New Gaza Conflict shows that “Abraham Accords” can’t bring Peace as Long as Israelis keep Palestinians Occupied and Stateless
New Gaza Conflict shows that “Abraham Accords” can’t bring Peace as Long as Israelis keep Palestinians Occupied and Stateless
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - The conflict that broke out on October 7, 2023, between Palestinian militants and Israel underlined …
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The suggestion that if Israel simply lifted the blockade and stopped all security operations in the West Ban there would be complete peace is ridiculously idealistic and naive.
You are not going to convince a nation that just saw hundreds of citizens brutally murdered and kidnapped that the only thing they have to do is fully open the borders and smile, and then the people who just murdered them will come out and be their friends.
The inverse is also true. Israel has kept these people bottled up in what amounts to open air concentration camps for the last 70 years, and constantly killing Palestinians for that entire time.
Israel has never cared about collateral damage in their war on the people who lived there before.
So imagine a people, treated like criminals for their entire lives, all because they lived on the land that Zionists wanted.
All that resentment for the unceasing oppression let the worst elements gain power.
The path to change is not to expect the oppressed to stop lashing out. Only in ending the oppression can there be change.
But the Israeli government isn't interested in stopping the oppression. They could have done that at any time in the last 70 years. No, they seem to want a full genocide.
The reason that Israel doesn’t go full speed on genocide is the same reason why they never actually pursue peace. That is, the ruling authority there benefits from having a persistent threat. They get to maintain and build power and wealth while genociding in a slow enough fashion to not raise a critical mass of objections from their benefactors in the United States.
Not only the resentment but Israel actually helped their worst elements gain power in order to cause an inner conflict within the Palestinians. They supported Hamas's growth to cause a fissure between them and the PLO.
If Israel wanted to actually genocide the Palestinians, it would take a few hours.
I don't want to suggest that Israel hasn't also taken actions that are completely opposed to peace - West Bank settlements to name a very big one - but that cannot excuse what happened yesterday. There is a lot to criticize on the Israeli side, but Israel has not attempted a wanton extermination of every Palestinian it sees. Israel's prime aim is to ensure its own security, and it will do that at all costs. No peace will ever be reached unless Israel's security is guaranteed, and so any actions - no matter how potentially justified or not - that threaten that security are inherently counter-productive.
That's not congruent with the facts. If Israel wanted only to guarantee its own security, it could have accepted the Arab Peace Initiative, but deemed withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders unacceptable. It wants to guarantee its own security, to be sure, but it also really, really wants more land.
Israel could genocide the Palestinians in a few hours, but then the international community would bomb their asses back to the stone age.
But, if they were to say, fund a religious extremist or two (which they totally did in the beginning), and then look the other way as that extremist starts up a terrorist organization or two, then the Israeli leaders can constantly be in a state of "protecting themselves" and easily maintain their own power in government.
Plus the constant low level terrorist attacks justify more oppression and theft of land, and any time there's international pushback about the oppression or theft of land, you see a larger terrorist attack.
If I were conspiracy minded, I'd say that there are mossad plants in Hamas who gently nudge when Israeli leaders need a distraction.
Almost every statement you just made is demonstrably false.
This isn't that profound an observation, because the same sentiment works in reverse from the point of view of Palestine. There's no way that they can appease Israeli revanchism. That's why the situation is so intractable.
This is a ridiculous straw man.
Look up how many civilians were killed on both sides since the beginning of this clusterfuck.
You know as well as I do that if Hamas was successful every time it tried to murder an Israeli, those death tolls would be much much closer.
Are you saying that if Israel let more of its civilians die, it would be less morally culpable?
I cannot imagine success as killing someone. Also, you are speculating on what might happen with people's lives.
IMHO civilians dying in any circumstances is dumb af. This includes them directly dying as a result of war and indirectly dying as a result of economic and political maneuvers, blocades, shitty things.
My point is that there is a difference between attacking a building that is shooting rockets at your civilians and slaughtering 200 civilians at a festival, taking 130 hostages, raping women and parading their naked bodies through the streets, and decapitating people.
Israel is not in any sense perfect, but it least attempts to minimize civilian casualties. The IDF is not roaming through the West Bank murdering every Palestinian it sees, whereas that's exactly what Hamas was doing two days ago.
We are mostly saying the same thing. There is a reason why what happened happened and as far as I am concerned both sides are terrorists. Is raping women any worse than imposing a blocade that literally equals people fucking starving to death? Yes, it's shocking. Genocide is genocide no mater how you slice it.
