A refresher of WHY the Middle East is such a mess... history.

[WarGamer]

Hopefully no one calls Salon a right wing source.

U.N. voted to partition Palestine 68 years ago (2015 article), in an unfair plan made even worse by Israel's ethnic cleansing

The Partition Plan was never implemented, however. The very next day after it was voted on, the 1947-1948 war broke out.

In this war, Zionist militias systematically ethnically cleansed large portions of historic Palestine, sacking hundreds of Palestinian villages and expelling more than 750,000 people -- around two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population. Prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappé notes that, in Israel's Plan Dalet (also known simply as Plan D), "veteran Zionist leaders" created "a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." They dispatched military orders in March 1948, Pappé explains:

Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion -- the first prime minister of Israel and, until current leader Benjamin Netanyahu finishes his fourth term, its longest serving head of state -- saw no problem in using violence to force indigenous Palestinians off of their land. "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it," he said as far back as 1938.

https://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/u_n_voted_to_partition_palestine_68_years_ago_in_an_unfair_plan_made_even_worse_by_israels_ethnic_cleansing/

[elleng]

1. ;-(

[Coventina]

2. Why pick that particular date? Why not blame the Romans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)

I mean, that was the event that really launched the Jewish diaspora.

I'm being tongue in cheek here, because there have been wars in the Levant amongst its peoples since the dawn of civilization.
(There's a reason for the famed walls of Jericho).

The fundamental question is: Does Israel have a right to continue to exist?

Yes, there was problems with the establishment. But, it was established.

Does the UN get to vote it out of existence, now that a new generation is in power?

How would such a thing be done?

I'm genuinely curious as to what my fellow DUers think about these questions.

[WarGamer]

3. It's simply a thought exercise.

Today, Israel ABSOLUTELY has the fundamental right to exist.

End of Story.

But at a minimum, Israel need to abide by (or create anew) the partition plan agreed to by the UN... which means giving land.

[Coventina]

7. Continuing the thought exercise:

Assuming that Israel is willing to give lands back, what do the Palestinians give up?

And how are the concessions made by both sides monitored and guaranteed?

[WarGamer]

10. Let me start by saying it's way above my pay grade.

But if I were King...

First I'd work with the neighboring countries (wasn't done in 1947)

See if there's any flexibility for land. Egypt, AFAIK isn't willing to give up a single acre. Jordan? Saudi Arabia?

Obviously it's not fair to just bus all the Palestinians to the middle of the Saudi desert... so they need a significant footprint in their ancestral homeland, as planned in the initial partition plan.

They need a country with secure borders, sea ports and access to resources.

Most importantly... you need to convince the neighbors to support it because if all the locals come onboard, Hamas and their ilk loses all power.

Maybe link Gaza to the West Bank so it's a contiguous country? A half mile wide ribbon with elevated freeway overspasses allowing Israel access to the South?

This will never work because Israel will never give up a single acre, though.

[Coventina]

11. So you've already decided that Israel is going to be the bad guy in this thought exercise?

Because that's how it is coming across.

[WarGamer]

13. Israel has taken land consistently for 75 years.

This isn't what the UN originally planned.

Look at the map I posted above.

They're squeezing the Palestinians out. Look at the quote of their early leaders, this was always the plan.

If you could get the neighboring countries on board, have them put together a military force to maintain the peace for 20 years.

Poverty is the main driver of the problem. Opportunistic terrorists are a close second but they wouldn't exist without the first.

Have serious discussions. Have Qatar, the Saudis and Egypt sit down with Syria and Iran.

Come to a compromise. Iran now says "no Israel" but find out WHERE their concession point is.

[Coventina]

14. Israel has taken land, yes, and I think some of it should be returned.

Israel has bulldozed illegal settlements before, so I think they would be willing to do it again.

Other land was taken after they were attacked from said land. That's pretty standard for warfare. That would be a tougher piece to negotiate.

So if Israel was willing to negotiate, what do they get in return?
It needs to be more than just, "We will grumpily allow you to exist. While secretly planning your extinction."

[WarGamer]

15. First there'd need to be the admission that the partition was unfair to begin with.

Second, global respect for the State of Israel to exist.

Third, dividing the land in the best way possible in 2023. I mean... no one is saying move all Israelis out of Tel Aviv or Haifa and make it Palestinian.

These are all fantasies but it's fun to dream.

[Coventina]

19. There is value in fantasy. If aspirations were never aired, no progress would happen at all.

There is some severe obstacles, obviously.

