Economic solution to the Gaza conflict?

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Alessan

First of all, my sympathies. Second of all, you have nothing to apologize for - it was a good post.

Thank you very much.

[Declan]

@Ibn_Warraq

Respectfully, have you ever met Israelis?

Yeah, Israel does have huge numbers of immigrants to the US and other countries, but the only way what you’re proposing happens is that someone invades them and forces them out at gun point and that is simply not happening.

Similarly, I can’t help but chuckle at all the people proposing to pay off the Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip.

Please. The Palestinians there shouldn’t even be called Gazans. Something like 70% are refugees or the descendants of refugees who were ethnically cleansed/fled from what is now Israel during the 48 War.

I don’t know how many people have ever been in the houses of Palestinian refugees either in or outside a refugee camp, but it really is something difficult to convey with just words. The walls are often covered with intricate drawings of the houses and villages they used to live in generations ago. Has anyone ever listened to a ten year old child describe in detail the home his great-grandfather lived in and the olive trees he used to own and how he will live to see that home.

They don’t want an independent Gaza or a Palestinian State. They want Palestine. They want Haifa, they want Jaffa. They want their land back and they want the Jews gone.

What we have unfortunately is a conflict between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The Jews aren’t going to leave or give up the idea of a having a sovereign state for the Jewish people which is going to ensure they’re always going to be in conflict with the Arab minority within Israel and the Palestinians are never going to give up their dream of returning to their homes and liberating Palestine from the river to the sea and they will never support a two state solution because they aren’t stupid enough to think that the West Bank and Gaza are viable as anything other than Bantustans.

Now, I’m sure lots of us have “solutions” to this. Quoting from memory, E. K. Hornbeck said, “for every complicated issue there is a solution that is obvious, simple, straightforward, and wrong”. I’ll add to the list self-serving.

I don’t know what the solution is and I guarantee that thirty years from now, just as thirty years ago in late night sessions in college dorms people had “solutions” and people will be saying “this can’t go on forever” but the truth is that sometimes there really is no solution.

Some conflicts just reach a certain point where both sides reach in the words of P.J. O’Rourke “an acceptable level of violence” and neither side is willing to admit they’ve lost and neither is willing to say “ok, we’ve got to give up our dream, sit down and cut the best deal we can.”

Someone on another thread made some terrible comparisons to postwar Japan. What they failed to realize is that Japan not only surrendered to the US but offered unconditional surrender.

That is how such conflicts end. One side clearly is the winner and the other recognizes it and surrenders.

Perhaps I’m wrong. If you’d asked me in 1987 if there’d be a resolution to the conflict in Northern Ireland I’d have laughed in your face and made a similar post, but the IRA surprised me and while they never publicly admitted it and tried to shroud it in sheep’s clothing, they basically realized they’d lost, sat down with the British and negotiated a surrender with the British in such a way as to save face but still meant the British didn’t have to give up one inch of territory and the IRA didn’t gain an inch of territory.

Perhaps something like this will happen, but not while Hamas is around. People who believe that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs and that the Jews have through their agents, the Rotary Clubs, the Lions and the Free Masons have come to dominate the West aren’t the kind of people to negotiate a surrender with the Jews.

Until then we’ll have what many romantics refer to as “the cycle of violence” but the realists refer to as “the cycle of cease-fires”.

If there’s ever a saying that better encapsulates the situation that Ron Moore’s saying “All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again” I don’t know what it is.

This post should be pinned for the goto answer regarding this question in the future.

Declan

[Shodan]

Another factor to recognize about sending aid to the Palestinians is that their leaders are going to steal as much of it as they can get their grubby little hands on.

Regards,
Shodan

[LinusK]

@Ibn_Warraq

Respectfully, have you ever met Israelis?

Yeah, Israel does have huge numbers of immigrants to the US and other countries, but the only way what you’re proposing happens is that someone invades them and forces them out at gun point and that is simply not happening.

Similarly, I can’t help but chuckle at all the people proposing to pay off the Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip.

Please. The Palestinians there shouldn’t even be called Gazans. Something like 70% are refugees or the descendants of refugees who were ethnically cleansed/fled from what is now Israel during the 48 War.

I don’t know how many people have ever been in the houses of Palestinian refugees either in or outside a refugee camp, but it really is something difficult to convey with just words. The walls are often covered with intricate drawings of the houses and villages they used to live in generations ago. Has anyone ever listened to a ten year old child describe in detail the home his great-grandfather lived in and the olive trees he used to own and how he will live to see that home.

