[Discussion] Middle East Politicking Catch all

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria... there's no end of things to discuss.

Everything that doesn't have its own thread lives here.

No, what would help is an administration that doesn't encourage Israel's worst instincts because they now know there are no repercussions.

What would help is an administration that didn't take a huge bargaining chip, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and/or Palestine, off the table in return for.... nothing.

What would help is an administration that, when confronted with the fact that 60 people were killed and 3000 wounded essentially said, "lol fake news" which further tells Israel that they can do what they want. The Palestinians used threatening language tho so.

You can't "but both sides" this issue when this administration has gone out of their way to shoot what little peace process that was left in the head.

You also can't take the evangelicals out of the conversation (whether you believe they're apocalyptic or not) because those are the republican donors encouraging moving the embassy. Being disturbed that people think like this doesn't make them stop thinking like this.

Israel has been making the situation in Gaza worse and worse since at least 2005. They've consistently done horrific things all while cutting off access to basic needs such as water and fishing, breaking apart communities, and many other terrible things. But they've done under W, under Obama, and now under Trump.

Republicans, especially with Trump, are being much more bellicose about their support but we continue to sell weapons to them no matter which party is in charge. Outside of one incident on Obama's way out we've continually backed Israel with our UN veto.

I'm not saying both parties are the same; moving the embassy to Jerusalem was idiotic and will undoubtedly be a boondoggle. But I do want to emphasize that getting Democrats in office, even if they got control of all branches of government, is not a fix to America's relationship with Israel and is unlikely to alleviate the Palestinian's plight. Doing that is going to take a lot more work and involve significant changes within the Democratic party.

bnpederson wrote:

But I do want to emphasize that getting Democrats in office, even if they got control of all branches of government, is not a fix to America's relationship with Israel and is unlikely to alleviate the Palestinian's plight. Doing that is going to take a lot more work and involve significant changes within the Democratic party.

Certainly, having in power people who think of Israelis as an important yet problematic ally is better than people who see them as placeholders for the end times (whether the intent of those people is immanentizing the eschaton or not).

There's just one leeetle problem to changes within either party: money. There's a strong pro-Israel lobby in America, and the quadrennial pander is one of the features of every presidential race.

DoveBrown wrote:

Can we please move the conversation on from the relationship between Israel and American Christianity? While I can accept that their Christian background has some influence on American foreign policy, it's not the reason the US State Department gives for doing anything and the given reasons do make sense on their own.

If I may, I'll add one more thing. Tom Wolfe died this past week and this quote was just brought to my attention and is apropros:

Tom Wolfe wrote:

A cult is a religion with no political power.

garion333 wrote:

It isn't an issue of liberals refusing to call things what they are, it's that overuse of extreme language doesn't help anything and instead widens the gap between people. No, not the gap between liberals and the Doomsday cult members, but the gap between liberals and all evangelicals and Christians, even the ones who don't think it's necessary to support Israel, which according to OG is about 48% of them.

You're reading the survey wrong if you think that 48% of evangelicals don't support Israel.

67% of them have a somewhat positive, positive, or very positive view of Israel. 6% have a somewhat negative, 2% a negative, and 1% a very negative view of Israel. 24% aren't sure.

Those positive answers jump up to 77% if the person attends church several times a month or self-identifies as a Republican.

And there was a dedicated question in the survey about respondents personal views about their support of Israel. 24% said that they "support the existence, security, and prosperity of the State of
Israel no matter what Israel does." 42% "support the existence, security, and prosperity of the State of
Israel but don’t feel the need to support everything Israel does." And only 1% doesn't support Israel.

Those 42% are kinda meaningless because while they might not approve of specific things the State of Israel does, they aren't going to raise too much of a political stink about it because they still fundamentally believe that Israel *has* to exist because the Bible says so and the Bible is infallible. And over half of them think Israel has to exist to bring about the Seconding Coming (which also has to happen because it's in the Bible).

You're concern over the gap between "liberals" and all evangelicals and Christians is somewhat interesting, but is honestly going to boil down to urban white people with college educations against white evangelicals, mostly suburban and rural. Blacks and Hispanics are very religious as well and yet have little problem being associated with liberals (and "liberals" have little problem with them). 90%+ of black people vote Democratic as well as about 2/3rds of all Hispanics.

