This is from Yoav Gallant, who has been insistent that Gaza should eventually be turned over to Palestinian control:
Israeli media publishes leaked recordings of Israel’s Defense minister saying: ignore American statements, they know the PA will not return to Gaza and that there won’t be a Palestinian state under this or any Israeli government. pic.twitter.com/1pdcU9aVNX
— Nour Odeh 🇵🇸🍉 #NojusticeNopeace (@nour_odeh) May 21, 2024
This is not specifically in conflict with Gallant's public views. He wants eventual Palestinian control of Gaza, but not necessarily PA control. Nor has he ever suggested he favors a Palestinian state.
In one sense, this is a big "meh." Only a true Pollyanna could believe anything different. Still, it's always nice to get confirmation in blunt statements captured on tape. Israel has no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state, full stop. After October 7, and with the Israeli electorate trending more conservative every year, I have no idea what kind of pressure could ever change their minds.
POSTSCRIPT: I haven't seen this leaked audio reported in any mainstream outlet, so maybe take it with a grain of salt? Still, even in this brave new world of AI deepfakes, I assume that audio like this (and the English translation) isn't invented out of whole cloth. Right?
Gaza was, it seems to me, a separate state already before 10/7. It wasn't occupied by anyone. It had a strong Palestinian government which exercised control over the population and territory. That's the very definition of a state.
"A state is a political division of a body of people that occupies a territory defined by frontiers. The state is sovereign in its territory (also referred to as jurisdiction) and has the authority to enforce a system of rules over the people living inside it."
Now, it seems to me, that the Hamas / Gaza state has mostly lost the war but it refuses to surrender and is content to see its enemy render the place uninhabitable. I suppose they think they can outlast the Israelis and they might be right. The leadership is hiding safely in tunnels and bunkers. (Or living elsewhere!) It seems perfectly reasonable for the Israelis to view this state as an implacable enemy with whom peaceful coexistence is impossible for the foreseeable future.
It is tragic. Bad governance by extremists and religious fanatics have left no room for a peaceful resolution. So that's that.
Gaza was and is an open air prison, it was never a state, a city state or anything that looks like a State...
Before 10/7, (when history started), Israel controlled the border and determined who and what could go in and out of Gaza, Gazan fishermen couldn't go out on the water more than a couple of miles before being intercepted by the Israeli military, there is no airport in Gaza(Irael bombed to smithereens sometime in the aughts) and there is no port (Why do you think the US is buildinga temporary port?)
So please fill me in in what way does Gaza resemble a state?
According to the Economist's Mideast correspondent, Gaza has never been an independent polity. His words.
North Korea is an open air prison too. The fact that Gaza had a hostile relationship with its neighbors does not change the fact that it exercised control over the territory and population. Israel and Egypt had no obligation to trade with them at all. Clearly Hamas / Gaza was a hostile state.
South Korea does not trade much with North Korea.
I cited the definition of a state in my comment above. I won't pick sides. All are despicable... extremists and religious fanatics. As are, perhaps, you?
Was the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust a state?
Of course not. It was not self-governing.
Do you think the Gaza Strip is self-governing, or was prior to the genocide?
I think you have to call Oct 7 an attempted genocide or a first step of planned genocide - it was not a successfully completed genocide.
Gaza Strip was (and is, to the extent it still has a government) mostly self governing. This is obviously a spectrum rather than a clear line. For example, was Austalia in 1975 self-governing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis
Israel seems to have little or no influence on who the leaders of Gaza are / will be other than its ability to invade. Arguably Gaza is more self governing than Australia in 1975.
I have a hypothesis that there are just a few different ways that people -- or at least Americans -- come to be reflexively pro-Israel: belief in Western hegemony; messianic Christian hoodoo; ignorance and having been flooded with pro-Israel media; and identifying with Israel, generally for being Jewish.
The first two are almost exclusively positions of conservatives, or what passes for conservatives in America. The third is a position that is at least willing to consider new information, and so will not forcefully promote pro-Israel positions in the face of contrary evidence.
Conservatives are very scarce -- and usually very clearly conservative -- in KD's blog, and I at least do not recall you revealing yourself to be such.
And I haven't seen evidence that you are willing to consider contrary information.
This makes me think that your route toward being pro-Israel is from identifying with Israel, most likely meaning that you or someone very close to you is Jewish.
Is that correct?
I'd be more interested if that were not the case, which might mean that I have missed a way that someone might come to have a reflexively pro-Israel outlook.
It isn't only conservative Christians who put a lot of store in the biblical story. Moderate and even liberal devout Christians can be quite pro-Israel, especially if they have visited the "holy land".
I have a good friend who is a moderate Episcopalian priest. She is close to MF in her views.
Ah yes... because only the evil Joos, Conservatives, and ignoramuses can be pro-Israel, right?