They don’t want an independent Gaza or a Palestinian State. They want Palestine. They want Haifa, they want Jaffa. They want their land back and they want the Jews gone.

What we have unfortunately is a conflict between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The Jews aren’t going to leave or give up the idea of a having a sovereign state for the Jewish people which is going to ensure they’re always going to be in conflict with the Arab minority within Israel and the Palestinians are never going to give up their dream of returning to their homes and liberating Palestine from the river to the sea and they will never support a two state solution because they aren’t stupid enough to think that the West Bank and Gaza are viable as anything other than Bantustans.

Now, I’m sure lots of us have “solutions” to this. Quoting from memory, E. K. Hornbeck said, “for every complicated issue there is a solution that is obvious, simple, straightforward, and wrong”. I’ll add to the list self-serving.

I don’t know what the solution is and I guarantee that thirty years from now, just as thirty years ago in late night sessions in college dorms people had “solutions” and people will be saying “this can’t go on forever” but the truth is that sometimes there really is no solution.

Some conflicts just reach a certain point where both sides reach in the words of P.J. O’Rourke “an acceptable level of violence” and neither side is willing to admit they’ve lost and neither is willing to say “ok, we’ve got to give up our dream, sit down and cut the best deal we can.”

Someone on another thread made some terrible comparisons to postwar Japan. What they failed to realize is that Japan not only surrendered to the US but offered unconditional surrender.

That is how such conflicts end. One side clearly is the winner and the other recognizes it and surrenders.

Perhaps I’m wrong. If you’d asked me in 1987 if there’d be a resolution to the conflict in Northern Ireland I’d have laughed in your face and made a similar post, but the IRA surprised me and while they never publicly admitted it and tried to shroud it in sheep’s clothing, they basically realized they’d lost, sat down with the British and negotiated a surrender with the British in such a way as to save face but still meant the British didn’t have to give up one inch of territory and the IRA didn’t gain an inch of territory.

Perhaps something like this will happen, but not while Hamas is around. People who believe that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs and that the Jews have through their agents, the Rotary Clubs, the Lions and the Free Masons have come to dominate the West aren’t the kind of people to negotiate a surrender with the Jews.

Until then we’ll have what many romantics refer to as “the cycle of violence” but the realists refer to as “the cycle of cease-fires”.

If there’s ever a saying that better encapsulates the situation that Ron Moore’s saying “All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again” I don’t know what it is.

I’ve never been to the home of a Gazan/ Palestinian-living-in-Gaza, but I do realize what they want is to move back to Haifa and Jaffa. Given that’s not possible, though, the question is whether they’d want to continue to live in Gaza, or somewhere else, +$50,000. No one is asking them to stop wanting to return, or to give up the “right of return” (at least, I’m not).

The idea is not to solve Israel’s problem, or the Palestinians’ problem. The idea is to solve America’s problem. Specifically, that we’re sending billions of dollars of aid to a country that’s using at least some of that money to turn children into blood splatters.

Not only is it a poor use of US taxpayer money; it’s something that’s contrary to US interests. It harms our relations with dozens of countries throughout the world, and stirs up hatred for the US that leads to terrorist attacks like 9/11.

I don’t know how many people in Gaza would accept the offer, but I suspect it would be a substantial number, and I think any number of countries would accept them. There’s no reason the US couldn’t take another 250,000, for example, and there are other countries that would follow our example. Especially if they showed up with cash money in their pockets.

[LinusK]

@Shodan

Another factor to recognize about sending aid to the Palestinians is that their leaders are going to steal as much of it as they can get their grubby little hands on.

Regards,
Shodan

The families that got the money would get the money when they got where they were going, not before they left.

[Ambrosio_Spinola]

@LinusK

I don’t know how many people in Gaza would accept the offer, but I suspect it would be a substantial number, and I think any number of countries would accept them. There’s no reason the US couldn’t take another 250,000, for example, and there are other countries that would follow our example. Especially if they showed up with cash money in their pockets.

Any merits of this idea aside, what do you think that Fox News would say if the Obama Administration floated the idea that the US should give direct payments to Palestinians and allow them to immigrate? They’re already saying that the children crossing the southern border are some sort of plot by the Administration to increase the number of Democratic voters, and the fact that these proposed immigrants are majority Muslim would also be fuel on some fires. There is no way that Congress would permit money to be spent in this fashion, and no way that the President would ask it to. It is politically impossible for the US to execute such a plan at this time, and I’m hard pressed to think of any time in our history when it would have been.

