Israel is not “moving towards a theocracy”. Sure, the ultra-Orthodox are annoying, but they are not going to be imposing a “theocracy” any time soon.
The people in the WB and Gaza have no interest in becoming Israelis.
See post # 145 upthread (in a response to you).
Relocation of refugees to Canada was mooted as a possibility, quickly disavowed in part due to universal negative reaction from Palestinian supporters, who feared that allowing the refugees an out to Canada would undermine the “right of return”.
It is very difficult for intelligent, rational people to accept the idea that intelligent , rational discussion are not enough to solve a problem.
But the simple fact is that when you are dealing with people whose mindset is totally foreign to yours, then some problems will remain un-solvable.
(proud Godwin alert: ) I think you’ll agree that WWII was unsolvable. Chaimberlain tried it the intelligent,rational way.
Or, if you’re rolling your eyes at me, let’s look at a non-Godwinized problem: The Berlin Wall. That was, like the Palestinian issue, an unsolvable problem…as long as the mindset of the Communists was simply to deny all human rights and shoot on sight , there was no way to unite Germany.
The only solution was a total and complete surrender by one side, which then agreed to let itslelf disappear into the dustbin of history.
Not at all. I think some form of a two (or three-) -state solution is viable, even very likely.
It will not, however, “solve” all problems. The problems will keep chugging along, new ones all the time, because the region is rife with fault-lines and always has been.
The mistake people make is the sort of all-or-nothing thinking that presupposes that some kind of “solution” exists. The “solution” is really a question of crisis management - to take the facts as they are and do what can be done to minimize the human damage.
Reading about the history of the ME in the times immediately predating Islam is instructive. It is remarkably similar in some ways to the world of today.
Hmm, hmm. The Bulgarians own half the Balkans, Constantinople is barely hanging on there but Greece, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and North Africa are all well under East-Roman control. And Christian of course.
Persia still has Iraq , transoxania is quiet.
Both parties are weary of war. A long period of peace with well established borders awaits us all. Happy times.
In particular, that the area was divided into spheres of influence between two great powers who had ceased to fight each other directly, but who still meddled in the affairs of their “clients” - who in turn had ambitions of their own.
My post was rather meant as tongue in cheek, as I supposed you were going somewhere else with your argument.
Apparently you are not.
Those were not “spheres of influence”, those were actual parts/provinces of their empires.
Maybe you could classify Palmyra, Dura Europos and Armenia as border-territory, but Iraq was absolutely Persian. Nothing client about it.
So were Palestine, Syria, North-Africa and Anatolia absolutely Roman provinces and Christian.
Meh. It is perfectly true that the empires owned bits of the ME. I never claimed the parallel was in any way exact.
I was thinking in particular of the conflicts between the Persian Empire and the romans/Byzantines over the trade-routes running through the Arabian penninsula, and the extention (and relaxation) of influence over client states such as Ghassan and Hira.
It is somewhat similar in tone to the later period, when the commodity big empires wanted out of that part of the ME was oil, not trade with India and China.
I know full well what the Byzantine and Persian Empires were, and that they owned bits of the ME.
You are being too literal about an off-hand comment.
If the Iranians achive their ambitions, it will be the Sassanids all over again.*
*Yes I know, I know, the current Iranians aren’t Zoroastrian.
But more seriously - the larger point is that this sort of turmoil and foreign interference/occupation of turbulent states isn’t anything new to the area. Except for the times when the ME was dominated completely by great empires, of course.
