"Can you even indentify any moderate Palestinians that have any real power?"
I don't need to identify any such. My point does not require that negotiations be convenient for Israel. In fact, the Palestinians will gain more by making the negotiations inconvenient. Instead of pleasing a single strong man in control, the task that Israelis have is to convince the Palestinian people as a whole that there is no more reason to fight.
If the Palestinians have no representative (a "strong man" or a representative of a democratic government or whatever but someone who can negotiate in good faith and who has the power or influence to follow through on commitments made in the process of negotiations) that Israel can negotiate with they will not gain more in negotiations. They will not gain anything in negotiations. Either there will be no negotiations or they will be a sham.
This is not particular to Israel's situation, there is no point negotiating with someone who has no ability to follow through on his commitments.
And who would the Israelis use this force against? There is no Palestinian state. Military force is useless against civilians, except in violation of various international treaties. If Israel does go postal, they'll find themselves in the same position as South Africa, a world pariah. But we've argued this before. Are there any examples of a modern industrialized power doing this sort of ethnic cleansing? The only one I can think of is the Nazis in WW2, and I doubt that the Israelis will imitate them. "Never again." If they do, then the Israeli state will be dead in its heart, and the rest will follow soon after.
They would use force against any PLO, Hamas ect. members they could find. They might also use force against civilians. States will use force in violation of any treaty if they think there existence is at risk. The US would likely go postal if it faced 50 suicide bombers a day (your 1 a day scenario multiplied by the difference in population rounded off). It may even rise to ethnic cleansing, at least of the majority Palestinian areas that are closest to Jewish areas (this might include the Arab section of Jerusalem. Then maybe a "Berlin Wall" type barrier, with aggressive patrols on the Arab side of the wall to reduce attacks over the wall. It might go further and involve total ethnic cleansing of the West Bank or Gaza, or it might not go nearly as far, perhaps just a "Black September" style series of attacks. That worked pretty well for Jordan. Israel would probably have a bit less success (the attack would be easier because of Israel's greater power but perhaps a bit less successful). All of this assumes that the attacks rise to a level where Israel views itself as being in mortal danger. Short of such an escalation Israel would probably be much more restrained, but its military still would not be "useless".
More telling would be the South African situation, where the Boers also had nowhere else to go in the entire world, where they could preserve their culture.
The Boer's where a small minority maybe 10% to 15% of the population if you include non Boer whites. Jews are a strong majority excluding the West Bank and Gaza, and are I believe still a majority if you include those areas. Also the black South Africans had Nelson Mandela who the whites came to have some trust in and who had enough influence to make it reasonably possible that negotiating with him was more then a sham. The Palestinians have Arafat who is weak as a leader and never seems to negotiate in good faith. They also have Hamas who would probably reject any deal that Arafat makes and who are committed to the destruction of Israel. This makes the situations a bit different.
I don't think that the Palestinians are going to cease escalating the violence, short of a
deal where they substantially get their demands met.
At 40,000 terrorist victims a year (or over 10 9/11's a year in a country only a bit more then 1/50th of the US population) the Israelis escalate. If the US faced a similar risk from say Native Americans who resented the fact that the US conquered them in the 19th century then I think our constitutional protections would go out the window and you would see reservations that where more like concentration camps. I doubt it could get that bad. I don't think the Palestinians could pull it off and I'm not sure they would if they could but if it does happen then ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians will no longer be considered a fringe radical extremist view, but a serious option.
The Soviet Union couldn't be made secure either, for that matter, but don't you recall what a surprise it was when it fell without a global thermonuclear catastrophe? The expectations of genocide in the Middle East if the state of Israel falls are similarly fears unlikely to be realized. No amount of nuclear or conventional military power was able to keep the Soviet Union together
The use of force that fell far below genocide was usually enough to keep the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe together. (a good example of moderate force with the threat of a lot more if it was needed keeping civilians down without genocide) No amount of force kept it together in the end because the empire had decayed at its core and no longer was willing or able to use even a more moderate level of force.
Like I said before, this is thinking inside the box.
"The box" deals with the real world opinions and attitudes that exist in this situation. Israel isn't going to negotiate away its existance. It might negotiate away land but not anything that if views as fatal to the state of Israel.
Throughout history I can think of no country that had the preponderance of money and military force, and that was not a small minority in the area under dispute negotiating away its own existence. Boers (even combined with white non Boers) where a small minority. Also they didn't negotiate away their country just who would rule it. Everyone involved though of themselves as South Africans not as two different nations in the same area.
Tim |
