Things that are simple to say can be hard to do. Everybody taking opioids for non-medical reasons should just stop, so should everybody building nuclear weapons <dusts hands>.
Simple fact: the Israelis want neither the 1 or 2 state solutions; certainly not handing 2 million votes to Arabs, and not carving out land they want to keep. (Anyb…
Things that are simple to say can be hard to do. Everybody taking opioids for non-medical reasons should just stop, so should everybody building nuclear weapons <dusts hands>.
Simple fact: the Israelis want neither the 1 or 2 state solutions; certainly not handing 2 million votes to Arabs, and not carving out land they want to keep. (Anybody about to hand South Dakota back to the Blackfoot? Then shut up.)
The Palestinians, lacking power to force them to any solution, 1-or-2 state, are attempting to use "The Horror, The Horror" as a force amplifier, see Col. Kurtz' argument in "Apocalypse Now" for how that works. Moral shaming for it is inevitable and correct, but nobody should pretend their ethnic group wouldn't do the same. See Adam Serwer's "The Cruelty is the Point". The "unholy glee" on the faces of White lynch mobs that burned a man slowly to death and posed for thumbs-up photos in front.
Another simple fact: "In 2002, during the second Intifada, Moshe (“Boogie”) Ya’alon, the Israeli Chief of Staff (and today the Minister of Defense) declared: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” (Another simple fact is that Egyptians tried that on Israel for 400 years, and it didn't work.)
So, the simple facts decree decades and generations of conflict to come, because this certainly isn't making the Israelis make any concessions, and the Palestinians will still be here in another generation.
Since I'm always quoting Gwynne Dyer, here's his "simple fact": He noted that everybody eventually rises to industrial development, and Arab countries are slowly getting there. With development will come money, with money will come military power. Israel will eventually be surrounded by very powerful Arabs that even the USA can't protect them from. The change is already coming, see this article on "drones rewriting the Middle East": https://www.mei.edu/publications/drones-are-re-engineering-geopolitics-middle-east
When Israel sees an existential threat, they will make concessions needed to alleviate the threat. Not before. Even that is simple.
I liked your comment because it is the kind of rational analysis and weighing of alternatives that ought to animate behaviour. Basically it is that states will weigh and bow to the balance of power, recognizing competitive advantage and disadvantage. Which is a version of Thucydides' observation that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must (or something like that). My only reservation is that after decades spent in hearing rooms listening to accounts of irrational and dysfunctional and self destructive behaviour, I am perhaps less sanguine that you are about the inevitable triumph of such rational calculation. Especially if the protagonists are nuclear-armed and the time for analysis is compressed. I ponder the alternative scenarios in the Cuban missile crisis, for example.
Things that are simple to say can be hard to do. Everybody taking opioids for non-medical reasons should just stop, so should everybody building nuclear weapons <dusts hands>.
Simple fact: the Israelis want neither the 1 or 2 state solutions; certainly not handing 2 million votes to Arabs, and not carving out land they want to keep. (Anybody about to hand South Dakota back to the Blackfoot? Then shut up.)
The Palestinians, lacking power to force them to any solution, 1-or-2 state, are attempting to use "The Horror, The Horror" as a force amplifier, see Col. Kurtz' argument in "Apocalypse Now" for how that works. Moral shaming for it is inevitable and correct, but nobody should pretend their ethnic group wouldn't do the same. See Adam Serwer's "The Cruelty is the Point". The "unholy glee" on the faces of White lynch mobs that burned a man slowly to death and posed for thumbs-up photos in front.
Another simple fact: "In 2002, during the second Intifada, Moshe (“Boogie”) Ya’alon, the Israeli Chief of Staff (and today the Minister of Defense) declared: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” (Another simple fact is that Egyptians tried that on Israel for 400 years, and it didn't work.)
So, the simple facts decree decades and generations of conflict to come, because this certainly isn't making the Israelis make any concessions, and the Palestinians will still be here in another generation.
Since I'm always quoting Gwynne Dyer, here's his "simple fact": He noted that everybody eventually rises to industrial development, and Arab countries are slowly getting there. With development will come money, with money will come military power. Israel will eventually be surrounded by very powerful Arabs that even the USA can't protect them from. The change is already coming, see this article on "drones rewriting the Middle East": https://www.mei.edu/publications/drones-are-re-engineering-geopolitics-middle-east
When Israel sees an existential threat, they will make concessions needed to alleviate the threat. Not before. Even that is simple.
I liked your comment because it is the kind of rational analysis and weighing of alternatives that ought to animate behaviour. Basically it is that states will weigh and bow to the balance of power, recognizing competitive advantage and disadvantage. Which is a version of Thucydides' observation that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must (or something like that). My only reservation is that after decades spent in hearing rooms listening to accounts of irrational and dysfunctional and self destructive behaviour, I am perhaps less sanguine that you are about the inevitable triumph of such rational calculation. Especially if the protagonists are nuclear-armed and the time for analysis is compressed. I ponder the alternative scenarios in the Cuban missile crisis, for example.