Can someone explain the whole Israel conflict to me?

Great Debates
81

The relevant history goes back centuries, but, in a nutshell, the current intractable conflict exists mainly because in 1967 Israel conquered and occupied what are now known as the Occupied Territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were and remain full of Arabic-speaking Muslim Palestinians. (The West Bank was Jordanian territory at the time, but Jordan wants no part of it any more.) It must have seemed a defensive necessity at the time; the Jordan River is a more defensible frontier.

Israel conquered these territories but, except for East Jerusalem, did not annex them; so these territories remain neither in Israel nor out of it, and the Palestinians are citizens of no country; they are, like a colonial population in the old days, or the blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, in effect ruled by Israel without having any voting voice in it. And they don’t like that. And it really fucks up their economy, too. The Israelis nabbed all the best-watered land, and the Palestinians can’t even travel to or trade with Jordan. There seems to have been the idea current in 1967 that the Israelis could make those territories truly Israeli by colonizing them with Jews, but, there just aren’t enough settlers compared to the Palestinians. See this map – everything in dark pink is an Israeli settlement, everything in light pink is a restricted military area. Note that everything near the river is pink.

There are 3.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and 1.3 million in Israel proper. Most of the latter are Israeli citizens. There are 5.9 million Israeli Jews, including 300,000 in West Bank settlements. So, all told, they outnumber the Palestinians – but not by much.

So, annexing the Territories and makng voting Israeli citizens of the Palestinians . . . would not be the end of the “Jewish State,” not immediately, but Israelis fear the high birthrate among Palestinians, and the “Law of Return” the latter want enacted that would allow Palestinian refugees (or their children or grandchildren) from all over the world to move to Israel/Palestine . . . those factors might eventually lead to the Jews being outnumbered in what was founded to be their own country. So, nobody in Israeli politics seriously considers a “one-state solution.”

OTOH, a “two-state solution,” with the OTs forming an independent Palestinian state, also frightens the Israelis, because they’re not confident the Palestinians would settle for that. They fear the result would be yet another hostile neighbor on their borders; and besides, the 300,000 Israeli settlers now in the West Bank would have to be either uprooted and moved west, or left to the mercies of the new Palestinian government, both politically unsavory options. And they’re not at all encouraged by the way things have gone in the Gaza Strip since the Israelis pulled out of there. Anti-Israeli forces have been launching rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. In response, the Israelis, rightly or wrongly, have judged it necessary to impose an embargo so that the fractious Gazans cannot trade with the world or even with their only non-Israeli neighbor, Egypt.

And that’s why this conflict goes on and on and on. Because there is no obvious solution that is more-or-less acceptable to all parties.

And, of course, in the above analysis, “all parties” means only those people actually living between the Jordan and the sea. It does not simplify things that most Muslim countries have an ideological hostility to Israel, and the U.S. and many other Western countries support Israel.

82

I was talking about the Yishuv. Beyond that, until extremely recently, Arabs weren’t allowed to even lease the land.

It was for Jews only.

Under the Yishuv? Practically anything that wasn’t remotely menial.

In modern day Israel, Israeli Arabs are routinely denied numerous jobs due to not serving in the military.

The last time I was in Israel, the 90s, it was an open secret that many jobs in Israel would regularly post when looking for jobs “veterans only” to make it clear they didn’t hire Arabs.

I’m sure a few people will now chime in, “Yes, but Israel doesn’t draft Arabs the way it does Jews”.

That is certainly true, but as David Shipler, the former NYT Bureau Chief for Jerusalem points out, virtually any Arabs(except for the Bedouin and if you count the Druze, who’d be insulted by being called Arabs) are turned down because they’re not trusted.

Beyond that, there’s all sorts of soft discrimination that David Grossman described in detail in Sleeping on a Wire.

83

Anyway, you have yet to explain why you decided to ignore the present absentees?

Once more, please explain your reasoning.
thanks

84

Well, certainly. But Israel also does not draft the ultra-Orthodox Jews - while as you know it does accept Druze and Bedouin, who are non-Jews, into the army.

So the situation is not all that simple. Discriminating against non-veterans affects Arabs it is true, but also Orthodox Jews, and not (non-Jewish) Druze and Bedouin.

That is not to say that there is not discrimination. Such is inevitable, given the passions in the region. But at least some of the official discrimination is the result, as it were, of attempts to accomodate local group desires - for example, the army does not draft Arabs for the same reason it does not draft ultra-orthodox Jews - that these groups very much oppose being drafted and to attempt to draft them would create social problems (though as I understand it the Ultra-orthodox Jew thing is under revision right now).

Should the Israeli army attempt to draft Arabs (including Arabic women - as Jewish women are drafted), as it does Jews, there would be a huge outcry about how they are being oppressed - yet the fact that they don’t draft Arabs can be held up as a symptom of oppression! It’s heads I win, tails you lose.

