Every Sunday should start with Barack Obama. Some things to chew on.
You don’t have to take my word for it, but maybe you’ll listen to Obama.
“If you want to solve the problem, you have to take in the whole truth, and you have to admit that nobody’s hands are clean.”
— Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) November 4, 2023
Barack Obama, from the video above: “If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side, and listen to them, and understand what they are talking about, and not dismiss it, because you can’t save that child without their help.”
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“I am pro-Israel and anti-Netanyahu.”
Full agree.
— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) November 4, 2023
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Calling for a ‘Free Palestine’ isn’t, of course, antisemitic.
Vandalizing a random Jewish institution with those words *is* antisemitic.
This isn’t hard. Jews aren’t to blame for the actions of Israel. Muslims aren’t to blame for the actions for Hamas.
Let’s stop the bigotry. https://t.co/5xwYugYkO4— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 4, 2023
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The United States continues to believe that the sole viable path is a two-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians each exercising their legitimate right to live in a state of their own, with equal measures of security and freedom, of opportunity and dignity. pic.twitter.com/S9u4GX7HTj
— Department of State (@StateDept) November 5, 2023
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.@SecBlinken discusses tangible steps being taken to increase the sustained delivery of food, water, medicine, fuel, and other essentials into Gaza. pic.twitter.com/WPHLW3Is2X
— Department of State (@StateDept) November 4, 2023
President Obama says people have to talk about this in order to get anywhere towards making it better.
How do you discuss the situation, how do you communicate your position on what’s happening in Israel and Palestine, without small-minded people, who can’t seem to hold two complex thoughts in their mind at the same time, jumping on you?
*If anyone finds links to these videos on YouTube, I will gladly put them up.
Open thread.
kindness
I used to believe in the Two State solution. I don’t any more. All the settlements in the West Bank make it impossible to have a Palestinian state there now. I say that because I sincerely doubt the settlers would be willing to live under Palestinian rule. What I favor now is equally implausible. One state. Give the Palestinians Israeli citizenship. Palestinians wouldn’t really like that and Jewish folk would become a minority in Israel. Ain’t happening.
taumaturgo
Here is a possible timeline of Obama’s administration actions in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, based on the web search results:
UncleEbeneezer
I’m not afraid to talk about many issues. This is the only one that I have been like “yeah, I’m gonna sit this one out” because people on both sides are making it impossible to do so without getting reamed. I’m just saddened that so many people I know who are usually very nuanced in their approach to complex issues are pretending that this one isn’t complex, pretending like it is completely black & white, pretending like either side is blameless and that there’s an obvious/simple solution. I don’t know how I can possibly engage with people in that sort of environment. If this conflict was simple and only one side had legitimate claims and beef, it would have been solved a long time ago. The conflict persists because it is complicated. And I really don’t have the patience for people who won’t acknowledge that upfront.
Jeffery
I wonder how many Palestinians would be willing to relocate to United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, if given the opportunity? What kind of life can they have in Gaza?
With global warming I expect the Mideast will be uninhabitable in 20 to 30 years. Then everyone is going to want to leave.
Kent
I don’t talk about this subject in real life because no one in my circle really cares that much or is following it all that much. After 50 years or so of trying to pay attention to this conflict I’m basically exhausted with it and have expended my sympathy for both sides. At this point I’m more interested in other parts of the world where people are more reasonable. I mostly blame religion for making everything worse. Religion is a toxic influence here in the US and it is in the middle east as well.
That said, I disagree with kindness. The 2-state solution is still the ONLY solution to this issue, however unlikely it might seem. And if Arabs and Muslims can live within a democratic Israel as they do today, then Jews can live within a future democratic Palestinian state. It goes both ways. It might require decades of robust international peacekeeping by profession NATO forces or some such. But it is possible.
The only alternative to a 2-state solution is the status quo where Israel just keeps kicking the can down the road with eruptions of violence and war every few years. That might be sustainable in the short term but eventually it won’t be. War is changing profoundly as we see in Ukraine. At some point remote war technology will advance to the point that Palestinians will be able to do things like fly cheap drone bombs right through the front doors of things like settler schools in the West Bank and the cycle of violence will just continue. The only solution is a political one not a military one. And it will require sacrifice on all sides.
Warblewarble
Until such time as settler violence and the illegal settlements are no longer part of the problem , the US. has zero creditability in the region. The IDF is only the settler movement with tanks, artillery and bombers.
Jess
@Jeffery:
Great point. I’ve been pondering the same thing. But for many, history + territory = identity. It would be simpler if it weren’t so.
Kent
The Syrian civil war has, in fact, been heavily linked to climate change. Not as the proximate cause, but as a contributing factor.
Kent
Nobody has any credibility in the region.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Not disagreeing with you, just wondering… in what ways it is seen as a contributing factor?
sab
@kindness: When the Israeli government closed down Yamit, a settlement in Sinai, they had to demolish it to keep the settlers from re-occupying it. The Arab world thought the Israelis did it out of spite, but that was not the case.
HumboldtBlue
Obama spoke yesterday on this issue and others.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Jeffery: I keep wondering how much this isn’t the real subtext to the whole fight.
Jess
This situation seems like a repeat of the mistakes the Bush administration made before and after 9/11. Israel has been baited into targeting the wrong people, and will end up losing more than they gain. I’ve thought for years that the tragic history of the Jewish people has blinded Israel from learning some important lessons from it (such as, don’t treat others like this). I would never minimize how the Jews have been victimized over the centuries, but the current folly of Israel reveals the danger of staying in a place of victimization. As Obama said, you need to get outside the walls of your outrage and move forward.
WaterGirl
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: I’m not sure what you mean by that. Can you say more?
wjca
Any two state solution has to start with enforcing Israeli law. Which law says that the settlements in the West Bank are flat illegal. So that means the Israeli government packing up the settlers and forcibly (it would have to be forcibly) removing them from the West Bank.
It would be an enormous political lift for any Israeli government. But it’s less impossible than any of the alternative “solutions”.
Eric S.
I turned 52 this year and the Palestinian / Israeli conflict was decades old when I was born. I remember saying a couple times while in college the world should wall them off and come back in a century to see who’s still standing. Alternately I’ve also paraphrased the movie Aliens, “we should nuke them from space, it’s the only way to be sure.”
Both are just immature flourishes that express the intractability of the issue. How do you solve for two populations wanting to occupy the same land that have millennia of conflict? Smarter people that I have tried. I think the two state solution is the framework for any viable solution. Viability is going to require the two populations to compromise and forgive the millennia of grievances. Additionally the Israelis and the Palestinians need to police themselves and bring to justice those that break the peace.
I do not hold out much hope.
wjca
Jews can. The settlers? Not so much.
Conflating the settlers with Jews generally is on a par with conflating the Oath Keepers with Americans generally.
BellyCat
@taumaturgo: Thank you for this!
My impression: The US has consistently made toothless “pretty please” requests of a bully, while failing to support efforts by others to apply any degree of accountability to said bully.
Whocoodaknowed the unchecked bully would keep on bullying?!?!
JoyceH
I felt a flicker of optimism about the Middle East a while back when Netanyahu got turfed out of office – by the voters! But then… he came back. The vast majority of the citizens don’t want him there, but there he is. And I think he’s the major obstacle to any solution for the region. Because he doesn’t want a solution. He wants the land.
Kent
Lots has been written on this subject. For example: https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-paved-the-way-to-war-in-syria/a-56711650
Warblewarble
The reality is that Israel is an expansionist state that has US. backing . While they have that backing expansionism will continue , settlers are just one tool in Israels toolbox.
