To be clear, I’m not remotely convinced that pressuring Israel to moderate would cost Democrats any elections. It’s hard to point to many Democratic voters who would walk away because of that sort of humanitarian pressure, and the people who would be incensed by it already reliably vote for Republicans.
CraigM
4842
Not those in good standing in the community :)
Evangelical Christianity is the strongest predictor of political affiliation, full stop. They are locked in more than any other demographic for the GOP, and any evangelical who dares suggest that the Democrats aren’t evil incarnate, let alone votes for them, will be called an apostate, backslider, not actually Christian, or worse. They literally believe it is impossible to be a Christian if you do not vote GOP.
I can only imagine what my family would think if I gave them my full unfiltered thoughts about what I thought of their politics. Going to hell would be the nicest thing, I am sure.
Timex
4843
What would need to be done in order for the Palestinians to be able to effectively govern themselves? What are the steps that need to be taken where the end state is a functional Palestinian state?
Step 1 is surely an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, including the abandoning of Israeli settlements. Occupied countries can’t govern themselves, by definition.
Timex
4845
I think you need to have an actual full plan before Israel can be expected to withdraw.
I assume by annexing the west bank Israel will grant citizenship to all residents.
what, with no religious test? haha
Yeah, and in extension of that, lifting the iron curtain around Gaza so people can build an economy. 60% of young people in Gaza are unemployed, and people wonder why these kids are willing to kill themselves to topple a border fence.
I recently read the memoirs of Ami Ayalon. He’s a fascinating person; A son of the kibbutz movement, former Shayatet 13 frogman, former head of the Shabak, and now a full-throated proponent of peace in Israel.
He makes a lot of good points, some of which are self-evident: Making peace is always going to be more painful than waging war. In order to make peace, you have to forget about your feelings, and you have to be ready to suffer humiliation and attacks, without being drawn to retaliate in a way that serves to reignite the conflict.
It often requires a unilateral display of good faith, because that’s the only way to build trust where there is none, and that is obviously not very politically palatable. Practically everyone in politics wants to look powerful, and offering people something for nothing is easily interpreted as the opposite.
It’s also very likely that once Israel commits to a credible peace process with moderate Palestinians, extremist Palestinians will start trying to hit the softest targets possible in order to end the talks, and no one knows how the Israeli extremists will react in that situation. Last time they killed Rabin, so I think it’s easy to see why it’s not a scenario that most Israeli prime ministers are crazy about.
Right now I don’t think it’s possible to even attempt it, but if we’re being very optimistic, I guess there’s a chance that these cruel and ugly zealots will disgust enough people that Israel starts pining for more moderate politics.
Timex
4850
Yes, this is why simply withdrawing from Palestinian regions, and allowing them totally open traffic is problematic for Israel.
In the past, when they’ve eased up on those regions, the response has been that terrorist groups then launched weapons from those regions into Israeli civilians.
A responsible government cannot simply allow its civilians to be targeted like that, and thus can’t simply take steps that have, historically, enabled it.
That’s why you need a better plan than
- Israel withdraws
- ???
- Peace!
If Israel is going to take actions which will potentially jeopardize the lives of its people, there needs to be some clear path to success, not just hope.
Sharpe
4851
Step 1 has to be a complete and utter end to further settlements, expansion of settlements, increase of settlement population and all related expansions/taking of land/expansions of easements/water rights/etc/whathaveyou. This is the old “when you are in a hole, first, stop digging.” That’s a rock solid necessity IMO. Sadly, this step has been impossible for decades and I see no hope of it. That makes it almost moot to talk about further steps, but I will try my best.
Step 2 has to be a gradual draw down of Israeli settlements and gradual return of local/internal sovereignty to Palestinians in the West, CONCURRENT with the build up of a stable non-extremist government in the Palestinian territories. This second step is even harder than the first but in theory there are ways to have staggered withdrawals and staggered returns of sovereignty triggered by thresholds of stability and governance. What makes this step damn near impossible in addition to the intransigence of the Israeli side and lack of consistent follow through on the Palestinian side is that to get this rolling, both sides need to both compromise and trust at least a little bit right off the bat and that seems impossible.
So I don’t know about solutions, really.
But I do believe that until that first step is taken, nothing good is going to happen. Nothing good is possible while the Israelis continue to expand their settlement population and footprint.
