'They' = Lebanon. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26385835.

Yes, I think people need to just accept that Israel is a part of the middle east and is not going anywhere. It's in everyone's best interest to become friendly with Israel, and that will help the neighboring countries prosper.

Is this a viewpoint special for Israel or does it also cover other countries with, let's say, complicated politics? Without comparing Russia, China, North Korea, Syria comes to mind.

I don't really see those as directly comparable. The problem most people have with the countries you listed is the specific regime in power. Depose the leaders, have a free election, and many of those complaints go away. The problem that many people in neighboring countries have traditionally had with Israel is its existence. You can't change the Israeli government in a way to satisfy those demands. It is more than just "complicated politics" for them.

You certainly could swap out the regime from being a Jewish state to being an Islamic state? Constitutional change would solve that issue

That wouldn't provide any real solution to the region's political problems. Jewish people make up some 75% of the country. The only way to turn Israel into an Islamic state would be through conquest. The country would still have Occupied Territories except the map would be inverted.

Yeah, I can't imagine why all of us Jews aren't voting for the policy of an Islamic State in the Levant. That platform has obviously never been tried before, certainly not by the region's most disgustingly, genocidally evil terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Yeah, well after the holocaust no jew will give up sovreignity and rule so it can be a minority in an islamic state.

>Depose the leaders, have a free election, and many of those complaints go away.

I love when people oversimplify things like that.

I thought it was obvious that I was both simplifying the situation and talking about the long term repercussions. I recognize that holding a national election tomorrow in North Korea wouldn’t result in any real improvement.

The important point is that Israel’s problems are largely detached from the flaws of its current leaders. Meanwhile the problems in the listed countries are often created or reinforced by their current or former leaders.

No, it's not special for Israel. It makes sense for nations to learn to live peacefully with their neighbors, especially when those neighbors are vastly more powerful than them.

But there's also a bit of a false equivalence here: Israel is a true democracy, which ranks significantly higher on lists of economic and individual freedoms than the nations you just named. Israel also soundly beat Lebanon in several wars, and Lebanon's conflict with Israel is rooted in religious hatred - it's not like Lebanon is taking a moral stand here. Hezbollah, which has run Lebanon for years, is an Iran-supported extremist / religious / terrorist group.

> Israel is a true democracy

For whom? What does this even mean?

It contrasts with countries like China or Russia, where voting does exist, but major government leaders can ensure that they’re always re-elected and their policies are always enacted.

It means that all citizens (which includes many Arabs and Muslims) can vote and those votes are binding and not manipulated by fraud or threats of violence.

>which includes many Arabs and Muslims

Yes but not all of them which is the problem. Ask poor Palestinians how democratic Israel is. It would be like if the US made laws specifically to imprison masses of black people and then say "we are a democracy, except for those who have been in prison".

> Yes but not all of them which is the problem.

The ones that can't vote in Israel are part of another nation (whether recognized or not) and they vote as part of that nation. A better analogy would be saying that Mexicans can't vote in the US (even though Mexican-Americans can).

True, yes. Functional, eh?

What # election are they on? Four in the last 2 years?

Seems better to have more elections than be stuck with someone for 4 years without any chance of recall. How is more elections worse than fewer?

I'm not sure it's clear that one is better than the other in general. For instance, I would be wary of a snap election after an event perceived as politically significant (e.g. a declaration of war, a major terrorist attack, etc.). Obviously, there can be benefits to building a government or coalition as a response to this sort of event, but it can also lead to transient or reactionary politics. When circumstances permit, I much prefer a more stable system such as a Switzerland-style executive council or otherwise stable administration with a fixed and limited term as long as there is sufficient oversight to deal with neglect of duties, corruption or incapacitation, etc.

I think this discussion is missing important facts: 1. The current ruling government forced these elections 2. the same prime minister was elected in all of these and he could not compile a government due to lack of mandate

The current ruling government (comprised of a shotgun marriage between two opposing parties) disintegrated, right?

My understanding of Israeli politics is that it's two major parties (roughly, conservative and liberal) + a few smaller bloc parties that generally line up with the same major party.

And that the math of this vs the majority needed tends to result in a larger number of elections.

I believe something similar tends to happen in Italy? And maybe Spain?

The flaw, in the sense that overly-frequent elections are unproductive to the business of governing, as I see it is matching a static legal mandate (a government must be able to compose a strict majority) with a variable system (number and size of parties), that leads to some edge cases that make the former difficult / unsustainable.

I'm American though, so I'm looking at this from our (probably to the rest of the world) crazy winner-take-all tilt.

It seems like parliamentary democracies would be improved by either (a) implementing policies and laws that ensure a larger number of smaller blocs, with which alliances can be made (preference voting?) or (b) having "deescalator" clauses if election churn happens, to lower the threshold required to form a sitting government (which then presumably ramps back up over time).

it is more sinister than that i believe. i do not know about spain or italy but these frequent elections come at serious monetary cost in top of the slow down of governing. at the same time the same prime minister is then allowed to extend his role past the legal limit of 2 (full) terms

It also applies to those other countries. You can and should offer harsh criticisms of a government when you think they’ve done wrong, but eliminationist rhetoric is pointless and self-destructive in the modern world.

Unfortunately, that is not the attitude that ended apartheid in South Africa and it is not the attitude that will end the Israeli apartheid system.

How much of the influence to end the apartheid at South Africa was internal, how much was local, and how much was global?

I really don't know the answer to that. It's hard to say what kind of influence will work on the Israel apartheid, but a declared ongoing external war makes a strong impression that is an influence on the wrong direction.

I don't know that. Economic historians and others have to figure out exactly what caused the end of South Africa's apartheid system (my layman's guess is that it was a combination of multiple factors).