Kirk
In my mind one of the biggest negatives Israel has in this fight is the government’s (and possibly whole culture’s) inability to effectively tell the settlers, “no.”
Not saying that doing so will be easy, nor that they’re the only government/political body with problems of the sort (GOP=NRA for an easy example).
cain
@kindness: Settler thing is Bibi’s other plan to ensure there is no Palestinian state. He is a hate filled Twinkie. I hope he is condemned whatever Jewish punishment that is assigned to people like him.
suzanne
I do not.
I don’t even agree on the terms. Like, what does it mean to “support Israel”? Does it mean I support the idea of a democratic, free, prosperous country in the Middle East? Because yes, I support that. Does it mean I want to give dollars to fund a military in defense of a Jewish ethnostate that drives others away? Because no, I don’t support that.
“From the river to the sea”…. does that mean that I want Palestinians to live in equality and prosperity and dignity in that region? Because I do. Does it mean I want to drive Jews away from that land? No, I don’t.
AFAIAC, anyone can live wherever they want, in freedom and dignity. I don’t really have a preference or opinion which national structure is best to achieve that. I am not concerned with maintaining an ethnic majority.
WaterGirl
@Jess: I think you’re right about the same mistakes. It’s not as if the US advisors didn’t talk about that to Israel, and as far as I can tell they basically told the US to fuck off on that particular front. “Thanks for your advice, but we’re gonna ignore it.”
Kent
Yes, and the violent religious settler types are a minority. They are even a minority within the settler population, the majority of whom are just ordinary commuters living in subdivisions just across the border and not religious settlers in far-flung remote settlements on hilltops in the Jordan River valley.
If a political settlement is to ever happen they will either have to (1) mend their ways, or (2) leave. The only reason they have outsize power now is because Netanyahu relies on them to build a political coalition. But politics change.
BellyCat
Agreeing on the toxicity of religious zealotry.
Eversor, where are you when we need you?!?! The bat signal has been lit again! (ducks…)
WaterGirl
@Eric S.: I think that finding a real solution requires good will on all sides, and an actual desire to reach a solution, and as far as I can tell, that doesn’t exist at the moment.
I do see more pushback against the Israel violence from our government than I have ever seen before. Would it be wrong to think that Bibi has to be gone from leadership before there can ever be a solution?
Kent
From the River to the Sea actually comes from the Old Testament Book of Numbers. The River and the Sea are the defined boundaries of Canaan that God supposedly gave to Moses and the Israelites https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2034&version=NIV
It is also the political policy of Netanyahu’s Likud party. They first used it as a Likud Party election slogan in the 1977 Israeli elections.
This really is one of those “both sides” issues.
cain
@Eric S.:
The problem like every problem has its roots in colonialism and anti-Semitism. Specifically we can once again look to the British. They took control of Palestine and then decided to signal that they would support Israel when talking to the Zionists in the late 1800s.
Europe was not willing to address anti-Semitism within itself so decided to send them all to Palestine. They should have given up their own land for the Jews. They have been living there for centuries.
cain
@BellyCat: Looking at that timeline.. posted above. Obama looks kind of weak and Bibi was undercutting him at every turn and Palestinians had expectations that probably were unrealistic but they probably would have been killed if PA agreed to a smaller deal. Then again I’m not sure I would have believed a moratorium on settlement from Bibi
WaterGirl
@Kent:
Who is ‘they’ in this paragraph?
Old Man Shadow
The world’s current solution is to let Israel do whatever it wants in Gaza and the West Bank with zero consequences. The current government of Israel seems to have decided that what it wants to do is a slow ethnic cleansing of the regions by economic strangulation, ultra-orthodox settler violence and theft of land, and the occasional complete and utter destruction of air and artillery attacks.
The response of Hamas is terrorism and the deaths of innocent Jews.
Half of the political establishment of the United States is captured by religious zealots who hate Muslims (and hate most American Jews) but think that God gave Jews that piece of land and any attempt to compromise or broker a two-state solution is going to engender God’s curse on us. And that’s before you even get to their End of the World bullshit. Not to mention, a lot of the other political party seems paranoid of their accusations of anti-Semitism for even suggesting that Palestinians are human beings.
It’s all a giant clusterfuck of irrationality, dehumanization, generational feuds, and reciprocal anger and claims for justice.
But right now the Israeli government is the side that is currently terrorizing innocent people and killing kids. That needs to stop.
But I have no fucking idea what could be done and I have no fucking idea how to untangle the Gordian knot of Israel and Palestine.
UncleEbeneezer
I also don’t generally wade into this topic because I don’t agree with any country having an official religion/ethnicity that grants different rights to people based on those. It’s a recipe for discrimination based on religious beliefs and I just can’t support that anywhere (I have the same criticism for Saudia Arabia and other Islamist states).
cain
Apparently the zealots don’t pay taxes or participate in the IDF. They also have large families.
WaterGirl
@cain:
Who is ‘they’ in that sentence?
Eric S.
@WaterGirl: I don’t understand Israeli politics in any depth. With that qualification I can’t see a way forward with Bibi having any influence. When he’s gone will there be another who steps into his place and continues the same policies with same effectiveness and zeal? I don’t know the answer to that.
50% + 1 generally gets you a government majority (the US electoral college, Senate, etc. being an obvious exception) but 50% + 1 doesn’t change a society.
Both sides need a large, popular mandate to want an equitable solution for themselves and the other side to solve this. I could be wrong but I’ve never thought that to have existed.
noncarborundum
@WaterGirl:
The “violent religious settler types”, no?
JaySinWA
Well it is hard to see Bibi have a “Nixon goes to China” moment or even a VIetnam withdrawal, so probably not wrong. He’s too personally invested in the conflict. But it might take another hard liner taking over and changing course to make it seem posible.
cain
@Old Man Shadow:
Don’t worry climate change will change the dynamics. But I also fear that Israel will leverage it to kill the Palestinians.
I do not trust the Govt of Israel under Netanyahu.
suzanne
@Kent:
It means something different to everyone who says it, and that’s the problem.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I’d be perfectly fine with Hamas and Likud dusting each other. Problems are that there are innocents in the way and Likud is armed with weapons we gifted them.
Freemark
@Jess: THIS. I am saddened how easily Israel has taken the role of oppressor so willingly. People talk about both sides but right now pretty much all of the power resides with Israel. I believe what Hamas did was heinous but my support for Israeli actions are tempered by the fact there essentially no difference from that than what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians over decades.
Israel stole Palestinian land to build their wall, they created the Iron Dome and their extensive air defense network to nearly eliminate effects of rocket attacks. They of course have maintained the strongest military in the Middle-East. These are all things that are reasonable, if not always ‘right’, considering their security situation. But instead of using this increased security to decrease their oppression of Palestinians they used it to increase it ‘knowing’ Palestinian retaliation would be even less effective than before. The only reason the Hamas attack was as effective as it was is because the IDF had moved troops into the West Bank from southern Israel to help settlers expand and remove Palestinians from their homes.
I certainly don’t expect Israel to stop their massive attack on Gaza even though it will, in the end, hurt Israel and Palestinian civilians far more than Hamas.
If at the end of this attack on Gaza if Israel removes all settlements and gives Palestinians more freedom to control their lives there would be a chance at peace. That would involve making a deal with the PLA to take over Gaza instead of supporting Hamas as Israel did before. At this point, to even have a small chance at peace, Israel has to do nearly all the lifting because nearly all power is in their hands.
cain
@WaterGirl: Abbas and company. The folks in the Palestinian Authority. They also have a reputation of being very corrupt.
wjca
I’m not so sure. Netanyahu has only been a major political player for 30 odd years. But the settlements (the ones deep in the West Bank, not those along the edge of Israel), and the settlers have been a problem far longer. And previous Israeli governments have also been leery of taking them on.