I believe I threw out the 42% and meant it that they're not actively looking to fulfill Bible prophecy in supporting Israel. Something like that.

I only said "liberals" because MrDevil used that term and I couldn't come up with something better.

garion333 wrote:

I believe I threw out the 42% and meant it that they're not actively looking to fulfill Bible prophecy in supporting Israel. Something like that.

Ironically one of the responses to the question "Which of the following reasons, if any, contribute to your support for the modern State of Israel?” was "The Bible says Christians should support Israel," which got 42%.

Beyond that the second question of the poll shows 80% of evangelicals believe that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 was "[fulfillment] of Bible prophecy that [shows] we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ."

Onion is killing it lately.

Drumpf’s Complicity In Israel’s Brutal Attacks On Palestinians Is Yet Another Example Of The GOP Taking Credit For Obama’s Hard Work

Since day one of his orange presidency, Drumpf has wasted no time putting his name on the hard-earned achievements of those before him and chalking those accomplishments up as his own personal successes. We saw this cheap political tactic wielded again this week as the U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem, stoking extreme violence against Palestinians, and this might be Trumpo’s biggest whopper yet: Drumpf’s complicity in Israel’s brutal attacks on Palestinians is yet another example of the GOP taking credit for Obama’s hard work.

First, our Cheeto in chief claimed the booming economy he inherited from Obama was the result of his own doing, and now he’s acting like he’s the first and only president to unwaveringly enable Israeli’s murderous apartheid tactics that killed 60 Palestinians this week. The reality is that he’s capitalizing on the work of President Obama, who laid the foundation for ignoring the slaughter of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children to back Israeli interests. Without the diligent efforts of POTUS 44, Israel would never have seen a $38 billion military aid package, and this current Republican administration wouldn’t have this to co-opt as its own achievement like it did Obama-era unemployment rates.

bnpederson wrote:

Israel has been making the situation in Gaza worse and worse since at least 2005. They've consistently done horrific things all while cutting off access to basic needs such as water and fishing, breaking apart communities, and many other terrible things. But they've done under W, under Obama, and now under Trump.

LOL
Sorry, couldn't help but legit laugh at this ridiculous claim, as in 2005 Israel actually evacuated every single settler and soldier out of Gaza. Until that point everyone was complaining that Israel is occupying Gaza. I guess people will never be satisfied when it comes to Israel.

After Israel left, the Palestinians only increased their rocket launches on civilian population (the first siren I heard is still fresh in my memory, with many more that followed). They also kept systematically improving their range and deadliness.
They shot it without any concern and without provocation. There are Israeli kids who were born into a reality of constant sirens.
From shooting on villages near Gaza like Eshkol they improved to Sderot, in 2007 a first Katyusha rocket was fired on Ashkelon. Then they started shooting Grad rockets on Beer Sheva, Ashdod and Tel Aviv. That was of course on top of the "usual" suicide bombings, stabbing and shooting attacks.

Where was the world then?
No one did anything against thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians but when Israel did something about it, everyone jumped on Israel.

This led to several military defensive operations from Israel and to a blockade on Gaza from the Israeli side.
Everyone conveniently forget that Gaza also shares a border with Egypt, which is also closed most of the time because Egypt, like Israel, also sees Hamas as a terror organization. I didn't hear condemnation of Egypt in the "Human Rights" organization though....

Instead of rebuilding Gaza, Hamas used the materials to build more rockets and to build offensive tunnels into Israel. Instead of taking care of the population, Hamas used the money to pay its fighters and buy more weapons. This led to a bigger blockade, and as always Israel is to blame.

Many Israelis, including myself, want to see Gaza prosper. Everyone understand that improving the economic situation in Gaza will reduce terrorism. People who care about their jobs and actually have something to lose are less likely to run at a heavily protected border with knives and axes. Don't think anyone here doesn't understand that or wants Palestinians in Gaza to remain in the stone age.
We want them to have a port, an airport and everything else.
Hamas doesn't want that and it doesn't really allow it. Israel tried.
However, a terror organization that doesn't recognize Israel as a country and openly aims to destroy it, will unfortunately keep Gaza in great suffer. I honestly think that at this point there is no partner on the Palestinian side and all Israel has to do at this point is to wait for them to smarten up and realize that violence will lead them nowhere.

I mean, we'll probably never agree on this, but Israel continues to occupy Gaza to this day. It maintains control over air space, sea access, most of its land crossings, has a buffer zone and the people of Gaza are dependent on Israel for both water and electricity.

