How do wars end? Lots of different ways. One of the most common is also the simplest: the losing side surrenders and sues for terms. Needless to say, these terms are often harsh.
Wars can also end via negotiated settlements, usually mediated by a third party. In these cases the losing side often avoids the harsh terms of formal surrender but nonetheless is forced to accept a small fraction of what it wants.
Surrender and negotiation have one thing in common: both sides, but especially the losing side, have to stop fighting.
The Arab-Israeli War¹ has been ongoing for 80 years or so. The Arab side that started the war has lost. They've lost over and over and over, and they have no chance of changing that. They are outmatched in conventional terms, and even if, somehow, they were able to turn this around, Israel has nuclear weapons available in the last extremity. Put simply, the Arab side literally has zero chance of ever winning.
But they refuse to surrender. So the war continues, and Israel's defense becomes steadily more brutal in an effort to finally force surrender. None of this is necessarily fair. It is, however, the way the world works and always has.
The Arab-Israeli War will end when the Arab side surrenders. So far, only Egypt and Jordan have effectively done this, and they've had peaceful relations with Israel ever since.
The same thing will happen with any other organization or state that recognizes reality and surrenders. The terms of this surrender have gotten worse over the years as the fighting has continued, but that's to be expected. They'll get worse still as long as the fight goes on.
Like it or not, this is the only endgame. Short of Carthage-like annihilation, the Arab side has lost as thoroughly as any side has ever lost in history. They need to surrender and then rely on the US and Europe to help them avoid the harshest possible terms from Israel. It's the only way this ever ends.
¹This should be "Arab plus Iranian," but there's no good word for that. Just assume that Iran is included in all references.
There is no “Arab-Israeli” war. There’s white people who colonized a land that didn’t belong to them, their on-going genocide of the aboriginal people, and the fight to restore native rights. There’s also the continuing Western interference in the region in service of acquiring oil. But history bends towards justice, and eventually Palestine will be free and the West will mind its own business.
Let's set that aside, and assume that the internationally-agreed borders of Israel are inviolate. The "Arab side" DID surrender -- in the Oslo Accords, which Israel proceeded to violate in spirit by continuing to build settlements on Palestinian land from the jump, even before the ink was dry.
Israel did this, not the Palestinians. At that time, the Palestinians were busy trying to keep the peace, to the point that Muhammamad Dahlan's security forces were working hand-in-glove with Shin Bet. Fat lotta good it did 'em: Israel kept right on goin' eating up Palestine.
So you're right: the Arab-Israeli war has never stopped, b/c Israel has never wanted to stop it, including during the Oslo Accords. They're hell-bent on taking all of Palestine. All. Of. It.
British Gas found natural gas in Gaza territorial waters (1999), ultimately determining that there was 1 trillion cubit feet there. The gas lies in Palestinian maritime territory as per the Oslo Accords of 1995.
In 2002 the Palestinian Authority approved BG's proposal to construct a pipeline to a processing facility in Gaza, which is precisely when Israel started supporting Hamas' overthrow of the PA. Hamas won control of the Palestinian legislature in 2007 (again, with the full support of Israel) and the next year, in total contravention of international laws, Israel declared sovereignty over the Gaza Marine area, and BG closed its offices in Tel Aviv.
Hamas played stooge for Israel for years and then it stopped. That's the long and the short of the Hamas story.
Go ahead and try to explain how robbing the inhabitants of an area of their own natural resources is not colonialism.
In that it's just straight up theft, not colonizing?
"Violate in spirit" means they are keeping to the agreement made but violating terms that you think should have been in the agreement but are not.
Except that Israel didn't violate the Accords in spirit. They violated them in letter. When you read the Oslo Accords, you will find a stipulation that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations." This is a prohibition on expanding the settlements.
What the language means is that Israel is prohibited from changing the status of territory by declaring it to be State Land. Legally, this is a necessary precursor to using that land for Israeli settlements. Without that status, settlers cannot get mortgages or a deed to the property. Under Israeli law, they cannot get a building permit.
After the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel never stopped declaring that private land in the West Bank was now State Land. When they were first called out for it, they came back and said that they would continue to expand current settlements, but not construct new ones. The phrase they used was "natural growth." As they don't have any actual power, the Palestinians reluctantly agreed.
Israel proceeded to completely abuse this agreement. There was nothing "natural" about the growth of the settlements. They continued to build, and they continued to invite Israelis who had not previously lived in the West Bank to acquire these new homes.
You've been watching way too many Hollywood movies if you think Jews are White colonizers.
"Europe," Great Britain and the U.S. in particular, are the colonial powers and the Jews are the proxies.
Oh Please.
Jews may be proxies. But Jews are not strictly White; about 70% of Jews are closely related to Arabs, all coming from the Sinai.
Anyone who knows Exodus or a tiny bit of the cultural customs knows that Arabs and Jews have a shared heritage. That's why this war is asinine. They're waging war against their own brothers and sisters.
You will recall the UK abandoned this territory in 1948 after being kicked out.
... which means that GB was the primary colonial power from 1918 to 1948. What's your point?
About 60% of the "white European" Jewish refugees who settled around Jerusalem were driven out of their homes in Syria, Iran, Morocco and elsewhere in the middle East. Most of the rest of the "white European colonizers" were refugees from the Holocaust.
It is true a good 60% plus of Israeli source poppulation comes from MENA region Jews, it is not true to lump this all into "driven from their homes" - it does apply to some MENA but not all.
The example of cited Morocco shows the fallaciousnes of these narrarives (both the "White coloniser" and the "Driven from homes'
In the Moroccan case not only were Jews protected by the Monarchy against Vichy France attempts to deport them (something Israeli Jewish authorities recognise quite frequently in re the Moroccan kingdom) but the Moroccan kingdom coordinated with Israeli on the "Aliya" calls in the 1950s - calls from Israel for Aliya not explusions, no expropriations, but enticedd by Aliya subsidies (and given a chance to escape general rural impoverishment in Morocco in the 1950s who wouldn't take that).
