Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: Will there be peace if Palestinians lay down their arms? [View all]Igel
(35,522 posts)If Palestinians lay down their arms, there'd still be issues.
How to reconcile all the demands that really have no compromise? For instance, both want territorial integrity. That works only if at some point there's a point at which both countries "meet," sort of like how Utah and New Mexico "meet" each other at the same point Arizona and Colorado meet each other. At the center point of a +. Hard to build a road there or do much else.
But even given all the competing demands, it'll push the violence into Israel itself. (In a way, that would be the harshest attack on Israel. Because as long as the extremes in Israel are facing a common enemy they can find times and places to feel united and work together. Take away that enemy and they'll have to find Israel-internal compromises.) Israel will have to exorcise its own demons before there can be peace.
That can never occur as long as there's a "Palestinian threat."
It's the same process that the Palestinians have to go through, except that Israel by and large isn't the one using offensive weapons first. Even when it does use them first, it's pre-emptive to avoid things like tunnels or threats that are plausible if not (highly) likely.
And in the case of the Palestinians, it's like finding peace in Eastern Ukraine. In both cases, without the massive support, moral, emotional, financial, and military from outside parties interested at least as much in fighting the "occupier" as they are interested in the people on whose land they're fighting and who are being killed, much of the problem would quickly be solved. Some say "Israel doesn't want peace." The same is true of other actors in the region: If the I/P issue goes away, they have a bogeyman they can't blame for problems, they have a bogeyman they can't scare their populations with. And what would the imams talk about for their khutbah?