Consider this parable about the current situation in the Middle East.

[guillaumeb]

Open discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is permitted during very high-profile news events which are heavily covered across all newsmedia.


Daoud has lived in his house, and his family before him, for hundreds of years. It is a large, 10 room house, surrounded by orchards of olive trees, and citrus trees, a deep well, and vegetable gardens. His extended family lives with him.

David comes to him, and says that he must give up 8 of the ten rooms so David can settle his family there. David also says he will take possession of the trees, the gardens, and he will control access to the well. Daoud's family can crowd into the remaining two rooms.

What would you do if you were Daoud?

[Ani Yun Wiya]

1. I think I would tell David this:

Piss up a rope...

[guillaumeb]

2. Understandable reaction. eom

[alwaysinasnit]

3. IMHO, if the Israeli government weren't afraid of the world's opprobium, they would be engaging in

unabashed and unfettered genocide against the Palestinians instead of just genocide by a thousand cuts.

[guillaumeb]

6. I disagree.

My opinion is that they are trying to force out as many Palestinians as they can, and then perhaps physically remove the remainder.

Ethnic division and separation is not the same as extermination.

[Bettie]

9. That's what I think too

if the eyes of the world weren't on them the genocide would be quick instead of, as you said, by a thousand cuts.

[joetheman]

12. Right now, Bibi is trying to help Trump get re-elected in 2024.

Bibi is helping turn the American voters against Biden.

Don't fall for it. It might backfire, however, if the people within those Arab nations that made a deal with the Israel as part of the Kushner peace deal, rise up on behalf of the Palestinians. I'm not talking about the leaders of those nations, I'm talking about the people who are not part of royal families and who have little freedom within those nations. Watch what the women do. They will e the key.

[NotANeocon]

4. Brings to mind the story of The General's Son

Or

The Return

[Mosby]

5. Where does Daoud live?

Does he live in Israel?

Judea?

In your parable, where does Jesus live? Was he living on stolen land?

[guillaumeb]

7. Daoud lives in Palestine.

That area that Netanyahu says will never be a state.

But does it matter? If I came into your house and forced you to give up 8 of the 10 rooms, what would be your reaction?

Acceptance, or resistance?

As to Jesus, and 2,000 years ago, apply that logic to the US, and suggest that all of European descent should go back to Europe and honor the claim of the First Peoples.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Jesus was a rabbi.

My liberal Jewish friends see Jesus as a rabbi who wanted to start his own religion. As to the OP I see some truth in both of your narratives. I do wish Israel had a leader who genuinely reached out to the Palestinians.

[The Magistrate]

10. That Is The Problem With The Topic, Sir

People engage in oversimplifications, which either reflect their own lack of knowledge, or are aimed at persons without much awareness of the situation.

So let us adjust your happy little tale.


David used to own the house, but was driven away by an imperial power a good while back.

Douad never really owned it either, he occupied it on sufferance of a later imperial power.

David had always wanted to go back, and finally went to court to assert title, since it had been his once.

Douad didn't bother showing up in court. So a default judgement was issued, which was pretty favorable to Douad, as defaults go. David was to have half the house.

When David arrived to take up residence in his half, Douad got violent and attacked David. In the ensuing fight, Douad got the worst of it, and having won, David decided the whole house was his now. That ran a good deal ahead of the court's decision, but Douad never was able to think of much to do about it but try and harm David or damage the house.

That hasn't gotten him any where, and is not likely to.

Now I would be the first to agree this is an oversimplification, but it does at least recognize the real substance of the dispute, and how it got to its present impasse.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. In short both sides have compelling narratives.

Your narrative is excellent and has the benefit of being humorous.

[guillaumeb]

13. We all occupy our residences by sufferance of the government.

David claimed a divine right/title to the house, but what Court would accept divine assurance of a clear title?

And David attacked Daoud, and drove out Daoud. From 1948 to the present, that has been the fact. David is driving Daoud out.

[The Magistrate]

14. Both The League Of Nations And Its Successor, The United Nations, Did, Sir

It is a fact that what passes for international law, in both 1922 and 1947, respectively, did recognize that title, to at least a portion of the ground in question. The mobilization of armies by Transjordan and Egypt and Syria to attack the Jewish portion of the Palestine Mandate was a clear violation of the law as it then stood. That is not a statement of the rights and wrongs of the matter, it is simply a statement of what was legal and what was not at the time of the event.

If one wished to be vicious, one could liken the matter to one of those cases still popping up in courts where heirs of European Jews bring suit for return of properties confiscated by the Nazis. It would be far from fair, but it is worth pointing out that Arab Nationalists, during the Second World War, did in fact align with Nazi Germany. Whether this was more a question of being against anyone who was against the English, who at the time ruled Egypt and Iraq in all but name, or a genuine alignment with the idea of exterminating Jews, is open to argument, but again, the fact remains, and has weight. It is one reason Arab League objections to the partition carried so little weight in the United Nations in 1947. Most European governments were in the hands of people who had resisted Nazis, not supported them.