Regarding the rocket attacks, those would be the rocket attacks that led to a less people dying than Israel murdered a few days ago, as I recall. And while I very much agree that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is terrible the response to that can not be to indiscriminately kill civilians. Yet that is what Israel did and thousands of civilians died.

The protesters shot, recently, were also unarmed according to all reports and footage I've seen. They were not a barbaric horde streaming across the "border" to murder people, they were unarmed human beings who were shot by snipers hundreds of meters away in entrenched positions.

If the Palestinians peacefully protest they're killed. If they violently protest they're dubbed terrorists and killed. And the US waffles between tut-tutting while continuing to back Israel with its UN veto and arms and loudly voicing its support while continuing to back Israel with its UN veto and arms.

Who said Israel is bad into the mirror three times in a row?

Demosthenes wrote:

Who said Israel is bad into the mirror three times in a row?

oilypenguin when he started a middle east thread?

We could talk about Yemen instead, if that'd help.

bnpederson wrote:

I mean, we'll probably never agree on this, but Israel continues to occupy Gaza to this day. It maintains control over air space, sea access, most of its land crossings, has a buffer zone and the people of Gaza are dependent on Israel for both water and electricity.

Serious question: what do you suggest?
Each time Israel relieved the security in the past, Hamas used it either to attack or to smuggle weapons.
As mentioned, they are not interested in negotiations and they call for our destruction.

BTW - Why not use the millions in aid from across the globe to build a power station? Israel has no problem with that. Where does the money go and how come Hamas has so much rockets and weapons?

One more note about the electricity - the Palestinians have a huge debt, which president Abbas does not pay on purpose, because of his internal conflict with Hamas. He can pay it but he chooses not to. He is sh*tting on his own people for political gain, knowing that the outrage can only go in one direction.

bnpederson wrote:

Regarding the rocket attacks, those would be the rocket attacks that led to a less people dying than Israel murdered a few days ago, as I recall.

As for the rockets - it's an invalid claim. The fact that we have the Iron Dome doesn't make it OK to show any tolerance for freaking rockets being launched on our civilians.
Those rockets are shot with the intention to murder as many Israelis as possible.
Saying something like "they didn't kill enough of you so you can't fight back" doesn't make any sense.

BTW, this highlights the difference between them and us - we try to minimize casualties, they try to maximize it.

bnpederson wrote:

The protesters shot, recently, were also unarmed according to all reports and footage I've seen. They were not a barbaric horde streaming across the "border" to murder people, they were unarmed human beings who were shot by snipers hundreds of meters away in entrenched positions.

Just one example
Live fire exampe

And don't forget the kites with molotov cocktails on them, which Palestinians launched hundreds of in recent weeks into Israeli villages and farms, causing massive damage and risking lives of many. Surely, a normal thing to do at a peaceful protest.

BTW, the snipers were not shooting freely. Every shot was approved by IDF command, and only when there was no other choice (as in, the border will be breached). Think about it, ~45,000 people rioting. 60 dead. Was the army really shooting freely?

bnpederson wrote:

If the Palestinians peacefully protest they're killed.

Wrong. There were protest across all of Israel and in the West Bank. Not a single person died there. Why?
They didn't try to reach into Israeli homes and murder Jews.

Again, I am asking you how would you do things differently, all things considered?
Before you answer, put yourself in the shoes of an Israeli and think of the consequences.

If you ask me, all that needs to happen is for them to say: "We cease the pursuit of the destruction of Israel and want to negotiate peace". Simple.
This worked with Jordan, this worked with Egypt. No reason this shouldn't work with the Palestinians. The ball is truly in their court.

Demosthenes wrote:

Who said Israel is bad into the mirror three times in a row?

I'll take what's the vast majority of the Western media for 400, please Alex.

sonny615 wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

I mean, we'll probably never agree on this, but Israel continues to occupy Gaza to this day. It maintains control over air space, sea access, most of its land crossings, has a buffer zone and the people of Gaza are dependent on Israel for both water and electricity.

Serious question: what do you suggest?

Maybe Israel could go back to the 1947 UN borders rather than slowly devouring the state of Palestine.

bnpederson wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Who said Israel is bad into the mirror three times in a row?

oilypenguin when he started a middle east thread?