As you say, politics can change. But just getting rid of Netanyahu, while a necessary condition, will be far from sufficient.
WaterGirl
@Eric S.:
I imagine that would be agreeable to Palestinians, but sadly the groups with the power – Bibi / the government, Hamas, etc – don’t seem to view the Palestinians as people. They are just pawns in the power game.
WaterGirl
@noncarborundum: That’s what I am asking Kent, because it wasn’t entirely clear. I could guess, and that would be my guess, but this is not a subject where it makes sense to make assumptions.
Warblewarble
There has never been any effective US. pushback against Israeli expanionism. And I’m not holding my breath.
WaterGirl
@cain: I strongly suspect that the Biden administration doesn’t trust the Govt of Israel under Bibi.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I think Netanyahu has to be gone several years before a Two-State solution is even possible. People’s attitudes will have to evolve and that takes time. The normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states will survive this was, I think, and that might help lead to a two state solution by the end of this decade.
But in the short term, I think Netanyahu has to be dumped as PM and his coalition partners Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and their party of Kahanists must be removed from the government before they make matters worse. That can happen without new elections, and it might before too long.
Carlo Graziani
Really, the only way forward on the 2-state solution is for the US to take over security in the occupied territories, supervise the expulsion/relocation of Jewish settlers and the accession to political/economic control by the Palestinians, provide training and gear to Palestinian security forces, and stand by to calmly withstand the violently furious reaction of extremists on both sides.
An International peacekeeping force is not going to cut it here, any more than it did in Bosnia. Quite aside from the fact that Israel would never trust a UN-commanded and constituted force to protect it from inevitable attempts to attack from the territories, such a force would never have either the authority or the will or the military capability to carry out its necessary duties. It’s a non-starter of an idea. In the end, the US remains the only coceivable guarantor of peace in the region, much as that fact may be disliked around the Global South and in China (Russia prefers chaos).
The main problem (other than getting rid of Bibi and his coalition partners) is whether US politics would permit such a thing to happen. Which is surely doubtful. But perhaps a post-2024 Biden team might make something like that happen.
Eric S.
@cain: All true. In a broader sense The West drawing the borders of the Middle East has resulted in dozens (hundreds?) of conflicts. The area of Israel / Palestine has been conquered and ruled by many civilizations going back to at least he Iron Age. IIRC, it was the Roman Empire that first applied the Palestine name to the area after a series of revolts by Jewish people living in there. I point it out because this is just more of the complexity to this problem that Obama discussed.
Kent
That is a bankrupt argument.
Saying Jews should have stayed in Europe in the 1940s is absolutely no different from saying that Muslims today should stay in the Middle East and North Africa today instead of invading Europe and North America with waves of Muslim “settlers”.
Which is the same anti-immigrant argument that ultra-right fascist parties are making across Europe today.
JoyceH
Isn’t Netanyahu under indictment? Fraud or corruption or something? And wasn’t that why he tried that legislative plan to neuter the judiciary a while back, that plan that had thousands and thousands of Israelis out in the streets protesting? Whatever happened to the indictment? Could that come into play, or is it just some weird little historic curio like the Paxton indictment?
Nelle
A friend, active politically, is getting freaked out at how many of her friends are saying that, because Biden said he supports Israel, they refuse to vote for him. How many times does someone sit on their hands waiting for the perfect? The Palestineans definitely won’t get a better response from a Republican, be it Trump or someone else. I am so tired of spoiled, “I want what I want right now!” voters. I better get out in the neighborhood and beg my neighbors to vote on Tuesday. Really. People died for the right to vote and I have to beg people (cheerfully!) to stop in at the polling place for a short ballot.
It does feel like there is some vast movement, probably uncoordinated, of many parts of the world moving in the direction of clipping Western wings. Some are motivated by competitive power (Putin, China), some in dismay at the immense environmental damage by consumptive capitalism. It’s sort of as if a lot of the world seea this train going that might mean a diminishment of US power and people are curious. If they get on this train, maybe there will be some goodies for them, instead of the US hogging all the goodies. It sure feels that what my generation is accustomed to – the US ascendent in power – may be about to change.
One thing that could change would be the myopic gaze of the US. I liked that Obama had lived outside of the States and grown up on an island. He was able to stand outside the normative viewpoint and see from outside. I’m incredibly grateful that I had years with an ocean between me and the States. And even living in Alaska (Fairbanks and Kaktovik) had an outsider sense to it. It was invaluable to me.
BellyCat
To believe the Hatfields and the McCoys can or will resolve (thousands of) years of grievances is naive. Mandatory, binding arbitration is clearly required by a third party. Problem is, nobody wants to (or can) be that third party, let alone the enforcer of decisions mandated.
WaterGirl
@cain: Thank you for clarifying.
Another Scott
Nothing changes, until it does.
I’m rather pessimistic about anything changing quickly, but Hamas got Israel’s attention (though horrific violence) and created an opening for a different path.
The obvious solution is for Israel to return to the 1967 borders, for Jerusalem to be some-sort of “international city”, and for there to be regional boards to decide things like Jordan and Golan water rights and similar resource issues. Open borders for trade and travel so that there can be economic development across the region and people can see and gain a better future. And democratic political rights for people whatever side of whatever border they are on – democracy has to come before religion.
None of that is going happen quickly, but that’s the path forward, I think. (Yes, I know that many oppose many/most/all of those points.)
As long as political leaders cannot, or will not, talk about the need to change the path, there will be no sensible change. As long as radicals and reactionaries talk about killing political enemies rather than trying to move forward together, politicians aren’t going to stick their necks out.
It’s a really tough problem. But it’s a solvable one.
The real question is, how many thousands are going to die before we/they get on a sensible political path.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: I don’t think Netanyahu will be Prime minister very far into 2024, if he makes it that long. But he is only psrt of the problem.
cain
@Freemark:
The PLA are looked upon with disgust and contempt by Palestinians. I don’t think the people of Gaza are going to accept them.
There needs to be more parties and proper choice. There needs to be proper recognition by the UN and the world.
And the U.S. needs to fucking stop supporting Israel in the UN security council. They get away with this shit because we keep blocking any kind of punishment.
Eric S.
@Freemark:
There’s a lot of truth in this statement.
Kent
@WaterGirl: Yes, the violent religious extremist settler movement. Which is actually a small minority of people living in West Bank settlements. The majority are actually just ordinary suburban commuter subdivisions on the edge of Jerusalem where lots of people have moved simply because it is cheaper than buying or renting houses in Israel proper.
cain
@WaterGirl: looking at all those protests world wide and in DC. I hope this doesn’t create voting issues. My wife is not happy with Biden.
Kent
Not true. Israel gave up its occupation and settlement of the Sinai under US pressure during the Camp David accords.
WaterGirl
@Kent:
I don’t see those settlers as innocents just trying to save money on housing. Add this, and we’re in agreement.
And totally disregarding the rights of the people whose land they are taking for their cheaper housing
edit: thanks for clarifying you use of “they”.
WaterGirl
@cain: Surely your wife can see that even if she is unhappy with Biden, a Republican president would mean the end of this country as we know it.
taumaturgo
@BellyCat: Yes indeed. There is also a greater force at play that is seldom mentioned as a main caused in this conflict, perhaps because it comes from the Israeli side, and that is Zionism.
cain
@Kent:
That is not what I am saying .. I am saying that European countries should have created a homeland for the Jews in Europe not take someone else’s land. That’s very different than saying the Jews should just stay in Europe. If you are going to create a homeland for Jews it should have been in Europe.
