A point made in the Times leader.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2015602,00.html
I actually know a lot of people in Israel: Middle class types, engineers and scientists for example. They tell me they have never had it better. They are very prosperous and are not really worried about the lack of progress towards peace. In their daily lives they don’t feel that they are in danger.
At this time there’s just not a big incentive to change the status quo.
ETA: The Time magazine article linked to by Malthus expresses this well: The average Isaraeli has a great life now, so why should he care?
That is true, and it is very, very scary. Israel is enjoying life right now, but the long-term situation is grim.
American support will not continue forever. (Ask Castro about that sort of thing.) Arab populations (in whatever geographical area we are discussing) are growing and cannot be denied forever. The Arab nations are growing richer and more capable.
The Israeli situation is as good as it has ever been, and as dominate as it ever will be. Another way to say this is that it is all downhill from here. Making peace now will lock in Israeli security while it still can dictate terms. In fifty years, what will the Israelis be able to bring to the table?
Fifty years is nothing. Your children will be alive in fifty years. What sort of situation is our generation going to leave them?
Weird, but it’s been nearly a hundred years since my country was in a war with either of it’s neighbors. France and Spain and Britain haven’t been at war with each other for longer than that. Even the Germans, whose national sport is starting wars, hasn’t started a war with a neighbor in 70 years.
Peace is in everybody’s best interest, but the Palestinians have to get their shit together first. The Israelis can afford to wait, because however much the situation is hurting Israel, it’s hurting the Palestinians worse. If the Palestinians can’t commit themselves to peace, then all that’s going to happen is that the Israelis are going to finish the security fence, then move behind it and withdraw from the settlements on the other side, and forget about the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy will continue to suffer, and the Palestinians will slowly starve. And nobody will give a damn. Oh, the Arab League will pass some sort of declaration of solidarity with the Palestinians, and the UN General Assembly will condemn Israel, a few college campuses will boycott and aid associations will probably do what they can, but the Palestinians will still be screwed.
How very magnanimous of you.
I’ll also add that while you talk a lot about US aid to Israel, foreign aid to the Palestinians makes up about a third of Palestinian GDP.
Now lets look at US aid to Israel. Currently, the US provides Israel with about 2.3 billion in military aid, and that’s it. The current Israeli defense budget is about 14.4 billion, out of current budget expenditures of 58.6 billion and revenues of 45 billion. Losing the 2 billion would certainly hurt Israel, but their budget could, if needed, survive it.
Am I wrong?
As long as both sides keep saying the other side has to go first, no one will ever go first.
Israel’s tried going first before, and it’s always turned to shit, though. It’s not like nobody has ever tried to get a treaty before. I could take you through the whole thing: Madrid, Oslo, Taba, Wye River, Sharm el-Sheikh, Taba 2, Camp David, Annapolis. It’s not like there’s been any lack of conferences and agreements.
Could be, but I see an alternative possibility, if it finally decides that peace on terms if finds acceptable are not possible:
Israel finishes an impenatrable wall around its territory and then tells the whole world to go to hell.
Israelis I know would be remarkably favorably inclined towards that idea.
Wow. Just wow. So your ghetto would survive as a juche state? Do you have some sort of historical example of that ever working?
But of course the other choice is for Israel to allow its neighbors to “starve” (as a poster upstream proposed) and then make peace.
Let me repeat. The correlation of forces in the region are presently in favor of Israel. Things can only go downhill from here. Making peace is best done while you are the strong party. Waiting will not help. Neither will holding one’s breath until one turns blue. Neither will letting the rest of the world go to Hell.
For one, this isn’t strictly speaking true: Britian and France have fought - as recently as the 1940s.
While I’m all in favour of a comprehensive peace deal, there is no evidence that the bargaining situation, for the Palestinians, is going to get better over the long term.
First, there is no evidence that growing population means growing power. On the contrary. Growing population, combined with third-world type economy, means weakness, not strength.
Second, there is no evidence that the Arab or Muslim world is likely to act in concert any time soon, or in the foreseeable future, and pledge its blood and treasure to the support of Palestinains. Indeed, all evidence points to the contrary - that the Arab world, or at least its powers, are seriously divided on this. Israel-hatred remains a useful symbol for some groups, and merely an irritant for others - and Israel’s immediate neighbours are more inclined to accept peace deals with Israel (however unpopular), then face ruinous wars.
Third, you (and others) much over-rate the importance of US support. The Israeli state would, without question, be hurt by withdrawal of US support - but do not forget, Israel lacked US support when the Arab states were united against Israel - and Israel still won, in '48, in '56, in '67. US support is not, contrary to what many think, a matter of existential importance to Israel.
The fact is that the Palestinians are facing a worsening of their bargaining power, in almost all respects. Israel is no longer heavily reliant on Palestinian labour - they have been replaced by foreign workers. The Arab world has mostly given up paying more than lip service to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinains are divided like never before, between Hamas and the PLO. The Israeli security measures, such as the Wall - while widely hated and protested - have proven largely successful, in terms of blunting attacks. Starting up another round of rocketing, rioting and/or suicide bombing will merely provoke further Israeli crackdowns, as happened in Gaza. The world mostly hates Israelis, and Israels know it - but then, they mostly have ceased to care, concluding that no matter what they do, they will get the same reaction; thus, moral suasion has been rendered toothless. Nor have boycotts and the like proven any more effective.
Thus, while peace remains the objective, the Israelis are unlikely to be frightened into making it because “things will get worse for them”. It may be true that in decades, the situation will change - but right now, there is no evidence of it.
Those aren’t the choices, and nobody’s saying those are the choices, your hysterical misreading of what I’m saying notwithstanding. The Palestinians can have peace right now. In 2000, a plan was offered that set up an independent Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank. In 2005, the Israeli government unilaterally evacuated settlements in Gaza and the Northern West Bank, and turning over Gaza to Palestinian control. The Palestinians then responded to the Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip by Palestinian mobs destroying the evacuated settlement homes and greenhouses, by electing Hamas, and by firing rockets into Israel from the very places in the Gaza Strip that Israel abandoned.
There’s not going to be peace until the Palestinians want peace, and right now, there’s a large enough faction of the Palestinians that don’t want it.
One somebody says it is an option;
I think he was overstating things. We certainly don’t want to cut off America, Europe and Asia; it’s just the Arab world that has nothing to offer us. Face it: it’s a cultural, scientific and economic backwater, and other than oil, it doesn’t produce anything we might need. The business of nations is business, and the Arab world isn’t selling anything we want.
Israelis used to dream about eating hummus in Damascus on the banks of the Euphrates, but these days, we make some damn fine hummus here in Israel, and besides, we’ve grown up - we’ve stopped caring as much about whether people like us. Mature nations, like mature people, don’t need others’ approval.
Really? How about peace?
We’d be willing to sell some of that.
>insert Jewish merchant joke here.<