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Let's say Israel agrees to a two-state solution but Palestine just keeps attacking Israel over and over. What is Israel entitled to do in response? Do they just keep retaliating tit-for-tat? Are they allowed to invade, depose the government, but then must leave just to return when the new government does the same thing? Do they just have to improve their defences?
Let them do whatever they like, with their own capabilities and let them deal with the consequences. We, the West, shouldn't be standing behind the Israeli military, supplying the bombs and shells they're using, bankrolling their operation, threatening anyone who attacks them. Once they start taking our aid, we become a participant.
Azerbaijan has a spat with Armenia? Not my problem, let them handle it.
But the Palestinians are far more dependent on US and EU aid than the Israelis are. We are much more funding the terror campaigns against Israel than the military operation in Gaza.
No you're not - Biden sent $14 billion in military aid to Israel for this conflict alone, plus the baseline $3 billion in military aid annually. Palestinians don't get any military aid from the West, only a few hundred million annually in humanitarian aid.
Over 6 years, the entire UN gave about 1.5 years of annual US military aid. The US sent about 1.7 years of Israeli military aid and tries hard to avoid it going to Palestinian war effort. If anything the aid serves more as a bribe to keep them from electing Hamas, they cut funding when that happened.
I propose complete non-interference, to cut aid to both sides.
Without which the entire economy would collapse and they wouldn't be able to afford a single scrap of metal, let alone a bomb or weapon. Plus the international orgs that aid and abet Iranian resupplies. Its not magnitude alone that matters, its percentage. If we left Palestine 100% on a branch, they would have nothing.
Look, if you provide 14 billion in military aid to one side and a few hundreds of millions in civilian aid to the other side (openly talking about how you try to prevent it going to their military wing), you clearly support the former over the latter. This is absolutely basic logic. Every US politician will tell you that they love Israel and hate Hamas.
Who cares if Palestine has nothing? Who cares if the Israelis have to pay for their own bombs? Not my problem!
I disagree. 14 billion looks like a bigger number because the spending is asymmetric. Iron dome is expensive suicide vests and rockets are cheap. Defense against this kind of aggression is easily 100x more expensive, probably closer to the 10000x multiplier. So its not clear that Israel is coming out ahead.
Israel. If they have nothing, Israel needs nothing. But we give them a lot, and they divert much of it to waging terror campaigns.
My interpretation of this sentence was that Israel needs nothing, but we give them (Israel) a lot and they use much of it to wage terror campaigns. I agree with this but I'm not sure that's what you were actually saying.
No. My statement is Israel needs nothing, but Palestine would be zero without aid. Every dollar provided to Palestine has a significant percentage eventually funneled to terror campaigns against Israel. Without international aid Palestine would cease to exist.
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