[LinusK]

@Ambrosio_Spinola

Any merits of this idea aside, what do you think that Fox News would say if the Obama Administration floated the idea that the US should give direct payments to Palestinians and allow them to immigrate? They’re already saying that the children crossing the southern border are some sort of plot by the Administration to increase the number of Democratic voters, and the fact that these proposed immigrants are majority Muslim would also be fuel on some fires. There is no way that Congress would permit money to be spent in this fashion, and no way that the President would ask it to. It is politically impossible for the US to execute such a plan at this time, and I’m hard pressed to think of any time in our history when it would have been.

It’s hard to put the merits aside, because it’s the merits I want to talk about. I freely admit the Republicans would go apeshit over the idea.

Personally, I’d rather see my tax dollars go to resettling Palestinians in safe homes where they can make new lives for themselves, and their children, rather than as fuel for this endless violence. But, I’m not a Republican.

[XT]

If they were paid, say, $50,000 each to leave, how many would go?

Some non-zero number comprised chiefly of those folks who aren’t the actual problem. I suppose the only merit of this plan is that you’d be buying off all of the innocent ones that Hamas et al are using as meat shields, thus freeing up Israel to really take the gloves off, since pretty much anyone who stays is definitely doing so because they have an agenda. Give a 12 month window for people to take it, then let Israel unleash the dogs and wharves…er, dogs of war and get all biblical on whoever is left.

Like your plan to do essentially the same thing here in the US (based on past threads), this really isn’t a solution. You can’t leverage all of Israel’s defense costs into this sooper plan of yours, since they will still have to pay that money even if all the Palestinian’s decide to take the money and run. Israel will still have sunk costs for defense regardless (unless you have an equally great plan to get rid of, oh, say Iran as well?). Same goes for the US loans and aid…it’s not going to really change much. So, you can’t simply hand wave the current costs aside and then say you’d put that money you would save into this goofy plan.

And this leaves aside the fact that your plan wouldn’t work as you’d never get more than a fraction of the Palestinian population to move away…and those who stayed would still be tossing rockets periodically at Israel to spark a reaction and hopefully (in their minds hopefully) have Israel retaliate and kill some civilians, maybe hit a children’s hospital or something.

[Shodan]

@LinusK

The families that got the money would get the money when they got where they were going, not before they left.

No, they would get the money as soon as they bribed whoever was handing it out, or there would be a special 75% windfall tax on the money unless you gave 5% of it to the local tax collector, in which case it drops to 60%. Etc.

Regards,
Shodan

[Dissonance]

@LinusK

Personally, I’d rather see my tax dollars go to resettling Palestinians in safe homes where they can make new lives for themselves, and their children, rather than as fuel for this endless violence.

It’s hard to see the wars that are not there, and a reasonable case can be made that its time to cut the tap on FMA to Egypt and Israel; but again your tax dollars going to foreign military aid to Egypt and Israel are there because of the Camp David Peace Accords, not to add fuel to endless violence. Prior to Camp David Egypt, which is by far the most militarily powerful of Israel’s neighbors, and Israel had gone at it with each other in a major war every decade: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973. Not only have Egypt and Israel not gone to war with each other since Camp David, Israel hasn’t fought a major war with any of its other neighbors either. Jordan has made peace with Israel as well, and Syria hasn’t seen going at Israel by itself as a very good idea.

Going by the average rate of wars between Israel and its neighbors prior to Camp David, your tax dollars prevented a major war between Egypt and Israel and most likely Syria and possibly Jordan as well in the 1980s, another in the 1990s, one in the 2000s, and we’d be about 50/50 on the one in the 2010s.

[LinusK]

@XT

Some non-zero number comprised chiefly of those folks who aren’t the actual problem. I suppose the only merit of this plan is that you’d be buying off all of the innocent ones that Hamas et al are using as meat shields, thus freeing up Israel to really take the gloves off, since pretty much anyone who stays is definitely doing so because they have an agenda. Give a 12 month window for people to take it, then let Israel unleash the dogs and wharves…er, dogs of war and get all biblical on whoever is left.

