Israel’s been willing to negotiate land swaps to keep those. The sticking points are the settlements all over the interior of the West Bank which make it ungovernable (by design).
Given history, there would be some minor fluctuation in the border (such as Shebaa Farm on the Israel/Lebanon border, or the aforementioned border settlements behind the Great Wall of Judea) which is used by hardline Palestinians as an excuse to continue fighting and demand continued economic subsidy.
Given history, I’d say the international community freaks out completely when Israeli cuts the power, and it’s a race to see which hundred countries are the first to formally accuse Israel of war crimes.
Welcome to the club.
Sounds good to me. I never had a problem with Israel building a wall on their own land, although I’m a bit dubious about some of the places they considered to be their own land…
Read World War Z.
Some day people (including the Israelis) are going to look back and be amazed that the world put up with it for so long.
That’s okay, as the Chosen, God has already vindicated them.
Interesting. Ezra links to this article which discusses how fighters from Iraq are filtering back through the Middle East. Potentially more unintended negative consequences from Bush’s war.
His deconstruction is bull because he is basically implying that the so called only alternative is “All bombs, all the time”. while it actually is “All bombs until the enemy is crushed, have some years of peace, terrorist attacks start up again, repeat”. The relative quiet of the last years fits right into that.
Also this:
It seems undeniable that Operation Cast Lead has devastated Hamas’s conventional weapons capabilities. Those capabilities were meaningless.
Yes, I’m sure having a bunch of lunatics launching missiles at you is a very meaningless thing that your government has to do nothing about. The goal is to stop Hamas from performing long range attacks. This seems to be working. So is it the best possible approach? Yes it is.
Sure, maybe there is a better way to solve the overall problem. But that way will involve serious concessions from Israel which as I said before they aren’t going to give. Especially not when people who still remember the Six Day and Yom Kippur war are still in charge.
With the Gaza attack Israel is probably breaking as much windows as it is fixing but I can’t figure out why people, given the history of the state, are so surprised that Israel reacts like this.
Iran comes in and takes over, establishing a nice little outpost full of destitute radicalized young men on the Israeli border. Entirely in everyone’s interest, I’m sure.
Sunni Arabs want to be ruled by Shiite Persians as much as by Israeli Jews.
They already did.
I agree, and furthermore I think they should spend some time talking to the British about how they solved the IRA problem. The point is that it is actually possible to end a long-standing conflict, but it takes a long time and requires the bigger power to not be reactionary or provocative.
I’m not one who subscribes to the idea that Britain was the prime mover in the calming of Northern Ireland. I tend to think that the IRA problem was ultimatley solved because a generation of IRA leaders who grew up knowing nothing but the conflict of “the troubles” came to the realization that while they could fight Britain to a stalemate, they ultimately could not win and were more likely to achieve their goals via a nonviolent political process…I do not believe Hamas has come to that same conclusion.
I also think its an easy but ultimately incorrect comparison to make between the troubles and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Each one was it’s own separate beast and comparing them leads to a tendency to overlook the issues that sets them apart.
Religion?
The British government wasn’t the “prime mover” in the Peace Talks. A whole number of parties needed to come to the table, including the Northern Irish Protestants. There were also other factors, such as the EU making the difference between Ireland and the UK minimal.
But without the British making moves to address the core issues that caused the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and without the British being prepared to play ball with Sinn Fein and not respond to the IRA, or the breakaway Real IRA, in the same aggressive manner as it had in the past, allowed for an environment where the Catholics of Northern Ireland realised the best way forward was through politics and not violence.
Thinking that the IRA changed their attitudes in a vaccuum ignores the hugely important role Britain played, for better and worse, in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.
What Britain did, and what I believe Israel should try to follow, is create that environment where Palestinians feel their best way forward is through peaceful, largely political, means, and not through violence. The first step to that is making the Palestinians peaceful choices meaningful. Currently voting in a Palestinian election is little more than answering a survey; it merely acts as a barometer of Palestinian public opinion.
It’d help if Palestinians could choose something other than “establish an Islamic theocracy” and “keep the corrupt alderman on the take”. Palestinian leadership has been lacking for decades and has only been getting worse. Of course it would take an epochal hero on the order of Nelson Mandela to survive in that environment and not run on a platform of “kill all the bastards”.
Well, Mandela did have a period as an armed freedom fighter/terrorist and insurrectionist before he was arrested and jailed, and he refused to give up support for the armed struggle as late as 1985 in exchange for his release.
Point. They might not want to get too directly involved, as for all their bluster, they’re probably not very interested in an open conflict with Israel just now.