Nobody is saying that 100% of the Palestinians would then make peace by doing that. But doing so would rob Hamas of all its popularity. Palestinians turned to it because they had no other choice; Abbas was doing nothing to stop the slaughter of Palestinians and asking the world for help got nowhere. Conversely, if all attacks by Palestinians stopped for good then most of the Israeli rightwing would be abandoned by the Israeli public. These two groups are not as different as you think.
Palestinians are the only ones who can end this conflict. It's been half a century, and they have never once been willing to accept a solution that didn't include "Right of Return"... a mechanism by which they would overwhelmingly claim voting rights in Israel, and essentially vote Israel into an anti-Jewish Muslim theocracy.
Israel won't agree to any peace deal that would see it voted out of existence.
Israel is also able to thrive even under the threat of terrorism.
They can wait forever.
The ball is in the Palestinians's court.
This conflict will be over the day they say to themselves, "hey gang... Uh, I don't think we're going to get our land back. And I'm tired of living in poverty. Let's take the shit peace deal and get some land and autonomy, and look forward instead of backward.
There's no other way this ends. Anything else is a fantasy.
And I've never seen the anti-Israel crowd come up with a single coherent rebuttal to this.
The whole fact that you see the wrongdoings of only one of the sides in this conflict speaks volumes.
Sorry but you too are a product of your state media propaganda. Just from the other side of the barricade. And sorry to disappoint you but that doesn't make you morally superior.
I see wrongs on both sides. But I also see that Israel has a history of trying to make peace, and of making piece with their other neighbors.
All I've ever seen from Palestinians is terrorism and rejecting peace deals.
Your view on the peace process is disturbingly simplistic and inaccurate. There were attempts on both sides and both sides failed to reach a compromise but saying that all the fault lay with one of the sides comes to prove that you fail to see the issue with all its nuances.
Oh really. Name one time in history that the Palestinians agreed to a peace deal that wouldn't have left Israel with indefensible borders or a "right of return" which would allow Palestinians to essentially vote in overwhelming numbers to turn Israel into an anti-Jewish theocracy?
Ah yes, why shall we grant them voting rights, it is so much better to create a humanitarian crisis, endlessly increase the buffer zones and the restrictions on the Palestinians, depriving them from food, clean water, fuel, expel them from their homes, create even more illegal settlements and then act surprised when they revolt.
Why should we care for civilian lives on the other side of the fence. /s
Right?
Correct. Giving Palestinians the ability to vote Israel out of existence, and turn it into a Jew-hating Muslim theocracy is absolutely the worse option of those two.
Peace cannot begin and end with asking Jews to opt in to suicide.
You conveniently forget that your population is a lot higher than that of the Palestinians and even if all the Palestinians come to Israel it won't happen. So your solution to the problem is to keep Palestinians still in this open air prison, oppress them economically, and with resources, severely restrict their freedom rights, expel them from their homes, etc. Here we are not talking about a small group of people, but a couple of millions.
Current events displaced already 123.000 people, same people are currently sheltering in schools, etc. Soon the whole population of Palestine won't have access to fresh water, electricity, fuel. You cannot even comprehend the extent of this. Have you ever tried to put in the shoes of the people who are living behind that fence. No. Because you simply don't care. Do you truly believe that all of those people are complicit and deserve this suffering. If you are subject to such oppression what would you seriously do?
So tell me now how are you any different from the people who are celebrating on the streets the civilian casualties?
And can you please remind me what exactly you have learned from history, your own history, not too long ago. Do you truly believe long term oppression is the solution and a recipe for peace?
You're not considering the population growth rate in Gaza is considerably higher than in Israel.
The demographic shift would have a massive impact on Israeli democracy, even if a complete theocracy was not immediately on the table.
For comparison, imagine what would happen to any swing state if you introduced 20 percent of voters from deep red Alabama.
How long until books are banned?
My solution to the problem is a two-state solution where Palestinians take whatever Israel is willing to offer at this point.
Palestinians have ZERO leverage in this situation. They lost. The lost decades upon decades ago.
If they loved their children more than they hate the Jews, they would cut their losses and rebuild.
It really is exactly that simple. Because Israel will never budge, and they are getting better and better at defense themselves over time.
Economically, Israel is thriving. They can wait forever. That's the political reality.
And if you think the answer is pulling international support from Israel, consider that China or some other world power would love to have a foothold in that region, and Israel will have have no problem finding other allies if we want to give up access to intelligence in that region.