Luckily the blatant anti-Semitism of the anti-Israel left is disgusting more moderate Democrats.
There are much simpler reasons for being pro-Israel:
1. It is a US ally.
2. Even the local sane Arab states are tilting to Israel because they do not like crazies like Hamas. (I spend lots of time in UAE and travel to KSA, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Pakistan for my work. You would not believe what the people I meet are willing to say in private. Things like "I hope the Israelis just kill every damned Hamas member - no prisoners. Then in twenty years maybe we can have some kind of real settlement of this shit."
3. The Israelis objectively are NOT settler colonists. The majority of them are refugees from and descendants of refugees from the Arab and North African states. They have no home to go back to. I guarantee to you that Iran and Syria are not going to take back their Jews and give them back their homes and if they did no Jews would go.
4. From the start, the Palestinians have embraced terrorism. For example, do you remember the Munich Olympics? The Israelis have been far more restrained and humane.
Hamas started the current war with an attack that deliberately targeted civilians. It is still holding hostages including infants, children, and civilian women. It can end this war in an hour by surrendering unconditionally. Why are you not calling on them to do so?
Right.
So you are Jewish.
It's not just being pro-Israel that makes one either "an evil Joo," conservative, or an ignoramus; it's being pro-Israel and refusing to consider facts contrary to your position, as you do with your ”Israelis objectively are NOT settler colonists" and your delineation of "local sane Arab states" and your ascribing of terrorism to Palestinians when it was the Zionists who first brought it to the conflict (for example, have you heard of the bombing of the King David Hotel, some 24 years before the Munich Olympics?).
Why not just admit that you have a dog in the fight? Sure, it will give people reason to question your positions, but as it is, you come across as both biased and dishonest; appearing merely biased would be an improvement for you.
And I encourage Hamas -- if they are listening -- to release the hostages, but happily my country has no responsibility for anything they do, nor do they depend on us in any way.
On the other hand, my country supplies Israel with most of their weapons. Why are you not decrying their killing of tens of thousands of children and their destruction of the means to support human life in the Gaza Strip?
Gaza in no way resembles North Korea. It is more like a Bantustan. It doesn't control its borders, unlike N. Korea that has a Navy, Army, Nuclear Weapons. Gaza has no land to farm to feed its people. It can barely fish its waters, it can't import arms or obtain resources to make them. Even before 10/7, Israel would shoot civilians that neared the border wall with impunity, even shot kids running after a ball.
N. Korea controls its borders and its trade and its airspace.
It let's in or let's out who it wants. It buys and sells what it wants. If it wants to buy guns it buys guns.
None of that was true with Gaza.
Gaza was a ghetto in the old-fashioned E. European sense.
There are bprder crossings with both Egypt and Israel, they cooperated closely to keep Gaza wrapped up tight as a drum.
Perhaps you have forgotten that Gaza has a border with Egypt that is controlled by Egypt?
Or you cannot read a map?
".... That's the very definition of a state."
Strange then that it was not recognized as a state (as far as I know) by any of the world's actual states. In reality the Palestinians in Gaza like those in the West Bank are stateless which is a bad condition to be in.
Actually 143 of the 193 UN members recognize Palestine as a state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine
That being said, I agree that it's not a state in the traditional sense given tat it doesn't have a unified government and doesn't control its borders.
Israel continued to exercise far too much control over Gaza for it to even vaguely resemble an independent state. And, while I don't think Hamas would make for a decent government if they had the chance, the Israelis made sure that Gaza was ungovernable.
1) When they left in 2005, the Israelis declared that a significant portion of Gaza, along the border, including a third of the arable land, was off limits to Palestinians, and they spent 18 years shooting anyone who entered it.
2) Before they left, the Israelis destroyed both the airport and the seaport in Gaza. They have prevented the Palestinians from building new ones. This ensured that everything and everyone entering or leaving Gaza had to go through border crossings that either the Israelis controlled or that they could lean on the Egyptians to control.
3) Since 1999, the Israeli navy has patrolled Gaza's territorial waters. They refuse to allow fishing boats to travel more than a certain distance from shore. This distance changes frequently and arbitrarily. It has been as little as three miles and as many as twelve. Most of the best fishing areas are between twelve and the twenty miles from shore that constitutes all of Gaza's territory. As a consequence, the fishing industry in Gaza has been largely destroyed.
4) Israel had signed agreements committing them to keeping the Karni crossing open for exports from Gaza. Immediately after evacuating the settlements in 2005, they reneged. In the year before Hamas won the elections, the crossing was entirely closed on 60% of days. On the days it was open, it was usually for just a few hours. Palestinian businesses that invested millions of dollars in capacity for exports (including the "high-tech" greenhouses that Israel's supporters lie about and say that they were destroyed immediately after they left) went bankrupt because most of their produce rotted while waiting for the Israelis to clear it.