(The Moroccan Jewish population being a unique one that had a huge component of non-Arabic speaking Berber-speaking populations thought to trace back to Roman era conversions, in addition to the more well known and visible Sephardic - Spanish refuguees from the expulsions from Spain after 1492).
Morocco still has a substantive Jewish population which has significant business ownership in the country, with frequent inclusion of Jews in senior government (and Royal advisory, some of the richest families remaining, Jews...) positions. And an active Israeli - Moroccan tourism relationship for Marocco-Israeli families (heavily weighted to pilgrimmages off the non-Sephardic).
Egypt, explusions, yes. Iraq, the same, but one should endeavor not to fall into simle minded 1970s era propaganda about The Arabs and The Jews, the region contained different stories than just those.
Ding ding ding!
Just the first few comments here show why this is nowhere near resolution.
So are the Arab governments and the various resistance organizations just going to give up the West Bank to Israel? Should they evacuate Gaza and let Israel take it over? These things may well happen eventually, but just giving over to Israeli territorial aggression is not easy. The US certainly resisted when the Japanese took over our territories in the Pacific. If the Palestinian organizations did stop their attacks is there any reason to believe that this would actually stop Israel's drive toward Greater Israel?
Except for Syria, Libya, Lebanon (effectively controlled by Hezbollah) and the Houthis, all the Arab governments want peace with Israel and most effectively have it. There is a reason why Arab militaries helped defend Israel against the recent Iranian attack.
I live in the Middle East.
No one in the region thinks they can rely on the US to protect them from Iran indefinitely - at some point we will have a president who cuts and runs like Biden in Afghanistan.
Most people think a long term accommodation with Iran is impossible without regime change.
Israel is a nuclear armed hi-tech military regional superpower that cannot run because it is in the Middle East and that cannot afford to abandon the major Arab countries to Iranian control.
Most people expect a mutual defense treaty (perhaps secret) between Israel, KSA, and a few other Arab nations within 10 years. A few people I have talked to think there is already a secret treaty.
"cuts and runs like Biden in Afghanistan" Are you really this stupid? How many more decades were American soldiers supposed to occupy Afghanistan? It was long past time to leave. Biden had the courage to finally step up and do it. Not to mention that Trump had made a deal that compelled this result - we were leaving, soon, as a result, regardless.
Drum's entire comment is stuck in a 1970s narrative - even continuing to call this Arab-Israeli is rather non-sensical in substance as ex-Lebanon (which can't particularly be said to even have a government, it's rather the Shia Hezbollah regional warlord sub-state) have any war agenda and have not had for a good two decades, at minimum (and really three).
The Palestinian prolbem is really a Palestinian problem.
There is not any broad 50s-70s era Arab nations coalition nor desires for such to go to war. Even at popular level while people hate what they see re Gaza and West Bank, there is not a mobilisation notably different than what US Uni campuses engaged.
Of course myself contra MF here am focused in North Africa, so the Iranian considerations are basically absent, this being really a Gulf concern (a very real one for them however).
Drum and American's commentary and understanding on this issue are really geriatrically trapped in the image that came out of late 60s-early 70s. But Nasserism is dead, has been dead for decades and Pan Arabism (at least of the 60-70s form) is dead. The entire analysis gets down to " not even wrong"
The war has shrunk from "all Islamic nations in the Middle-East" to "Hezbollah and a couple of other small groups with the backing of Iran".
It's the same war, but the dimensions have changed. The problem remains about the same in that they're fighting over the same land, money, power, etc.
If Hamas leaders weren't making out like bandits, would this remain? It seems a lot less likely, though there will always be hotheads like Trump supporters who still believe the past was better.
The Palestinian problem is closer to solution now than ever, but that doesn't mean it's easy to solve or help us create that solution. What would it be? How can the Palestinians survive if Israel takes all the land "from the sea to the Jordan"? There are questions.
a little off topic but I'd be curious about opinions on this.
I think Hamas gives Bibi a big PR advantage when they use their own civilians as shields. Did the IRA do this? I understand someone out-gunned using ambushes, hostages, suicide vests, etc, but launching rockets from civilian neighborhoods, and setting up command posts under hospitals, gives the IDF a free pass for gross collateral from their retaliatory strike.
I don't expect Hamas to march against the IDF in columns like the Brits at Lexington, but setting up their own civilians to be collateral fodder does not help their PR.
okay- kevlar donned ( G )
Gaza is small and extremely crowded. Where are the neighborhoods that Hamas could use that don't have civilians?
And, yes, the IRA did this. All terrorist and almost all guerilla armies do this. Israel would be guilty of this, too, if the Palestinians had the firepower to strike back against settler terrorists.
I don't recall Israel supplying anything that could be called close to credible evidence for this accusation (command posts under hospitals). Certainly not in 25/25 of the instances of a hospital's desctruction.
I gotta disagree with Kevin. In Vietnam and Afghanistan, our adversaries were surely militarily defeated and should have surrendered at some point but did not. Instead, they just kept on fighting and eventually they exhausted the US and we went home and they won. While Nazi Germany was physically unable to continue to resist because the allies conquered it and controlled the land, the Israelis are incapable of that.
While Israel is not going to "go home," there is a viable Arab victory in exhausting Israel, inflicting unacceptable casualties on an Israeli populace which particularly keenly is sensitive to casualties. And perhaps most importantly provoking the Israelis to do things that alienate Israel's supporters in the West to drive them into a South Africa under Apartheid style pariah status. I could see that leading to a solution where the Israelis agreed to evacuate to the 1967 lines, which I would consider at this point an Arab victory (but they will never get the "Right of Return" because that is an existential threat to Israel's existence...).
