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.
The purpose of West Bank settlements is to make a two-state solution impossible.
Palestinians can remain in the West Bank if they agree to be second class citizens without political rights.
Israel’s rightful land extends from the Euphrates to the Nile.
I don’t care about Palestinian children, only my own children.
I like the interview and I respect how honest she is. She doesn’t pretend this is about Hamas or terrorism or anything; it’s her tribe versus someone else’s tribe and her tribe should do whatever it takes to win.
Some thoughts/questions:
How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)
A two-state solution was moderately popular just a few decades ago, but it's largely considered a lost cause at this point among Israelis at this point, and polls among Palestinians show it unacceptable or undesirable for them as well (for whatever extent you trust polls on this). But that does not mandate genocide or a lack of political rights (or ethnic cleansing), nevermind presuming such a position would be popular: indeed, even early in 2023 a two-state solution polls higher than a single-state one with privileged status for Jews.
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
A lot of it's less political power, and more the Israeli equivalent of the deep state. A lot of the positions and perspectives favoring Israeli expansionism into the West Bank has been a philosophical goal of the Israeli government for long enough that changing who's in office doesn't necessarily change what happens, it just changes who reports on it. And there were military and tactical reasons in the 70s, even if using those reasons as justification for military confiscation to later hand over to individual civilians is utterly abominable. Beyond that...
The settlers in the areas illegal under Isreali law, and their more activist branches in specific, are often assholes (price taggers regularly deface Israeli or even IDF property!). But there's another large class who played by at least Israeli rules, and are not so readily opposed. And the former groups exist in no small part by exploiting the ambiguities, there, and they're regularly assisted by international groups that take anything less than the Green Line borders as Israeli perfidy.
While I think the religious role is overplayed in American or international contexts, among Israelis and Palestinians there's a very serious concern that each side will dynamite the other's religious sites the second anyone's back is turned, and they matter a good deal more for internal reasons.
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
Combatant doesn't mean 'bad person' (an Israeli defending their Kibbutz on 10/7 is a combatant!), and non-combatant does not mean 'good person'. We have the "you're not allowed to shoot someone unless they're trying to kill you, or at least part of a military trying to kill you" for the very good reason that if you start allowing military strikes on anyone who has actively wrong political positions, there's nothing without a target.
A more difficult question is whether she'd count as a valid military target, and that's complicated. Ideally, trespassing and unlawful occupation are not themselves the sort of thing that would justify military or personal self-defense, but COGAT's enforcement and implementation of the law is a joke, so I have more sympathy for some of that. That said, mere advocacy or past actions are not themselves military justification -- there's a difference between fighting someone who's actively invading your house from breaking in to beat up someone who did a year ago.
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
I'm not the person you'd need to persuade, but it's been considered at times.
A lot depends on what, exactly, you mean by "West Bank" or "settlers": there's a risk of certain if-by-whiskeyism, here. Area A is already effectively off-limits for Jewish (and Israeli-friendly non-Jewish) people, rather famously. But that's a bunch of small cities and towns without a land bridge, which doesn't even include all West Bank Palestinians. On the other hand, turning over Area C and going back to the 1967 Green Line would involving moving almost a 400k Israelis and give the West Bank a fully-uncontrolled border with Jordan; that was a difficult ask in 2000 and there's no way it'd be acceptable now. Whatever extent 'land for peace' might have seemed a reasonable trade in the 1990s, it's clearly danegeld now, if the rumors that Arafat was planning the Second Intifada during the 2000 talks weren't enough, the recent problems made it obvious. And a lot of Palestinians, the Arab states, and the academic left consider all Israelis to be settlers, which beyond all the other problems, given the number of Israeli Jews that were ejected from Muslim countries nearby, is the sort of thing you bring to end negotiations, rather than to start them.
On the gripping hand, I think Israel should dismantle the settlements that are a violation of Israeli law anyway, so 'conceding' to remove them is conceding nothing at all.
I dunno. Before October, some large scale-down of Area C, in exchange for significant concessions elsewhere, might have been the best option. And maybe the PA pulls some sort of hat trick here that makes puts that back on the table again, if only to cut out Hamas and its affiliates as competition. But the last 'significant' (and it wasn't much, or even that honest!) pull-back resulted in a swath of suicide bombings, and I'm not sure that Abbas could commit to non-hostilities if the IDF gift-wrapped the entire Green Line borders for him, and any attempt to remove Israeli settlements requires them to believe they're getting peace out of it.
