Hi twfowler; Re: "If the Palestinians have no representative ... there is no point negotiating with someone who has no ability to follow through on his commitments." What Israel would like to do is to negotiate with a strong man who will force the rest of the Palestinians to accept a deal. But Israel has removed any ability that the PA had to enforce this. So what Israel is left with is not a "negotiation" with another government, but instead the far more difficult task of pleasing an entire people. This is not an impossible task, it simply requires more sacrifices than the Israelis are yet contemplating.
Re: "The Boer's where a small minority maybe 10% to 15% of the population if you include non Boer whites." If you consider the full region where Palestinians live, (i.e. parts of everything from Egypt to Lebanon and Jordan), you'll find that the Jews are a minority in the area. If you consider the Arabs in general, the Jews are a small minority. Why do you think that Sharon was asking for a million more immigrants? The South Africans also tried to gerrymander districts where they would have the majority. It didn't work for them, and since Israel is already a militarily indefensible tiny gerrymandered country (i.e. even including the occupied territories), gerrymandering it further certainly isn't going to work for the Israelis. The basic problem is that the Israelis have no more land to give for peace.
Re: "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."
This is true, but it doesn't do Israel any good. All the argument is, when stripped to its essence, is an argument for why what Israel is doing is "moral" or at least justifiable. My whole argument is to ignore what is moral as such arguments lead nowhere. For example, you could also say that if the US had been garrisoned in the 18th century by British (Israeli) troops that shot us when we tried to walk from town to town, demanded identity documents, tied us up with wire and wrote numbers on us, made us strip search in public, ran armored vehicles through our neighborhoods, fired missiles into our residential districts, assassinated our citizens, bulldozed our houses, etc., etc., etc., the US would certainly have fought back by carrying on guerilla warfare against the British (Israelis). There, see how useless that line of reasoning is? All humans are human and do human things for human reasons. Everybody is (self) justified. Arguing about it is a waste of bandwidth.
Instead of pointless sanctimonious moralizing, simply look at the problem as a practical one. Here's the practical problems with your analogy: (1) Israel isn't in the 19th century. (2) Israel doesn't have the military power to enforce a final solution against the Palestinians (in the face of world reaction). (3) Israel has higher moral standards than to do that. Heck, even the US had qualms about what went on in the Indian wars. Even though these are partly self generated moral restrictions, they are still restrictions. That's why hippies could get away with yelling "pig" at most police officers in the 60s (at least when TV cameras were around).
Re: "The use of force that fell far below genocide was usually enough to keep the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe together." This is true, but what Israel wants is more difficult. Humans are notorious for putting up with class differences, but situations where a "different" minority group (an ethnic group) controls a majority are more difficult. Where it becomes impossible is when the discriminated against minority has majority populations nearby that can supply it with weapons and (very important) moral support. (1) The Soviet Union did not have cross border issues except in the Muslim areas, and in those areas they did have trouble. They're still having it. (2) The Soviets allowed various minorities to rise to great power in the country. For example, Stalin was a Georgian. (3) The Russians (current ethnic population 120 million) were a populous and dominant ethnic group in that area for thousands of years. That means that everyone is already used to having the Russians tell them what to do. The Israelis (current ethnic population 6 million) are a rare and non native group in the Middle East. Using the Russians as a model for a "pax Israeli" is silly. There simply aren't enough Israelis.
If Israel really wants to survive as a Jewish state, they should start programs to convert Moslems to the Judaism. (Now that I think of the religious life of most of my Jewish friends, maybe the Israelis should start their conversion efforts with the atheists instead.)
Re: "Israel isn't going to negotiate away its existance." That's what they say now. The South Africans were saying the same thing then. Like I've said before, this fight hasn't reached anywhere near the peak of escalation. As has been oft noted, the murder rate for terrorism is still way too low to have any real effect, but that rate is increasing, and it has no real limit. The Palestinians are getting better and better at terror. At some time, an honorable peace with a truly secular, un-gerrymandered state with no internal borders or distinctions based on religion, with rights of return for all, etc., is going to seem very attractive, even to Nadine. They're just not yet sick of the blood.
Re: "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. The area under dispute is most of the Middle East. Israel is technically at still at war with several countries much larger than she. Yes, the war is not hot, but that doesn't matter. Now, go find just a single example with that sort of demographics.
Iran, (population 66 million) for example, just tried to send the Palestinian Authority a boat load of weapons. What happens when the Palestinian Authority gets ahold of anti aircraft weapons and makes it impossible to fly commercial aircraft into Israel?
Iraq, (population 23 million) launched Scud missiles against Israel as recently as the Gulf War, and even now, though suffering from sanctions, still finds cash to give to Palestine.
Saudi Arabia, (population 23 million) still sends cash to Palestinian suicide bombers.
Jordan, (population 5 million) has plenty of Palestinians with sympathies to relatives in Israel.
Lebanon, (population 4 million) just recently forced an Israeli military force out of their country.
Syria, (population 17 million) regularly trades weapons fire with Israel across the Golan heights.
Egypt, (population 70 million) signed a peace treaty with Israel, but still has rather frosty relations. Certainly if Israel ties to shove the remaining Palestinians into concentration camps that peace will effectively be over.
When you say that Israel is majority Jewish, you're wearing blinders so that you can ignore the situation in the neighboring states. The Soviet Union is so huge that you can get away with this (mostly). The Soviet Union held most of a complete continent. The same applies to the US and other real countries. Israel is too small to be analyzed by itself. Militarily, Israel's Jewish majority regions are not defensible, and have not been for 50 years. Gerrymandering out a region so that you can conclude that Israel has overwhelming force is being deliberately unrealistic. You might as well argue that since the British had majority support in Hong Kong, they therefore are still in control of the colony, or by the same reasoning, the Portugese are still in control of Macau, etc.
I'm still waiting for that example.
-- Carl
P.S. Here's Time waxing poetic about what a great guy Stalin is (and how the Germans can't get through the Maginot Line), in 1939 :
time.com |
