Hi twfowler; Re: "If the other side has the goal of destroying you its hard to find common ground for negotiation." It's common for sides in a war to make this sort of exaggeration of the other side's goals. It's just not a realistic appraisal. (And if it were realistic, then the Israeli Jews had better start looking at buying land somewhere else.)
Re: "If that is what you mean then it can be a "negotiation of equals", but it wont be a negotiation of equals in the sense that the two sides have roughly equal power." No, what I meant was a negotiation between sides that are roughly equal in power (to hurt each other). It is very easy to mistakenly analyze the situation as one where the Israelis are naturally in possession of more power because the Israelis have more and better weapons. But weapons (in and of themselves) are not power, at least not the power to achieve peace. If they were, the massive military power that the US brought to Vietnam, or that the USSR brought to Afghanistan would have pacified those countries. Military weapons are not power, at least not any more. Similarly, money is also not power.
Military power no longer equates to the ability to decide how a piece of territory is governed. It once did, and there are plenty of examples of this, but that was through slaughter that is no longer possible, at least on the part of Israel. Realistically, what is Israel going to do, kill 10% of the Palestinians? Of course everyone knows that this is not going to happen. Consequently, having the military power to kill large numbers of Palestinians is not a threat. If nuclear weapons, for example, were power, then the Soviet Union would be still ruling Eastern Europe and the US would have decided the government in Somalia. But as the Soviet Union and the United States have both discovered, military power ain't what it used to be.
The Palestinians do not have the ability to kill large numbers (i.e. 10% or more) of the people of Israel. What they have is the ability to prevent the Israelis from enjoying peace. That is a negative ability, not a positive one. Similarly, the Israelis do not have the ability to kill large numbers of the people of Palestine. (One can always argue that owning a weapon implies the ability to use that weapon, but in the presence of larger forces that will extract revenge, such power does not really exist.) What Israel does have is the ability to prevent the Palestinians from enjoying peace. That is a negative ability, not a positive one.
This is the nature of the balance. Neither side has a commanding advantage.
Israel's military force is useless in the absence of an army to field it against. That's why the Palestinians (mostly) step back and let the Israelis roll tanks into Palestine. Ethnic cleansing or wholesale slaughter is not an option for Israel, so when the tanks move into Palestine there is nothing for them to do except piss off the locals and get shot at by the odd sniper.
Compare this to what the US military did when it rode into Indian camps in the 19th century. Frequently, everyone who gave the slightest resistance was killed. Unarmed men, women and children were massacred without the slightest mercy. Perhaps you have forgotten this part of our history. If so, here's a reminder:
Massacre at Wounded Knee
lastoftheindependents.com
Sandcreek Massacre
... The Indians who could escaped or secreted themselves, and by three o'clock in the afternoon the carnage had ceased. It was estimated that between three and four hundred of the savages got away with their lives. Of the balance there were neither wounded nor prisoners. Their strength at the beginning of the action was estimated at nine hundred. Their village consisted of one hundred and thirty Cheyenne and with Arapahoe lodges. These, with their contents, were totally destroyed. ...
pbs.org
On that date, a group of men out of Tucson (many of whom were Papagos and Mexicans, but their leaders were Americans) treacherously attacked the peaceful, sleeping Apache camp. About 144 were killed, almost all of them women and children.
geocities.com
... For his merciless handling of the battle at Ash Hollow, Harney was forever afterwards known among the Sioux as "the Butcher." However, for U. S. military officials and the ever increasing numbers of emigrants traveling the Oregon and Mormon Trails, Harney's execution of the affair bought them 10 more years of relative peace.
mormontrail.net
Here's a good set of links to dozens of other battles:
eduscapes.com
You don't have to kill very many people to convince the remainder to give up. Killing 10% or so usually suffices. While that's not very many, as compared to the large number who survive, it's about 1000x more than Israel can get away with in the current international diplomatic climate.
-- Carl
P.S. It's not like it was the Americans who invented the above illustrated technique. Here's an archeological site where the Indians butchered each other long before Columbus got here:
usd.edu
My point is that the techniques that victors used to pacify the defeated in the 19th century are no longer available to Israel. The wild west is over. That's what "never again" means. The Israelis will have to negotiate with the Palestinians without taking into account differences in military power between them. |