What I do know is that black South Africans begged us not to do business with their country until apartheid was abolished. Many of us (and even the US in the end) obliged and cut ties with South Africa. Palestinians are similarly begging us not to do business with Israel over similar human rights violations. We did (eventually) heed the black South Africans' call, so why can't we today heed the Palestinians' call?

Have any of those treaties offered full and unconditional return of the occupied territories, along with full state independence?

Or, alternatively, integration as equals?

Yes, most of them. The amount of land offered varied.

In particular check the Olmert peace offer from 2008 which offered Palestinians basically every single thing they wanted - but they refused it anyway (apparently because Abbas was too weak politically to make it happen, and Olmert did not want to go public without assurances from Abbas that it would actually happen).

(Not sure about the unconditional part though - why in the world would it be unconditional?)

Land provided with conditional use is not sovereign land. If the palestinians must continue to defer to israeli conditions on use then the land hasn't truly been returned.

The Olmert offering required the large settlements remain, which is an obvious non-starter.

Pressure from the commonwealth, particularly from Canada, was an enormous factor in ending apartheid.

As an Israeli living abroad I am torn on this. Not that I think Israel has South Africa level apartheid, but since both Israel and the Palestinians are up to their chins in the conflict and both wouldn't budge a millimetre a good kick in the ass towards one of them could lead to somekind of dialog.

As much as I disliked Trump and his actions in the area, at least he did something out of the ordinary that could have led to untying the mess. The latest "peace agreements" with Arab countries are probably a result of this and might lead to something in the future.

Unlike South Africa the level of religion extremism is too high on both sides to allow a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Zionism has minus nothing to do with religion, Religious Zionists non withstanding. It is a popular misconception, i think.

Can you clarify your definition of "Zionism"?

It seems to be widely defined as the establishment and maintenance of an explicitly Jewish state.

That is correct, but Jewish in this context is an ethnic group, not a religion. Much of the original Zionist movement was comprised of secular Jews.

"Explicitly jewish" could be a democratic state with jewish majority. And it could be a jewish minority ruling over a non jewish majority.

Most Israel want the former. A hard core minority wants the latter. The last few decades the latter set the tone because the dovish side of the map hadn't propose a viable course of action to change the status quo. The moderate majority is too scared and it lost faith in trying to reach a peace agreement again after the violence the last try brought, And the "death to israel" rhetoric of palestinian leaders.

So while the majority is pretty moderate, the perceived lack of partner basically put in power an extreme right minority. This might change as there's an undercurrent of population change, where the new majority might be less preoccupied with western values of democracy and citizen rights.

You are technically right, although currently it's a mixed bag. Many cite religious as the reason for not letting go of the land, others simple Zionism.

As for letting go of the entire country, there is nowhere else to go, as for giving the Palestinians what they want, just look at the trouble Gaza alone is causing, look how many innocent civilians (on both sides, mind) Hamas has killed. I don't think for the majority of Israelis it's ideological.

You're conceptually right, but the current right wing in Israel is very much centered around the concept of a united Israel rooted in Biblical reasoning.

Zionism might not be religious, but the political forces that would prevent relinquishing territories in modern day Israel very much are.

Trump's 'peace agreements' were mostly mutual defence signals (re: Iran) that paradoxically make the 'real issue' between Israel and West Bank even harder to solve.

Gulf states are more worried about Iran's intransigence than they are about the rights of Palestinians and that's where we are today.

Fifty something years of more or less the same type of international efforts didn't really work, that's why I think something extraordinary is needed.

Trump is not here anymore, but I don't think his efforts actually made the situation harder to solve, this is a misconception, they did push the Palestinians to a corner and they lost some Arab support, but it could have led to new negotiations where the Palestinians are pushed by this reduced support and Israel is pushed by behind the scenes threats from Trump to lose support.

The Palestinians nothing more than a play tool for other Arab nations, not just the Gulf states. Even their close neighbors, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, are not big fans

You are wrong, because trump didn't push israel to do anything. So the Palestinians got nothing, netanyahu "proved" that being an asshile is how you get good deals.

And this situation get to fester while corrupting both our people.

So you're right I don't think Trump did anything to make it so much harder - however - he had absolutely not one iota of interest in helping to solve the Palestinian problem.

Trump's 'big gamble' on N. Korea for example does not apply to Israel in that way.

If anything Trump would 'end' the situation by caving to pressure to declare the occupations 'legal territory of Israel' or something along those lines.

I don't think he remotely understands the history or cares, he'll take what some of his wealthy buddy 'advisers' tell him about it.

I believe he would do it in a heartbeat in exchange for guarantees for financing on construction of a few buildings in NYC and Tel Aviv.

He is as corrupt as he can be within the law, he will offer powerful people 'whatever' on a personal basis, in exchange for some personal gain be it populist or prospect of future deals.

FYI I don't think he had anything to gain on N. Korea but some kind of accolade, it's the only situation that didn't provide for considerably conflict of interest.

And yes, I agree that the Gulf States don't care that much about the Palestinians, but they do at least a little bit.

> Not that I think Israel has South Africa level apartheid

What is Israel doing better than pre apartheid South Africa? Or rather, what are the positive differences between the two regimes?

Arab(muslim/christian) citizens get full rights under law, vote like any jew israeli. On the flip side, in the occupied territories the Palestinians (arab muslims/christians) don't get to vote, and are basically under military occupation.

So Israel is (was) willing to give equal rights to any one who accepts jews place in israel.

The last few decades are begining to erode this willingness. And I fear we maybe slipping to full apartheid.

Not that surprising though that someone who is trying to form their own country won’t get to vote in a country which they don’t recognize as having a right to exist and don’t want any part in.

What do you mean? Literally every characteristic of South African apartheid would be illegal under the Israeli constitution.

We don't have a constitution per se. We do have "fundamental laws" protected by an independent supreme court. The Israeli right wing is orchestrating a decades long campaign to discredit the supreme court and make it less independent. So who knows what the future will bring.