5) Israel retained control of Gaza's airspace, deciding what can and cannot fly.
6) Israel also retained control of the electromagnetic spectrum. If a Palestinian individual or business wants to use a portion of it, they have to get a license from the Israeli government.
This is not an exhaustive list. Could the Palestinians have built a successful economy and society? We'll never know, because the Israelis sabotaged all attempts to do so.
I'm curious how you think Israel leans on Egypt.
Mostly through the United States. We give billions of dollars a year to Egypt, conditioned on playing ball with the Israelis.
Exactly
Can you provide an iota of evidence that the US has leaned on Egypt to restrict any imports to Gaza other than those that Hamas could use for military purposes?
Gaza is not ruled by a unified government that is sovereign in its own territory. Your own use definition of statehood precludes your analysis.
Actually Israel controls who is a valid resident of Gaza. That came out in an odd way when Syria imploded some Palestinian refugees from Syria actually snuck into Gaza. International organizations could not feed them because they get their lists of valid residents from Israel.
Israel has also used sharp shooters on protesters within Gaza based on their rights to police the territory they occupy. I understand why people who support Israel want to portray things in ways that make Israel look less awful than it actually is. But these attempts usually fail because Israel is not less awful than it actually is.
Note that North Korea has a relief valve in its dealings with China. But Gaza's dealings with Egypt are limited by the fact that Egypt recognizes Israel as the occupying power in Gaza. That is why even when the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt it did not affect what goods got into Gaza.
So explain to me like I'm an American college student: If Israel never intends to allow a Palestinian state in the region, as is becoming increasingly clear, why should Israel continue to exist? If the one side is not legitimate, the other can't claim that it is.
Because two wrongs don't make a right just more wrongs.
I don't think your logic is right, or at least it's incomplete.
The underlying question is, what makes a state legitimate?
Your answer to that -- which might not be the same as mine -- probably doesn't include a requirement that the state recognize any and all other claims of legitimate statehood: you probably would not deny the legitimacy of America on the basis that it refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Republic of Martha's Vineyard or the Conch Republic of Key West.
That said ...
The idea of a "nation state" basically supplanted the previously dominant idea of international relations of "empire." Under the "empire" system, there was no call for one empire to recognize another: disputes and claims for territory and resources were settled by force of arms
This created obvious problems.
So the idea of the "nation state" was created.
Under the "nation state" system, every nation state is assumed to have its own legitimate interests, and is held accountable for recognizing and respecting the legitimate interests of other nation states.
And this of course requires some manner of deciding what any given nation state's legitimate interests are.
The liberal -- meaning "liberal" in a very broad sense -- notion of this is essentially what is expressed in the American Declaration of Independence: people have rights independent of any state entity, and legitimate governments are constructed to defend those rights. Exactly what those human rights are is open to debate, but there is broad agreement about some things: people have the right to exist wherever they find themselves, provided they did not violate someone else's rights to get there; people have the right to a government that respects and protects their rights; people have the right to move about as long as they don't violate someone else's rights; etc.
Surely this liberal notion of the legitimacy of nation states is not the only one, but it is the one that most current nation states recognize, or at least claim to recognize. See https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_217(III).pdf
In the matter of Israel/Palestine, there are essentially competing claims to legitimacy, each with its own notions of facts that sometimes disagree, and more importantly each with its own notions of the relative importance of different facts in determining legitimacy: the Palestinians, for example, claim legitimacy by the fact that they were there before the Zionists/Israelis, and the latter only arrived under force of arms and contrary to the rights of the Palestinian Arabs who were already there; and the Israelis claim that because their distant ancestors were there millennia ago and were expelled by force, they have the legitimate claim.
From my own perspective, the Palestinians are right and the Israelis are wrong, and Israel is an illegitimate state.
Others, you may have noticed, hold different perspectives.
I don't think that Israel's claim to what used to be the British Mandate is legitimate either. But that doesn't mean that I think that Israel shouldn't exist as a state. Nor does it mean that I don't recognize the elected government of Israel as legitimate. Israel is not going away, and its government was freely elected.
The idea of what constitutes a "nation" has changed a lot over time; in the US, Native American tribes were initially treated as nations within a legal context, anyway.
Since the current Israeli government has done everything to avoid the creation of a legitimate representative government of an independent Palestine, however, I would argue that this means that Israel should grant voting rights to every adult within its borders -- a one-state solution.
This sounds like a pipedream now, and I suppose it is, but it's remarkable that political solutions like this have in fact been reached, albeit rarely.
If Israel never intends to allow a Palestinian state in the region, as is becoming increasingly clear, why should Israel continue to exist? If the one side is not legitimate, the other can't claim that it is.
This seems a bit confused. Plenty of sovereign states violate international law. A good example was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Another was, yes, Israel's conquest and colonization of Palestinian lands post 1967. Another was Russia's conquest of Crimea.