The difference is, US wasn't fighting an existential war.
There is never going to be an "exhausted" Israel. This is an existential war for them and to be exhausted means to be eliminated.
Israel has made it so. We don't know what would have been the outcome if the Israelis had adhered to the Oslo Accords; and if negotiation had continued beyond them. The Arab nations that once warred against Israel on behalf of the Palestinian cause have turned their backs; only Iran supports violent resistance. I believe that if there were a clear path to a sovereign, sustainable Palestinian state, that most of the support for Hamas and IJP would evaporate. Yes, there would be die-hards, but both the Palestinian proto-state and Israel would have every incentive to suppress violence.
It's just as much an existential war for the Palestinians, which means neither side can "win" short of exterminating the other side, which Israel seems to be trying to do. The only other end is a negotiated end. There have been lots of negotiated agreements, but Israel hasn't abided by a single one. To be fair, the Palestinian side hasn't been too good about that, either. I see only one way this ends. There has to be enough international pressure on Israel to negotiate in good faith.
When did it become an existential war for Palestinians? From the beginning when the UN apportioned lands for the creation of Israel?
Well then, I go back to my point about how the anti-Zionist makes it impossible to achieve a negotiated peace.
And if that's the case, then the war ends when one side wins and the other side is wiped out.
Good luck to all, and may the side with the most righteous claims win.
/S
It became existential for the Palestinians when Israel annexed West Bank (and for a period Gaza) and began settler colonialism in West Banks (and briefly Gaza).
The drip-drip-drip of annexation.
The path is then either Israel continues and for it's Judea & Samaria (West Bank) becomes an apartheid state, or it engages in mass expulsions in some rerun of European 1940s experience or a single state emerges.
From the beginning when the UN apportioned lands for the creation of Israel?
"The beginning" long preceded that. It started when the Zionists engaged in a project of large scale immigration with the stated purpose of creating a state that excluded 95% of the population at that time from full citizenship.
As for the UN apportioning lands, that would have been illegal had it ever actually happened. Article 2, Paragraph 7 of the UN Charter states, "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." As Palestine was declared to be an independent country when the Palestinian Mandate invoked Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the conflict between the Palestinians and the Zionists was within its domestic jurisdiction. So, the UN had no authority to get involved.
But, even if it had, the UN never passed a partition plan. As Israel ad its supporters loudly point out in every other circumstance, a General Assembly resolution has no legal force if it is not subsequently passed by the Security Council. The Council never even took Res. 181 up for debate, let alone vote on and pass it.
The UN partition never actually happened. It was just kicked around.
The fact that one side or the other refuses to settle down to some relationship where both can live is painful to watch from a distance. It seems very stupid. But, with so much at stake and the possibilities for outside influences, anything has been possible.
Consider that the recent Hamas October attack involved Russia, timing and perhaps more. What happens if Putin is out of the picture? Would both sides continue the same way? What are their incentives? Without Putin wanting to use them to embarrass America ("Israel kills wantonly and America is to blame"), would Israel be so contentious, and without money from Putin, would Hamas do things like their October attack? Take money out of the picture and a lot changes.
Yes, starting in the latter 20th century many native governments and movements have successfully resisted or thrown off control by a more powerful invading nation, which is what Israel is with respect to the Arab parts of Palestine. Deciding when to give up is not simple.
Isn't that more or less basically what Kevin referred to as going on for 80 years? Will another 80 do it?
200 would be only a start in the Middle East. The crusader states are only ruins now….
Mention of Vietnam reminds me of the history of Annan, roughly today’s Northern Vietnam, which was defeated and subjugated by China for nearly 1,000 years before regaining independence
That thing you're worried about (Will Kevin Drum double down on his weirdlly ignorant and passive-aggressive anti-Arab comments)? Have no worries, the answer is yes.
To borrow a phrase he used the other day, What do you expect them to do? (When you actually understand the motivations of the peoples involved and don't just wave them off as trivial)?
Oh yeah, and when you add Iran, you have a country that has never been "defeated" by Israel in any way other than by small-scale proxy. Plus they're nuclear-adjacent.
Maybe time to hang up the old blogging spurs.
Talk about 'weirdly ignorant'! Maybe time to hang up the old commenting spurs.
Hey somebody had to drain all the existing bodies of water dry to grow all those crops for export and fill their swimming pools and stuff. The water in that desert wasn't gonna drain itself.
The cost to Israel for all those walls, military all over the place, atom bombs, and the whole security/surveillance apparatus must be around East Germany level. Good thing for them that the US pays for it.
Yeah, when you put it this way it makes clear that the whole thing is a heavily overleveraged enterprise. South Africa had mineral wealth to prop itself up with, for a while. Not sure what Israel has if current demographic and political trends continue to be not in their favor.
10% of Israel's exports is military hardware. Didn't try to find what percentage is civilian spinoff from defense tech.
"Wars can also end via negotiated settlements, usually mediated by a third party. In these cases the losing side often avoids the harsh terms of formal surrender but nonetheless is forced to accept a small fraction of what it wants."
This is part of the problem with the Oslo Accords. Arafat and the Palestinians were treated as equals. As if they have won wars.
Why is this a problem? It would seem that the bigger problem is that Israel spent the entire Oslo process working to make peace more difficult and then didn't offer peace in the end. How do you come to the conclusion that what really matters is that the Palestinians were treated with respect?
Israel hasn't won any wars, either. They've won some battles. They've made peace with some of their enemies. But, so long as the other side keeps fighting, you haven't won the war.
One of Israel's problems is that it has no strategy. They haven't had one since 1967. The closest they've come is, "If we make their lives sufficiently miserable, maybe the Palestinians will magically disappear." That's not a strategy.
Because they have no strategy, they can't even figure out what victory looks like. It's really hard to work towards a goal if you can't articulate what that goal is.