Well, except for the bit about deliberately not conscripting Arab citizens.

Apartheid South Africa also didn't give rifles to the conscripted black Africans either and ask them to patrol white cities.

For the same reasons.

Are the Arab Israelis clamoring to get themselves blown up by human-shield toting, radical extremists in Gaza? I think not.

Also, simply not true; https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rJVoNmyCP

Volunteers aren't conscripts. Surely you know this.

Non-apartheid-type governments by definition do not have laws that discriminate by race.

Both Apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel had and have laws explicitly preventing an emormous fraction of their society from every getting near military hardware.

Again, for the same reason.

I personally couldn't care, but the OP was falsely stating that Israel had no race defined laws in common with Apartheid South Africa.

[They have a few more in common, but this was one example I chose].

You're arguing that the privilege of Arabs avoiding military service proves the Israeli government discriminates /against/ Arab citizens. If that's your strongest argument then I'm quite happy.

So why then put the extra burden of defending Israel on just the Jews? An act of unsolicted kindness?

Unless of course Israeli jews really, really, really want to avoid training generation after generation after generation of Arabs citizens in IDF tactics and technology. Every year, year-in, year-out.

Clearly not trusting people is very obviously a form of government sanctioned discrimination.

Which again, is also why Apartheid South Africa also didn't feel comfortable handing millions of young Zulu men (ironically) Israeli designed R4 automatic weapons.

Peas, pods.

The point though, is that it is weird to bring up a situation where arabs are being discriminated in favor of, as some sort of killer argument as for why israel is discriminating against Arabs.

It undermines the argument.

Use a different one if you want to make that argument, because that one is bad.

Because, they aren't being discriminated in their favour (except in the most immediate sense).

Rather, like Apartheid South Africa, Arab Israelis are being very, very clearly told that they cannot be TRUSTED in bulk with something like assault rifles in the presense of Jewish citizens.

Apartheid was not merely Jim Crow type laws - it was existential.

I deliberately chose these laws because they get to the heart of what an Apartheid state is.

> Because, they aren't being discriminated in their favour

On that specific point they are being discriminated in favor of, though. Please show the specific harm, of how not forcing someone to join the military but still allowing them to if they want, is harm, if you disagree.

If you have other examples of them being discriminated against, just use those.

> they cannot be TRUSTED

They are allowed to volunteer if they want. They aren't being prevented from joining. Instead they are only not being forced to, which is discrimination in favor of the people who are not forced to join.

You need to show an actual specific law that harms them, to support your argument. Not forcing people to join the military is a benefit, not a drawback.

There are basically no circumstances, where not forcing someone to join the military, is a drawback.

There are non jewish israelis in the IDF. Mostly Muslim...

Edit: looks like the parent didn't even bother much research - Arabs aren't forced to do military service but they're welcome to do so:

> National service is compulsory in Israel, with some exemptions — three years for men and two years for women. This rule also applies to the country's non-Jewish Druze and Circassian communities.

> Muslim Bedouins, who tend to identify more as Israeli than other Arabs, and Christian Arabs can voluntarily sign up and each minority is represented by a couple of hundred members of the armed forces.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/arab-israelis-are-joining...

"Arabs aren't forced to do military service but they're welcome to do so"

Exactly the same situation in Apartheid South Africa. There were whole battalions of volunteer black soldiers. Hell, after 1981 there were even black commissioned officers.

But under no circumstances where they arming and training the 'enemy' wholesale - as you said before your edit 'to protect THEIR people'. (Telling choice of words there).

You keep making my case for me.

South africa also had water pipes, so your country is an apartheid country. See? This is silly.

Israel is in a tough situation where there are civilians with relative who swear they want to kill al jews. Israel tries to be fair in this scenario.

A matter of fact is, non jews can vote, join the police the army and the country has laws that gives non jews the same rights as jews. There are scholarship for non jews, and even programs to make sure they are getting to be doctors lawyers etc.

Heck, there are non jewish judges (in the supreme court!), parliament members, and government ministers.

The situation is far from normal or sane, But this is very different than what the situation in SA was.

Now, all of this might change, as there are very dark forces that through the political situation in israel are trying to change israel from being a liberal democracy (at least striving to be) to become a theocracy/ethnocracy.

If they succeed, you might be right in calling israel an apartheid state.

i'm genuinely curious. What is the precise nature of these "Dark Forces" and who are the powers driving them?

Arab citizens are very much allowed to volunteer for military service and are given access to the same kind of weapons as any other soldier: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rJVoNmyCP

It's true they are exempted from the draft, but I don't quite see how that constitutes discrimination _against_ them.

I would suggest one Google "hasbara."

Please be considerate in how you phrase the apartheid comparison. Many, myself include, feel it reeks of anti-semitism.

I also don't think this is a helpful way of phrasing your point that we should consider the downstream carrots and sticks of our positions.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. But "apartheid" is the nomenclature adopted by well-known human rights organizations, (https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is...), by the Palestinians themselves (https://bdsmovement.net/apartheid-free-zones), and by one of my personal heroes, Desmond Tutu (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1957644.stm) to describe Israel. I have also visited the West Bank many times and what I saw with my own eyes suggests to me that the apartheid-label absolutely fits.

The point of calling Israel an apartheid state is of course not to claim that Israel is identical to what South Africa was. The point is to emphasize that it is the same racist and supremacist ideology that permeates both systems. In South Africa, you had white people (Boers) dominating and oppressing colored people. In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, you have Jews dominating and oppressing Palestinians.

The Palestinians agreed in the Oslo Accords t govern themselves. They don't vote in Israeli elections, and Israelis don't vote in their elections (if they had any).

“The same racist and supremacist ideology” that is factually incorrect

Why?