States do bad things, but don't lose their right to exist as a consequence. Indeed, not much happens to them, given we very much live in a "might makes right" world.
I agree with your overall premise but not a couple of your examples. UN Resolution 1441, which was approved unanimously, authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And, while the US was certainly the biggest participant, it was a coalition of countries, not a unilateral invasion. As far as Israel, most of their actions were in self defense from constant threats from their Arab neighbors who had the stated intention of destroying Israel.
UN Resolution 1441, which was approved unanimously, authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Absolute bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War#:
The Bush White House wanted that war; got just enough process to serve as a patina of legitimacy to feed the press; and then proceeded to launch an aggressive, illegal war of choice that killed hundreds of thousands of people on a completely made up national security premise.
The world is still paying the price in terms of reduced respect for International law.
Turkey will never allow an independent Kurdish state to exist in or on its borders. Do we abolish Turkey? Russia is determined to erase an independent state of Ukraine. Why should Russia exist? China has effectively obliterated an independent Tibet and systematically represses Uighur identity and autonomy. Why should China exist? Hell, the United States itself once completely decimated half its own country in order to quash the southern states' aspiration to have their own nation separate from the Union.
If the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, or the China-Uighur conflict, polarized the world in the same way the Israeli-Palestinian question does, those countries might find themselves in *very* different geo-political realities in terms of their legitimacy. Had Britain tipped in 1863 and recognized the Confederacy, as it almost did, we'd have had a very different outcome to that conflict as well.
So to put it in Crib Notes college student style: it's who you know and who has your back.
The Kurds in Turkey are citizens of Turkey. That is not true of the Palestinians in either the West Bank or Gaza. That makes a rather big difference, or it would if people actually applied principles to Israel.
a reasonable question, if you don't believe in playing favorites, and who does, people tend to go with the underdogs
Early 1970's: "We
have no solution… You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like
dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process
leads."
– Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) served as Chief of Staff of the IDF, defense minister, and leader of the Labor party in Israel. He said these words in a talk with members of his Labor cabinet
Different times. Before any peace processes. Different relations with Israel's neighbors.
Well, today, there also is "no peace process" and Israel seems strongly committed to ensuring there never again will be. Relations with neighbors? Their tolerance for Israel seems also to be wearing thin.
And officials in the Israeli government are saying out loud, to the teevie cameras, what Dayan said only behind closed doors.
Israel has agreed to a two state solution several times in the past and Palestinians and Arabs rejected it. You can't ignore that and blame it all on Israel just because they are not open to a two state solution at the moment when they just suffered a horrendous terrorist attack.
Israel *said* they would accept a two state solution, even while they have spent the past 40+ years building a network of settlements in Palestinian territory that render a Palestinian state logistically impossible.
Israel has never agreed to a two-state solution. What they have agreed to a couple of times was to create something that it called a Palestinian state, but, in fact, had such limitations on its sovereignty that it wouldn't really have been one.
Actually, Israel now has peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, UAE, and Bahrain.
I sometimes travel to Riyadh and the Saudis I talk to mostly say that a peace treaty with Israel is a foregone conclusion. The US is not to be trusted, especially after our pull out of Afghanistan. If we successfully decarbonize KSA cannot count on us. But Israel is stuck in the region and cannot allow KSA to be dominated by or defeated by Iran. Therefore, Israel will provide KSA's nuclear umbrella to protect it from Iran and Iranian nuclear blackmail (perhaps even to the extent of having Israeli troops and nukes stationed in the country) until KSA decides that the political moment has arrived to develop its own nuclear forces, at which point KSA will decide whether to get its nuclear technology from Pakistan (KSA funded much of their nuclear program, supposedly in return for an option to buy nukes at a later date) or Israel.
Iran is now driving the Middle East peace process.
It is no coincidence that UAE has continued to announce cooperation deals with Israel even during the current war.
So many of you so willing to recall any occasion in which an Israeli official says something stupid and at the same time so willing to ignore the positions of the defacto government in Gaza and desires of many Palestinians.
When people use words I take them seriously. At the risk of rehashing this, the slogan "from the river to the sea" means what is says. Just like when Trump would say something incredibly dangerous and the right would just dismiss it as "just words", we on the left would reply with "words matter". None of you seem to have a problem with Palestinians and their supporters not wanting a Jewish state. This is all in my mind because I saw a person wearing a cap with a map of the entirety of Israel covered in a Palestinian colors/flag. My friend on the left care little.
At the risk of rehashing this, the slogan "from the river to the sea" means what is says.
Radicals can say whatever they like. But the plain reality is that "from the river to the sea" properly refers to a country called Israel plus the lands it conquered in 1967 and continues to this day to illegally colonize.
Zionists understandably don't like the term because it's a reminder of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
What makes you say they are illegally colonizing it? If nations launch a war against you, and you defeat them, you don't have to give back that land. That's the price countries pay for launching wars.