I picked up on this argument from Israeli writer fyi and it made sense. But here we are.
Kent
@WaterGirl: Oh, I agree.
My point is that only a small percentage of Israeli Jews living in the West Bank are actually the violent religious extremists that make the news and engage in tit for tat violence against Palestinians.
The majority are more ordinary secular types living in suburbs around Jerusalem.
So if we are going to count the total number of extremist settlers who would have to be displaced under a 2-state solution, the number is far smaller than the total settler population. Most of whom would probably pack up and willingly leave if given reasonable compensation and relocation.
In other words, the “settler problem” is probably not as big as it is made out to be.
cain
@Nelle: I can sympathize. We are supporting one nation killing off a minority. There is moral clarity there.
Geminid
@JoyceH: Netanyahu went on trial for three counts of corruption in April of 2021. The trial was soon interrupted by the May, 2021 Gaza war. It has since proceeded at a snail’s pace with more interruptions including for the formation of two governments. Assuming Netanyahu cannot sabotage the case through his judicial “reform,” the three judges might deliver a verdict this summer. Then the appeals will begin.
But like I said above, I doubt if Netanyahu will be Prime Minister very much longer. He’s already been forced into a War Cabinet arrangement by which he shares power over major war decisions with current Defense Minister Gallant (the guy the PM tried to fire last Spring) and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz. This is part of the agreement Gantz and Netanyahu signed in order to bring Gantz and his party into a “unity” government; the agreement was ratified by the Knesset and has the force of law.
taumaturgo
@cain: All the alarms should be ringing in the Democrats halls of power.
The poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College determined that Biden’s support base is fracturing as voters are dissatisfied with his immigration, national security, and economic policies. The Times poll found African-American voters are expressing an unusually high 22 percent support for Trump, and Biden is also hemorrhaging support from younger voters, Hispanics, and urban voters.
As 67 percent of registered voters say that the country is moving in the wrong direction, Biden’s troubles come into clear view with how badly he’s faring in the swing states. Trump, according to the poll, is beating Biden 49 to 43 in Georgia, 49 to 44 in Arizona, 48 to 43 in Michigan, and 48 to 44 in Pennsylvania and even holds a stunning double-digit lead in Nevada, 52-41. Biden currently has the lead in Wisconsin, but just barely — with 47 percent to Trump’s 45.
Pittsburgh Mike
There will be no long term solution to this war without a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Today, there is no trust between the groups: Israelis look at the popularity of the attacks of 10/7 and think they can never make peace with the Palestinians, and Palestinians look at the abuses in the West Bank, where settlers steal Palestinian lands over and over again, while Israel restricts day to day life in the occupied territories and feel hopeless as well.
The idea behind Oslo was that it was to be the start of trust building between the two sides. But Israel never stopped building settlements and the Palestinians never stopped suicide bombings, and indeed accelerated them starting in 2000, which put Ariel Sharon in power in early 2001, effectively ending the peace process.
Israelis and Palestinians have wasted three decades, but I can imagine a progression where Israel grants increasing power to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. If that power sharing goes well, you could have a federal nation of Israel consisting of two states, with Palestine and today’s Israel coexisting as parts of a federal system, with rights of return to each respective state, and with both Israelis and Palestinians being citizens of the Federal state. The settlers would eventually be citizens of the state of Palestine within Israel.
There’s at least a path without major discontinuities between here and there. It wouldn’t be a true two state solution — Israel might never be comfortable with a completely independent Palestine on its borders. It’s not apartheid and it tries to provide some territories for each group where their voters control their respective lives.
It’s not going to happen without a new generation of leaders however.
Brachiator
Have any of you seen the video clips of Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff discussing the Middle East situation with idiot UK TV personality Piers Morgan?
Youseff uses some dark comedy as well as eloquence to try to shed new light on what is happening. Piers tried the standard UK journalist trick of trying to get an answer to the wrong question, but does try to listen.
The first interview is about half an hour, and is mainly about Gaza.
Piers later went to the US for a longer interview with Youseff.
Here is a short clip, with Youseff responding to a question about what the Palestinians should do.
Note that I do not agree with Youseff on many key issues. But my views on the region don’t mean squat. But I have seen that Palestinian and Muslim viewpoints are not always fairly presented, or presented only in the context of Western conventional wisdom.
WaterGirl
@taumaturgo: If you are going to lay a lot of the blame at the feet of ZIonism, can you at least explain exactly what you mean by Zionism? Can you please define that?
cain
@WaterGirl: she will vote Democratic but she reads a lot of Palestinian points of view. I do as well, and also Jewish writers.
But it is likely that Bidens popularity is going to plummet with some groups of people. You can bet that Muslim voters might be on the fence and that might spell trouble in places like Dearborn, MI.
Kent
No, European states should NOT have created some independent political homeland for Jews. They should have accommodated Jews as full citizens in the multi-ethnic states that emerged with the collapse of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, yes, most certainly. And in every other part of Europe that had Jewish settlement. But some “ghetto” state where European Jews would have been encouraged to migrate to? Nope.
Likewise, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Jewish migration and settlement in Palestine under the British Mandate and before that during the Ottoman Empire.
People and populations migrate. That has been the case since the dawn of time. We are a nation of migrants here in the US. I fail to see why Jewish migration is any different from Arab and Muslim migration which is currently happening in the millions.
And BUYING land, which is what Jewish settlers were doing prior to 1948 was not “taking someone else’s land”. After 1948 the reality of war created different circumstances.
People need to learn to live together. There is no other solution.
zzyzx
@cain: in theory I see the argument, but the net result of that would most likely just increase European antisemitism based on wherever the state was put.
I don’t think there was an easy solution.
Alison Rose
@Kent:
What was the original name of this land?
BellyCat
The rest of world is likely less confident of this than it once was given the internal governmental instability on full display for at least the last seven years. Sure, Biden’s team could embark on such following a 2024 win, but four years ain’t gonna be enough. The US peacekeeping presence there would need to be for decades and Biden knows this will not be durable.
zzyzx
And if you’re a Jew in 1948 who has seen how quickly Jews could go from full citizens to being kicked out of the country, how much do you trust that promise?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@taumaturgo: Polls are meaningless at this stage. I saw the headline this morning and all it did was motivate me to:
1. Change from a non-subscriber of the Times to a non-reader under any circumstances
2. Get my act together with my own writing
3. Find a broad and broadly reliable news sourc
ETA: I recently found a deeply personal reason to push back on the attacks on Biden’s age. When I see Biden at 80ish finally reaching the Presidency and doing such a damn good job, I find that incredibly aspirational as a 40 year old with bothing to show for himself.
Martin
Fixed that for you.
jonas
The whole settlement policy of the last several far-right Israeli governments has been to create facts on the ground that make that impossible without Israelis killing hundreds, if not thousands, of other Israelis and that’s not going to happen. The settlements need to be cut off, though — from protection, infrastructure, welfare payments for their so-called yeshivas, the whole works. If they want to seize Palestinian land and call it their birthright, they can defend it on their own.
wjca
Hard to argue with the “wrong direction” view. See the dysfunctional House, various gerrymanders, extreme antiabortion laws, etc. Definitely wrong direction. Which, be it noted, is NOT a reason to oppise Biden. But that nuance is, apparently, beyond the ken of political commentators.
trollhattan
File this whole mess under “Shit I don’t discuss at the office.”
Until proven wrong I can only conclude Israeli conservatives have gained permanent control following the Rabin assassination. That that bastard Bibi keeps assuming office despite his criming and horrid governance tells me their system of government is broken. Legal problems? Defang the judiciary.