Israel denies citizenship, voting rights, and equal rights to Palestinians (who still have to live according to the law Israeli citizens decide because Israel controls their territory). And the entire basis for doing this is that Jewish people must be the ethnic majority in Israel. It's literally apartheid on ethnic lines.

Well anyone who ever visited the Israeli Palestinian border or ever had to go through a border crossing security check would see how obviously it is apartheid.

I'm sorry it hurts your feelings but real people are losing their homes and livelihoods every day to ever increasing Israeli settlement.

I've visited it numerous times. The label on it doesn't make it ok or not.

The issue is the circumstances there don't meet the factual criterion of apartheid. That's not a question of feelings. The fact the apartheid label is applied here while it is not emphasized or even applied to non-Jewish countries is a double standard. That fits the definition of anti-semitism.

They do meet the factual definition whether you like it or not.

If I'm Palestinian, I live my life completely according to the rules of Israel (because of the blockade and checkpoints and control of the territory). As a Palestinian, I also cannot vote in Israel and will never be granted the ability to vote in Israel, in order to preserve the ethnic majority of Israel. As a Palestinian I can also have my home taken away from me to make room for Israeli settlers.

That's apartheid.

You are not a citizen of Israel and live in land you claim for a totally separate country.

That is, literally and factually, not apartheid.

I saw "Israel" in the title of this post and immediately thought "there is going to be a lengthy discussion in the comments, irrelevant to the subject of the post, where people argue about politics." Scrolled down, wasn't disappointed.

Ok, but please don't make the thread even worse with meta comments about offtopicness.

It's not surprising that an internet forum thread about Israel turns into a political, etc., flamewar—that's unfortunately the expected outcome. The important question is how to develop a site culture where that's less likely to happen.

True. Peace has been on the table for two decades but the expansion of settlements makes it very very difficult to deliver any kind of contiguous Palestinian State. Imagine trying to turn this map into a two state solution https://www.btselem.org/map.

In the past two decades Israel has given back complete control of Gaza to the Palestinians. They had one election 15 years ago. Hamas won on a campaign of abolishing Israel (“from the river to the sea...”). They proceeded to shoot thousands of rockets into major Israeli population centers - rockets that couldn’t have reached had Israel not given back Gaza.

While I don’t at all agree with the settlements, the truth is that’s a lightening rod point and the actual amount of land is a drop in the bucket. Israel has always been willing to trade land for peace. But both parties must want peace.

"In the past two decades Israel has given back complete control of Gaza to the Palestinians."

Bollocks - there is a complete naval blockade.

[Before the Hasbarati downvote me - I truly couldn't care whether is a good or bad thing, but HN is for facts].

To those who would like to learn more, GP is referring to the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which, to quote Wikipedia, "was the unilateral dismantling in 2005 of the 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of the settlers and Israeli army from inside the Gaza Strip." [0]

But did Israel give back "complete control of Gaza"? Here's another Wikipedia quote: "Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities." [1]

My own opinion on the matter is not contained within this post; just providing some more facts for the interested.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

I think this is true, but I wonder why this olive branch of “right to exist” doesn’t also extend to the Palestinian government? Maybe the Palestinians need a stronger military force to establish their right to exist?

In the 90s, There was a majority of Israelis willing to give the Palestinians a state and recognition for peace and recognition. This was met with packed buses being blown away in major cities by palestinian extrimists during negotiations.

This allowed Israeli extremists to take the reigns, and after three decades of hegemony managed to convince most of the Israeli population that peace is a dangerous pipe dream and any sort of compromise will be met with violence. And to establish facts on the ground which would make a palestinian state practically impossible without rooting out masses of Israelis from their home by force.

The Israeli left kept warning of this scenario, because the end game is either a non democratic jewish state, or a civil war torn single state. This cost the traditional Israeli left (the labor party) to be almost electorally eliminated during these 3 decades. Now the hegemony opinion is that no peace is possible, and the Palestinians are to be basically ignored.

Yeah, I have no idea what the answer is. But if the Palestinians somehow all of a sudden had a massive (and well-organized) military, they couldn’t be ignored and settlers would see it in their interest to leave voluntarily. Then maybe peace could happen. The asymmetry of the military situation means that one side is desperate and the other side sees no reason to compromise, and therefore you have a low level conflict forever which is not actually good for anyone.

They are ignored as they've proven again and again that their words are not worth the paper that they sign, that they cannot be trusted. That they are as corrupt as an entity could be. That they are unwilling to make hard compromises ... nay ... any compromise whatsoever. Even when compromise enables them to declare "victory" and free their people from a lifetime of violence.

The conflict will continue until one side realizes that it has been utterly defeated. This hasn't happened yet. They have been defeated. They just don't want to admit it.

This seems like it could be applied in either direction.

You can't really talk about the breakdown of the Oslo accords in the 90s without mentioning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, can you?

> I wonder why this olive branch of “right to exist” doesn’t also extend to the Palestinian government?

The right of a homeland for the Palestinians has been recognized since before Israel was even granted statehood by the U.N as part of the two-state solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution

The PA has been recognized since the Oslo accords in 1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority

Hamas in the Gaza strip is not recognized by Israel and its allies, but Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant

Note Palestinian’s situation isn’t just due to Israel. Neither Egypt nor Jordan really “want” Palestinians either. Palestinians refugees in Jordan often face as bad or worse discrimination as those in Israel. Egypt could welcome the people of Gaza but don’t either. In contrast after Israel declared itself independent most Arab states in the Mediterranean ejected their historical Jewish inhabitants (roughly equal to the number of Palestinians at the time), and the state of Israel accepted them (it had incentives too to do so). But in short it’s a much more complicated issue than just having a stronger military and Palestinians are victims of more than just one state or political expediency.

Palestinians are victims of an imperialist pan-Arab politics that sees the removal of non-Arab sovereignty from the region as fundamentally more important than ensuring democracy, civil rights, or economic development for all Arabs within Arab nations.