Clausewitz pointed out that war is politics by other means. Mounting successful military operations isn't valuable if you can't convert them into political gains. The last time that the Israelis did so was 1978.
The Israeli right wing does have a strategy. It's a mirror image of Hamas's strategy, and it's equally horrific. It mostly isn't that different from what Israel has been shambling towards for 57 years, but Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are happy to say the quiet part out loud. The way Israel is headed, the differences between them and Hamas will continue to shrink, and they'll find themselves a pariah state.
OK, let's talk just about Israelis and Palestinians:
1) Came the Balfour Agreement, which essentially says Palestine will be a home for Jews but nothing should happen that deprives the Palestinians of their lives and property
2) The Jews represent about 9% of the population but want at least half of everything. The Palestinians don't much like that divvy up. The Nakhba ensues: the European Jews are much better organized than the Palestinians and is victorious, which involves massacres and ethnic cleansing.
3) Since then, Israel has killed anywhere from 10 to 100 Palestinians for every Israeli Jewish dead. It goes up and down, stats from leftie Israelis here:
https://www.btselem.org/statistics
4) Since then, Israeli had stolen/occupied by force majeure 'dunam after dunam' (the Zionist goal) of land, purposefully creating facts on the ground that make a Palestinian state less and less feasible.
So Kevin: what do you think the Palestinians should do? Roll over and die? Commit mass suicide....or go bugshit berserk like Hamas manages to do every do often.
Never mind how does a war end: what are the Palestinians supposed to do as Israel steals their lives and property, immiserates them? This really is a Final Solution in progress only this time it isn't Jews.
I am racially Jewish.
1) Came the Balfour Agreement, which essentially says Palestine will be a home for Jews but nothing should happen that deprives the Palestinians of their lives and property
Not disagreeing, but it's important to note that the authors of both the Balfour Declaration and the Palestinian Mandate considered using the phrase "Jewish state" for what would be created, but explicitly rejected it. Instead, they used "Jewish national home," and the text of the Palestinian Mandate clearly envisions a single state in which both Jews and Arabs are citizens.
The question really should be: how does a final solution end.
I see several key issues:
1. Russia (Putin), Iran, and other countries have to be kept out of it.
2. The borders of Israel have to be properly defined, and no Israeli forces allowed outside of it. Right now the West Bank settlements have Israeli defense.
3. Palestinian leadership has to actually support Palestinians, rather than hoarding monies for themselves.
Other issues would be much more easily resolved if those can be achieved.
I realized what bothers me the most about this and the other recent post: they're not the posts of a person actively intellectually engaged in trying to parse the issues at play. They're the posts of somebody who wants to not have to be bothered by this particular war and wants to dismiss the whole thing in the simplest possible way. Mr. Drum is expressing that he has been inconvenienced.
I get the same feeling.
The comments are more intellectually engaging than the post.
It seems the Kevin does not read his comments. He certainly does not engage with any of their substance.
Yes sdean, I would like for KD to proffer a solution or at least tell us what he thinks is going to happen to Palestinians. For someone to think he is being brutally honest, he shies away from his ultimate opinion. My question for him is simple- does he believe in self determination for Palestinians.
How many "wars" did the Irish lose against the British before the British more or less gave up? 80 years seems a bit trivial.
In the Middle East, the country that usually wins is the Party of God.
Here that's both sides.
https://youtu.be/8tIdCsMufIY?si=lky6jRxVGHByxXxG
As I see it, none of the Middle-Eastern parties is exhibiting behavior appropriate for a follower of God. It all seems highly corrupted and un-Godly.
There are 7 million Jews living in Israel, 2 million Arab Israeli citizens, not counting 2 million Gazans and 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. Palestinians practically outnumber Jews in Greater Israel and this doesn't take into account the millions Palestinians living in neighboring countries, at least 50% of the Jordanian population is of Palestinian descent, half a million Palestinian live in Lebanon and another quarter million in Syria.
Israel is doomed to fight a continous defensive war against all of their neighbors that is never ending, the second the US stops supporting them, their economy will collapse under the cost of maintaining their defense establishment.
Broadly speaking, in the long run Israel is fucked. Either they commit genocide and get black balled by the west and are basically left to die on the vine or else they keep fighting a never ending low intensity war...
They were fucked when they were captives in Babylon. They were fucked when they were slaves in Egypt. They were fucked when the Nazis tried to exterminate them. They are resiliant.
They were fucked when they were captives in Babylon.
Not really. Most of the Jews remained right where they had been. Only a portion that were taken to Babylon was a minority. As for being fucked, the historical evidence is that they lived pretty normal lives and were in no way treated as prisoners. When they were allowed to return to their former kingdoms, a lot of them chose to stay in Babylon.
They were fucked when they were slaves in Egypt.
This never actually happened.
They were fucked when the Nazis tried to exterminate them. They are resiliant.
What's most remarkable about this is that a population of survivors who never surrendered are surprised that anyone else would endure hardships and never surrender. If the Israelis bothered to universalize their own historical legends, they wouldn't be so mystified by the Palestinians' continued resistance.
This is an example of what I call the "We are strong; our enemies are weak" fallacy.
Israel gdp is 525 billion. us aid 4 billion.
Israel's economy can absorb a 1% shock.
How about Curtain #3: Israel gives up its efforts to annex all of Palestine and negoitiates a meaningful peace agreement.
"The Arab-Israeli War¹ has been ongoing for 80 years or so. The Arab side that started the war has lost. They've lost over and over and over, and they have no chance of changing that. They are outmatched in conventional terms, and even if, somehow, they were able to turn this around, Israel has nuclear weapons available in the last extremity. Put simply, the Arab side literally has zero chance of ever winning."
