The problem I have with that is that in my view this sort of framing hampers the peace process. It creates this paradigm where the Palestinians cannot build up Palestine to be a prosperous place without claiming all of Israel, too; and as I’ve said before, anyone who hampers the path to a two state solution is an enemy of peace in my book.
Obviously this is far from the only thing standing in the way of a two state solution. Israeli settler ideology is also cancerous, and for the exact same reason. And other Israeli policies that prevent Palestinians from achieving a higher quality of life are also destructive.
All of Israel is not the same as the parts Palestinians were driven from. As I’ve frequently been told in these threads, there were plenty of Jewish pre-1948 settlements, large parts of the Mandate were empty anyway, and subsequently Israel has made places that were complete desert bloom.
If Israel can’t see itself allowing Palestinians back as citizens, it’s not like Israel can’t give some territory back. I mean, it’s not like Israel will have to give all of it. There are less and less Palestinian claimants with each passing day, for some reason.
It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the situation. It’s on par with looking back at the financial cost of the Vietnam War and deciding that the way to win the war would have been for the US to pay everyone in North Vietnam $100,000 to not try to forcibly reunite the country and not understanding why that isn’t a realistic possibility.
One would think that was obvious considering I was comparing how your plan is a joke to a plan to win the war in Vietnam that is equally detached from any concerns with reality.
I believe DPRK’s comment was referring to the reality that Israel is dependent on cheap Palestinian labor. So similar to the current US border issues, Israel will either need to come to some terms with Palestinians crossing the border for work, or find a new source or cheap labor, or deal with rising labor costs.
Here is a cite about that reality, and one step Israel is trying to take.
It should work the other way, too: many Palestinians are dependent on working at jobs in Israel because that is where many OK-, if not always spectacularly well-, paying jobs are.
Serious question: what do you think the UNRWA should have been doing differently? As I understand it, their chief task is providing aid and building infrastructure. I get that you object to the political implications of them calling places “refugee camps” rather than “cities”, but are there, in your opinion, ways that the actual aid distribution and infrastructure building should have been done differently?
For starters, making sure that their employees are not Hamas terrorists.
Second, setting up a distribution system directly to the people, which does not go,through Hamas. The key grift in Gaza has been diverting aid funds to buy weapons and build tunnels, while the leaders skim off a substantial portion for themselves.
This has been going on for decades. Hamas has no interest in producing a better life for Gazans. The more miserable they are, the better for Hamas so long as it doesn’t take the blame.
At this point I assume that UN aid agencies are corrupt as hell, and UNRWA is worse than most.