They spent a decade blowing up Israelis in schoolyards and cafes. I don't think more violence is their path to freedom.

I’ve always thought that hitting soft targets was a sign of weakness and desperation. So your point doesn’t seem to contradict mine.

No, not really. You're suggesting more capability for violence will secure their freedom. I'm noting the observation of facts at hand suggest the opposite.

Does that mean reducing the Israeli military would also help?

The goal is for both the Israeli and Palestinian states to exist and for there to be peace. An Israeli hegemony over the Palestinian state, with settlers and all, certainly doesn’t help that, and it may be a rational goal of the Palestinian state to become too much of a nuisance to be ignored. If peace means subjugation, I think many Palestinians probably wouldn’t be okay with that. The Palestinians are seeing a lot of “might makes right” arguments right now about why they should just accept subjugation.

Given the two wars of survival the Israelis have fought in the past 50-ish years it seems very likely that it would reducing their military would reduce the freedom and literal existence of the Israelis.

For the Palestinians, perhaps reducing the Israeli would increase freedom in the short term. In the longer term, in the absence of Israel, it seems more likely they would end up dominated by either larger neighbors like Lebanon by Syria or experience low-freedom autocracies like Egypt, Iraq, etc.

Who said anything about eliminating Israel? Why eliminate EITHER side? I think a two state solution makes the most sense, but right now the one state Israeli right wing has the upper hand and a near monopoly on violence (and let’s not ignore there has been plenty of targeting of civilians, including retribution). This doesn’t seem to be a great argument about how freedom-loving the State of Israel is. An autocratic (or ethnocratic), low-freedom Israel snuffing out the Palestinian state doesn’t seem preferable to me whereas a peaceful two state solution seems like it could be super awesome for both sides if they can just get over themselves.

And if one can understand why Israel would fight for its right to exist as a state, then why should it be surprising that the Palestinian state fights for the same reason?

Nobody said anything about what is "right".

Instead, the argument is that the observable fact is that continued violence has not helped the palestinian cause.

It simply has not worked.

That's not a moral statement. It is simply the descriptive truth that violence for decades has not helped their cause, and therefore it probably won't in the future.

But the violence by the Israeli military DOES seem to have worked! Israel exists and no serious person doubts that Israel will continue to exist for quite a while because of it. So why would violence help one side more than the other? Probably because one side is much more powerful than the other. Hence my asking about whether a stronger (and more organized) Palestinian military would help.

Hitting these 'soft targets' is and has been a war crime, but hey ...

Yeah, ain’t no angels in this conflict. It’d be doing the world a favor to move everyone out and then sow the ground with highly radioactive waste making it entirely uninhabitable for hundreds of years, denying it to everyone. So much blood spilt over a bit of land no bigger than Massachusetts (and much of it desert).

To take this thread further off topic, i feel like there's some remarkably not-hot-headed people in this thread so maybe I can finally get an answer to a question that's been bothering me a long time:

Why do some Israelis build settlements? I mean, in the middle of what used to be Palestinian-controlled land? What's their goal? Also isn't it super risky/scary?

It seems to me to just be a needless provocation but that makes no sense, why would anyone risk their family's safety just to provoke? I'm clearly missing some key insight.

Originally, security . Israel’s economic and population core is contained within a region as wide the distance from your average small city to a suburb. It’s also geographically a low plain. It’s called Gush Dan and looking at a map is helpful for understanding how extreme this geography really is.

The land on the Palestinian side of that border are hills. Prior to when Israel conquered that land in 1967, Arab militants/terrorists would take pot shots at and occasionally kill drivers of cars and busses driving along roads in this region. It’s really that small, single digit miles wide. Apparently school busses were a favorite since they are large bright targets.

The settlements were originally limited in number and designed to offer the Israelis opportunity for physical security. This is still the case today when the preferred weapon of militants/terrorist is missiles.

After 1973 when the Right came to power the settlements adopted a religious connotation. They were massively expanded as a conscious effort to absorb the entire West Bank. Since then the problem has only deepened.

Right. Irredentism is a lot of the reason as I understand it.

Over two thousand years ago there were two kingdoms called Judah and Israel. Judah encompassed the southern West Bank and Israel the northern West Bank. These kingdoms were destroyed and became part of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and the Roman empires. The modern State of Israel claims that it is the spiritual successor to these kingdoms and that it therefore has a right to the same territory that these kingdoms once encompassed. Furthermore, Judaism's holy book, the Torah, describes how God gave his people, the Israelites, this territory. Many Israeli Jews believe that they are somehow related to the ancient Israelites.

While many Israeli Jews (likely a majority) acknowledge that the West Bank is "occupied", technically, according to international law, for the above reasons, they insist that Israel has a legitimate claim to it. The West Bank is in Israel commonly referred to as "Judea and Samaria" because those are the names used in the Torah.

The goal of the settlements is to create "facts on the ground" to make it harder for future governments to relinquish the occupied Palestinian territories. As Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon phrased it: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." This is precisely why it is considered a war crime for an occupying power to transfer parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.

Most Israeli settlers live in settlement blocs and it is not dangerous for the setters to live in them. A smaller number of settlers are religious extremists and they establish "outposts" - settlements built without explicit permission by the government. These settlers are often well-armed and coordinate with the Israeli military. Palestinians, on the other hand, are for the most part not allowed to own firearms.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is said to have been the most successful political assassination in history. It changed the tide for real, in the way that the assassin strived for.

Yeah, the Palestinian government and voters should try pursuing a politics of statehood and independence, rather than one of "return" to 1946 or the Ottoman period. http://www.wilf.org/English/2016/12/02/the-war-isnt-over-yet...

Yup, I agree. Same for the Israelis who want peace shouldn’t be pushing for settlement and subjugation of the Palestinian state. Extremists on both sides don’t want to compromise on their visions.

