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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   29943 thread views

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.

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Why is “Israelis don’t have a right to continue to settle on Palestinian land and they should give it back” so hard to say?

Because it's equivalent to "Israeli Jews should be pushed into the sea."

How is it equivalent exactly? Besides the millenia old blood feud that's tied to it, I mean.

Because to the Palestinians, Palestinian land is "from the river to the sea".

Surely all the attempts at codifying a two state demarcation that have since been soundly violated should count for something in defining what is and isn't "Palestinian land". Leaving again, the blood feud aside.

Do the Palestinians agree that those attempts count for anything in defining what is not "Palestinian land"?

Well they did sign those agreements. Given that does it matter what they really think?

Of course both sides would like the whole of Palestine for themselves and to get rid of the other ethnic group. They've both made that clear. But that doesn't make them both blameless when they break their word on any attempt to avoid war, surely.

Let us remind ourselves there is such a thing as compromise.

Sure, there is such a thing as compromise. But once a compromise has broken down, is it reasonable to say that one party has to keep giving up everything they gave up to get that compromise?

Like I would be totally with you if there was any reasonable prospect of the Oslo Accords being adhered to today. But the deal was made 30 years ago, it irreversibly died with the Second Intifada 23 years ago, and there's been no new deal since then. The Palestinians today aren't saying "stick to the deal you made", they're saying "From the river to the sea". So in the present circumstance it seems unreasonable to insist on Israel sticking to the dead-and-buried compromise.

It’s clearly not, and if the pro-Israeli side is so simplistic about it why even have a discussion? Do you really think “roll back the extralegal settlements in the West Bank” is the same as “exterminate the Jews in Israel?” Be serious.

He is serious. Rolling back the West Bank settlements is not equivalent to exterminating all the Jews, but it is also not equivalent to leaving Palestinian land. Because the Palestinians are very clear, it is all Palestinian land. They consider Tel Aviv an illegal settlement.

Respecting Palestinian claims to the land does indeed mean exterminating Israel.

Except that's not the Palestinian demands(which are "Israelis out, from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, it's all ours").

It strikes me that neither side of this conflict seems in any reasonable state of mind to adjudicate it.

Were we in saner times, a great power would just take the whole territory and administrate it to solve this problem. One should want for the British, but then again they created this mess in the first place.

Still better them than eternal massacre for nonsense such as "self-determination" and rights "to exist".

It strikes me that neither side of this conflict seems in any reasonable state of mind to adjudicate it.

I thought that moral equivalence went out of style with the fall of the USSR,.

Claiming that the two sides are equal is still a position, and this position can be wrong. It especially can be wrong if the actual facts don't match up with your ability to describe both sides with the same words.

Both sides have provably broken their word and murdered innocents. Regardless of who is more at fault, neither are responsible enough to enact good government. Or it would have materialized by now.

In that way at least, they are both sufficiently incompetent or untrustworthy to solve their problem. A competent third party wouldn't have this problem.

You can't "enact good government" in the way you seem to mean when faced by someone who wants you dead.

I've honestly wondered if it wouldn't be an improvement if the US just annexed all of the territory just so everyone could put their differences aside for long enough.

How do you predict the US would handle Gaza within its borders?

About the same way it handled the Comanche.

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