You say the Arab side has lost but this is false. Israel isn't going to occupy Iran any time soon. What happened is Israel took control of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967. Since then they have treated the existing population very badly. Which not surprisingly has led to constant trouble which will continue until Israel gives them a better deal or somehow gets rid of them.
Kevin, you seem to forget that the US fights on Israel's side in this war. The US chooses to arm Ukraine against Russia in the name of justice, and it chooses to arm Israel... Certainly not in the name of justice, because justice would have been to allow the self-determination of Palestine, not to let Netanyahu colonize what is left of the territory of Palestine.
American politicians have had to reflect the views of American Jews and for a long time it was Israel is good 100%. These days that view has changed and the politicians are more free to look for real solutions.
Anyway, support for the state of Israel, as a homeland for the Jews, has been a position since soon after World War II.
This is all an oversimplification. Israel was established by the UN in 1947. The agreement designated a Palestinian state as well. The Arabs did not accept this two state solution and went to war vs. Israel, resulting in the Nakba--the flight of many Palestinians from the designated Israeli territory. The West Bank was under the control of Jordan until the 1967 war (started by Egypt, Jordan and Syria), at which point Israel took control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The situation has been at a stalemate ever since, although since then Egypt & Jordan have made peace with Israel.
I would like to see a two=state solution with borders resembling pre-1967 borders. There are Israeli agreements with Bahrain, UAE, and Morocco, and there was a Saudi rapprochement in the works before the Oct 7 attacks. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, in addition to the two Intifadas, complicate things considerably, as do the terrorist organizations Hamas & Hezbollah, and the involvement of Iran.
There are not just two sides in this ongoing conflict, but many factors and actors. There is a civil war in Syria, the total disorder in the failing state of Lebanon, and the Sunni-Shia conflict--all creating a context that is both fluid and disorderly.
In short there are no two sides that can negotiate in good faith, and actors with many different relations vis-a-vis the US and European diplomatic efforts.
One has to also consider the change in Israeli politics since its founding. It has grown more conservative, especially with the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and the rise of the religious right and its drive to control "Greater Israel".
I really feel for those in the Biden administration and others who are working to find some kind of temporary settlement in Gaza, let alone a regional solution. Probably the thorniest diplomatic issue of our time.
Thank you for this comment, one of the more rational in this inflammatory debate. Part of the problem is that those we now call “the Palestinians” are a stateless people. And as far as my limited understanding goes have never been a sovereign nation. It seems fair they should have self determination, but within what borders? Until 1967 Gaza was under the control of Egypt and the West Bank under control of Jordan. An easy solution would be for those areas to return to those nations but neither Egypt nor Jordan want them.
Complicating the issue, tho American left leaning protesters ignore it, is that Hamas as an organization is a murderous, medieval, theocracy. Israel understandably is loathe to create a nation like that on its border. Especially one openly committed to its destruction. If I could wave a magic wand to chance facts on the ground I’d think a workable territorial solution would be to carve out a big chunk of land somewhere in the area (I obviously don’t have the insight to be specific) and say this is Palestine. And then create a Korean style DMZ between it and Israel. Ugly but possibly effective. Zero border crossings between the two states, but Palestine would be free to arrange whatever sort of border crossings it liked with whatever other neighbors it had, most likely Egypt and Jordan. Of course neither of those countries seem to like Palestinians very much so it’s hard to say what sort of relations they’d have. But that would not be Israel’s problem any more. More importantly it would no longer be America’s either.
Israel already created a Korean DMZ out of Palestinian farms, and has sliced the West Bank into pieces not connected with each other. Not to mention the millions of refugees not allowed to return to Palestine, left in bordering camps where they are effectively prisoners.
The only way the folks in the refugee camps will ever return to pre-67 Israel is if Israel is eliminated as a state and Israelis are turned into refugees and like forced to flee to America and Europe. Odds are extremely against that happening.
It is cruel to the Palestinian people in the camps to even pretend this is a possibility. In real life, they are now Jordanian, Syrian, etc. But then, most of them have lived all their lives there anyway so it is just acknowledging reality and going forward on that basis.
And as far as my limited understanding goes have never been a sovereign nation.
This is mostly false. The Palestinian Mandate, through its invocation of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, declared that Palestine was an independent country that would be temporarily administered by the British. That country would become fully sovereign when the British left. You'll have to decide for yourself where on the spectrum of sovereignty being independent with a promise of eventual full sovereignty lies.
That said, Palestine was definitely a state. Article 7 of the Mandate declares that the British should "facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine."
It seems fair they should have self determination, but within what borders?
Legally speaking, they should have self-determination within the borders set by the Palestinian Mandate. The refugees that fled/were ethnically cleansed have a legal right to return to their original homes, which would make them citizens of Israel under the Law of State Succession.
Obviously, that isn't going to happen, but Israel needs to negotiate in order for the Palestinians to relinquish legal claims.
Slightly more practically, and even more legally ironclad, they should control all of the West Bank and Gaza. As the Israeli conquest of them postdates the 4th Geneva Convention, it has no legal claim to them at all, as the ICJ pointed out recently.
An easy solution would be for those areas to return to those nations but neither Egypt nor Jordan want them.
More to the point, Egypt and Jordan legally ceded any claims they have to that territory. Their control of them was illegal to begin with, so this is just an acknowledgement that it is not their territory.
Complicating the issue, tho American left leaning protesters ignore it, is that Hamas as an organization is a murderous, medieval, theocracy.
Even more complicating is the American right ignoring that the Israelis are also guilty of terrorism in the West Bank.
Israel understandably is loathe to create a nation like that on its border.
But, of course, there's no acknowledgement on your part that, equally understandably, the Palestinians are loathe to have a state like that on their borders.
Especially one openly committed to its destruction.