Yeah, if I wasn't abroad for my PhD I'd be voting for the Labor Party this election. They've got a new party head who's taking a stronger stand against Netanyahu and the pro-settlement Right than the other parties.

I do really wish my people's country could come up in the news without people breaking out in Zionism Derangement Syndrome in the comments, insisting genocide refugees are colonizers and racism is when we don't force minorities to fight in the army if they don't support the state. It brings to mind that academic crank who once said Israeli soldiers are racist for not raping Palestinian women. This kind of ZDS is why Netanyahu keeps winning -- it's all Israelis and Jews hear from people in other countries, and it affects our discourse.

I don't want to get into the rest of your argument, but just wanted to say that based on my reading of history, pretty much all of the borders on Earth "were a colonization project from the start".

Important to remember but not quite the same as colonizing a region in the 20th century. This isn’t the distant past, it’s actively happening.

Which is why Poland and Germany constantly fight over the border that was imposed post-WWII (20th century, yes) and the population displacement that took place at that time, right?

It's really easy to declare things as black and white. It's seldom accurate.

(Important note: a large fraction, a majority depending on how you count it, of Israel's population are descendants of Jews who were ejected from other Middle Eastern countries after the establishment of Israel? Are they to be considered "colonizers" in your framing?)

> a large fraction, a majority depending on how you count it, of Israel's population are descendants of Jews who were ejected from other Middle Eastern countries after the establishment of Israel

This is not modern history. Yes they are colonizers. By your logic, anyone could just invade Africa and start a country there since all humanity's ancestors descended from the region.

> It's really easy to declare things as black and white.

Colonization and genocide are actually pretty black and white. Israel is violating international law and committing human rights violations.

I admire your ability to bite the bullet and call Mizrahi Jews colonizers for being ethnically cleansed and fleeing to their indigenous homeland.

> This is not modern history.

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: we're talking about the mass ejections of Jews from various Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 50s, 60s, and 70s of the 20th century, right?

And if that's not modern history, then how is the establishment of Israel at the same time modern history?

> Yes they are colonizers.

They were refugees, more precisely. But just to be specific, what is your concrete proposal for where they should have gone?

> By your logic, anyone could just invade Africa and start a country there since all humanity's ancestors descended from the region.

No, I don't see how that's an analogous situation at all. My question about Israel is a pretty specific one: I challenge its presentation as a "European" or "Western" colonial project. Though maybe that was not your intent?

> Colonization and genocide are actually pretty black and white

We'd have to clearly define "colonization", since I suspect we disagree on whether specific actions constitute it.

Genocide is pretty black and white, I agree. I am opposed to genocide. We may disagree on whether there is genocide, or attempted genocide going on in various situations, unfortunately.

Concretely: Do you feel that Israel is attempting a genocide campaign against the Palestinians? Do you feel that the Israeli electorate supports such a campaign? Do you feel that the Palestinians are attempting a genocide campaign against Jews? Do you feel that their electorate (using that term loosely, due to lack of elections) supports such a campaign?

Fundamentally, I disagree with both the "from the river to the sea" narrative and the "all of Judea and Samaria" narrative... (And I do note that neither of those is necessarily genocidal, though both can be nice jumps onto slippery slopes towards there.)

> Israel is violating international law and committing human rights violations.

Yes, I agree. But just to make sure we're on the same page, so are the Palestinians, every single country Israel has a border with (on the human rights violation parts of the ledger for sure), and quite a number of other entities. Including, I am 99% sure, the country you live in. There are questions of scope and degree, of course. Please don't mention the words "false equivalence", because I am not claiming that anything here is "equivalent" to anything else, and if I were we'd likely disagree on what equivalences are "true" vs "false".

More practically, what specific actions do you think would be required for Israel to stop committing what you perceive as human rights violations and international law violations? And if your answer is "dissolve itself as an entity and have all the Jews go somewhere else", then I can see how that's a consistent moral position, but that does not match either international law nor morality as I perceive it.

If that's not your position, then were back to trying to figure out various shades of grey, as far as I can tell, which we're probably not going to manage to work out in this sort of discussion.

Israel actively planned to grow its non-native population and encouraged immigration from neighboring countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Plan

Yes, I think Israel is attempting a genocide against the Palestinians. The ICC is currently investigating war crimes:

https://apnews.com/article/israel-west-bank-palestinian-terr...

Israel encouraged immigration, yes. And the countries the Mizrahi Jews left did all sorts of things that encouraged their Jews to leave.

> Yes, I think Israel is attempting a genocide against the Palestinians.

OK, we have that clear. I asked three other questions in the paragraph where I asked that question, and I'd love to know what your answers to those are.

> The ICC is currently investigating war crimes

As they should, yes. I don't think everything Israel does is either acceptable or even justified, by any means.

No, I don't think the Palestinians are engaging in genocide against the Israelis. Yes, I think Israel should be disbanded. As for what to do with people who don't want to stay? I'd be more than happy to welcome them to the US.

Thank you, that makes your position quite clear. I appreciate your continued engagement with this conversation and the fact that I think we managed to keep it reasonably polite...

Agree.

So's the arrival of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, which is still ongoing.

You're right but that doesn't mean we should accept it. Why we didn't accept it when Saddam invaded Koweit or when Russia annexed Crimea? Colonization of Palestine has very negative direct and indirect consequences on our world.

Sorry - has something changed with Crimea? Begrudging acceptance seems to be exactly where we're at....

AFAIK very few countries have recognized Crimea as part of Russia. So my comment is still valid, most countries did not accept the annexion.

No countries recognize Israeli claims to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and even the comparatively tame annexation of the Golan Heights is recognized by very few.

That means, formally, Israeli actions in the OPT are even less accepted than Russia's annexation of Crimea. Practically, begrudging acceptance seems to be a very apt description, arguably of the latter even more so than the former.