If nations launch a war against you, and you defeat them, you don't have to give back that land.
So the United States could have legally annexed Honshu and Bavaria against the wishes of the Japanese?
Interesting take!
Well, I do not think the Japanese would have cared if we annexed Bavaria, but yes, we could have annexed Honshu against the wishes of the Japanese.
You might want to check out some of the maps showing what happened to the countries of Eastern Europe after WWII. Borders all moved West and so did people. Those new borders remain even after the fall of the Soviet Union and I do not think any serious person claims they are illegitimate.
What a shockingly evil statement. "You may conquer and ethnically cleanse as long as you weren't the aggressor."
Where did I say anything about ethnically cleansing?
Well, the alternative is even dumber: "As long as you weren't the aggressor, you may conquer and absorb a bunch of people who do not wish to be part of your polity."
The alternative isn't any better: continuing in perpetuity to commit massive violations of fundamental human rights. There is no end game that involves Israel holding on to Gaza and the West Bank that does not involve a lot crimes.
If nations launch a war against you, and you defeat them, you don't have to give back that land.
False. The 4th Geneva Convention, signed in 1949 and ratified by Israel in 1951, makes it illegal to expand territory through conquest. It explicitly says that it doesn't matter who started the war.
This appears to be incorrect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention
Look up Annexation in Wikipedia. The Evolution of international Law section mentions the 4th Geneva convention only tangentially but states annexation is illegal under various international laws.
This same link discusses Israel in detail.
Let's all hope we have progressed we have advanced a teeny tiny bit from might makes right.
The main backing for this is the UN Charter.
I'm waiting for the countries that signed that Charter to reverse the annexations at the end of WWII.
BTW, I am curious to hear what country you think Israel annexed East Jerusalem from. Jordan has renounced its claim and Palestine never existed as a country. The previous sovereign was the UK but it was not annexed but was instead part of the British Mandate. Before that the previous sovereign was the Ottoman Empire whose successor state is modern Turkey. Does it go to Turkey?
It does not. Your comment demonstrates the folly of regarding stuff you find on Wikipedia as authoritative. The fact that its summary doesn't mention annexation doesn't mean that it's not in the Convention itself.
Because it is.
Primary sources are a better place to go than Wikipedia, which should really only be used as a starting point. In this case, the primary sources are the text of the Convention itself, and the 1958 Commentaries, which are considered authoritative.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949
The issue is covered in multiple places, but the most important are Articles 47 and 49. The former reads:
Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.
The Commentary to Article 47 includes:
Consequently occupation as a result of war, while representing actual possession to all appearances, cannot imply any right whatsoever to dispose of territory. As long as hostilities continue the Occupying Power cannot therefore annex the occupied territory, even if it occupies the whole of the territory concerned. A decision on that point can only be reached in the peace treaty. That is a universally recognized rule which is endorsed by jurists and confirmed by numerous rulings of international and national courts.
and:
It will be well to note that the reference to annexation in this Article cannot be considered as implying recognition of this manner of acquiring sovereignty.
The problem in Article 49 is that Paragraph 6 reads:
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
It's obvious that Israel has violated both of these Articles. Technically, they have only officially annexed land around Jerusalem, but even this is illegal. And they have, de facto, annexed a lot more of the West Bank through their violations of Article 49, Paragraph 6.
It should be noted that even the Israeli government makes the argument that you have. They have not claimed that the 4th Geneva Convention does not make annexation illegal. They have two arguments that they use, both specious.
1) That their presence in the West Bank does not constitute an occupation. This argument relies upon the idea that, because borders were never legally set after 1948, they are entitled to treat all of the West Bank as legally Israeli territory. This ignores the fact that Palestine, under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, was an independent country. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 predates the 4th Convention by a year, so, legally, they can claim territory inside the Green Line to be theirs. This does not apply to the West Bank and Gaza.
2) The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the Convention has no force unless it's supplemented by legislation at the national level, and Israel has never codified it. This is an interpretation that no one else agrees wit, including the UN Security Council.
So, yes, Israeli annexation is illegal. Contra Atticus, they do have to give back the land. They could make annexation legal in a peace treaty, though the Commentary on Article 47 makes clear that even under a peace treaty, such an action is frowned upon. Until then, though, they are bound by the 4th Geneva Convention not to annex territory and not to allow Israeli civilians to move into the West Bank.
Your core claim is incorrect.
HEre is the text.
ARTICLE 22.
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.
...
Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.
---------------
Needless to say, the parts of these communities that now constitute Israel are standing alone... as part of Israel.
On the other hand, using this clause to establish a mandate by a suitable power over Gaza and/or the West Bank is an interesting idea.
Yes, because declaring Palestine to be an independent country in 1922 obviously means that they were entitled to take over half of the country in 1948.
