It’s not about who has a ‘greater right per man’. A two state solution with see two sovereign states, not just Jews.
That means it explicitly recognizes that two groups have an equal right.
Which is dramatically contrasted with your support for ethnic cleansing.
To begin with, the comparison to ‘reservations’ is somewhat strangely false to facts.
To follow, you have set up a false dichotomy. The choices aren’t between occupation and ethnic cleansing, it would be between occupation, peace, and ethnic cleansing.
It’s also worth noting that depending on whose numbers you look at, there may very well be a majority of Jews in the area. Would you then support them ethnically cleansing the Palestinians since that would be preferable to a sovereign state having to continue an occupation to guarantee its safety? :rolleyes:
Geopolitically, Israel/Palestine/Canaan hasn’t exactly been a secure territory since the invention of the iron chariot wheel. Which is to say, it’s flippin’ narrow. Dividing it into three strips only exacerbates this to the point of absurdity.
Add to that that there is a lot of very understandable ill feeling on the Palestinians’ part & a real popular will to re-unify the country.
Ergo, any stable “two-state solution” necessarily implies one side in control, & the other dominated & restricted. Which is not really two independent states, but one state & its subject.
If that is necessary & sufficient to peace, sure. Repatriate them to Egypt, Pakistan, anywhere they want where they can be free men.
The sad thing is, I think the opportunity for a one-state solution in my lifetime has passed. The present arrangement, with the Jews on top & the two sides warring endlessly for domination, may come closest to giving the greatest number of people an acceptable situation. It perhaps cannot get any better than this, from the point of view of all involved.:eek:
That’s odd, as there never was a country of Palestine. How can they reunify something that never existed in the first place? If you mean have freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza, then yes. But that’s not the same thing.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
There is no such implication. Two sovereign states would be independent and would each be in control of their own territory. With viable corridors of movement, they’d be in charge of their own movement as well. You’ve created some strange scenario where one has to be dominant over the other, and that has nothing in common with reality.
It would be quite possible to set up two states with self-governance, territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Unless you’ve gone Orwellian and you are using “domination” and “restriction” to mean “Israel would prevent any Palestinian terrorists from trying to destroy it and ethnically cleanse it.” Then yes.
There never was. The Jews wanted self determination over their own home and the Arab political leadership allied with the Nazis and wanted to commit genocide. There has never been an Israeli acceptance of dissolving their sovereign state. There’s never been a possibility of a one state “solution”. Not ever.
The problem, then, is in pretending that every ethnicity has a potential nation-state in them, & every country’s government can govern responsibly on ethnocentric principles.
We may as well insist that the Gypsies are just like everyone else & that we can take Egypt & give it to them.
The idea of Hamas altering its charter to accept the existence of the state of Israel is silly. Hamas is not going to do that any time in the foreseeable future. They are a political organization and they depend on the support of the far-right faction of Palestinians, who would instantly abandon them if they did that. In fact, as long as a large far-right faction exists among the Palestinians, the Israelis would be foolish to take any change in the ideology of Hamas as a sign that they can let their guard down.
But it is also wrong to characterize the entire Palestinian population as “a hostile population that wants their complete expulsion from the land.” I don’t believe in the existence of countries where everyone is a militant. Presumably most Palestinians could be persuaded to live peacefully under any regime that respected their rights. The problem is that if the entire area were merged into one state, it would include all the people, even the ones who really do want war.
What is needed is a way of getting all the people who prefer peace into one state, and all the people who prefer war into the other.
Given that there has been a recent wave of Palestinians fleeing Gaza for other countries, what if Israel began encouraging these people to settle in Israel and granting them citizenship? Naturally some terrorists would try to sneak in along with them, but careful controls might allow these infiltrators to be mostly weeded out. The borders with the Gaza Strip would remain tightly closed, and the long-term goal would be to turn the Gaza Strip into walled-off enclave of extremism.
Let me reiterate that I would love to see a Palestine where it Just. Didn’t. Matter. what race/religion you were.
But if the choice is…
A. Repatriate the Jews (& Russians) to Og knows where
B. Repatriate the Palestinians to Og knows where
C. Keep the two-state solution (which seems to require Israeli control of both states in fact)
D. Build one state & then see if anyone has to flee
P.J. O’Rouke mentioned the silliness of the idea that every group that shares a lisp and a pet name for God wants its own state.
I appreciate a chance to speak frankly and without anger on this thread. I am ready to be convinced, but it seems the one-state solution is going to happen no matter what we want. The demographics make grim reading for the Israelis. At some point the Jewish State will no longer be mostly Jewish. It seems getting ready for that day rather than denying it is going to happen makes the most sense.
There is absolutely no evidence, at all, that Israel will ever accept its end as a sovereign state. Even a state with an Arab majority (which almost definitely won’t happen any time soon, if at all) would still be a Jewish state as long as the Law of Return was in force.
Only if you assume that the West Bank and Gaza won’t ever be their own separate sovereign nation, or that the Arabs who live in Israel will continue to have a higher birth rate forever.
Not true. If we look simply within the Green Line, we get a much, much different picture. It’s like claiming that if we take the entire Middle East, that Israel is already obviously a ‘one state solution’.
Some of the people who were dispossessed are stil alive and living in refugee camps.
Besides, someone already mentioned that WWII happened before 1948. Are you also opposed to the restitution of Jewish property seized during WWII, on the basis that this also happened long ago?
Yes, we cannot reorder the world based upon the idea of prior victimization. Should we give back most of France’s wealth to the Templars? How would we find them?
You are continually setting up false choices and then asking that your false choices be used as a basis for discussion. They can’t be. Not accurately.
Yet again, it requires nothing of the sort. A sovereign Palestinian state with freedom of movement would not be restricted from doing anything other than freely waging war on Israel. Your claim is akin to claiming that the US should absorb Canada because with two states, the US must control Canada in fact.
Yes, because it’s so blatantly obvious that putting Hamas within rocket range (or able to freely walk the streets of Jerusalem) would immediately lead to massive bloodshed if not civil war.
It’s not at all reasonable to suggest that we ignore facts and give Palestinian terrorists total freedom of movement, and then be surprised when the inevitable happens.
This is a false dichotomy. Many people, myself included, support compensation for what was taken from the Jews. But it isn’t necessary to give them back the actual property to accomplish that. And also as mentioned, a very small fraction of Palestinians even owned the land they lived on, anyway.
Even if we maintain the Green Line, the rate of natural increase of Jews is less than that of non-Jews. (Darn hard to convert, amongst other reasons.) Reservoirs for in-migration are just about drained. The number of Arabs is increasing. It is only a matter of time before they become a majority.
Pretty loose use of “Dhimmi” there. The former dhimmis came from N. Africa & the Near East. In Europe, there was a range of treatments.
Of course, I take your meaning. Similarly loosely, to be a Palestinian is to be dhimmi everywhere, except in one’s “own” territory, wherein one is a hostage.
Perhaps, then, Hamas is too radicalized for its own good. That doesn’t mean we abandon the Palestinian people (who are far from all thinking that way) to the excesses of Hamas militancy. Can no one create a better situation where this kind of thinking is unattractive? Maybe one where people have their country again & don’t need the fanatics to fight for them anymore?