Didn't the Trump administration declare that the settlements were not illegal? Palestine is not even fully recognized as an independent state.

Besides the comparaison with Crimea, the point was that borders throughout history have been shaped by colonizations and invasions but that cannot be used to justify colonization itself.

but also haven't really done much about it right?

We threw some sanctions on them... that appear to be fairly toothless.

Crimea was given by Stalin to Ukraine relatively recently. Yes, Russia took it back by threat of force, but it's not like they didn't have some historic claim to the land, much like Jews do to the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Crimea#1954_Transfe...

That's a very dangerous position. If you want to go there you'll find a long list of claims of almost anything.

Take Crimea for example: the Russian Empire only conquered it in the late 18th century (relatively recently too). Should the Turks claim it next (as the Crimean state was the Ottoman Empire's vassal before) or maybe Mongols, Greeks, or descendants of Goths, Huns?

There's a reason for avoiding forceful border carving in the modern world for "historic justice". It is a phony cause and leads to a chain of generational violence. Too bad the modern world never acts to efficiently prevent it.

And by the way, Stalin was already dead by 1954 — difficult to "give" anything in that state. Not even mentioning that "giving" in USSR is just an administrative re-arrangement of a territory within an empire. By that logic, all the states ever being part of any empire have a "historic claim" on the other parts.

Are you saying there are a lot of Turkish people in Crimea?

That's a very slippery slope if you justify the colonization of Palestine by Israel because it was part of a jewish kingdom thousands of years ago. Spain has been muslim for centuries would that be acceptable if they settled again there by force?

There is no colonisation to justify or otherwise, there was a continuous use of the land by Jewish people since this time. The name 'Palestinea' only came about as a punishment by the Romans for Simon bar Kokhba.

Not that Wikipedia itself is a good source, but thi has a bunch of references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhba

> In the aftermath of the war, Hadrian consolidated the older political units of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria into the new province of Syria Palaestina, which is commonly interpreted as an attempt to complete the disassociation with Judaea.

There has been a continuous use of the land by Christians and Muslims for centuries as well. So because Judaism has existed the longest they have the right to expel everybody else or best case scenario, make them second-class citizen (Law of Return, Jewish National Fund ...). There has also been a continuous presence of native Americans for much longer than Europeans in North America...

If you're denying that colonization even exists it will be difficult to have a discussion based on facts.

I’m not denying there has been Arabs and other groups there. The situation regarding expelling is in many cases more more likely to do with people avoiding tax under the Ottomans (if you didn't own a field you were using, you couldn't be taxed on it) than forced expulsion though.

You’re also confusing a religion with an ethnicity in your comment. The issue is Arabs and Jewish people not anything to do with Islam, Christianity or atheism.

> The issue is Arabs and Jewish people not anything to do with Islam, Christianity or atheism.

Religion has a lot to do with the issue. Religion and ethnicity are often strongly related especially for Jews. Judaism is the main element that identifies Jews together and the vast majority of Arabs living in Israel/Palestine are Muslims.

Yes but race is an innate quality, whereas religion is a chosen belief. One cannot compare a race with a religion.

More Jews (eg, non religious Jews) are ethnically Jewish than spiritually Jewish (eg converts, which are generally quite rare).

I think the point was fair. We try to have a world where force is not used to reshape borders. Eg, we rightfully call out Russia's annexation of Crimea and sanction them.

If we are to call out China's genocide of the Uighers, we should also call out the Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States when they commit human rights abuse.

It's about applying human rights and international law as impartially as possible, and using economic might to sanction any country which breaks the rules.

I mean... economic might is a version of human rights abuses.

Ask the Cubans.

The are no simple applications of pithy thoughts. The world is messy, subjective and everyone has an inherent bias to their world view. And most importantly, it isn't fair or just. We just hopefully try to do better than yesterday.

There are officially recognized war crimes and crimes against humanity. There's national sovereignty. These aren't "pithy thoughts", they're well regarded basics that Israel regularly violates with the support of the US.

Officially by whom?

Go look at the UN Council on Human Rights, which is historically a literal who's who of human rights abusers.

The UN Security Council is actually the only UN group that can officially declare Human Rights Abuses... but of course a single veto prevents that.

The ICC has its own host of issues around bias.

I guess my point is most issues are not as clear cut in the moment as they are in retrospect.

Some are clearer than others, of course. But life is messy, and the victors have always written the narrative that past events are judged. It's a relatively recent artifact where we can argue about this stuff in real time.

Much the same could be said about America, Australia or New Zealand - or in older days the expansion of the First Calpihate - but time and humanity blithely blunders on regardless of critics' mores.

"in everyone's best interest to become friendly with Israel"

Said the Arabs in the West Bank?

We can't use the argument that 'Israel has a right to exist' (ok) to dismiss the illegality of the occupied territories (not ok).

Hezbollah exists for this historical reason. (Edit: people flinching at this comment, I meant to imply 'partly for this reason', i.e. in the context the overall conflict and brought them up because the article is about Lebanon. Of course Hezbollah is not primarily about Palestenians)

So yes 'let's make peace' but that would involve something like a two state solution or whatever.

I have a funny feeling that Israel is maybe paying for most of this cable, and that Greece is getting the added benefit of 'it's side' of Cypress getting a big win. Israel has a lot to gain from a geostrategic perspective from this whereas Cypress is too small and Greece doesn't have enough money for this to be a top line item.

Hezbollah isn't the PLO, they were formed out of Shia militia groups from Lebanon's previous civil wars, not to help the Palestinians.

Lebanon absolutely does not have the Palestinians rights in mind. They have "refugee camps" with tens of thousands of people in them that they have been kept there since the 1950's and 1960's, and haven't given them citizenship.

How come you're so concerned about other countries making peace with Israel, but not concerned with countries making peace with Lebanon?

