A lot of Arab and Muslim governments, including many who do not even share a border with Israel, are ideologically committed, and have been for decades, to the proposition that “the Zionist entity” has no right to exist at all on “Islamic land,” i.e., Palestine. Matter of national/religious pride. What was once “Islamic land” must remain “Islamic land” forever and must never be ruled by infidels. Part of this seems to be a lingering resentment from the period of European colonial imperialism.
But the real sticking point is not only about land but people: The situation involves Palestinians – Muslim Arabs – living under the rule of non-Muslims. And other Muslims sympathize with them (enough to occasionally go to war for the Palestinians’ sake – but not enough welcome Palestinian refugees as full citizens of their own countries :rolleyes: ).
Suppose the Palestinians finally got their independent state. Would that solve the problem, or begin to solve it? Would Saudi Arabia or Iran begin to edge toward recognizing Israel and normalizing relations with it?
I think it would help to some degree. At the same time, in the past when the other Middle Eastern states went to war with Israel they made it quite clear it was because they wanted to drive the Jews completely out of the region, they don’t want any Jewish state in the middle east and they consider any existence of one to be an insult to all of Islam.
The plight of the Palestinians is one popular way that Middle Eastern leaders can rally support against Israel. But it isn’t the only reason they dislike Israel nor is it the only reason their people dislike Israel; in general there’s an incredible degree of anti-semitism at work and throughout the middle east there’s almost tacit acceptance of quite a few of the cookiest Zionist conspiracies.
I think it is possible that hostility to Israel does fade eventually, but it will have to involve a general warming of relations; Palestinian independence would only be a part of the fix and not the total solution. There’s also a good chance that more than likely whatever form of Palestinian independence ultimately occurs, the Palestinians will always insist they deserve more of the land in the region than they received. And of course Israel will probably invade within weeks if an independent Palestinian state shows itself unable to control terrorist groups operating from within its borders.
I don’t think it would help significantly. The Palestinians have been offered independence, but turned it down, so it seems to just be one of a long litany of reasons why to hate the Jews. The real reasons why they hate the Jews are: “They” are different than “us” and “they” live better than “us”. (Particulary galling must be the fact that the Isrealis live better on the same crappy land. ) Ignorant people will always hate based upon those two factors, and there is no possible way for Isreal (or the USA) to change those two factors. Thus- there will always be hate.
*Arafat * turned it down, not necessarily “the Palestinians”. It seemed to be at hand at the time, and perhaps could be again.
I have to believe neither the Palestinians nor the Jews are essentially different from peoples in any other area where long-standing ethnic hatreds have been alleviated and made liveable by simple separation, and by the economic development that peace can lead to (no matter how tense or forced the peace). It does seem to me, at a great distance, that the primary source of anger for the average Palestinian just trying to make a life is Israel’s control of the land that would be in this new state, including massive reprisals and destruction of homes and livelihoods as well as planting settlers and creating that ugly wall on Palestinian land. All that is sheer provocation, unhelpful to producing peace and apparently unhelpful to producing security for Israel. That has to stop, and can stop unilaterally.
I do believe that “good fences make good neighbors”. The wall, if on the actual border, combined with Israel’s withdrawal from Palestine may not be sufficient but it’s absolutely necessary.
Nitpick: the government of Jordan vehimently denies that it is a Palestinian state, regardless of demographics (which it constantly tinkers with, anyway.)
In any case, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in the early 1990s. If Jordan – a country with a majority Palestinian population – can make peace with Israel, I’m not sure that this constitutes evidence that a new Palestine could not also make peace with Israel. Animosity would certainly still exist, but let’s get real: animosity is to be preferred over violence.
The hostility to Israel would probably remain generally unchanged. Israel would still exist and would still be on land that some Muslims believe should be Muslim-controlled. And, in my opinion, a lot of anti-Israeli feeling in the Middle East was actually pumped up for domestic reasons. Totalitarian governments generally find it useful to have an external enemy to focus their people’s hostility on.
My guess is that many of the governments in the area adopt an anti-Israel stance because it plays well with a substantial portion of their people, but that the people in government themselves may not be so strongly motivated. Kind of like some American Republicans who cater to the religious right to get enthusiastic support (or deflect the possibility of enthusiastic primary challenges) but whose own political interests are more economic or concerned with the state of military or whatever.
Given sufficient excuse and political cover, they might make peace with Israel, especially if doing so looks lucrative and conducive to good international relations all around.
