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Notes -
Operation Poseidon Archer
Reported by CNN:
I have mixed feelings about this. It is clearly the responsibility of the imperial hegemon to protect global shipping lanes. But by that same logic, it's time for the imperial hegemon to force a settlement onto the Israelis due to their never-ending destabilization of the region. That would entail the EU forcing a peace onto Israel, performing a Special Military Operation within Israel if necessary.
Bring back the 117 AD borders, with EU administration of Jerusalem. Jews may live in Jerusalem, wail at their wall and study Torah in peace, but it is utterly nonsensical for the West to continue to bear the burden of Israeli destabilization of the region.
This washy middle ground of appealing to imperial obligations when it comes to Middle Eastern intervention, without control of the "vassal" state destabilizing the region, is a never-ending pattern that has to stop. The US and EU has more than enough leverage to force a settlement onto Israel.
Israel is a nuclear armed state. You want a special military operation against a nuclear armed state to enforce what is likely an existential crisis for the nuclear armed nation? Israel differs from Iran and Pakistan in that its a dense nation. Its population centers are close to everywhere. You cant do limited attacks on it without attacking an Israeli population center. Thats a redline for the Israelis. They might genuinely choose to detonate a thermonuclear bomb over Europe in response. And Europe would deserve it.
Im going to answer some concerns and questions pre-emptively. The Israeli are mostly self sufficient when it comes to weapons. They do rely on outside parties for munitions, aircraft(as in piloted aircraft), and precision guided bombs. That ignores the Israeli ability to build bomb and munition making factories. They also have access to F35s and could reverse engineer them. In the 80s, the Israelis engineered an F15 competitor called the Lavi. An F15 was the major US air fighter jet btw, before it was replaced by the F35. Without US help, the Lavi aircraft showed the Israelis have the manpower and technical expertise to make advanced war weapons on their own. It was mainly a cost issue that they decided against, and it was only by a margin of one vote that it was decided against. After the fall of the Soviet Union, over a million Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel. This was a highly educated population with lots of technical expertise. Even before that happened, they had enough of it to survive.
Many people really dont look at the 50s-80s of Israeli history. They were precarious times, but the state of Israel survived under much worse circumstances. They have only grown richer and more established.
Lets say you cut off all military weaponry to Israel, including US aid. They already spend 5% of gdp on military. You likely only raise it to 7%, with no US aid. The Israelis have the technical expertise to manufacture the basics of war.
Lets say you start a trade embargo.
How far do you take it? Are you going to starve the Israelis to death? That would kill more Palestinians than israelis...because ding ding ding, Palestinians are controlled by Israel.
Okay, lets say not that. You only hit the Israeli pocketbook. You might convince them. Emphasis on might.
All this goes out the door the instance a Palestinian state starts shooting rockets at Israel. Which I find likely. Lets say a Palestinian state shoots rockets, what happens? A Palestinian state is positioned near Israeli population centers. Most Gaza rockets only affected the Israeli South. Not Tel Aviv or the Center. That wouldnt be the case with a Palestinian state, because of how the West Bank is positioned. If a Palestinian state fails to establish peace, I find it likely the Israelis expel the Palestinians. The Israelis will get sick of rockets over their heads, eventually.
Israel expelling the Palestinians leads to a regional war. A war the middle east would not win. All Israel has to do is survive. Israel has the superior military in the Levant. It has nukes. The conventional militaries of the Arab states are made for keeping the populations in line, although I suspect they will do better than even the Israelis predict. Israel would win, because at the very worst, they would use tactical nukes on advancing Arab militaries. The Arab militaries that also do show prowess, are mainly guerilla fighters in populated territories. Not conventional forces. If their population centers were threatned, they would use nukes on Arab population centers like Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Damascus. They might even target Riyadh in Saudi Arab in the Gulf if they feel malicious.
So Israel wins. It is now a heavily sanctioned pariah state like North Korea. Except unlike North Korea, they have decades of built up infrastructure and technical expertise. The Israeli population will also be much more motivated, because its their survival at stake. Not some stupid regime.
Israel likely wins a middle east war. What you have next, is waves of millions of refugees on Europes borders. Not just Palestinians. Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians. I could see Israel taking the East side of the Jordan and expelling any all Jordanians to give a buffer. Jordan likely collapses because of internal instability caused by too many Palestinian refugees.
All youve done is destroy the Middle East, and send hordes of refugees to Europe. You probably havent even destroyed Israel, just punched it. This also ignores the one unknown. Russia. If push came to shove, and Israel was already isolated, I could see the Russians supporting Israel in trade. A state that could become a Russian proxy to threaten Europe? Russia would love that.
Frankly the worlds obsession with the Israeli Palestinian conflict is absurd and more trouble than its worth. Fine boycott arms if you want to feel morally superior, but all you do is make the situation worse just to sniff farts up your own ass.
Why Europe even needs an opinion to care about this conflict, that they need to impose a solution, is whats ridiculous? The Arab states barely care about the Palestinians as they have shown. Not enough to militarily intervene. Not enough to stop trading oil. Why should Europe do anything only to make a contained situation worse. that they have nothing riding on?
I’ve been saying the same thing for a while. I don’t get the west’s obsession. People are marching in the streets of London flying PLO flags… why? It’s just another ethnic conflict in the middle-east, and a low stakes one at that. It’s baffling.
It becomes less baffling when you realize that there are a lot of continental philosophers and left-leaning technocrats (IE the sort of people who would have voted for Woodrow Wilson back in the day) who will never forgive the Jews for how WWII ended.
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When you see grassroots, suspect astroturf. Someone's propagandizing, organizing, and funding those marches. You'll likely find a web of NGOs behind them, but maybe it won't be opaque enough to hide the (Middle Eastern) state funding.
Probably. I'd expect this to be more well-known, though, especially these days and in pro-Israeli circles. I think there's also a torrent of info and mis-info coming out of true-believers in the Palestinian cause - there are quite a lot of Muslims in the world where that can originate from. Still, I'd imagined the median person to be more apathetic than this.
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