The Likudniks and their coalition partners are just as openly committed to the destruction of Palestine. So are all of the other Jewish parties, but most of them at least keep quiet about it. Instead of saying it, they choose the option of making sure that they aren't in the Knesset when it is busy passing a resolution saying that there should never be a Palestinian state, so that they don't have to vote one way or the other.
Actually you have identified almost none of the problem. What does it matter to anybody but the Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians whether the territory whose inhabitants Israel does not want to be Israelis, is Palestinians, Jordanian, or Egyptian? And Israel has done most of its work destroying the chance for peace in the West Bank where Hamas in not in control (while maintaining Hamas as a counterbalance to the PA) and not in Gaza where they are.
These are all just excuses supporters of Israel use to turn a blind eye to the truly disgusting treatment of the Palestinians by Israel.
This is all an oversimplification. Israel was established by the UN in 1947.
This is false. It was illegal for the UN to get involved, and Res. 181 was never passed by the Security Council, so, even if the partition hadn't been a violation o the UN Charter, it would have had no authority.
What established Israel was the Zionists rebelling against the legal government of Palestine.
The Arabs did not accept this two state solution and went to war vs. Israel
Unsurprising, given that the creation of Israel wasn't legal. But, more importantly, it must be remembered that the whole conflict began when a bunch of European Jews began a program of large scale immigration to a territory that was already populated, openly planning to create a state that excluded 95% of that population from full citizenship.
the flight of many Palestinians from the designated Israeli territory.
Some of them fled. Most were violently ethnically cleansed.
The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, in addition to the two Intifadas, complicate things considerably, as do the terrorist organizations Hamas & Hezbollah, and the involvement of Iran.
Very nice job of holding a double standard. Violent Israeli actions "complicate things considerably," while violent Palestinian actions are terrorism.
good comment overall, but Israel was not established by the UN.
There was a "Plan" passed by the General Assembly but not the Security Council, and is therefore non-binding.
Had the Security Council passed it it would have violated the UN Charter, which requires self-determination.
I'm not sure I agree that the Arab side started the war. Zionist settlers engaged in violent actions against Arabs (and the Brits) long before Israel formally existed. Arab populations fought back against displacement.
The rest of this I agree with -- mostly. The Arabs/Iranians lost and Israel has defeated their enemies. But only if Israel's enemies admit it. They have nothing to gain except their honor, which they lost long ago, I think (both sides did), but the Arabs don't think so.
iirc Mitchner (The Source) saw it the other way around. But what does he know about research?
You do understand that that was a work of fiction, right?
Apologies for misspelling. The correct spelling is Michener
yes a novel so the names are fiction, but built around meticulous research, according to Wiki and many others
So your source that the jews started it?
Where do the millions of Palestinians go, in this surrender? They're stuck, not able to go home, not allowed to leave.
I'm not sure I agree that the Arab side started the war.
They didn't. The UN Security Council never passed Res. 181, which was the partition plan, so it never had any legal force. Aside from which, it was a violation of the UN Charter for it to be involved at all. The war began when the Israelis rebelled against the legal government of Palestine.
The Arabs/Iranians lost and Israel has defeated their enemies.
There's a funny thing about defeat. It only happens if a side stops fighting.
They have nothing to gain except their honor, which they lost long ago, I think (both sides did), but the Arabs don't think so.
They think a couple of things:
1) The "peace" that Israel is offering isn't worth accepting.
2) That the Israelis will eventually collapse. This isn't as far fetched as it might seem. The current government of Israel is tearing the country apart. They are also getting more and more extreme in how they treat the Palestinians. This has a decent probability of driving the liberal, secular portion of the Israeli population to emigrate and further turn the international community against Israel. It isn't far fetched that they could end up being in the same position that the South Africans were in the 1980s.
Iran did not participate in the 1947, 1967, or 1973 wars. Hard to see how Iran has "lost".
I've been reading KD for years, but this post, I can't make sense of it.
"The Arab-Israeli War¹ has been ongoing for 80 years or so"
There were wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Those ended, the only Arab participant still at war is Syria, which is so messed up it can't do much.
Non-Iran did not participate in the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars.
Iran is fighting a proxy war with Israel, Iran has little at stake and is certainly not going to "surrender" any more than we would have surrendered leaving Vietnam.
Maybe KD refers to the Gazan War, fought by a tiny group Israel propped up until 10/6. Perhaps 10 thousand remain alive.
If KD are talking about the Palestinian struggle why does he refer The Arab-Israeli War?
If KD is talking about the Palestianian struggle the larger Palestinian group (PLO/PA) is not at war with Israel, (although it can be argued Israel is functionally at war with them). The smaller group, Hamas, can't surrender, because Israel has declared Hamas must be eliminated entirely. Surrender agreements, even when unconditional like WW2, don't go that far. 'Surrender so I can kill you' is not something that leads to an agreement.
So really, I can't even tell what KD is trying to say. It just makes no sense.
It seems to be what he is reduced to. He started out defending Israel by trying to make them the good guys for accepting more than half of the territory for their 1/3 of the population. That made him look foolish, so he retreated to the idea that that history was too long ago to count and people pointing to the history are showing they can't move on.
Now he is reduced to this might makes right argument where the weaker party is supposed to accept what the stronger party demands, while ignoring what the stronger party demands. And to make this at all plausible, all Arabs have to be lumped together under a rule that if every group of Arabs does not accept Israel then the Arabs are at fault. It is hard to imagine him making an argument this bad on any other topic.
The settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel's stance is the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were recognized as legitimate by the Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations. The same League of Nations that granted South Africa a mandate over (the present day) Namibia.
League of Nations mandates should all be void, yet the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs cites one in the Twenty-first Century.
This argument baffles me. (It's not new to me, I just don't think the Israelis have really thought through the implications.) If the Israelis are arguing that the Mandatory period never ended, and there is no basis for saying that the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian territory, then there's also no basis for the state of Israel to have a legal existence.
