It’s a peace deal designed specifically for people who don’t want a peace deal. Very few people here think it’s a real, serious proposal; mostly, they’re waiting to see how it impacts the elections. Nobody thinks that the Palestinians will touch it with a 10-foot pole. There are a few voices on the right crowing about American “concessions”, as if that means something.
Regarding Trump… the adoration is disconcerting to me, too, although I’m much more knowledgeable about American politics than the average Israeli, to no small degree thanks to my presence on the SDMB. Israelis tend to be focused on their own problems and are largely ignorant of global politics. Israelis also, unfortunately, tend to suffer from low self esteem and are highly susceptible to flattery. Trump may be an idiot - most Israelis have figured *that *out, at least - but he’s acting like he’s OUR idiot, so we support him. Anything else would seem ungrateful.
Creating peace requires at least positivity, optimism and goodwill. An absence of hostility and pessimism, the lack of a sense of competitive victory or loss. With both sides hopeful, a dialog begins…
I disagree. The sense of loss is the one thing that has prolonged the conflict this long. The Israelis have won every actual war they fought against Arab nations, but the unwillingness of those nations (except Egypt and Jordan) to acknowledge their loss in the military arena has them continuing to commit acts of violence in the hopes of absolute victory, which in turn leads the Israelis to conclude that peace is not yet possible. If the Palestinians (and Syrians, and Lebanese, and Iraqis, etc) would ever be willing to accept that Israel will not be defeated through violence and adopt an attitude of surrender, they’d be amazed at just how well peace might actually work out for them.
For sure Israel has won (and hopefully will win) all conflicts with her aggressive/violent neighbours, but the Palestinian occupation isn’t one that can be won. Palestinians, like Israelis, are there. Nothing will change the fact that both Israelis and Palestinians are there, living.
“Except Egypt and Jordan” - yeah, the two neighbors that abut something like 85-90% of Israel’s land borders. That’s “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln” territory.
Without Egypt or Jordan, nobody’s going to start a conventional war with Israel.
Not to understate the consequences of terrorist attacks, but they do not threaten Israel’s hold on its territory. There is no route to “absolute victory” over Israel that way, and I’d be curious to know which nations are fooling themselves into believing there is.
Oh, I knew you were being sarcastic about the “artful diplomat” thing, but I thought the quotes were exaggerated paraphrases of something he said, the way people “quote” Trump by mocking his speech patterns. Especially since there wasn’t a cite, my immediate reaction was that you were satirizing him. But then I remembered satire is dead and I checked the quote. Good lord he’s a piece of shit.
You’d fessed up to the sarcasm before I posted, so I had no chance to be deceived.
I thought of editing off your initial paragraph, but that leaves Kushner’s name off the quotes. Then I thought of stripping part of your first paragraph, but that seemed overly autistic … and under-appreciative of your attempt at humor! So I went for broke and quoted yours in entirety.
(BTW, AIM or did you used to play Mafia on the ungulate’s board? If so, plz jump in to Pleonast’s latest!)
Not sure what you mean here. Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel, no other Arab nation (or quasi-national entity) has. I don’t see how the land borders comes into play on this subject.
While you and I and likely most the world believe that to be true, what do you think the end-game of the Palestinian leadership (don’t call it a nation if you don’t wish to) is? Their strategy forward clearly involves violence, what’s the point of that if they don’t think it’s their path to some sort of victory? They may be deluded, but I don’t see any other logic to it.
Unless and until all sides involved somehow decide simultaneously that they’re OK with that, there will be no solution. At least, no solution that leaves much of anybody alive in the area.
So we’re talking about the nations that have fought conventional wars with Israel.
Israel has four neighboring nations: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. If you’re gonna push Israel into the sea, you’ve got to move troops there somehow, so unless someone’s going to invade by sea, land borders matter. It’s easier to defend against an attack from one direction than from all directions. (Do I really have to say this? Lord give me patience, and quickly.)
And that’s without getting into the relative military strength of the four nations, which makes it even more of a “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln” sort of thing.
I’m sorry, did the Palestinian ‘nation’ participate in a conventional war against Israel? Which war? (Oh, and they’re not a nation. They don’t have territory that they control to the exclusion of all other nations.)
And going from ‘absolute victory’ earlier to ‘some sort of victory’ now is quite a goalpost-moving. Can I borrow your backhoe?
While I think the chance of any peace plan succeeding are small, I’d have to say this one is more likely for several reasons:
Support of other Arab Nations. Having Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, and a few other states tentatively on board is potentially a big deal. Also on board are a wide swath of countries like France, Austria, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and about a dozen others so far.
Isolation of the Palestinians. Peace plans in the past often became victims of external politics. Cold war politics, the fact that the Palestinian cause was very useful to other states to deflect citizen anger away from their own misdeeds or to politically damage Israel and America, Iranian meddling and inciting hatred of Israel, etc. Palestinian leaders were essentially bribed billions of dollars to NOT seek peace with Israel. But that has changed. The rise of the Iranian threat has created new alliances, including a new Arab willingness to work with and even ally with Israel. Money and support of Palestinians is drying up in the region.
The fall of oil power in the middle east. The leverage that various middle eastern oil states once had on the global economy has shrunk. OPEC has lost much of its power to control prices. This may lead to a new era of compromise and shifting alliances as political power wanes among states hostile to Israel…
Some specific features in the new plan. For example, offering $50 billion to the Palestinians for signing on, while at the same time drying up the power of the other side to offer incentives for not signing, may move the needle with Palestinian leadership.
That said, a lifetime of watching various peace plans promise the moon and end up with nothing or worse, I suspect this will be more of the same. But this is an era of unexpected change, so who knows?
That’s just the Arab nations I mentioned. The other supporting countries were listed in the original announcement. According to the initial announcement, 23 countries were on board at the time of unveiling, including all the countries I mentioned.
I don’t recall other peace plans having significant Arab support. But it’s a different world now. Maybe there is an opening for something to finally get done.
I don’t see anything in that link or googling that indicates any of these countries are onboard specifically with this plan. Maybe they’re onboard with peace efforts, or something extremely vague like that, but without something specific I’m skeptical.
You don’t think those ambassadors standing with him at the unveiling of the plan don’t support it as at least a good start of negotiations? Why else would they be there?
I have no idea why they were there. Without official statements from their governments about this specific peace plan, we just don’t know where their leaders actually stand. It seems unlikely to me that a bunch of Arab leaders who have made commitment to the Palestinian cause a big part of their domestic political advocacy would out-of-the-blue go for a peace plan that did not include a Palestinian negotiating partner.
The best that I’ve heard from any of them is the UAE calling it a “good start”. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. And I see no evidence of European support.