In reality I think what is going to happen is that Israel has painted itself into a corner, with some Palestinian assistance, and that the next real movement we see is going to be some kind of intense conflict, prolonged atrocity or other major mess.
Bottom line: the region is fucked, long term.
Yes, this is what has happened when they have continued to occupy the West Bank while engaging in slightly less repressive measures. It’s not really much of a test of what happens if they actually withdraw from all the disputed territory in the West Bank, which they have never done.
It’s possible, even likely, that withdrawal won’t lead to peace and goodwill and love all around. But it’s certain that continued occupation won’t lead to that, either. The occupation is turning / has turned Israel into a militant, authoritarian, racist Apartheid state.
Responsible governments can and have done that.
People would still be killing each other in Northern Ireland if the IRA and the British government had allowed extremists to reignite the conflict.
You can respond to those attacks, but you definitely can’t do it disproportionately (which is a stupid concept in general) and the response needs to be understood by all within the talks.
In other words, you tell the IRA “We’re gonna kill these specific dissident IRA members, are you good with that?” and when they say go, you go.
It just takes a lot of courage and leadership.
See, the truth is, there won’t be peace until peace is cheaper than war for both sides. Currently, war is much cheaper for one side, so, they choose it, and will continue to choose it, because it makes sense.
Because there will be people trying to sabotage the process, and as long as war is cheaper than peace, when sabotage comes, people will do what people do.
And making war expensive for both sides isn’t going to look pretty either, if it’s even possible.
Yay?
This is the thing. Jews are highly divided in the USA over Israel. It gets complicated because political opposition to Israeli policy and flat-out anti-Semitism sometimes go hand in hand, even though for the most part they are or at least should be entirely separate things. So it’s hard sometimes to get American Jews to publicly criticize Israel, but it does happen. And pretty much every Jew I know (admittedly, not a huge subset of the population of the US or of Jews!) is at the very least ambivalent about a lot of Israel’s actions.
But the Evangelicals…hoo boy. Even back in the 80s, during my first stint in grad school, they were gung ho for Israel and supported any and all actions by the IDF. The idea seems to be rooted in some sort of belief about Armageddon and the Second Coming and a final battle or whatever. They might love “Israel” as a geopolitical force, but they sure don’t like actual Jews that much.
Timex
4856
I think the biggest problem for Israel is that the Palestinian government doesn’t seem capable of stopping, or holding accountable, the terrorists who would attack Israel.
So, if Israel withdraws, and then terrorists launch attacks on their civilian population, and the Palestinians can’t it won’t themselves police that region and catch the terrorists… What is Israel supposed to do in that situation?
I think this concern is real, but I also think it’s clear that the Israeli occupation isn’t stopping those attacks either; and beyond that, the occupation involves Israel exercising their own share of violence against the civilian population.
I think the occupation is the primary cause of the level of violence we see. End the occupation and there would be less violence all around. I understand why it is hard for Israelis to contemplate that, but a substantial number of them do nonetheless, and they can hardly be accused of not considering the risks. And there isn’t going to be any peace under the existing regime of occupation and repression. How could there be?
Pretty safe to say Netanyahu has no interest other than exacerbating the problem as much as possible:
Absolutely. I wish more Israelis would ask these extremists what their actual plan is, because I don’t see that they have one beyond “Violate international law, steal more land, profit?”.
Beyond some utter atrocity, or the abolition of international law, I don’t see how they could ever hope to resolve the conflict.
Ami Ayalon cooperated with security forces in the West Bank as the head of Shabak, and he says they were able to keep the peace as long as Israel didn’t make some horrible unilateral move, that meant the police had no chance of holding people back, at which point the security forces also had to be seen as supporting the movement, because otherwise they would be viewed as traitors and targeted themselves.
Hamas is a big problem, because they are as extreme as they are. It’s hard to imagine Hamas negotiating in good faith, but it is also perfectly clear that as long as Gaza remains as hopeless as it is, it’s the perfect breeding ground for extremism. It’s a prison.
DoubleG
4860
If somebody’s systematically stealing your land, killing your children, and has the support of the biggest nations on Earth, I don’t know how you could call fighting back extremism. This is a hopeless situation with a clear aggressor.