Hamas alligator tears over thousands of dead civilians is no better. They wanted to stir things up and that’s what they have, except it’s utterly past any control they might exercise. Despite Bibi’s stated intentions, I do not see how they can be removed from control of Gaza.
sab
@cain: The Republican Party is being quite outspokenly pro-Netanyahu lately, so I doubt many Arab-Americans that aren’t already Republican will see them as an alternative.
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
It’s hard not to conflate the settlers with Israelis (not Jews) generally, when Israel has failed to rein them in for generations now.
Kent
If I was a Jew in 1948 I don’t know what I would have done. Try to migrate to the US or Palestine, or stay in Europe? I honestly don’t know.
But that is a different argument from saying that European states should have carved out a Jewish homeland in the center of Europe during the 19th Century where Jews could establish their own autonomous nation. That wouldn’t have accomplished anything either. And such a nation would have simply been road kill in the next continental war. Do you think, for example, the Nazis would have respected the international boundaries of some hypothetical Jewish state sitting on the border between Poland and Belarus? Of course not.
I have no problem at all with Jews creating a multi-ethnic state democratic state in Palestine as they have done so. The problem is Israeli expansion beyond the 1968 boundaries without providing full citizenship and rights to the populations in the places where Israel has expanded. Therein lies the problem.
Freemark
@Alison Rose:
Canaan
Brachiator
@taumaturgo:
I flat out don’t believe this number. Especially when it purports to reflect all African American voters.
I can see issues with Hispanic voters, who are not a monolith, but again I wonder about the supposed problems with other groups.
I wonder what these voters expect Biden to do? And what specifically do they oppose?
It is interesting here that the GOP refusal to offer any policy at all seems to be working for them.
Note that while I dispute much of the reporting here, I am not suggesting that the Democrats do nothing. I presume that their pollsters and strategists are looking at the data.
YY_Sima Qian
One thing Obama could have done while in office was to threaten military aid to Israel in coerce the latter to rein the settlement activity & stop interfering w/ US domestic politics (as previous administrations up to Reagan had done). The same applies to the Biden Administration. The US does not lack leverage.
It would have been a political loser, but if you are going to be followed by Trump anyway…
Geminid
@Kent: The Oslo Accords designated the suburbs near Jerusalem as part of “Area A” that Israel was to retain. There was a notional plan to swap an area of Israel adjacent to the northern West Bank with a fairly dense Arab population for Area A. That might not work though: a few years ago, when there were rumors that this transfer might be imminent, some of the Israeli Arabs in question demonstrated against it.
Area C is the area where the rampaging settler groups are. The diversion of IDF forces from southern Israel to protect settlements in the West Bank outraged many Israelis. Former MK Einat Wilf expressed her feelings about it on October 7:
As a young woman, Ms. Wilf served on Prime Minister Rabin’s team that negotiated the Oslo Accords. She has since written extensively about a two-state resolution and the roadblocks to one, including in her book The War of Return.
Einat Wilf’s Twitter account gives some insight into the current Israeli politics as well as attitudes about this war.
sab
@BellyCat: It isn’t thousands of years of grievances. They had been pretty much getting along in the Levant right up until the twentieth century.
jonas
By the 19th century, most European states *did* grant Jews citizenship. And a lot of them at the time believed that was essentially it — they had arrived. What Jews learned beginning with the Dreyfus Affair, and then with more clarity between 1933 and 1945, is that it didn’t matter.
Alison Rose
@Freemark: The area we are discussing was called Judea before the Romans enslaved and murdered us and banished us from the land before renaming it Syria-Palaestina.
taumaturgo
@WaterGirl: Long story short: It could be broadly defined as the political arm of the colonization and expulsion of the residents’ territory of Palestine. Most of the original Israeli settlers adhered to the Zionist movement, which became the first group to use terrorist tactics in the area.
wjca
I’m trying, with total lack of success, to envision a place in Europe where such a piece of land would be found. Especially one where the current residents would willingly move away to make room. Did you have some place specific in mind?
topclimber
How about a three-state solution: one for Israelis, one of Palestinians, and a UN protectorate for places both populations are mixed? If one- and two-state systems are doomed, why not give it a try?
jonas
The couple of people interviewed in the article were basically like “Sure Trump was kind of out there, but Biden’s old. Plus my groceries still cost too much.”
I don’t know what to do about the ignorance/amnesia of the average voter these days. It’s absolutely horrifying.
cain
@Kent:
Jewish migration is fine – going to Palestine, getting a visa or citizenship – all good. But that’s not what happened. Bunch of countries came in and took the land and gave it to the Jews and then said ‘migrate’. You removed the autonomy of an entire group of people living in that land.
People can go wherever they want at the behest of the people who live in the area you are moving to – it’s only polite.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: Threatening to remove military aid to Israel is a toothless threat. It would cause too much dissention at home and damage whatever party in the US that proposed it.
Plus, everyone knows that as soon as Israel was under attack again, the Military Airlift Command (or whatever it is called now) would be running every available plane to Tel Aviv filled to the brim with every possible weapons system.
The only way to affect the Israeli government (like with the Chinese government) is to talk to them directly in quiet rooms. Once there’s screaming in the press, the US loses any leverage. Public threats don’t work.
The US is going to be sending $4B (or whatever the number is) to Israel until the end of time. I’m comforted by the fact that, thanks to inflation, $4B pays for maybe 2-3 new casino-scale developments these days…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Kent:
The Palestinian notion of the Nakba disputes that land was mainly purchased.
Again, a Bassem Youseff clip touches on this.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: The last time the US tried to take lead in enforcing peace in the region was Lebanon. After the Marine barracks was bombed, the US left. I highly doubt the US body politic can sustain the effort in face of the daily hemorrhaging from attacks by fundamentalists on both sides.
Also, the credibility issue of a US peacekeeping presence in Palestine is not primarily w/ China or the rest of the Global South, but w/ the Arab populations, which will then constrain the Arab government. The US has not been a neutral party in the Israel-Palestine conflict, it has not been a neutral party in the Israeli settlement expansion, or the Israeli militarist hegemony.
Miss Bianca
@taumaturgo: Any poll this far out is bullshit, and any poll by the NYT is going to be bullshit just on general principle.
sab
@cain: A lot of Israelis are not Ashkenazi. They are descended from people from north Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Turkey, India, etc.
J
@wjca:
An enormous lift (though well worth it) is right. Success would require, on the Israeli side, a government that not only wished the settlements weren’t there (not that we have even that now), but took active and extremely difficult steps (‘against their own people’) to eradicate them. On the Palestinian side, it would require a government that not only wished violent attacks against Israelis would cease, but took active and extremely difficult (and effective) steps to eradicate them (‘against their own people’). Since comparisons to Algeria are all the rage, it’s worth remembering the OAS and the attempts on De Gaulle’s life. In fact, one doesn’t have to look that far afield. Think of Rabin.
cain
@wjca:
I don’t know. That would be something nations would negotiate and redraw. Of course, today nobody is going to give up land for anyone. Regardless, it was Europe’s problem to solve for a group of people who have been living there for generations.
But if you want to go down that exercise – Germany lost. Compensation for the holocaust could have come out of Germany’s land. There would have been a certain amount of justice to it wouldn’t it? We’d probably be discussing the same problems with a different set of actors.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: It was “Canaan” when the Hebrews showed up. I think the Phoenicians might have called it something else, and the Egyptions probably had a name for it a few thousand years before that.