The deep hatred of Jews that exists in Arab states is very real and very embedded.

One of my Great-great uncles worked in Saudi Arabia (pipe-fitter in the oil fields) in the 1930s. He had to show them his baptismal certificate to prove he was a Christian and not a Jew before entering the country.

[Xolodno]

39. Oddly, that hatred in Arab states is relatively new on the historical stage.

Muslims were often the protector of Jewish people from those damn blood thirsty Christians. It gets glossed over in history, but the Crusaders didn't just kill Muslims, they killed Jews and Orthodox Christians (seen as heresy to the Pope).

[RandomNumbers]

23. "half mile wide ribbon with elevated freeway overspasses"

Sounds like a good idea.

UNTIL you think about the history of rocket attacks aimed at Israel.

Since I don't post a lot on this topic, let me be clear: there is evil on both sides of this conflict; and there are innocents on both sides. There is so much hate, fear, and distrust on each side - with strong justifications in recent history - it will be very hard to come to any solution proposal that doesn't easily get batted down as completely unworkable in this situation.

I do like your thinking. I just don't know how we get past the raw emotions of the people who are living through this nightmare.

[TheRealNorth]

18. Thats kind of like asking...

That the thief who stole $1000 is entitled to $500 if he gives the other $500 back.

Not saying I couldn't see some sort of military restrictions on a future Palestinian state, but the Israelis must give up all land seized during the 6-Day War, or offer exchanges of land that both sides can agree on.

[Coventina]

20. Why "must" Israel do such a thing? The land was seized because they were attacked.

That's pretty standard rules-of-war stuff.

(Since there's a lot of "war crimes" being bandied about).

[Lonestarblue]

29. Israel was not attacked. They initiated a preemptive attack.

The reason they won in six days is because the countries they attacked were so surprised and unprepared, even though Israel claimed that an attack was imminent, that they could not mobilize quickly enough to repel Israel’s invasion. Read 1967 by Tom Segev, an Israeli who has chronicled must of Israel’s history.

[TheRealNorth]

36. Exactly

The usual suspects here will claim that it was a "pre-emptive" attack, but Isarel had 2:1 manpower superiority against Egypt, indicating there was no "imminent" attack, and Egypt was in the process of fortifying the border, which is what you do if you plan to act defensively.

Jordan was honoring a defensive pact it had with Egypt.

Israel also tried to claim that Egypt attacked first, but that lie was abandoned when it was proven false.

[WarGamer]

8. Oh to answer your question...

I can't think of anything more central to the current situation in the Middle East than what happened in 1947-1948

[Coventina]

9. Actually, the UN decision to formally establish the state of Israel

wasn't just based on the guilt of the Holocaust. It was also a recognition of the large numbers of Jews already living there.

You really SHOULD blame the Romans, as Jews had been moving back to the Levant since the Middle Ages after the Roman destruction.

on edit: typo

[orthoclad]

37. Don't forget Moses and Babylon, if we're looking far back

Tribes have been fighting over that land for millenia. The authors of the Old Testament (having been raised Catholic I have no better terminology) were some of the most successful conquerors, and left a record, all dressed up with supernatural help and punishment. The winners write the history. I confess to much biblical and Roman-era ignorance, though.

But coming into more recent times, we should look at WWI aka The Great War, the big paroxysm of modern empires bloodying each other. The Western Euros took the Levant, Syria, and Arabia away from the Ottomans. The French and British victors then carved the land up with the Sykes-Picot Treaty. Europe thought it had a right to carve the Middle East up as a trophy and dictate it's future. T.E. Lawrence described the process well.

This Western Euro alliance was the kernel of the UN.

As a footnote, Lawrence, in the foreword to Revolt In The Desert, said that Britain would never have dared to raise so much nationalism had they known Arabia held any mineral wealth. That certainly plays a modern role.

As a second footnote: a long time ago I read that early Zionists (late 1800s? ) had discussed moving into Texas. Now THAT would have been interesting, complex, and possibly less lethal since ancient grudges wouldn't hold. A Tejano-Indigenous-Anglo-Jewish matter. I keep looking for a reference for that discussion, can't find it.

[Lonestarblue]

28. No one in the UN or the US or EU is threatening to vote Israel out of existence.

And yes people have been fighting all over the world for years. That does not excuse the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel. And 1948 is important because it was the beginning of the state of Israel and the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the land they and their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years. The people replacing them had no claim to that land (other than a religious claim) and the UK did a poor job of protecting Palestinian rights. They essentially declared two states and left it to the two groups to fight it out, which is what has been happening for 75 years.

