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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 was well on the way to coming to an understanding with its neighbors prior to 10/7.
The role of the global hegemon here, if we're really talking about 'just do whatever creates stability' would be take the population of Palestine, break it up into families, and scatter them around the globe, then decapitate the regime in Tehran and hand the reins over to a transitional government and leave. The Middle East would calm down very quickly.
You're being far too nice here from the perspective of an actual global hegemon with no ethical concerns. If you're talking about "whatever creates stability" then the Israelis are going to have to go too - they can either get wiped out and replaced by whatever ethnicity runs the global hegemon, or they can get forcibly mixed with arab populations in order to completely remove the possibility of this ancient tribal conflict starting back up again.
Just to clarify, I'm not actually suggesting this as a course of action.
The point is that the Israelis aren't actually a source of instability in the region, except in terms of their relationship with the Palestinians. Get rid of the latter and you've solved the problem. Get rid of the former and you've still got a problem because they're a radicalized Islamist population which hates all of their neighbors.
They are actually still a source of instability in the region due to their contentious relations with the other arab states, and the current state of affairs involves large sums of money being given to their neighbours in order to stop them from attacking Israel. Get rid of the Palestinians and you solve nothing - you give the entire Islamic world a causus belli against Israel and then they do things like attack international shipping vessels to disrupt the region.
And as for keeping the Israelis... ever read much Roman history? The Israelites made absolutely terrible imperial/hegemonic subjects to the point that they brag about it - an efficient hegemon would just exterminate them for good and resettle the territory.
The other Arab states couldn't care less about Israel. The Baathists were the only ones who ever actually disliked Israel at higher echelons of government and Saddam is dead and Assad has got bigger problems to worry about. The monarchies occasionally make anti-Israeli noises for their populaces but otherwise don't give a damn, Egypt has been sucking on the American military funding teet in exchange for peaceful relations with Israel for so long that the mask-for-money has become just standard Egyptian policy, and other Arab states are too distant to actually be bothered.
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