It's fascinating. You're not just thoroughly dishonest, but you're also really stupid about it. Anyone with a brain would recognize that making such transparently bullshit claim doesn't help their cause. You, on the other hand, post idiocy secure in the belief that you have proven anything other than that you're a dishonest idiot.
If my country -- America -- had armed the de facto government of Gaza and the Palestinians to the teeth, and had provided diplomatic cover for them whenever any of their actions were condemned internationally, then I would take more interest in the positions they have expressed, because I -- through my country -- would be responsible for those positions being promoted.
As it is, it is instead the government of Israel and the Israelis that my government has armed to the teeth and provided diplomatic cover for, so I am responsible for the positions of the government of Israel and the Israelis being promoted.
I'm responsible for the actions of my own government, which backs Israel almost completely without question.
Therefore, it is my duty as an honest person of goodwill -- which I like to believe is what I am -- to criticize and condemn when I see fit the positions of Israelis.
If some Palestinian says something awful, shame on them.
But none of that shame is mine.
If some Israeli says something awful, also shame on them.
But probably shame on me, too.
And because from where I sit Israel and its Zionist predecessors have never made a serious effort at accommodating or even recognizing the rights of the people they displaced, I frankly agree with the Palestinians not wanting a Jewish state and rejecting Israel's legitimacy.
If you don't care that Palestinians' rights were trampled in the creation of Israel, I really don't care what you think about anything else related to the situation.
At the risk of rehashing this, the slogan "from the river to the sea" means what is says.
It means the exact same thing, except in reverse, as when Israelis say that they are going to settle "Judea and Samaria." The Israelis have always been hypocritical about this, but, especially since Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich joined the government, Israel has no standing whatsoever to complain about the slogan "from the river to the sea." They are every bit as guilty.
None of you seem to have a problem with Palestinians and their supporters not wanting a Jewish state.
It's more complicated than that. It isn't that I don't have a problem with Palestinians rejecting a Jewish majority state . Rather:
1) I absolutely reject the idea that Jews have the right to set up a state in which they are not only a majority, but define the state's purpose in ways that exclude the Arab minority. It is not legitimate that they provide fewer rights to non-Jews. They do not have the right to a discriminatory state.
2) I understand the historical reasons why the Palestinians reject a Jewish state. The British allowed large scale immigration by a group of people committed to creating a state that definitionally excluded 90% of the population (as of when Mandatory Palestine was created). They were given no voice in this policy. They watched Europeans give away half of their own country.
3) While Hamas says that they will dismantle the Jewish state and deny its citizens a state of their own, this is entirely aspirational. Hamas is not, at this moment, actually preventing the Jews from having their own state. But that's exactly what the Israelis are doing right now, and have done for 57 years.
The Israeli refusal to allow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to have a government in which they have a say is a vastly more pressing problem than Palestinian dreams of returning the favor.
Likud 1977 election manifesto:
"Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
You don't even have to go back to 1977. Here is a portion of their platform for the 2021 elections: https://educ.jmu.edu/~vannorwc/assets/ghist%20102-150/pages/arabisraeli/likudpolicy.html
The link there that says that it takes you to the full platform is broken. It appears that Likud scrubbed their website of their policy platform, as I cannot find it anywhere on the party's website.
They've gotten smarter about what language they use, but it still has the same meanings. A couple of quotes:
6. Israel will keep its vital water resources in Judea and Samaria. There shall be no infringement of Israel's use of its water resources.
8. The Jordan River shall be the eastern border of the State of Israel, south of Lake Kinneret. This will be the permanent border between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Kingdom of Jordan may become a partner in the final arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians, in areas agreed upon in the negotiations.
11. Settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel is of national importance and part of Israel's defense strategy. The government will allocate special resources for settlement in border and sparcely-populated areas.
Here is a link to the 1996 Likud Party Platform.
https://web.archive.org/web/19990203183952/http://www.likud.org.il/policy/likud.html
It has all the sections you quote.
Here is what Wikipedia cites as the 1999 platform.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070930181442/https://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#cite_note-platform-135
No Palestinian state? No PA? Then how will the Gaza area be governed? I think that only leaves Israel governing the area.
Steve
They are still pretending that they will be able to get some Palestinians or foreign Arabs who agree to be their lackeys and enforce their rule.
One "plan" I have heard is Netanyahu saying that they should just let the local crime bosses run things. Which is yet another condemnation of him and his "leadership."
I think Netanyahu and other rightwing Israeli politicians were already saying the quiet part out loud several years ago that the two-state solution was DOA. Regrettably, they're right -- the West Bank has been effectively carved up into a mosaic of little townships and agricultural holdings surrounded by batshit insane settlers that could never function as an independent state and Gaza has been bombed back to the stone age.
Of course Hamas and the other radical Palestinian resistance groups never wanted a two-state solution, either, but just imagined they would be the ones who would get to slaughter all the Israelis instead. Everyone has what they want now!