But the descendants of the Hebrews lived there continuously since then, even after the Roman conquest. The survived in communities near the sea of Kinneret (Galilee), that the Romans neglected to capture. I saw one estimate that in 1880 there were 40,000 Jews living in that area under Ottoman rule.
cain
@sab:
I was referring to the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the driving force to create Israel, or am I wrong?
Yes, Israelis are not Ashkenazi but may different Jews from different parts of the world – Israel is a homeland for all Jews so not surprising.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Sometimes Biden falls short or even does something I actively dislike.
When such a thing occurs, I ask myself “would anyone else who might reasonably get the job right now do better?”
The answers, depending on issue, range from “no, obviously not” to “no, they’re gonna end human civilization.”
Point is that generalized dissatisfaction with the current state of things doesn’t tell us anything about what would otherwise satisfy people.
Warblewarble
Thanks again Watergirl for this thread which has mainly been constructive and on track, different voices must be heard.
sab
@Alison Rose: Wasn’t Abraham originally from what is now Iraq?
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Most of us survived Trump’s first administration–about half of the million dead from the pandemic died after he left office, after all!
And most Americans now remember the period before COVID killed a million Americans as pretty good, unless they care about undocumented immigrants or something. Cheap gasoline. The economy was doing pretty well (and Republicans were allowed to acknowledge it because Trump was President). And most of them don’t blame Trump for the pandemic at this point–they see it as a thing that came from outside and was impossible to control; some even believe conspiracy theories about the Chinese or Fauci somehow deliberately causing it.
So you’re probably not even inclined to think of Trump’s Presidency as bad unless you were inclined to think that way in the first place. I think the possibility that a return of Trump could mean the literal end of constitutional government in the US, especially given the decimation of the civil service that Stephen Miller seems to be planning for his second administration, is important to stress, but since he didn’t manage to kill it entirely last time, people may be inclined to discount that.
Geminid
@BellyCat: I don’t think it would be fair to send American soldiers into Galilee after Israel pulverized it with ordinance the US shipped them. It would have to be Arab troops, maybe led by the United Arab Emirates.
The US put a battalion-size force into the Sinai Peninsula after the Camp David Accords in 1978, and they were there for a couple decades (I think). But that was a different proposition than having US troops patrol a place densely populated with people with a grudge against the US.
zzyzx
@cain: I don’t see how that state survives or how anyone would want to relocate there.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: US Administrations from Eisenhower to Reagan had at various times strong armed Israel to compel certain behavioral changes, & quite publicly in so doing. The US could also stop shielding Israel at the UN, despite all of the resolution that Israel has failed to comply w/.
What you describe is a relatively recent phenomenon (w/in the past 2+ decades), & a self-imposed constraint on the part of the US – Rs going all in wrt alignment w/ Likud, & Ds paralyzed by fear of being demagogued.
Affecting change w/ China requires a deft combination of public admonition (but not transparent grandstanding) & private negotiation (can be no holds barred), but the U.S. does not enjoy the kind of leverage over China that it has over Israel.
wjca
To be realistic means first coming up with a peacekeeping/security force that both sides will see as neutral, and that has the clout to enforce peace. Which, in today’s world, means China (or, maybe, India). There’s simply nobody else.
The challenge, probably an insurmountable one, would be persuading China to take on the task. Because, why would they care?
taumaturgo
@Another Scott: History tells us that on June 5, 1967, Israel carried a preemptive strike on Egypt known as operation Moked. Israel was the aggressor, as it continues to be today.
Brachiator
@wjca:
RE: Really, the only way forward on the 2-state solution is for the US to take over security in the occupied territories, supervise the expulsion/relocation of Jewish settlers and the accession to political/economic control by the Palestinians.
This is sheer fantasy land. No one in the region would believe that the US was a neutral party.
More fantasy. I doubt that China would be interested in the role of peace keeper. The current Indian government is noxiously nationalist and is stupidly anti-Muslim. How are you not aware of this?
taumaturgo
@Miss Bianca: Partly true, but we must keep in mind that this is a current snapshot of voters sentiment on Biden, Trump, the economy and other factors that could influence the elections. It used to be that a year was an eternity in politics, however social media has shrunk that span of time.
YY_Sima Qian
@wjca: Sustainable peace can’t be entirely imposed from the outside, the vast majority of Israelis & Palestinians have to want it themselves, & want it above all else. World powers & international organizations can compel the behavioral changes that help set the conditions that make lasting peace possible, or at least reverse conditions that make it impossible. However, Israelis & Palestinians will have to take the primary responsibility of reining in their respective extremist elements even after a deal is reached. No outside power (not the US, not the EU, not China, not India, not the Sunni Arab states, not Türkiye) is interested in suffering the daily hemorrhaging to extremist terrorism, if the populations & the states do not want to end the extremist violence.
cain
@Kent:
The problem with this argument is that – settlers have the backing of the IDF and so they get to do bullying tactics to kick Palestinians out and they have the IDF there to protect them.
Minority or not they have the full backing of the Israeli govt. The reason Israel got attacked at all is that they moved IDF personnel to the West Bank so that these people can go and harass Palestinians, go to their sacred places, and generally act like assholes because they can.
These minorities also have a lot of political power as well.
cain
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
There was no good options – but right now, Israel govt’s actions are untenable. It doesn’t matter what it was before – what matters is how we handle it now.
Geminid
@Geminid: Sorry, that should have read “…send American troops to Gaza,” not Galilee.
cain
@zzyzx: well, no point speculating about it as that is not the reality of today. I don’t know what would have happened. For all we know, making Germany give up land might have caused WW3 given past actions like the Treaty of Versailles that created conditions for the rise of the Nazi Party.
Kent
No, not China or India.
I expect a multinational NATO force would be the only one equipped to pull it off. And that has the military force nearby to make things stick.
There is no force that everyone involved will see as neutral. The best that we can come up with is a force that has a big enough stick and capability to actually enforce peace.
Marc
I was a 7th grade student at a very liberal suburban public middle school in the northeast. The school was so liberal that they’d periodically suspend classes for Vietnam war teach-ins which included more than one in-person visit by Howard Zinn.
Then, the Six-Day War broke out at the end of the school year. 90% of the students at the school were Jewish, and I was one of two black students. War suddenly became a good thing to my great confusion. One day before history class, I erased a particularly virulent “Bomb the Arabs”-style slogan that someone had written on the chalk board, and replaced it with “PALESTINIANS ARE PEOPLE TOO!” which resulted in much shouting by other students sitting there. Then the teacher walked in and things got very quiet, He took a look at the board and myself with chalk still in my hand, excused himself, and came back a few minutes later with the Vice Principal. I was escorted to the office, they managed to reach my mother (who was a math teacher at one of the other middle schools) and told her they were sending me home “for my own protection”. My parents later related that there was a lot of discussion about what to do about me, including calls from various groups of concerned parents wanting to know what the school was going to do about that anti-semitic black (that was not exactly the word they used) kid. In the end, they didn’t do much, I was back at school a couple of days later.
After this (and a few prior incidents), I went from being happy, outgoing, and one of the top students in my classes, through a period of trying to bully other kids, then pretty much withdrawing from school and social activities altogether in 8th grade. I’m still a bit of a recluse, 56 years later. And, I still mostly avoid discussing the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
wjca
Naturally I am aware of this. But while the current Indian government is noxious, Modi hasn’t managed to lock down power for the BJP forever. Yet.
As for China, I agreed that there was no realistic chance of it happening. My point was that nobode else was both neutral enough and powerful enough to make it even maybe work.
Geminid
@wjca: The United Arab Emirates could lead a peacekeeping mission in Gaza, in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority. I think any peacekeeping forces would have to be from Arab countries or at least Muslim countries like Turkey.
But Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, says the Oslo Accords mechanisms must be revived before the PA would act in Gaza. In any event, the IDF will do its best to destroy Hamas before they let any kind of peacekeeping force into Gaza.
Kent
You will not that I was referencing pre-1948 Jewish settlement. Jewish settlers under the mandate bought the land that they settled on. There were funds raised for that exact purpose.
Once Arab nations declared war on Israel circumstances obviously changed and displacement actually occurred. Palestinians from Israel proper and Jews from their millennia-old homes across the middle east from Tunisia to Iran. War does that. But it was not a war started by Israel.
Geminid
@taumaturgo: In Mzy of 1967 Egypt moved its army into Sinai, blockaded Eilat, kicked out the UN units monitoring the border, and claimed it would destroy Israel. The US restrained Israel and the USSR restrained Egypt, but no one was willing to stop the war. Israel made a preemptive strike, but they were only beating Egypt and Syria to the punch.
I read in David Oren’s book Six Days of War that the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave President Johnson an estimate that if Israel attacked first it would win a war in one week, and that if it waited to be attacked Israel would win in two weeks. The Egyptians knew that blockading Eilat was an act of war, and when its army chief ordered the UN observers out it was obvious what was intended.
wjca
Does the UAE have the fire power to make that work? Just hiring it done (i.e. mercenaries), which is how most actual work get done there, won’t cut it. And I’m guessing that there aren’t enough trained soldiers/police in the UAE who are Arabs to do the job. (I discount participation the PA, as they haven’t got significant credibility with either the Gazans or the Israelis to be useful.)
If you want an actual Arab military (and we’re talking infantry, not just fighter pilots), your only shot is probably Jordan. Any other Muslim country is a) not Arab, b) already busy fighting elsewhere, or c) both of the above.
wjca
If memory serves, when the 6 Day War ended, the estimate was that the Israelis were 1 day from Damascus, 2 days from Cairo, and 3-5 days from Amman. (The Jordanians having much the best army of the three.)
Geminid
@wjca: The UAE has a very professional army. They could augment a peacekeeping force with troops from other Arab countries.
No one could control Gaza if Hamas was still around, but they might not be. This all depends on the course of this war over the next 20 days. The Israelis are determined to end Hamas’s control of Gaza, and Hamas and their allies like Palestinian Jihad are determined to stop them. They have weapons and fighters to try, but they also hope the international outcry over the deaths and injuries among Gaza’s people will stop Israel. That was their strategic goal when they rampaged through Israeli communities on October 7.
cain
@Marc: thank you for.providing this perspective.
Geminid
@wjca: Jordan may have had the best army qualitatively but it was much smaller than Egypt’s or Syria’s. Cairo was out of reach but Israel probably could have been in Damascus in two days. Amman would have taken less than a day to reach.
But what would Israel have done with those capitals if they took them? Taking capitals no longer ends wars. The Israelis were already under heavy pressure from the US to end the war. They used the last two days of the war to take the rest of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
WaterGirl
@Marc: Your story left me in tears. Bastards!
Proud of you for “Palestinians are people, too!”
They could have used that as a teachable moment. I’m sure they meant well, but that was a terrible way to handle it. Also, someone should have been paying attention to the bright, happy, outgoing kid who stopped being those things.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Kent
@wjca: No Arab army would ever be viewed as a neutral peacekeeping force based on the past 75 year history of the region.
Kent
@Geminid: Taking a capital is one thing. Occupying a population of millions or tens of millions is an entirely different thing as the US found out in Iraq and Israel is finding out with Gaza.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Geminid
@Kent: What about the last three years? The United Arab Emirates now have diplomatic, economic and military relations with Israel. So do Morocco and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has been prepping its citizens for normalization. This war will not reverse that process. These countries would be happy to see Israel destroy Hamas.
Geminid
@Kent: That is the point I was making. Three hundred years ago, capturing a nation’s capitsl could end a war. It rarely has since 1812, when Napoleon captured Moscow and ended up leaving Russia with half his army destroyed.
A few months ago someone told me here that Israel could take Syria if it wanted to. They were basically critical of Israel. It thought this was an example of a phenomenon I have observed: Israel’s biggest fans and most ardent critics both exaggerate Israel’s military capabilities.
Geminid
@Geminid: Another thing I’ve noticed that people tend not to understand how big a country Syria is. Other countries as well; if in 2003 TV network news shows had shown a map of Iraq overlaid on one of the US people here would have had a better idea of what we were getting into. Iraq can look small on a map, but it isn’t.
Ruckus
@cain:
Where in Europe?
Whose land are they going to occupy? Or better yet where are they going to live?
One of the big problems is that we are at a point that the habitable world is getting to the full point. We are getting to that in the US and the rest of the world is getting there as well. And many religions still have the we have to have more children so that we have the strength to exist and prosper. This makes the situation worse. With global warming – as in the entire planet is getting hotter, with little to no end in sight – this is making the situation worse. And any politician will likely want a larger elector base, so they likely will be of little use or even a roadblock.
The problem is multiple based.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
I’d have to disagree with the notion that the U.S. is getting to the full point. Most of the U.S. population lives on a small fraction of our land, and the flip side of that is that we’ve got vast areas of the U.S. where there are hardly any people at all.
We could give Israel a chunk of northwestern North Dakota and northeastern Montana that hardly anyone lives in, that would dwarf Israel in land area. We could work out a deal for them to move their nation there, and they wouldn’t have to worry about Hamas or Hezbollah anymore.
SpaceUnit
@lowtechcyclist:
They’d just end up in a war with Canada.
BellyCat
@sab: True, it’s helpful that the Israelis and Palestinians don’t have thousands of years of grievances with each other, but thousands of years of legitimate Jewish grievances is undoubtedly a complicating and escalating factor.
cain
@Ruckus:
All valid. Nature will strive for balance and it will reach it. One way or a other. This planet has billions of years ahead of it. It has time.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t think the Israelis would take that deal. They are detetmined to stay where they are.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Obligatory pointer to Tufte’s discussion of Minard’s 1812 flow map.
422,000 troops left Poland for Moscow; 10,000 returned, according to this summary.
Cheers,
Scott.
zzyzx
@lowtechcyclist: I’d like the hear the pitch of, “Hey, please leave your historical homeland that is extremely important to you culturally and replace it with borderline uninhabitable territory.”
sab
@Geminid: Isn’t Iraq bigger than California
ETA Square miles not population.
sab
@BellyCat: Palestinians had nothing to do with those grievances, which were caused by Christian Europeans in Europe or crusading in the Levant.
emrys
@Geminid: mfo.org
BellyCat
@Marc: Amazing reflection with lots of courage shown for one so young.
BellyCat
@sab: True, but Israel’s extremely muscular military posture has always, rightly or wrongly, been justified as essential due to thousands of years of persecution by many diverse actors.
Martin
Nah. But land ownership is how much of the world accumulates wealth, and from the rent of it income.
Because of this, every inch of land carries economic value, even if there were only 5 people on the planet, and as such, there would be wars over it among those 5 people.
There’s plenty of land to go around if you remove that dynamic. I’m not saying it’s easy to remove it, just that doing so solves that. You do see in some economies where income is less tied to land ownership that people are less tied to specific plots of land.
We have plenty of capacity to feed everyone, we just refuse to do it. We have plenty of water for everyone, we just refuse to distribute it fairly.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I don’t think that this is true. It is even arguable that the world is running out of resources.
Even here in the Los Angeles area, there are some city planners who argue that we could solve the housing crisis by mandating greater levels of housing density instead of restricting the amount of apartments and other housing permitted in “desirable” areas.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Yup.