/wave

sonny, I typed and deleted a LOT here.

Please don't feel attacked. Not one of us is in your situation and understands your day to day. No one should live in fear.

But no one should be oppressing minorities either.

I'm American. We have a lot of skeletons in our collective closet. We've committed genocide. We've systematically oppressed a people based on skin color (and imo continue to). So when we see what's happening in Israel, those of us with a sense of history don't want to see it repeated. What we want to see is a peaceful resolution and ultimately Israel and Palestine as a single nation (well, I do anyway). The only way to get there is for the people who hold the power to want that too and that's simply not happening.

Martin Luthor King called a riot, "the language of the unheard." You have a class of people with literally no rights. Who have been divorced from economic opportunity. They're going to fight back any way they can, and innocents will be harmed in the process.

The only way forward from that is to wipe them out... or start listening. And if a Palestinian was here, I'd recommend in the strongest possible terms for them to adopt non-violent means of protest.

Yonder wrote:
sonny615 wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

I mean, we'll probably never agree on this, but Israel continues to occupy Gaza to this day. It maintains control over air space, sea access, most of its land crossings, has a buffer zone and the people of Gaza are dependent on Israel for both water and electricity.

Serious question: what do you suggest?

Maybe Israel could go back to the 1947 UN borders rather than slowly devouring the state of Palestine.

Not sure if you're trolling or being serious... In any case, the borders that anyone would even remotely discuss are the 1967 borders.
A reminder that while Jews accepted, the Palestinians (or Arabs...) refused in 1947 and started a war. Another reminder that even today they don't want the '47 borders, they want all of Israel.

Leaving Gaza was an example of what happens when you make one sided retreats.
It just brought more Palestinian terrorism and more rockets, deeper into Israel. The days of one sided retreats are behind us now, at least as long as the Palestinian declared long term goal is the destruction of Israel.
Any future land exchange should only be done after mutual negotiations.

oilypenguin wrote:
bnpederson wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Who said Israel is bad into the mirror three times in a row?

oilypenguin when he started a middle east thread?

/wave

sonny, I typed and deleted a LOT here.

Please don't feel attacked. Not one of us is in your situation and understands your day to day. No one should live in fear.

But no one should be oppressing minorities either.

I'm American. We have a lot of skeletons in our collective closet. We've committed genocide. We've systematically oppressed a people based on skin color (and imo continue to). So when we see what's happening in Israel, those of us with a sense of history don't want to see it repeated. What we want to see is a peaceful resolution and ultimately Israel and Palestine as a single nation (well, I do anyway). The only way to get there is for the people who hold the power to want that too and that's simply not happening.

Martin Luthor King called a riot, "the language of the unheard." You have a class of people with literally no rights. Who have been divorced from economic opportunity. They're going to fight back any way they can, and innocents will be harmed in the process.

The only way forward from that is to wipe them out... or start listening. And if a Palestinian was here, I'd recommend in the strongest possible terms for them to adopt non-violent means of protest.

I don't feel attacked, not yet at the moment (I've been through worse times on this forum before)
It's extremely hard to explain my position when most of the world is literally against you and the media shows a twisted picture.
It reminds me of all the previous times: Palestinians commit terrorism -> the world media is silent -> Israel retaliates -> media reports Palestinian babies are being murdered. It is really frustrating, especially since I see with my own eyes how things really are.

I want a peaceful solution, I really do. I also know that Arabs and Jews can coexist.
My town is located between 2 towns with Arab majority. We live together just fine. I send my son to a kindergarten where he is watched by and taught by Muslim women. My son is the most important thing in my life and I trust his life in the hands of those women.
I drive through the Arab towns every day and they come to our town every day. My wife works at a hospital where roughly 50% of the doctors are Arab.
I have Arab co-workers too and so on. There are high court Arab judges in Israel, singers, TV hosts (Lucy Aharish is my personal favorite), we had an Arab beauty queen and so on.

With that said, I don't want to live in a state together with the Palestinians and they don't want to live with me. Our views, culture and ways of life are too different. I want them to have a country of their own (based on 67 borders or whatever is acceptable) and I want to live in my country in peace. I want them to prosper and to have the best lives possible but the solution should be separation.

BTW, the only party who is talking about one country for two peoples is the Israeli far right. Only they want to occupy, not to live together. Trust me, no one wants that.

So, any other ideas for a realistic solution?