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Notes -
An interview in the New Yorker with settler/activist Daniella Weiss, The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers, is making the rounds on Twitter.
Tl;dr:
I like the interview and I respect how honest she is. She doesn’t pretend this is about Hamas or terrorism or anything; it’s her tribe versus someone else’s tribe and her tribe should do whatever it takes to win.
Some thoughts/questions:
A two-state solution was moderately popular just a few decades ago, but it's largely considered a lost cause at this point among Israelis at this point, and polls among Palestinians show it unacceptable or undesirable for them as well (for whatever extent you trust polls on this). But that does not mandate genocide or a lack of political rights (or ethnic cleansing), nevermind presuming such a position would be popular: indeed, even early in 2023 a two-state solution polls higher than a single-state one with privileged status for Jews.
A lot of it's less political power, and more the Israeli equivalent of the deep state. A lot of the positions and perspectives favoring Israeli expansionism into the West Bank has been a philosophical goal of the Israeli government for long enough that changing who's in office doesn't necessarily change what happens, it just changes who reports on it. And there were military and tactical reasons in the 70s, even if using those reasons as justification for military confiscation to later hand over to individual civilians is utterly abominable. Beyond that...
The settlers in the areas illegal under Isreali law, and their more activist branches in specific, are often assholes (price taggers regularly deface Israeli or even IDF property!). But there's another large class who played by at least Israeli rules, and are not so readily opposed. And the former groups exist in no small part by exploiting the ambiguities, there, and they're regularly assisted by international groups that take anything less than the Green Line borders as Israeli perfidy.
While I think the religious role is overplayed in American or international contexts, among Israelis and Palestinians there's a very serious concern that each side will dynamite the other's religious sites the second anyone's back is turned, and they matter a good deal more for internal reasons.
Combatant doesn't mean 'bad person' (an Israeli defending their Kibbutz on 10/7 is a combatant!), and non-combatant does not mean 'good person'. We have the "you're not allowed to shoot someone unless they're trying to kill you, or at least part of a military trying to kill you" for the very good reason that if you start allowing military strikes on anyone who has actively wrong political positions, there's nothing without a target.
A more difficult question is whether she'd count as a valid military target, and that's complicated. Ideally, trespassing and unlawful occupation are not themselves the sort of thing that would justify military or personal self-defense, but COGAT's enforcement and implementation of the law is a joke, so I have more sympathy for some of that. That said, mere advocacy or past actions are not themselves military justification -- there's a difference between fighting someone who's actively invading your house from breaking in to beat up someone who did a year ago.
I'm not the person you'd need to persuade, but it's been considered at times.
A lot depends on what, exactly, you mean by "West Bank" or "settlers": there's a risk of certain if-by-whiskeyism, here. Area A is already effectively off-limits for Jewish (and Israeli-friendly non-Jewish) people, rather famously. But that's a bunch of small cities and towns without a land bridge, which doesn't even include all West Bank Palestinians. On the other hand, turning over Area C and going back to the 1967 Green Line would involving moving almost a 400k Israelis and give the West Bank a fully-uncontrolled border with Jordan; that was a difficult ask in 2000 and there's no way it'd be acceptable now. Whatever extent 'land for peace' might have seemed a reasonable trade in the 1990s, it's clearly danegeld now, if the rumors that Arafat was planning the Second Intifada during the 2000 talks weren't enough, the recent problems made it obvious. And a lot of Palestinians, the Arab states, and the academic left consider all Israelis to be settlers, which beyond all the other problems, given the number of Israeli Jews that were ejected from Muslim countries nearby, is the sort of thing you bring to end negotiations, rather than to start them.
On the gripping hand, I think Israel should dismantle the settlements that are a violation of Israeli law anyway, so 'conceding' to remove them is conceding nothing at all.
I dunno. Before October, some large scale-down of Area C, in exchange for significant concessions elsewhere, might have been the best option. And maybe the PA pulls some sort of hat trick here that makes puts that back on the table again, if only to cut out Hamas and its affiliates as competition. But the last 'significant' (and it wasn't much, or even that honest!) pull-back resulted in a swath of suicide bombings, and I'm not sure that Abbas could commit to non-hostilities if the IDF gift-wrapped the entire Green Line borders for him, and any attempt to remove Israeli settlements requires them to believe they're getting peace out of it.
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