85

I don’t think any contends that Arabs can live in Israel without being discrimination. In fact, it’s the opposite, which is the point.

86

I’m not good at this sort of thing, so I’ll leave it for someone more skilled, but this topic, in almost this exact form, has come up before. If I am recalling correctly there was an extremely helpful, well documented summary posted, by whom I cannot recall, sorry. It was really quite brilliant, if you’re any good at getting the search engine working, it’s definitely worth seeking out. Sorry I cannot tell you more.

87

I’m kinda scratching my head over the wording of your post. I’ve read it three times and, honestly, I’m not sure what you are saying.

Not to be rude, but are you attempting to say that everyone knows Arabs cannot live in Israel without being discriminated against?

88

Yes… It’s inherent in the concept of a Jewish State.

89

Exactly.

90

Is discrimination inherent in any sort of state that is founded based on 19th century style ethno-nationalism?

Because if that is the case, inherent discrimination is reasonably common.

However, my comments were not about the general (that is, that only states founded along non-ethno-nationalist lines are okay) but about the specific (the fact that failing to draft Arabs is a sign of discrimination - while drafting Arabs would be a sign of oppression).

91

Probably. Which is why Palestinians fought and continue to fight against Israel. They don’t want to be second class citizens in their own land.

92

This is not correct. The Palestinians who are actually Israeli citizens are by and large not fighting against Israel (though naturally enough, they are working to redress their grievances). If they were, for example, Arab-Israeli members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, would be traitors. Only the most fringe and extreme Israeli (Jewish) politicians make such claims.

No, what is happening is that the Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza are fighting, in the case of the PA, for recognition of Palestine as a state, and in the case of Hamas, for destruction of the Israeli state (but without realistic hope of success); and the Palestinians outside of Israel, the WB and Gaza - refugees who are kept in refugee camps by their brother Arabs in many cases - are fighting for the “right of return” or at the least for some better situation.

As can be seen, it is too simplistic to say “the Palestinans” have any one set of motives, as they are very differently situated - Palestinians within Israel are Israeli citizens; Palestinians in the WB are governed by the PA, which includes both Muslim and Christian Palestinians; Palestinains in Gaza are ruled by Hamas, which is expressly Islamic and so does not include Christian Palestinians; etc.

But that being said, about the least of their concerns, collectively, is that Israel was founded as an expressly ethno-nationalist state - except in the sense that if it wasn’t, it presumably would not exist at all.

93

I don’t usually like the phrase “there’s enough blame to go around” because there is usually one side that pretty clearly bears the lion’s share of the blame but I think it applies in this case.

The problem is that it is very easy to criticize terrorists without anyone pointing fingers at you, but if you criticize Israel, people will call you an anti-semite.

94

If making an arab an israeli citizen somethign that makes them stop “fighting israel” doesn’t it make sense to make more of them citizens? Or do they smell funny like Mexicans do here?

Isn’t the ethnocentric nature of the state of israel one of the major hurdles to passing out Israeli citizenship to the palestinian refugees?

95

I’m sure that they don’t want Arabic citizens to outvote Jewish ones.
:slight_smile:

96

The problem is not simply that these refugees and their desendants want citizenship. The major part of the problem is that they want their lands back when they “return”. However, this would not be easy (or even possible) to accomodate peacefully, as there exists a whole population who has grown up on those lands - in many cases, Jews who have been in turn turfed out of Arab countries without their lands or goods (half the population of Israel is Mizrahim).

This is of course not an issue, or not as major an issue, with the Arabs that never left.

It would not satisfy these refugees to simply give them citizenship. Moreover, because of these events, these refugees harbour a certain amount of resentment towards Israel, which they see as having dispossessed them.

In short, simply offering them citizenship will not make them similarly situated to the currently existing Israeli Arab citizens. This is yet another reason why there is no simple solution to what the “Palestinians” want - they are not a homogenous group. What Israeli Palestinians want is not going to be the same as what West Bank Palestinians want, which in turn is not the same as what refugee Palestinians want.

Please note that this concern would be the same no matter whether Israel was a “Jewish” state or not.

97

It should be noted that the Palestinians don’t want to be Israeli citizens, would view being offered it an insult, and would regard any of their leaders who asked for it to be a “collaborator”, which is about the worst word you can call a Palestinian.

The Palestinians of East Jerusalem have been offered citizenship repeatedly and, almost without a single exception have rejected it.

98

Terrorists being Palestinians, right? Like State of Israel never committed act of terror? Or, God forbid, fighting against an occupying force with all and anything you got on your own land to be considered normal reaction?

99

And by ‘occupying force’ you mean children attending school?

100

Is that what they call it now? Attending school?