I could be dead wrong and the folks in power in most of those states may harbor a deep personal hatred for Israel that would persist no matter what.
As I understand it, there was very little anti-semitism in Muslim cultures before Israel was brought into existence. No reason for it. The Islamic religion had gone from triumph to triumph since Mohammed first proclaimed it, and the Jews had never been an obstacle. They were tolerated as a “people of the Book.” (Mohammed did once massacre three Jewish tribes, down to the last infant, after defeating their rebellion against his rule – but that was routine tribal politics of the time; only way to prevent a multi-generational vendetta.)
This all depends on what you mean by “independent.” I suppose you’re meaning the West Bank plus Gaza. To me, this idea is a non-starter. Unless Israel is proposing to ethnically cleanse Israel proper by forcing all the Palestinians there into the West Bank and Gaza, you still have an issue. The Arab population in Israel proper is growing hugely; the Jewish population hardly at all. A couple of decades out, the demographic – hence political – weight of the Arabs in Israel is going to be decisive. For this reason, the West Bank and Gaza are mostly a sideshow. Some minor twiddling there is not going to solve the problem – either for Israel or for the neighboring countries.
This is why I say that the only possible outcome is a one-state solution: Jews and Arabs living together, in one land, on terms of equality. (And you would think, parenthetically, that people would embrace such an outcome that both solves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and assures an equitable outcome for both parties – but you’d be wrong, as just about every subsequent poster to this thread will show.)
But that’s where I think you’re wrong. Israel insists on being a Jewish state, with all the privileges for Jews that that implies. Palestinians within Israel are systematically excluded from full participation in the society. They see that as a problem – why shouldn’t we? And I don’t think that Palestinians who are Israeli citizens separate their problems as Palestinians from the problems of Palestinians outside Israel proper.
IMHO it depends on Palestinian leadership. The best interest of a nascant Palestinian state is in reproachment with Israel and in coorperative ventures with her. Tourism is a major industry that would benefit from cooperation, but it is not the only one. Israeli entrepeneurs could help develop many other industries as well and would be eager to cut good deals. Bluntly put, Israel could benefit from the labour force and a Palestinian nation could benefit from the investment. Both need tax revenues.
A Palestinian leader with any sort of vision of a future for the Palestinian people would encourage an end to hostility. But that doesn’t mean that it would happen that way. Israel has been used by Arab leadership for years as the subject of the daily “ten minute hate” - stoked up hatred against Israel has allowed Arab leaders to distract their own populus from the oppression that is imposed upon them by their own. That will be a hard habit to wean themselves off of.
Sal, the “one-state” solution is more than just a hijack, it is the absolute ultimate non-starter, for exactly the reasons you list. “One-state” guarantees the non-existance of a state with a Jewish identity.*
To be sure, the demographics of an increasing Israeli Arab population in a secular nation that wishes to have a Jewish face are an issue for Israel to face, as is any inequitable treatment of Israeli Arabs. The elimination of the latter (which exists on par with inequitable treatment of minories in the US) is, in fact, the major part of the solution to the former: the high Arab birth rate is consistent with high rates among most poor and uneducated populations. Increase educational and economic parity and the extremely high Israeli Arab birth rate is extremely likely to come down to the levels of most other educated and ecomomically advantaged groups. Moreover, helping a Palestinian state become economically successful is also part of Israel’s best long-term solution, as that makes emigration to Palestine by Israeli Arabs an attractive option. But these are subjects of other threads.
Brian, not quite. There were many many massacres of Jews in Arab history and Jews were tolerated only as dhimmis, second-class citizens, subjected to laws that made Jim Crow look enlightened. But there were periods of relative tolerance so long as they knew their place and Jews in general had it much better in the Arab world than in the Christian one. And that said, Arab Jew-hating today is a different beast than the discrimination and occassional massacre of Caliphate days.
*Still, a version of “one-state” may have some appeal in a generation or two: long long term a loose federation between a functional Palestine and Israel may be mutually beneficial. But we need some years of cooling down first.
So? The state with a Jewish identity is inherently discriminatory, hence the need for an alternative. But I agree that it’s a non-starter in that there’s little political traction for it.