So these are just my own thoughts as cis white american male so take that for what it is worth: I think for Americans, especially the kind of liberal leaning Americans who frequent this forum, when we hear about Israel firing on unarmed protesters we immediately look back to our own baggage: The Great Soix War, The Trail of Tears, Kent State, Montgomery, The Stonewall riots, the White Night Riots, on and on and on. We have a lot of baggage and a lot of guilt for continuing actions here. We tend to push back hard, not because we think Isrealis are evil, but because we are reminded of the evil acts we are responsible for and don't want to see them repeated.

Eh, I think it's more that we push back harder on anything that conservatives support.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Eh, I think it's more that we push back harder on anything that conservatives support.

I think you're mistaking correlation with causation. I don't think (in general) liberals push back on things because conservatives support them; I think (in general) liberals push back on things, and conservatives frequently support those things. The pushback is on the things, not against the proponents.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

The pushback is on the things, not against the proponents.

No, I agree, but that's why I said harder, not why there is pushback at all. There's no complex reason involving baggage or something: there's just right and wrong, liberals are right, and if liberals push back harder for some reason, there's going to be a much simpler explanation.

If anything, pushback on Israel is a *loss* of baggage, the baggage of facing the consequences of indifference towards the Holocaust, and how it made us gunshy to criticize Israel because of that. It's more and more pushback as Israelis are seen more and more as white people who live in a western country that is on the colonizer side of the metropole/colony global divide.

edit: you know what? That may be the difficulty in communication: we speak as if Israelis are as safe from Palestinians as, say, white people are safe from people of color in a place like, say, Canada. I can see how an Israeli would think "these people are treating my life as if it's an abstract thought experiment."

Are there any especially good coverage of the current border clashes because I’m seeing a lot of conflicting reports even in publications like The NY Times.

I’m shocked and horrified to see teens and children killed, but every country on Earth has the right to defend its borders. In my mind, a Molotov cocktail is a deadly weapon and I’m not sure I can fault Israeli forces for responding with deadly force against specific individuals. Rocks of course are a different story, which is why I’m trying to get good info on how much of the IDF response is indiscriminately hitting unarmed protesters.

The problem with Israel is that it's a manufactured country, an imposed country. British Palestine was a thing that should arguably never have happened, and the handover from Britain to a contested new place couldn't have had any result other than what is happening. The rest of the Western world went, "Yeah, good enough. Israel is a thing!", when nobody from whom land had been taken agreed.

Can a country defend it's borders? Sure, if there are agreed upon borders. Israel doesn't have those, not "agreed upon" by the people that share the proposed borders.

Can a country defend it's sovereignty? If the UN gave Nova Scotia (a Canadian province) to the Belgians when we didn't agree, is there a limit to how long we can wage guerrilla warfare on the Belgians to try to regain our sovereignty? What's the statute of limitations on retaliation for an unresolved (in our eyes) wrong?

So the molotov kites are the most "fashionable" act of terror, since it is easy to make and Israel doesn't have a good answer yet. It presents a tremendous threat to lives of people around Gaza and since most people there are farmers, it also kills their income.

Here is footage from the village of Beeri, one of dozens daily fires set by Palestinians:
https://twitter.com/ndvori/status/99...

Palestinians also draw swastikas on their kites, as a way of saying - we will burn Jews like the Nazi did, which I find horrific.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdaycA1UwAAtkmn.jpg:large)

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

The problem with Israel is that it's a manufactured country, an imposed country. British Palestine was a thing that should arguably never have happened, and the handover from Britain to a contested new place couldn't have had any result other than what is happening. The rest of the Western world went, "Yeah, good enough. Israel is a thing!", when nobody from whom land had been taken agreed.

Can a country defend it's borders? Sure, if there are agreed upon borders. Israel doesn't have those, not "agreed upon" by the people that share the proposed borders.

Can a country defend it's sovereignty? If the UN gave Nova Scotia (a Canadian province) to the Belgians when we didn't agree, is there a limit to how long we can wage guerrilla warfare on the Belgians to try to regain our sovereignty? What's the statute of limitations on retaliation for an unresolved (in our eyes) wrong?

You can say about most countries that they were manufactured at some point of time in history.
This should be crystal clear: Israel has very clear borders. It existence is not in dispute, unless you are a terrorist organization.
There are regions in dispute like the West Bank but surely the Gaza border, where the riots happen, is not in dispute by the international community, Arab countries or the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.