Google tells me there are 172 M acres of land in Texas. 1/4 acre lots (plus roads) gives 3 houses per acre, say on average 3 people per house, that’s 1.55 B people. In Texas. Throw in sensible density of high-rises and everyone living could fit there.
Of course, they’d have to live in Texas…
;-p
The world is big for sensible human living density. But it’s much, much too small if everyone wants to live like 1960s America where everything is cheap and everything is disposable.
Cheers,
Scott.
wjca
That is not my recollection. It made an impression because, while Amman was physically closest to the front line, it was seen as the one which would take longest to reach. And I explicitly recall being told that the reason was because the Jordanian army, while smaller in numbers than the others, was also better trained and equipped.
As for what the Israelis would have done, I would expect they would have taken down the various governments. Not necessarily by force of arms, but because a government which doesn’t have solid popular support to begin with is not going to survive starting a war and then losing the capital. The members of the government may individually survive. But a new government with new people would result. That new government might be no better, from Israel’s point of view. But it would be on notice of the consequences of starting another war.
wjca
Surprised you didn’t mention, from the same time, the British burning Washington. Also without winning the war.
Martin
@Brachiator: The United States has more land area dedicated to parking lots than to housing. The US builds more 3 car garages than 1 bedroom apartments.
In the case of Los Angeles county specifically, the land area dedicated to car parking is larger than the total land area of Manhattan, Paris, and Barcelona (about 5 million people).
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I have relatives in Texas. The last time I visited I was amazed to see how much vacant and undeveloped land there was even in the Dallas area, compared to the heart of Los Angeles. And yet a number of people talked about how much building was going on.
Geminid
@sab: I don’t know exactly. I know that the three northern provinces that the Kurdish Regional GGvernment controls are a big area. The Kurds have nore or less a state within a state, with its own army and 500 menber US military advisory mission.
One of the only good Middle East stories I’ve read lately came out of Iraqi Kurdestan. It was a festival celebrat the culture of the Dom people. Yhese are related to the Romany “Gypsys,” and hgere are 60,000 of them in the three provinces. Not many places in that region would be safe for an event celebrating a minority group because there is so much hatred, but this event went off safely.
But the areas the Kurdish regional government controls is still violent on the edges. Iran was bombing groups on the eastern edge earlier this year, and Turkiye is fighting PKK guerrillas in the mountains in the north. And there has been a lot of unrest in Kirkuk, a city just south of the three Kurdish provinces
And every miltia in Syria is fighting or getting ready to fight everyone else, including the 700 or so US troops in Northeast Syria. I read that the Russians and the Syrian government have multiplied their attacks on the 1 million people in Idlib provinces who the Syrian government has not brought under control. They are counting on people’s attention being on the war between Israel and Hamas.
Geminid
@wjca: They Israelis knew better than to go after those governments. They were really time constrained by US pressure. It was all they could do to win what they won. And they knew that no government they sponsored would last a week once they were gone.
They had fought guerillas attacking from Syria and Jordan enough to know how tough a guerrilla war would be occupying someone else’s land. They forgot though, and had to learn this all over when they invaded Lebanon in the 1980s, and occupied the part closest to the border for 6 years. That’s a war Israelis don’t like to talk about. It cost them 600 soldiers and they ended up worse than before.
Geminid
In other news of this conflict, William Burns, the CIA Director, was In Israel today, conferring with Israeli officials. President Biden elevated Burns to Cabinet status earlier this year, a sign of Biden’s trust and respect.
And Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is Ankara. He’ll meet with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who is President Erdogan’s right hand man when it comes to foreign policy. Turkiye just recalled its Ambassador to Israel for “consultations,” but Fidan may still play a role if and when a ceasefire is possible.
Bill Arnold
@Freemark:
From Relly Shitty Copper, about a Sumerian copper merchant “Ea-Nasir” who is the subject of (one of) the first recorded customer complaint, about the quality of his copper ingots. (Really funny thread, though it doesn’t mention the The debate between Silver and Copper (translation))
A comment about Abraham, a natural-born Sumerian citizen, from the city of Ur.
Y’all I have an absolutely insane theory
Anyway, the point is that history, even recorded history (those clay tablets), goes back a ways. And prior to that, there were migrations of a few species of genus Homo, though for reasons still in considerable academic dispute (including gestational biology), none of the species except Homo sapiens sapiens survived except as substantial remnants in the Homo Sapiens genome (and assuming no remnant sub-populations of other species).
Ruckus
OK, I’m back, and I see some disagreement with my take….
First I didn’t say it was going to be next week. Second, sure there is land that is not occupied and some of that for sure can be. But there is usually a reason that the land isn’t occupied to the level it could be. Jobs is one of those. A company that needs a number of employees and/or a product to sell may not want to move to say North Dakota for a number of reasons. And no I’m not picking on ND, It is a beautiful place but a good part of the year the weather is a tad chilly. It isn’t that there isn’t land there it is the weather and the cities and what they can provide. I live in a county that has a larger population than 40 states, or at least it did less than a year ago. It supports most of it’s citizens. How many states can say that? And actually mean it? But I’ve traveled to 46 of the states and lived in 3 different states and in both northern and southern CA. I’ve seen that not everyone wants to live in some of them. What would change that if there aren’t enough jobs, or rational reasons to live there? Sure if we keep going some are going to move to those states that either don’t have a lot of jobs or much of the year, somewhat reasonable sized cities that support things and people that might want to live there. Many countries are not a lot different in this concept. I’ll ask the people that live in say CA or NY, do you want to move or is the weather or the jobs there worth staying? How many countries in Europe are a whole lot different than CA or NY as places to live? I’ve traveled in many or most of them and they are very nice but what happens if the open country gets as crowded as SoCal or SF or NY or Boston or……..
At some point in the future, as we’ve seen over our (the old farts) lifetimes, areas will support a lot but there are limits and some will not support as many, if for no other reason it snows a good part of the year or there really isn’t a lot of jobs there. Sure there could be more if more moved or were born there and once again I didn’t give a time frame but many places have limits as places that a lot of people want to or are even willing to live. Will life change? Well it sure has in my lifetime, I’d imagine that it will change more and will continue to be more densely populated but there are limits. Remember the more land we take up with homes the less land there is to support food production.
Marc
That was not courage, I was smart enough to know exactly what the reaction would be. That was more about breaking away from a culture I could not be part of and friends I seemingly could no longer relate to. I no longer knew where I belonged. The truly sad part is that just saying “Palestinians are people” was every bit as controversial half a century ago as it is now.
Paul in KY
@kindness: I think if there ever was a legit ‘two state solution’ all those whackjob settlers would have to leave.
Paul in KY
@cain: I would have loved them to get Prussia. That would have been the biggest fuck you to militarist Germany. Of course, USSR had that territory post-WWII & wasn’t going to give it up.
Maybe then what part of the Saar Germany kept after the war?
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Glurgland. Named by Glurg the Smelly back in 27,381 BC (roughly).
Paul in KY
@Kent: Obviously the state would have been carved out post-WWII.
Paul in KY
@Freemark: Glurgland
Paul in KY
@wjca: Obviously, Prussia would have been the most ‘fuck you Germany’ place to give to the Jewish people. However, they would have been behind the Iron Curtain & Prussia was pretty messed up from the war.
Would have had to be a place in Germany. Maybe part of Bavaria? That also would have been a great ‘fuck you’ to German militarism.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Glurgland was the original name…
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: Texas is pretty dry (compared to KY, say). Don’t see how you’d have the water for 1.5 billion, unless massive desalinization was available.