Like your plan to do essentially the same thing here in the US (based on past threads), this really isn’t a solution. You can’t leverage all of Israel’s defense costs into this sooper plan of yours, since they will still have to pay that money even if all the Palestinian’s decide to take the money and run. Israel will still have sunk costs for defense regardless (unless you have an equally great plan to get rid of, oh, say Iran as well?). Same goes for the US loans and aid…it’s not going to really change much. So, you can’t simply hand wave the current costs aside and then say you’d put that money you would save into this goofy plan.

And this leaves aside the fact that your plan wouldn’t work as you’d never get more than a fraction of the Palestinian population to move away…and those who stayed would still be tossing rockets periodically at Israel to spark a reaction and hopefully (in their minds hopefully) have Israel retaliate and kill some civilians, maybe hit a children’s hospital or something.

As I said before, I haven’t been there, but my impression is Gaza’s not a great place to live. Per capita income is about $4000, unemployment is over 20%, and it’s been described as an open-air prison camp, since Israel controls all its borders. It’s a tiny strip of land that’s mostly desert. Then there’s the periodic bombardment, and the perpetual threat of invasion. It’s a place where you are literally never safe: your kid might get blown up playing football on the beach, and your home might not be there tomorrow.

My impression - and I’m open to fact-based persuasion here - is that most people live in Gaza because they can’t leave, not because they want to be there.

You yourself say the plan would “buy off the innocent ones”. What percentage of the Palastinian population is “innocent”?

Women? Children?

According to the CIA Factbook, children 14 and younger make up 43% of the population of Gaza. Even if you consider only women and children “innocent” that’s close to 3/4 of the population. And surely there are at least a few males 15 and over who are innocent, wouldn’t you agree?

So while I agree it would be a fraction of the population that would leave - meaning less than 100% - I think it would be a large fraction, not a small one.

I also agree the plan would be expensive. By citing numbers for military aid to Israel, the costs to Israel associated with maintaining the status quo, and the costs to the US of its support of Israel, I’m just just putting those costs in perspective.

If you thought for example, that 9/11 had something to do with US support of Israel, the cost of that one event alone would dwarf the cost of resettling the entire population of Gaza.

[CarnalK]

@LinusK

As I said before, I haven’t been there, but my impression is Gaza’s not a great place to live. Per capita income is about $4000, unemployment is over 20%, and it’s been described as an open-air prison camp, since Israel controls all its borders.

How many times does it need to be said that Egypt controls one of the borders? The enclosure of Gaza is a joint affair between Israel and Egypt.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Trinopus

Shipping inspections could, eventually, substitute for the blockade. So long as nobody is bringing in weapons, nobody would really much care if manufactured goods, machine parts, electronics, and so on come and go. Rockets are a problem, but washing machines won’t be.

As you say, structured negotiation with stages. Peace would benefit the Gazans vastly more than war ever conceivably could.

That is only because they have no conceivable chance of winning a war.

[Trinopus]

@Damuri_Ajashi

That is only because they have no conceivable chance of winning a war.

Not “only,” but, most certainly, to a large extent. What kind of idiot wages a war he has no conceivable chance of winning?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Ibn_Warraq

Sigh. I really shouldn’t post when suffering from insomnia, having had a little too much to drink adjust having heard of the daughter of a good friend of mine, whom I’m also friends with, getting paralyzed in a car accident.

I apologize to all.

Sorry for your troubles. I haven’t always been a big fan of yours but don’t think I’ve read a better post from you.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Trinopus

Not “only,” but, most certainly, to a large extent. What kind of idiot wages a war he has no conceivable chance of winning?

Well, Palestinians for one. I’m not sure what they have to lose at this point and I’m not sure they think they have anything to gain by stopping.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Sorry for your troubles. I haven’t always been a big fan of yours but don’t think I’ve read a better post from you.

Thank you. I’m being completely sincere when I say that.

[LinusK]

@Trinopus

Not “only,” but, most certainly, to a large extent. What kind of idiot wages a war he has no conceivable chance of winning?

I don’t know if it’s a question of winning, Or of being idiots. I’m just speculating, but I think it’s more a question of rage, and desperation.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Ibn_Warraq

Thank you. I’m being completely sincere when I say that.

Well, so was I.

I feel like I could learn a thing or two from you (as I have from malthus and alessan and even finn again, even though I continue to disagree with them).

[Grumman]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Well, Palestinians for one. I’m not sure what they have to lose at this point and I’m not sure they think they have anything to gain by stopping.

That’s why they’re the bad guys. Another organisation, less shit than Hamas, would look at the hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians caused by the fighting they started and know they had something to lose.