for a few decades would likely work for Green Line borders. Except even these borders would require political (and effectively physical, given Rabin's example) suicide both from Israeli and Palestinian leadership: recognizing the border as final would require abandoning both Jewish settlements and Palestinian right of return.

ZOPAs are not immutable. It's certainly possible that actions by the Israelis or the Palestinians could push things to the point where both take a deal. I don't see one coming out in the latter's favor, but what do I know?

I would be interested to hear from someone more informed about the conflict whether there is any border other than "Free Palestine, from the river to the sea" that can be acceptable to a critical mass of Palestinians.

Progressive Hamas supporters speak as if Israel pulling back to 1967 borders and ending the Gaza blockade will bring eternal peace, but the average Palestinian on twitter or any video clip that ends up on Social media just seems happy as long of Jewish blood is spilled and regards every bit of Israel-Palestine as theirs.

If every Palestinian was relocated to Canada with the equivalent of 1 million USD in their pocket, might they be satisfied?

I'm sure a few of them would resent forced relocation, but maybe the majority of them would be cool with it.

There are 3 million people in the west bank and 2 million people in the gaza strip.

5 trillion Dollars to buy a solution to the middle east conflict is not impossible, but pretty steep.

Though the problem only compounds over time: Fertility rate is 3.2 and even 3.97 in Gaza. Look at this population pyramid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_Palestine

Someone should run the numbers and figure out how much is spent over a 40 year period maintaining the Palestinian territories. Then we divide that number by the number of Palestinians. That's a reasonable upper bound for paying them to leave. It might be well under a million, though.

The irony is that if in 1948 those who were forced to flee Palestine had gone somewhere with birthright citizenship, or if the supposedly pro-Palestinian Arab states had granted them citizenship, there would be essentially no such thing as "Palestinians" because almost no one would think if themselves in those terms. We certainly would not have idiocies like this: "When the [UN] Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services." Nor would we have the even greater idiocy of 1.5 million people living in refugee camps.

If every Palestinian was relocated to Canada with the equivalent of 1 million USD in their pocket, might they be satisfied?

what about Canada being satisfied?

Canada loves refugees, hardy har har.

But in all seriousness, this is strictly a hypothetical I'm using to prove that peace is technically possible. Once we know a peaceful solution is technically possible, then we figure out the logistics.

Honestly given the way things currently are, Canada probably would be satisfied.

If you paid off the KKK to stop lynching people, I'm sure a million dollars per member would convince them to stop lynching people. That is not really a reason to say "the KKK may be satisfied with something other than lynching people".

"Be satisfied" doesn't mean "be satisfied by any condition, no matter how unlikely". This is just another example of over-literalness on the Internet.

The difference is that the KKK could theoretically convert new members at any time. Palestinians aren't merely an ideological group. They're a group bonded by, pardon the expression, blood and soil. Finding a way to remove them from their territory without pissing them or the rest of the world off would solve the problem permanently.

Is a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict conceivable in this decade?

No. The land is cursed. Everyone living there would be well advised to go live somewhere else.

Unfortunately, everywhere else was taken.

Well shoot, they probably shouldn't have imported all these dirt-poor Arabs once they took possession.

It turned out this particular patch of desert was also taken.

You'd think a cherished sacred homeland would have more to show for it than Israel does.

Or, I suppose it did, but desertification in the Bronze Age pooped on the bread basket.

I am not aware of one.

What more, there is also no viable achievable solution that would be liked by even one side.

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