Had we been sitting in Gaza, it would be a different story but since we are out, and since Palestinians shoot into Israeli territory, we have full right to defend ourselves.

Of course countries were manufactured. Generally in blood and contention. Israel isn’t old as a country, and didn’t conquer territory, so it isn’t surprising that the contention hasn’t subsided by now.

Israel’s borders were imposed by a biased third party. The fact that other governments agreed is irrelevant to the people actually involved. If I came into your house and told you your kitchen was mine now and all my friends agreed, would you be ok with that?

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

The problem with Israel is that it's a manufactured country, an imposed country. British Palestine was a thing that should arguably never have happened, and the handover from Britain to a contested new place couldn't have had any result other than what is happening. The rest of the Western world went, "Yeah, good enough. Israel is a thing!", when nobody from whom land had been taken agreed.

Can a country defend it's borders? Sure, if there are agreed upon borders. Israel doesn't have those, not "agreed upon" by the people that share the proposed borders.

Can a country defend it's sovereignty? If the UN gave Nova Scotia (a Canadian province) to the Belgians when we didn't agree, is there a limit to how long we can wage guerrilla warfare on the Belgians to try to regain our sovereignty? What's the statute of limitations on retaliation for an unresolved (in our eyes) wrong?

I don’t think this is a good analogy. A better one is the UN gives Texas back to Mexico in recognition of the large Hispanic population living there and the fact that Texas was settled for hundreds of years by people of Mexican descent before the US came along and seized it.

Now, to further this analogy, you have a group of relatively peaceful American protesters being shot, but mixed among them are a group of ultra violent “Confederados” who aren’t fighting for freedom but the extermination of anyone who isn’t traditionally White.

I imagine most people on this board would be sympathetic to group one but I don’t think anyone would be standing up supporting group 2.

My biggest issue with the Israeli borders are how they keep moving. The question of "does a country have the ability to defend its borders?" Seems to work both ways here. If you look at the directions the borders are moving there aren't give and take, Israel takes takes takes takes. Looking at maps over the last decades it doesn't really seem like Israel is the one having trouble defending its borders.

Yonder wrote:

My biggest issue with the Israeli borders are how they keep moving. The question of "does a country have the ability to defend its borders?" Seems to work both ways here. If you look at the directions the borders are moving there aren't give and take, Israel takes takes takes takes. Looking at maps over the last decades it doesn't really seem like Israel is the one having trouble defending its borders.

While this might be somewhat relevant to the West Bank (and I agree that Israel should return some of the territory as a part of future agreement), your statement is irrelevant to Gaza, as we did the opposite; we pulled out our forced and every last settler out of there.

The riots were labeled as a "March of Return", which aimed to infiltrate internationally legitimate Israeli towns, within Israeli border.

Speaking of borders and pulling out of Gaza in 2005, there was this tweet from South Africa yesterday...

Looking at it from the outside and comparing to the Northern Ireland situation that has similar historical dimension which I have much more familiarity with (and in both cases had the British Empire blundering around), there really does come a part where you have to accept that you're never going to turn back the clock. Just as ethnic Irish are never going to get the land back from the ethnic Scottish planters (settlers), that doesn't leave them without a chance to better themselves. Now they have access to the same quality schools, healthcare, employment rights and legal safeguards as the anyone else.

Personally I think we've passed the point at which the two state solution is viable. I tend to mark the point of no return at the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin but others will disagree. Looking a maps of the West Bank that show the settlements and areas of control by the Palestinian Authority, I can't see how you could run a state there. Gaza if anything is worse, in effect it's just a very large refugee camp. Only Hong Kong and Singapore are more densely populated and both of those required a huge influx of wealth to kickstart the, into being reasonable places to live, and very different political and geographical systems. Both were smack bang on the trade routes between huge markets. None of that is true for Gaza.

With that in mind, Palestinians are going to have to get used to never having a state and Israelis that Israel is going to have to become a secular state. I have no idea how to deal with the issue of land that was seized both legally though the courts and illegally from refugees who had fled. It's probably going to be expensive. What I can tell you is that the majority on both sides want peace, regardless of the noisy hardliners tell you.

One final thing, I worry about is Israel being faced with the choice of becoming secular and remaining a democracy or remaining Jewish and becoming that apartheid state.