"In one sense, this is a big 'meh.' Only a true Pollyanna could believe anything different."
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains (which is the 2-state solution), however improbable, must be the truth."
Sherlock Holmes does not appreciate being referred to as "a true Pollyanna."
May 3, 1983:
"When we have settled the land, all the
Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged
roaches in a bottle."
– Rafael Eitan (1929-2004) served as Chief of Staff of the IDF, and later as Knesset member and government minister.
February 2006:
"The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger."
– Dov Weisglass, adviser to now-Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, talking about Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip.
I remember this one. Keep Gaza always on the verge of famine. And yet, the United States said nothing.
We've been here before. It's a ritual. Every two or three years, our
military mounts another bloody expedition. The enemy is always smaller,
weaker; our military is always larger, technologically more
sophisticated, prepared for full-scale war against a full-scale army.
But Iran is too scary, and even the relatively small Hizbullah gave us
a hard time. That leaves the Palestinians.
Israel is engaged in a
long war of annihilation against Palestinian society. The objective is
to destroy the Palestinian nation and drive it back into pre-modern
groupings based on the tribe, the clan and the enclave. This is the
last phase of the Zionist colonial mission, culminating in inaccessible
townships, camps, villages, districts, all of them to be walled or
fenced off, and patrolled by a powerful army which, in the absence of a
proper military objective, is really an over-equipped police force,
with F16s, Apaches, tanks, artillery, commando units and hi-tech
surveillance at its disposal.
The extent of the cruelty, the lack
of shame and the refusal of self-restraint are striking, both in
anthropological terms and historically. The worldwide Jewish support
for this vandal offensive makes one wonder if this isn't the moment
Zionism is taking over the Jewish people.
But the real issue is
that since 1991, and even more since the Oslo agreements in 1993,
Israel has played on the idea that it really is trading land for peace,
while the truth is very different. Israel has not given up the
territories, but cantonised and blockaded them. The new strategy is to
confine the Palestinians: they do not belong in our space, they are to
remain out of sight, packed into their townships and camps, or swelling
our prisons. This project now has the support of most of the Israeli
press and academics.
We are the masters. We work and travel. They
can make their living by policing their own people. We drive on the
highways. They must live across the hills. The hills are ours. So are
the fences. We control the roads, and the checkpoints and the borders.
We control their electricity, their water, their milk, their oil, their
wheat and their gasoline. If they protest peacefully we fire tear gas
at them. If they throw stones, we fire bullets. If they launch a
rocket, we destroy a house and its inhabitants. If they launch a
missile, we destroy families, neighbourhoods, streets, towns.
Israel
doesn't want a Palestinian state alongside it. It is willing to prove
this with hundreds of dead and thousands of disabled, in a single
'operation'. The message is always the same: leave or remain in
subjugation, under our military dictatorship. We are a democracy. We
have decided democratically that you will live like dogs.
On 27
December just before the bombs started falling on Gaza, the Zionist
parties, from Meretz to Yisrael Betenu, were unanimously in favour of
the attack. As usual – it's the ritual again – differences emerged only
over the dispatch of blankets and medication to Gaza. Our most fervent
pro-war columnist, Ari Shavit, has suggested that Israel should go on
with the assault and build a hospital for the victims. The enemy is
wounded, bleeding, dying, desperate for help. Nobody is coming unless
Obama moves – yes, we are all waiting for Godot. Maybe this time he
shows up.
– Yitzhak Laor lives in Tel Aviv. He is the editor of Mita'am.
He is exactly correct.
Humans are quite "good" at "justifying" such.
Amazing that Christians, Jews and Muslims cannot seem to worship the very same god, with all the rules issued by the same god.
Both sides have spent the last 57 years trying to make the other miserable enough to leave. While both sides have failed to drive the others out, extremists on each side simply enable extremists on the other side.
At this point, the majority of each side seems to be extremists, unfortunately, which is what happens when you treat the other in the most brutal ways you can get away with.
At some point, the US has to disengage from unqualified support of Israeli policies. It seems clear that that unqualified support has enabled Israel to avoid meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians, esp. with the PA.
There will be a state of Palestine, side by side with Israel.
It is true that we don't know what pressure would make Israel be even minimally decent. But it is long past time to admit that our policy of making sure there is no pressure on Israel to be decent has failed. It is reminiscent of Ned Flanders' hippy parents despairing parents lamenting that they don't know how to control him. We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.
Our policy towards Israel has been that if we make sure they do not feel pressure they will do the right thing. Shockingly feeling no pressure has actually allowed them to do whatever they want, and the things they have done are things that would be described as evil if done by anyone else, but can't be described as evil because it is anti-Semitism to treat Israel like we would treat other countries.
w
It is interest with South Africa how little pressure it ultimately took to end Apartheid. They saw economic ruin on the horizon and backed down before it arrived rather than after. And they had to go from ruling the country to economically controlling a country ruled by black people. Israel is really just being asked to accept that its less than 50% of the population should settle for 78% of the land. But given the no pressure on Israel whatsoever policy they have seen no reason not to keep 100% of the land. The deep immorality of it could be a reason, but clearly isn't for them.