If someone from another country came to your home today and said they were taking your home and land and you have no recourse, would you quietly leave or fight back? Those who deny that Palestinians have any rights seem to be saying that they could have had peace if they had just quietly given Israel all their land.

[Xolodno]

38. Actually the Romans didn't want to expel them.

The business model was conquer, absorb their religion (obviously, that model had a flaw) into their own and collect taxes for Rome. The only reason the Jewish revolt was successful at first, was due to Rome being in turmoil, they went through five emperors in five years. When the Temple caught on fire, the Roman Legions tried to save it as they knew how important it was for the Jewish population. Complicating things, there wasn't one government in Jerusalem, after expelling the Romans, the Jews broke into three groups and went into a civil war, only pausing it for the Passover holiday.

Well, as the troops tried to put out the fire, one or more of those groups started shooting arrows at them and attacking them. That's when Titus lost control as his troops were seriously pissed by that point (plus they heard about the disgusting atrocities from the civil war) and that was the straw that broke the camels back. In a weird form of irony, the expulsion was 500 years after they were uprooted and sent to Babylon.

[misanthrope]

4. Because it is populated by humans

and homo sapiens has been at war with itself since the species emerged.

[Ace Rothstein]

5. That article isn't highly biased at all.

[WarGamer]

6. It's passionate, sure... but I don't see any mistruths or lies.

[Beastly Boy]

12. There is a difference between passion and bias.

You are overlooking the author's mistruths by omission. His article is a puzzle with over half of the pieces missing, and the rest arranged in a deceptive pattern to favor his biases and not historic truths.

I've seen it done hundreds of times. He is not fooling anyone, other than the people who desire to be fooled.

[Nanjeanne]

16. I thought this might give an interesting perspective as you are discussing history. I posted

this a while ago as soon as I read it in NY Times Magazine Section. It didn’t get much traction back then but I found it absolutely fascinating and learned so much. Not sound bites but a great discussion full of complexity and nuance.

Was Peace Ever Possible? - NY Times discussion w/ 3 Palestinian, 3 Israeli & 1 American scholars

Reading NYT Sunday Magazine Section today, came on, what for me, was a timely and fascinating discussion. Learned from scholars and people who were actually involved in peace negotiations and much detail about Oslo and Camp David, the reasons they fell apart and more.


Thirty years ago, a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed achievable. The story of how it fell apart reveals why the fight remains so intractable today.

Was Peace Ever Possible?
A discussion moderated by Emily Bazelon

The Panelists:

Omar Dajani is a professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. From 1999 to 2001, he served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel, participating in the summits at Camp David and Taba. He currently sits on the board of A Land for All, an Israeli-Palestinian peace group.

Dana El Kurd is an assistant professor at the University of Richmond and author of ‘‘Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine.’’ She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C.

Efraim Inbar is president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and head of the program in strategy, diplomacy and security at Shalem College in Jerusalem. He was a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and the founding director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is the author of ‘‘Rabin and Israel’s National Security,’’ published in 1999.

Daniel Kurtzer was the United States ambassador to Egypt from 1997 to 2001 and the ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. He is a professor at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Avishai Margalit is a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the George Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 2006 to 2011. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Khalil Shikaki is a professor of political science, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Since 1993, he has conducted more than 200 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and, since 2000, dozens of joint polls among Palestinians and Israelis.

Limor Yehuda is a lecturer at the faculty of law at the Hebrew University and a research fellow at Haifa University and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She is also the author of the recent book ‘‘Collective Equality: Democracy and Human Rights in Ethno-National Conflicts’’ and a founder of the Israeli-Palestinian peace group A Land for All.

Highly recommend reading it. [link:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BU0.wKTl.DHlfUPMrskco&smid=url-share|]. GIFT LINK

[WarGamer]

17. bookmarking for later tonight, thanks!

[Goddessartist]

21. Thank you

Excellent article! This piece stood out:

"Dajani: Despite the serious design flaws in Oslo, I don’t think today’s reality was an inevitable consequence. I think the U.S. could have played a useful role in compensating for the accords’ weaknesses.

One of the biggest problems was that there was no mechanism for third-party dispute resolution. Palestinians thought that the international community, and the United States in particular, would step in to ensure that the obligations of Israel were being implemented in good faith. And again and again, what the United States chose to do instead was to leave Israeli leaders with discretion, by blocking efforts in the U.N. Security Council to censure Israel for continuing settlement activity.