Huh? The war may be termed "The Arab-Israeli War" but it wasn't a war between the nation of Israel and the nation of Arabia. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were involved militarily, as well as Israel. The end result of the war was armistice agreements concluded separately between Israel and the nation combatants: the agreements as signed deliberately limited the scope of the acknowledged territorial gains of Israel and left open the question of Palestinian independence. The war was settled, but nothing was settled in terms of Israeli versus Palestine. That the Palestinians are (predominantly) Arabic does not mean that they were even a party to this particular armistice, and an armistice is (of course) distinct from a surrender.
So yes, if you conflate an agreement to end a conflict with abject surrender, and a specific set of Arab states with ALL ARABS, then Kevin might have a point.
All that sets aside the question of what happens if Israel wins, Palestine surrenders (if there were such a state to surrender), they draw up a peace agreement, and Israel then violates the terms of that agreement. By Kevin, the only two options are abject surrender or genocide, and he has no objections if Israel as a state or polity opts for genocide, that's a choice made by "the Arabs"? If the winning nation violates the terms of the surrender, there's no recourse?
There's no end to this conflict because the leadership on both sides are sufficiently divided, and neither side ultimately trusts the other to follow through on any agreement concluded.
“This should be "Arab plus Iranian," but there's no good word for that. Just assume that Iran is included in all references.”
Exhibit A for why Drum should stop posting about Israel. Iran wasn’t involved until the 80s, has never been defeated by Iran, and never was part of any negotiations about Palestine, wouldn’t face any plausible threat (except a scorched-earth nuclear attack that would mean the effective end of Israel) from Israel. It could carry the fight literally forever and in no sense has ever “lost.” At best you could say it’s proxies aren’t likely to defeat Israel any time soon.
Just stop, dude. This is embarrassing.
good comment.
KD has spent a lot of words on a number of occasions to basically assert "might makes right". Always has, always will. There is literally no chance that Israel will ever agree to a right of return or to end the annexation of the West Bank. My only quibble is that there is no reason at all for the US to assist Israeli territorial expansion or to assist in committing war crimes. Neither is in the best interests of the US.
A lot of pro-Israel sentiment comes down to might makes right.
A lot of pro-Palestinian arguments ask, 'didn't we leave might makes right behind with the 4th Geneva Convention?'
This is a weird take which seems stuck in the 60s. That assumes all Arab coutnries, which is also silly since we're talking about Persians also, have a single minded purpose and aren't playing their own local power games.
Meanwhile Israel has been methodically killing and displacing residents who have lived on their land for generations. Running an apartheid state under the cover of American racism. Brown is bad, but Brooklyn is good. The irony of European and American Jews kicking folks off ancestral land in violation of the UN. Money talks, hi AIPAC, and Palestinians have none.
They're becoming pariah's and tainting all Jews with their barbarism, but that's common for zealots. I think it's time to take the absurd amount of money sent to Israel and send to American Indian reservations. America owes Israel nothing and was not a part of European antisemitism / pogroms, but we owe the native Americans everything.
The Palestinians have surrendered several times now, but who would they surrender to now?
Israel won't let them vote. Won't let them work. Won't let them go to school. Won't let them go home.
Surrender requires someone to surrender to.
The basic conceptual problem with Kevin's analysis is that what is going on isn't a war; it's a resistance movement on the part of the Arabs and a counter-insurgency on the part of the Israelis. In a war, the enemy has a government that can be induced to surrender. A resistance movement, on the other hand, is typically decentralized which means there is no governing body to negotiate with or force the surrender of. As long as the resistants can get outside help from a source beyond the reach of the government their actions are directed against, which the Viet Cong did and which the Arabs do, the resistance can continue an apparently hopeless struggle for a very long time.
The majority of the Gazans the Israelis have recently killed had probably, as individuals, surrendered long ago.
I sincerely suggest Kevin stop writing about the Middle East, because his thoughts are consistently simplistic and ill-informed.
His "reasoning" in this post would have led the Irish to give up their struggle for independence; the Vietnamese to end their war against France, and then the one against the US; the British Commonwealth to surrender to Germany in 1940; the Algerians to sigh and declare "nous sommes tous français maintenant" and end their fight for independence. Indeed the Jews themselves would have thrown in the towel in 1947, because how could they possibly defeat all those Arabs? As for the Afghan mujahideen resisting the USSR - give it up, you fools! You've zero chance of winning!
There is no "Arab-Israeli War". There are numerous tensions and hostilities and alliances in the region which in combination constitute a far more complicated source of potential and actual violent conflicts than the concept of Arabs fighting Jews that Leon Uris wrote about. I have little doubt that unless Israel changes its current attitude of antagonism to its colonised peoples, and finds a way to co-exist peacefully with Iran, it will not survive to the end of the century in anything like its present form. Changes will come not from defeat on the battlefield, but from within, in response to relentless violent resistance from the occupied territories and the hostility of most of the rest of the world to its continuing lurch towards fascism.
There is indeed no Arab-Israeli war and has not been one in decades - this is from Drum being geriatrically trapped in a frozen 70s (or at best 80s) understanding.
No functioning Arab MENA government has any war agenda and this is has been true for decades.
On other hand Iran - as Shia aspiring regional power (but not direct neighbour, that is quite important) - desires to stir the pot.
On that fron there is not really any potential for Israel to find a way to co-exist peacefully with Iran as the Iranian government hasn't any such desire. Every bit as much as Netanyahu they desire conflict for their own goals.
The real unresolved issue however is not the "Arab-Israeli" conflict but rather the disposition of West Bank and Gaza.
That is it. Nothing more.
