site banner

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Suppose you were a moderate leader of the Palestinians. What on Earth could you possibly do to end the suffering and negotiate a lasting peace?

Palestinians appear to feel very strongly about unrestricted right of return. In the failed Camp David talks, Arafat demanded 150,000 Palestinians in the diaspora be allowed to settle Israel per year while Israel pushed back and said 100,000 total, though they offered a $30 billion fund to help Palestinians abroad to attain permanent settlement abroad.

This is pretty far apart. Israel doesn’t want to be demographically obliterated but Palestinians that fled Israel consider it their ancestral home.

How do you reconcile this? Wouldn’t any Palestinian leader that negotiated a peace deal without this be considered illegitimate and probably marked for death?

On the other hand, would the hostilities even end if Israel somehow agreed to unrestricted ROR? There’s so much bad blood that even this is hard to imagine as being the thing that achieves lasting peace.

I’m not sure any concession short of Israel packs up and leaves forever would end the violence.

Is it wrong to demand that Israelis relocate to Florida? It’s not like they can’t move all of their holy buildings. Surely the terra itself isn’t sacred?

Suppose you were a moderate leader of the Palestinians. What on Earth could you possibly do to end the suffering and negotiate a lasting peace?

Nothing. You try, you get killed and replaced by someone less moderate.

Wouldn’t any Palestinian leader that negotiated a peace deal without this be considered illegitimate and probably marked for death?

Yes.

Is it wrong to demand that Israelis relocate to Florida? It’s not like they can’t move all of their holy buildings. Surely the terra itself isn’t sacred?

Of course the land is sacred to them.

Is it wrong to demand that Israelis relocate to Florida? It’s not like they can’t move all of their holy buildings. Surely the terra itself isn’t sacred?

Of course the land is sacred to them.

/tableflip

Ok, so...

Isn't this the Israelis falling a bit below the sanity waterline? Yes it's true they're surrounded on all sides by people who are so toxic that they would rather die than coexist with Israelis, or even just share a border with them, and yes these other people are behaving really, really badly. But given that Israel is not allowed to solve this the old fashioned way (genocide), and all avenues for peace have epsilon probability of success, ... shouldn't they just nope out?

I agree it sets a terrible precedent that your neighbors can get their way just by succumbing to a deep and apparently permanent craze, and ideally you'd like to prevail against them, but at some point shouldn't you just move to a better neighborhood? Unlike the Palestinians, there are other nations of the world that would welcome them.

Israelis seem destined to be in this fight for centuries, and they're apparently okay with it.

Isn't this the Israelis falling a bit below the sanity waterline?

No, and that you think so just means you do not accept their terminal values. Whether those terminal values are ipso facto insane can't be decided from the fact that they have homicidal opponents with conflicting terminal values.

But given that Israel is not allowed to solve this the old fashioned way (genocide), and all avenues for peace have epsilon probability of success, ... shouldn't they just nope out?

You're privileging some of the givens. That they want the holy land is also a given.

No, and that you think so just means you do not accept their terminal values. Whether those terminal values are ipso facto insane can't be decided from the fact that they have homicidal opponents with conflicting terminal values.

Yes I suppose am rejecting religious devotion to a piece of land as a terminal value when there is abundance of land on Earth that’s far less problematic. I consider this sub-sane.

This is independent from why the homicidal opponents want it, IMO.