Kurtzer: I thought we would bend toward Israel on security and bend toward Palestinians on territory and governance. In other words, to assure Palestinians a serious state while finding ways to address Israel’s legitimate security concerns when they would have to give up those territories. But the U.S. negotiators didn’t do that."

[Nanjeanne]

22. There was so much I had no idea. We hear the snippets and the repeated statements about

rejection and all that. But there is so much complexity. And so much more than the standard sentences people use to explain what happened. I was amazed reading it. And realize how difficult a resolution is. And how - more than ever - it needs to happen.

[Goddessartist]

25. There is so much complexity.

I'm bookmarking this article, thank you.

I've been following this conflict for just over 30 years now. The Palestinians are really given no regard.

[Sympthsical]

24. I wouldn't use Salon as my history source

Cherry-picked to hell, because of course it is. The writer cannot resist their bias.

I can't decide which is worse. No education or bad education. Both have their problems.

[Nanjeanne]

30. Then try reading the NYT article I posted. It's probably what you are looking for.

[Sympthsical]

31. You'd have to be more specific

So many anti-Israel articles, so little time, ya know?

I'll need the reference narrowed down for me.

[Nanjeanne]

32. If you are looking for an anti Israel article I can't help you. But just look above in this thread for my

post about the discussion by those involved in the various two state solutions.

[Sympthsical]

33. That's a much better article

It follows, more or less, the contours of my understanding of roughly 1988-2008 - although there are some opinions thrown in there I'd disagree with. But the American ambassador is ultimately correct in his conclusion:

Kurtzer: I am mindful as a former diplomat to avoid blunt language. But if Palestinians expect that anybody will accept reverting to 1948, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. And if Israelis believe that they can achieve an agreement on something less than 1967, they’re going to be sorely disappointed.

This has long been my own opinion on the matter. '48 ain't ever gonna happen - and Westerners need to stop egging that on. Similarly, settlements in the West Bank need to go, and the U.S. should be willing to exert whatever pressure it can to make that happen.

[Nanjeanne]

34. Glad to help. I enjoy reading and have no problem with opinions different than mine if they

provide me with thoughtful reasoning. It sometimes es helps me change my thinking and it sometimes helps me fine tune my thinking.

[Kaleva]

26. Shouldn't you begin about 4k-5k years ago

The events of the past few decades couldn't have happened had not many other events occured in the preceding several thousand years.

[David__77]

27. Colonialism fucked over over Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The British actions were notably evil in that regard.

[Mosby]

35. The article is garbage, historical revisionism and the author

Is a US/Israel/West hating POS.

Look at this garbage:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

He sure does love China.

Eta he has a website:

The United States has played a key role in fueling the wars in both Israel-Palestine and Ukraine.

The US government has sought to prevent peace in Gaza, vetoing resolutions in the UN Security Council that call for a ceasefire, while sending weapons to Israel to help it bomb densely populated civilian areas, contributing to the killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians, approximately 70% of whom are women and children.

Since 2022, Washington has done exactly the same in Ukraine, torpedoing peace proposals that Russia had supported.

He hates America and supports Russia, China and Syria.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/12/03/west-sabotaged-ukraine-peace-russia/

[Xolodno]

40. I was actually skeptical of the article a bit...

...but when you chimed in and made your comments. I said, damn, the article might have some merit. LOL!

[Mosby]

42. We will be so much better off when Genocide Joe is out of office.

[LeftInTX]

41. I think the Middle East is a mess because of the weather

Seriously.
Actually the only countries with decent weather are Lebanon, Israel and Turkey. The rest is so hot that people are always at each other's throats. It's very clanny and no one trusts anyone except their own families. Then, you put them in somewhere crowded and it just gets worse.

My family was from Turkey and my grandmother would say, "Don't tell your friends anything"
And by that she meant:
Don't tell them where you shop.
Don't tell them who cut your hair.
Don't tell them who you are dating.
Don't tell them nothing.
Basically it was, "Don't have friends".
"Don't trust anybody"
Cousins marry cousins.
People don't date.
Marriages are all arranged and are done for increasing the family size.
Women have sex only because their husbands insist on it.
They let them run around with other women to have fun.
It really doesn't have much to do with religion either. (Our family is Christian)
It's just the way life is. It's harsh.