[guillaumeb]

15. A well thought out response, however, the key to my point is in your response.

You wrote:
"It is a fact that what passes for international law, in both 1922 and 1947, respectively, did recognize that title, to at least a portion of the ground in question."

The land seizures that continued after 1948 are all illegal under International Law.

As to the UN mandate, one could argue that it was following the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in that the intent of the European colonialists was to remove Zionists from Europe. To continue the Nazi analogy, this would have made Europe essentially Judenfrei.

And even International Law was largely written by the colonial powers that most often ignore it. Europe decided what was to be done with territory to which they had no claim.

[The Magistrate]

16. Of Course Law Is Written By People In Charge, Sir

And at the time Europe had claim to the territory on the oldest and solidest of grounds --- conquest.

The boundary in place from 1949 was an armistice line, where the soldiers were when the fighting ceased. People took a flyer on force, and they lost badly. The casino does not give you back the money, even if you can't pay the month's rent.

They should have taken the deal. It's a shame they didn't.

Personally I agree with Mr. Ben-Gurion, who said it would be best to withdraw from the territory beyond the '49 boundaries.

The settlements are not legal, and I never have said they were. The people who initiated them, however, had a good sense of the political circumstances. You may recall the first settlement was at Hebron. I would suggest some examination of events in that place in the late twenties. In a spate of communal violence begun over some altercation at the remaining temple wall (well within living memory in 1967), the Jewish community in Hebron, mostly quietist orthodox sorts resident there for centuries, was attacked by mobs, and its survivors driven from the place. That remained a point of pride in the nationalist movement led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, that Hebron was free of Jews. The return to the place, of young and vigorous Jewish men under arms, was something extremely difficult for an Israeli government to quash. Even many who knew it was wrong felt it was right.

You mis-state the motivation behind the Balfour Declaration. It sprang from something far more twisted. At the time, the idea Jews were 'the hidden hand' in world events was widespread in the highest circles of society. It was genuinely believed by men in authority in the Allied governments during the Great War that the Bolshevik revolution was Jewish revenge for the frequent pogroms of the Czar's government. The removal of Russia from the conflict was a great setback to the English and French. The Balfour Declaration was conceived as a payment to the (non-existent) power of the 'hidden hand', to persuade it to relax its grip on Russia and cease assisting Germany. Once the place was in hand, reasons to hang on to it that were closer to reality came quick enough to the English government, but that was the basis of it.

[guillaumeb]

17. One reason behind the Balfour Declaration was that the British saw a Jewish State

as an outpost near the Suez Canal. And the British, being well versed in the art of settler colonialism, assumed that the transplanted Jews would eventually drive out the Palestinians, whether Christians or Muslims.

All part of power politics, with no regard for people on the ground.

[The Magistrate]

18. They Already Had Egypt, Sir

They were in need of no outposts, major English bases and garrisons were in Egypt during the Mandate period.

Mr. Churchill said, in 1922, that anyone who 'expected Palestine to become as Jewish as Manchester is English mistakes the policy of His Majesty's government.' The phrase 'Jewish national home' was deliberately chosen to fall shy of any promise of statehood. What the English hoped to administer was a peaceable place in which the affairs of each community were managed by its own leaders, who would sit in a council (largely powerless) with the Governor, who exercised executive authority in the Mandate.

That is what experienced colonial powers do, they put as much local authority as they think they can in the hands of local dignitaries. This keeps the colonial power aloof from internal disputes, and creates prestigious clients with reason to attach themselves to the colonial administration. Jewish leadership was willing to accept this, Arab leadership refused any cooperation. One may choose to respect an uncompromising attitude, but one consequence of it was that Jewish leadership had some experience as a proto-state, which made a quick transition to functioning as a nation-state in 1948 a good deal easier than it might otherwise have been.

Opinion varied in English military and ruling circles regarding what if any utility Palestine, and the Jewish immigration fostered by the Balfour declaration, had for England's interests. One strain opposed it vehemently, on the grounds that being seen to favor Jews might strain the loyalty of the largely Moslem soldiers of the Indian Army, on whom possession of India depended. Another thought it served some use (along with then largely Christian Lebanon under the French) in putting a bone in the throat of geographic unity between Moslems in North Africa and the Middle East. There had been a wave of rebellion in both regions, and further east in Afghanistan, after the Great War. While these did arise independently, they were easy to see as a coordinated pattern. The idea that Moslems might combine together under a single leader had been a bugaboo of the Colonial Office for quite some time, and featured in popular culture as well. A popular author named Buchan, who worked in the government during the war, wrote tales of derring-do in Asia in which a conspiracy of Jews was halted from contriving exactly that.

[guillaumeb]

19. Like the US empire today,

the British empire had far more bases than it needed.

And as you noted, empires generally prefer to use local people to administer territory. The Romans perfected that technique, including in Palestine.