The choices are quite clear
A. Annexation with either
A.1 ongoing drift into Apartheid via drip drip drip controls, ever expanding annexations of settlements while continuing to wear the masque of occupation rather than annexation authority. This is the worst path as it
A.2 some form of single federated entity with regional sub-governments (as a path to threading a needle between Israeli and Palestinian while recognising that the annexations and settlements of West Bank will never be undone - and providing a path out of Apartheid logic).
B. Two State separation based on the old Oslo formulas - although this appear risible as an actual resolution given there is neither Israeli will nor Palestinian coherence.
Iranian hostility to Israel finds its outlet in support for displaced Palestinians. If Israel can resolve its conflict with the Palestinians, Iran's antipathy will have few practical consequences. As you say, what happens in the occupied territories will largely determine the extent of future violent conflict.
I agree the post is ridiculously over-simplified, but the KD commenters are really good on I/P.
So I'm good with more dumb I/P posts.
+1 though I am discouraged the KD is not able to evolve on this topic.
As usual, so many passionate comments, and almost all deal with who did what to whom first, who was the bad guy first. The world can argue about whether missile and suicide bomber and terrorist attacks are justified by whatever Israel's existence has done. The comments that are just ignorant - for example claiming that Israel has "occupied" Gaza since 1967 or that Israel is made up of white colonizers - should be disregarded. ---- There is more than enough tragedy to go around. What is certain is that Netanyahu is a war criminal, and that Hamas and Hezbollah and the PLO before them were terrorists, led by war criminals. How can the peoples of the mid-east proceed, from where we are now, without regard to he-did-this and she-did-that unproductive talk, toward peace and freedom for all peoples? It's a long way to go and after 80 years of attacks, Kevin is right that the Palestinians will likely get far less than they'd wish. But looking forward toward some kind of detente and peace, instead of looking backward and angrily assigning blame, is more difficult, more creative, and more productive path, far more worthwhile than all the finger pointing and the rehearsals of versions of history that can be supported by sad, true facts that can be cited by all sides of this holy mess. I haven't got an answer but all the mental prowess on display here - can you look forward to a solution rather than backward to blame?
Why would you list the accurate fact that Israel has occupied Gaza since 1967? Is it because Israel changed the nature of the occupation 1n 200 while maintaining all of the rights of an occupation, so you think they ended the occupation? Are you unaware of the fact that Israel still claims the right to determine who is a legal resident of Gaza, what goods enter and leave Gaza, as well as the right to carry out police actions in Gaza and to place limits on what Gazans can do in Gaza?
There are a lot of unhelpful comments about the conflict, but it is odd that you would picture a true claim that is usually offered against the either ignorant or misleading claim that Israel offered Gazans peace in 2005 and the Gazans didn't accept it.
Just as an example, after pulling out of Gaza Israel left the years produce to rot on the border as punishment for getting Israel to pull its (illegal under international law and truly cruel under the circumstances) settlements out of Gaza thereby further impoverishing an already poor people and warning the world not to invest in Gaza. People also point to the fact that Gaza has a border with Egypt apparently unaware that Israel pulled out of Gaza only after working out a deal with Egypt to respect Israel's occupation of Gaza and with it the right to limit what goods go into Gaza. That is why even when the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt there was no change in what went across the border.
let's not forget the "buffer zones" Israel maintains in Gaza that cannot be farmed, and the Gazan 20-mile sea rights that cannot be fished. At least not by Gazans.
These posts get stupider all the time. The Palestinians have sued for peace in the manner mentioned repeatedly. They have been offered endless occupation and Israeli control of the whole territory. That this gets defended by anyone is a result of the ludicrously racist way the conflict is viewed.
Israel has controlled millions of Palestinians while ignoring all of the obligations of an occupying power. If anybody else was doing this you would not be describing it in the fashion of those unreasonable Palestinians refuse to accept the terms that they have been offered.
We could similarly describe Tibet as a success story in which the Tibetans have accepted the terms that China has imposed on them. But you would look like an idiot describing things in that way.
Note that the Palestinians have accepted that their majority population would get 22% of the territory that the two parties share. It is, of course, true, that Israel insisted at the time that Israel should retain effective control over that 22% as well. And the Palestinians did not go for that. But how twisted does one have to be to blame the Palestinians for not accepting complete Israeli domination indefinitely?
It should be noted, that even on its disgustingly amoral stand on how countries behave, it's initial premise is complete nonsense. Jews are a small part of the population of the Middle East. It's approach to dealing with this is to oppress the majority of the population it controls, to violate the sovereignty of its neighbors, even to periodically humiliate the countries that have made peace with it. Currently it has a military advantage over its neighbors. More importantly it has the support of the most powerful countries in the world which for reasons of identification support Israel over its neighbors. But eventually these kinds of things run out.
Israel's abuse of the Palestinians is losing it the support of Europe and younger Americans. Israel could survive indefinitely by making peace with the Palestinians and its neighboring countries. The Palestinian Authority has shown a willingness to do this. The Saudis have shown an eagerness to do it if only Israel could manage to stop being evil for long enough. (And being too evil for the Saudis is impressive, not the most moral regime in the world). But on its current path it is unlikely Israel can survive for 100 years. It is hard to see when the twist will come. But the same was true of Apartheid South Africa until it wasn't. And the same was true of the USSR until it wasn't.
Israel's behavior is not only deeply immoral, but it is incredibly short sighted. It could take 78 of the territory it controls for the minority Jewish population on the land it controls, or it could look in an apartheid state which will ultimately almost certainly die. And it has chosen to do the latter. And for some reason Drum has gone back to defending them in this.
My sentiments too. If I try to look ahead a century continued Israeli Apartheid is less likely than:
- Palestinians ethnically cleansed.
- Jews ethnically cleansedt
- Nuclear war, uninhabitable.
- Two states
The last is obviously best, but Israel has ruled it out.
The rest of the world should follow what we did with S. Africa. Isolate Israel morally and economically hoping they reconsider.