And it appears that Biden has just reassured Israel that there will be no real pressure on them to do anything. Just kidding about that anti-slaughter of civilians thing. Although maybe that announcement got an end to the invasion of Rafah. As embarrassingly bad as Biden has been it remains true that Trump would be even worse.
It's honestly hard to imagine where that pressure would even come from. Even after the complete destruction of Gaza and 35,000+ deaths, about 85% of politicians are still pro-Israel (roughly 100% of Repubcs and 75-90% of Dems).
I'm reminded of Trump's infamous statement: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?".
Isreal can now claim: "We can completely destroy a city and kill 35,000 people and not lose support of the US".
Except Trump's statement was at least partially hyperbole; Isreal's isn't. It's the actual reality of the situation.
So that remains my question: What would it take for the US (and other Western powers) to abandon Israel? Would dropping a nuclear bomb be enough? Sad to say, I'm not even sure that would do it.
"What would it take for the US (and other Western powers) to abandon Israel?"
A fairly thorough economic collapse of the West.
I dunno. The S. African example shows that being enough of apariah can build real pessure.
The question was "What would it take for the US (and other Western powers) to abandon Israel?"
If that were to happen, yes, Israel would probably abandon a lot of its chauvinistic policies one way or another, but what would it take for America to abandon Israel?
Many Jews around the world feel a deep attachment to Israel, and there are more Jews in America than there are even in Israel.
And American Jews have a huge presence in American politics, particularly in the way of campaign financing. (Yes, that aligns with an antisemitic trope, but it's just true.) 80% or more Members of Congress routinely sign off on resolutions basically declaring that Israel's crap doesn't stink.
What breaks that?
It is being challenged now as probably never before, but it is a thin slice of American society -- centered on college kids -- where the challenge is based. Most Americans are unaware of anything going on outside of our borders, and don't care.
And now both here and in Israel, religious crazies have taken up an extreme Zionist perspective, which -- being based in religious craziness -- is immune to reason.
So I think the most likely reason America abandons Israel is if we are so economically stressed that we scrutinize everything we spend money on, including support for Israel.
Apartheid South Africa never had such entrenched support here.
It is easy to imagine where effective pressure could come from, but I gather your point is that it is hard to imagine it coming from those places. And sadly you are right about that. Of course for a long time the same thing was true with South Africa. And at some point it will be with Israel, it is just that "at some point" is intentionally vague.
In an earlier post Drum posted a comment from a college protester claiming something like that Israel would cease to exist in his lifetime. If we weaken that to the status quo will not hold, then I think he is probably right, assuming his lifetime will be at least 50 more years. But Israel can do a lot of harm in 50 years while the US tsk-tsks at Israel's behavior while fully backing it.
At the very least we need the Silent Generation and the Boomers to die off since they're clearly not going to reliquinsh power on their own. They're a bit like Charlton Heston and his gun in that regard.
In his remarks today or yesterday, Biden is wrong, Israel is acting illegally according to international law, and Joe has lost my support again. You can't straddle evil and pretend to be a cowboy.
What do you do with a burst appendix?
That's flippant and reductive...very much like the current military operation is. Now they just have to decide how oppressive the occupation is going to be unless they aren't finished...
We are definitely at the moment where the only reason to assume that a statement like this is not invented out of whole cloth is because it has not yet been done. Sort of like assuming Asian bird flus always peter out as they spread…
I think any non-public statement is now up for this kind of scrutiny.
Can’t get to cat blogging soon enough
Nobody is going to take Gaza over from them under those terms. They broke it; it's now theirs.
And it really isn't correct to say that no one knows what might change their minds, because nothing has ever been tried. We could try cutting off their weapons supplies until Netanyahu is gone and see how that works. We could declare them a terrorist state because they are. We could have let the ICC thing pass without comment.
You're right, the enormous influx of very conservative Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union has caused a major distortion in the Israeli electorate. That distortion is permanent. They arrived carrying their grievances with them and, just like in America, they see nothing at all wrong with doing to others what was done to them.
I think basing a state on an ethno-religious identity is always a mistake and this is a big reason why.
South African model: Increasing international isolation of a pariah state eventually becomes unbearable for a modern high-tech society with democratic pretensions.
I'm not saying it will happen, if it does it might take decades. But it is the only ray of hope I can see.
"None of these points is going to be easy for Israelis to swallow. I can attest that most people find it easier to sacrifice the lives of their spouses, siblings, and children in a futile cause than to change how they feel and how they understand the world." - David Shulman