"How come you're so concerned about other countries making peace with Israel, "

I'm not concerned with any nation making peace with the next because mostly they have a pragmatic peace.

The 'concern' is the ongoing incursion into the occupied territories, against all international condemnation and the duplicity of US actions i.e. technically declaring the occupation illegal while literally at the same time moving embassies etc..

The legitimacy of the Jews right to a homeland and their problems derived from nearby enemies is constantly used as cover for their other actions.

Zionism is not supposed to be Apartheid, but in pragmatic reality, it is.

That there are not sanctions against Israel is a testament to it's far reaching influence.

Hezbollah does not exist to fight for Palestinians. It was created to resist Israeli presence in South Lebanon, which in itself was a response to PLO attacks on Israeli territory launched from within Lebanon (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_Road_massacre).

Any rhetoric by Hezbollah leaders to the contrary is just that, plus an excuse to maintain relevance following Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon. After all, why maintain an extra-legal paramilitary force after it has successfully achieved the goal it was created for?

> Hezbollah exists for this historical reason.

That's true for the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., but not Hezbollah, which responds to Israel’s periodic occupations of South Lebanon, not their occupation of Palestine.

Israel also needs to make peace with Lebanon, a country they have invaded 5 times.

As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.

Which country actually initiates negotiations is not very interesting, if you can even accurately determine the "start" of any negotiation in this time of digital communications and backchannel diplomacy.

> As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.

It would also be nice if Lebanon accepted the international community's ruling that yes, the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon really happened, and there is in fact no remaining occupation of Lebanese land.

Why should Lebanon accept rulings from the international community when Israel has ignored almost every single one since 1948?! The core of the issue is the 30 square kilometers Shebaa Farms area which Israel occupied in 1967. Syria and Lebanon claims that it is Lebanese territory and Lebanon wants it back. Israel claims that it was Syrian territory that it occupied and subsequently annexed in 1980.

Regardless of whether the Shebaa Farms area is Syrian or Lebanese territory, it clearly isn't Israeli territory. https://pij.org/articles/9/understanding-the-shebaa-farms-di...

That sounds like rather much of a diversion from the simple factual question of whether any under international law Lebanese land remains occupied by Israel, to which the answer is a simple no.

Lebanon issued the declaration of war. They can withdraw it at any time. A declaration of war is an invitation to be invaded.

errr....

https://www.timesofisrael.com/rebuffed-by-lebanon-israelis-s...

This shouldn't be at all surprising.

The CIA did a fake vaccination program to find Bin Laden. I'd probably look askance at offers of aid workers from a country I'm technically at war with.

People were up in arms that palestinians weren't offered vaccines. If Israel doesn't give medical aid they are devils, when they do, they really want to cause harm.

Come on.

There is a lot of confusion here. Israel is 25% Arab (mostly Palestinian). All those Palestinians have full medical care just like any other citizen of Israel.

Israel has now begun to vaccinate Palestinian workers that commute from Gaza and the West Bank, and has also donated vaccines (despite the Palestinian government stating repeatedly they don’t want help from Israel) to Palestine.

Yes, millennia of feuding leads to mistrust, on both sides.

It's unlikely to be solved anytime soon.

millennia? more like since 1964 [1] ;)

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) [...] is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians.

Before that it was vanilla antisemitism, pogroms and massacres organized by the local Muslims, no different than how it was done in other places in the Middle East (or other places in the world). Some even were Nazi sympathizers/collaborators, like the Mufti of Jerusalem [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini

I wouldn't say millenia, but hundreds of years seems appropriate[1][2][3][4] ....

The "resistance" didn't start with the PLO. They are only the latest manifestation of a conflict going back centuries. It didn't start in 1948, or 1964, etc. It started long before that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hebron

ad nausem

That's exactly what I wrote, so we're in agreement here.

Before 1964 it wasn't driven by a Palestinian national aspirations, it was driven by religious antisemitism/bigotry, and in a much lesser extent by pan-Arabism.

There were many massacres of the Jews (including of women and children) by the local Arabs. It wasn't something specific to Israel, it happened with many minorities all over the Middle East. My family has oral memories of one such massacre.

But I wouldn't call massacres of the civilian minority population - a "resistance".

I should clarify that I was ironically using that word. Basically the point is that this is part of a much larger history, that has pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with the formation of Israel.

Unfortunately, most of the people who've been tasked with bringing the "conflict" to an end cannot seem to fathom, or more importantly, actively choose to deny the existence of these prior elements. As they would completely undermine their (only) thesis.

Again, I hate giving Trump credit for stuff, but his approach of "lets make deals with parties willing to make deals, and ignore those who want to waste our time" has opened doors. It would be a tremendous shame if we walked backwards to the old (failed) peace processors viewpoint. With the current administration, I'd say that was inevitable.

Lebanon could benefit from this. So could the Pals. All they have to do is stop trying to kill Israelis and destroy Israel. I have little hope of this happening in my lifetime.

Very much similar to the Tuskegee experiment. When your opressors experiment on you in the name of science it is logical to distrust the science of your oppressor.

Would any Jew in 1950 have willingly taken a German vaccine?

Many things would need to fall in place for this to happen. Since Hezb is a puppet of Iran, it is unlikely to allow this to happen. If anything, I would suspect they (Hezb/Iran) are planning on attacks against the infrastructure.

Lebanon's diversity is the problem. It only takes a veto from ONE faction.

Lebanon tried to make peace before the civil war. I think anyone with Lebanese family can see how Lebanon pre-civil war and Israel had more in common than Lebanon had with the greater arab world, or even with Palestine.

But Israel basically wanted the leadership to bend over further than they'd be willing to do, and the deal was cancelled.

Today with a more diverse Lebanon it's still possible. There would need to be a shift away from Syrian and Iranian interest but it is definitely possible.