There are some good points in your post, though I think you throw too much on the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinians operate in a context that is mostly set by Israel. Israel has the muscle – militarily, governmentally, financially – to dictate the terms of the discussion. They’re in the driver’s seat here, not the Palestinians. So I continue to believe that it’s the Israelis who should do something, if for no other reason than to save their own asses. You downplay the demographic trends, but Israel is absolutely sticking its head in the sand about them. That is why Palestinian independence as posited in the OP feels so hypothetical to me. Even with the Israeli retreat from Gaza, I feel like an independent Palestinian state is a long, long way off, given the Israeli mindset. I also believe – feel free to disagree – that at some point an Israeli leader is going to be hard-headed enough to realize which way things are going, and we’ll see the reemergence of the one-state idea.
By the way, your assertion that inequitable treatment of Palestinians in Israel is on par with inequitable treatment of minorities in the US is absolutely untrue. To give you a few examples, are there jobs in the U.S. that are off-limits to certain ethnic minorities? Areas where certain minorities are not allowed to live? Restrictions on where certain minority members can travel? None of those things is true in the U.S. – all are true in Israel.
The fact is, Israel calls itself a “Jewish democracy,” whereas the U.S. simply calls itself a democracy. Big difference.
The days of the vast Turkish/et al success at beating back the infidels were a long ago thing of the past even c. 1900.
Many of the governments throughout the Middle East for whatever reason were just doing terribly. The Ottoman Empire ultimately collapsed. I know very little about that phase of Middle Eastern history but I know enough to know things were going badly there for everyone, some areas worse than others (Turkey for example came out of it all relatively well, the Levant region did not.)
Muslims didn’t have a lot of opinion on Jews in the year 1700 or 1800. They didn’t come in to contact with many of them on a day-to-day basis, certainly not enough for it to be meaningful. They had a somewhat negative view of Christians, but that was more due to the fact that Christian and Islamic nations in the region clashed on occasion (like Russia with the Ottomans.)
Prior to the 19th century Zionist movement there were small settlements of Jews in the Israel/Palestine region. These Jews weren’t persecuted per se, but they were Dhimmi and viewed as inferior by all the muslims in the area.
When the major influx of Jews started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the muslims in the region instantly began to respond. There were small-scale clashes all the way back in the 1920s and earlier between aggressive muslim villagers trying to upset newly arrived Jewish settlers. Muslims were mostly okay with Jews as long as they were Dhimmi that is, a non-persecuted but mostly unrespected non-Islamic minority with relatively no power in the region. The idea of them establishing a state where the Jews and Muslims would live as equals was anathema. The idea of the Jews establishing and running a state themselves, in which some Muslims would be subject to the rule of a Jewish government was unthinkable to them.
Throw onto the fire the fact that this Jewish state was forming around a pretty holy city for muslims (Jerusalem) and everything just gets worse.
So anyways my main point is, while in the grand historical scheme of things muslims may not have had a problem with the Jews, Palestinian muslims have had a problem with Jews for about five generations now. Long enough that it’s an important aspect of their lives and culture.
Again, Isreal made EXTREMELY generous offers during the Clinton era, only to have Arafat keep raising the bar. SO, as long as the PLO and terrorists run the Palestinian government, the Palestinians won’t get much. Whihc, it appears to me- is the way the PLO wants it. After all, they are formed by hate & ran by terrorists. Dudes that are very good at bombing busses full of schoolkids are usually not good at running a progressive democracy. :dubious:
And, while it is true that there are certain restrictions on Palestinians, Palistinians in Isreal are far better off than a Jew in an Arab nation.
All right, you see the typical BS here: “Palestinian = bomber of buses full of schookids.” And those famous Clinton-era offers? More BS. The Israelis were so wigged out by Arafat’s conceding the whole of Israel proper – something entirely without precedent in the PLO’s annals – that they refused to put any offer in writing, and began backtracking as fast as they could.
But it’s attitudes like DrDeth’s that are especially revealing of the problem here. People who would normally consider themselves skeptical to the point of cynicism not only willingly swallow huge gobs of Israeli propaganda, but take upon themselves the responsibility for propagating it. And these people are a complete obstacle to any sort of solution. For them, it’s all about blame and wallowing in the past, and not about taking a hard look at the situation and finding a way forward. We need to ask ourselves, “What are our core political values here? Do we believe in equality or do we not? If we do, then what’s the way forward that will assure equality for all, Jew and Arab alike?”
This would all be hijack territory if it didn’t all reinforce my conviction that the prospect of Palestinian independence, as proposed in the OP, is a very distant one.