Towards a sustainable peace

[mids2019]

I think for a peace to be obtained constructive dialogue has to be started but in order for this to happen in my opinion Palestine has to acknowledge and their leaders publically denounce the heinous acts of October 7th and make clear such an event will never be repeated.

There have been to many senior Palestinian politicians wishing their grievances to be heard without mentioning October 7th and this will only have the effect of enraging Israel.

We need Palestinian leadership that is willing to sit down with Israeli leaders and from the outset denounce violence specifically making it absolutely clear there will be no 'revenge' for the current Israeli incursion.

We also need to be pragmatic and understand Israel will not be giving Gaza any financial aid so it will be up to the richer gulf states primarily to discuss funding some sort of rebuilding within Gaza. Also eventually there needs to be opportunities for Palestinians to emigrate in order to gain jobs and allow future generations to thrive. I think ultimately you would have to view Gaza as a city state with a multi million rebuilding package coming from those supportive nations in the middle east.

We also need to ensure education in Gaza is such that anti semitiism isn't promoted from a young age so we have a chance for a generation of Palestinians growing up knowing the only way forward is peace.

I think there is a peace to be had if both sides want it and are willing to negotiate positivist with a commitment to prevent terrorism and ensure there is security for both parties.

You know what, I'm so DONE with being threatened on being called antisemetic because I think the behaviour of the Israeli government has been abhorrent. Or because although I'm ok with Israel's existence now (that horse bolted long ago, and displacing yet more people isn't the answer), I think it's creation was immoral.

I'd rather know I believe in human rights and equality, and frankly people can label me as whatever they want.

Yes I want peace. Yes I want the hostages released. As the occupying force, the steps for peace need to come from Israel. Saying that Palestinians as the 'losers' need to make huge concessions is distasteful (putting it mildly) as they are a people who have lost almost everything already. Israel will win the war, that much was inevitable. But that doesn't give them the moral victory. A wealthy and militaristic state pummelled a poverty ridden area they kept under siege and at almost starvation level, that they'd oppressed for decades, back to the stone age. All their victory shows is that sometimes bullies carry on. That some people/countries are able to avoid international law, and that Palestinian lives contents to be worth less.

This.

A ‘victory’ for sure. But a legacy that will never be forgotten, certainly not by me.

You're not antisemitic, you just think there never should have been a Jewish state.

I've got no problem with the creation of any state, for people of any specific religion, race, or none. But only where the land is truly empty, people aren't disposed of land and it's creation nether violates human rights not amounts to ethnic cleansing.

If any group deserves their own new state, it's one specifically for Jewish people, but being a worthy quest doesn't override the rights of others.

But it exists now. For those that were born and raised there, it's the only home they've known, and so I support it's continued existence, but only alongside a truly independent and viable Palestinian state.

well of course it wasn't empty, @Babyboomtastic . Mandatory Palestine had about 2 million inhabitants in 1947: 630 thousand Jews, 143 thousand Christians and 1.2 million Muslims according to wikipedia. Britain and the UN tried to more or less separate it out according to ethnicity concentration, ie areas with a high concentration of Jewish inhabitants were allocated to the Jewish state and areas with a high concentration of Arab inhabitants were allocated to the Arab state. This ended up with the UN proposing a total of 20% of the land area forming a state for the 30% Jewish population, and 80% of the land area forming a state for the 60% Muslim population. But it was pretty intermingled and mixed up, if you look at the maps, because the population was quite intermingled. The UN suggestion didn't make either state remotely defensible as a separate entity. I can only assume they didn't expect the wider Arab population to attack the Jews, as ended up happening in 1948.

I'm not sure that carving it up differently would have prevented the violence though. Britain also created Iraq and Jordan at the same time from other mandated territories from the old Ottoman empire, and France carved up the bits they were administering into Lebanon and Syria - but they didn't consider ethnic lines for those. Splitting the large Kurdish population between 3 countries - leaving them as a smaller minority in each - arguably paved the way for the Kurdish genocides and ethic cleansing in Iraq which only stopped when the US forced the creation of the Kurdish autonomous region after the Iraq war. (Estimated 50-100 thousand dead and 1.5 - 2 million displaced from a kurdish population of 3.7 million)

Lebanon did pretty well with its very diverse population (50/50 Muslim and Christian) for 30 years after its creation. But the Palestinian military groups moving into Lebanon after 1967 pushed Lebanon into serious civil war in the 70s (150 thousand dead and 1 million displaced from a population of 2.5 million)

So different variations were tried in different areas: evenly-ethnically-balanced 1-state (Lebanon), majority Muslim 1-state (Iraq), 2-state (1948 Israel/Palestine)... and they all descended into war and huge bloodshed.

I hope that peace is possible. Europe managed to achieve peace after WW2 despite huge amounts of trauma and bloodshed. But it's not obvious or certain.

You say you believe Israel has the right to exsist

I assume you also believe that Jewish people have the right to self determine. Which means that Jewish people have the right to live freely and openly as Jews without predudice ( Whereas they live just like everyone else)

If you do believe both these things you are in fact a Zionist. Not sure if you knew that. There are different types of Zionism of course but this is one of them. Just the simple belief in these two things.

The acceptance of a Jewish state is an obvious precursor for peace and as in graciousness talks the acceptance of Israel as a state is a given. In order for a peace (and a lasting peace ) to occur talks need to be held on this basis. It could be that Jews In settlement in Palestinian areas is limited but there has to be political will from Israel on this.

One thing that can't be in doubt after October 7th is the security of Israeli people and any defining state borders would have to have this in mind unless there has been an irrevocable commitment to non violence by both sides. Absence of violence has to be predicated on agreed state boundaries and governmental arrangments.

We also need to Renner that there are other states in the region that oppose Israel e.g. Iran and how to prevent them funding terror like Hamas is a real challenge.

As for winners and losers in war after we won ww2 the USSR took over half of Germany simply because they could. It is just a historical though maybe not very palatable fact that victors in any conflict set the conditions for peace to a large extent; that political reality can't be ignored.

Personally maybe pragmatically it would take to long to restore Gaza economically so would a slightly expanded West Bank be a solution?

@mids2019 are you seriously suggesting that further occupation and expansion of Israel's borders is the solution here?

Why should the survivors of Gaza have to give up their homes again?

Your suggestions seem to be that Palestinians should just accept being occupied, give up the land that the Israeli government and 'settlers' want, and just get on with being oppressed quietly without bothering people.

There cannot be peace without justice for the Palestinians

What justice and rebuilding for any of the population groups who suffered violent displacement and deaths in inter-ethnic conflict following the collapse of the Ottoman empire? Of course that includes variously Jews, Kurds, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims.

I think it's a bit hard to see from the perspective of our country which has had a stable identity for thousands of years (allowing for a few occupations by Romans, Normans and Vikings and some mergers). But that's not what the Middle East is like. The Ottoman empire was huge. There weren't borders and people who belonged within them. There were lots of people of different ethnicities and religions mixed up in the whole area, and some inter-ethnic peace and some inter-ethnic tensions.

Empires collapsing do create a load of uncertainty and violence, as the area settles into new power structures. The UK and France were big colonial powers when the Ottoman empire collapsed after WW1, and initially occupied huge swathes, and then when we wanted to withdraw we tried to create stable states to take over governing... with limited success, as I said in my pp. But that isn't necessarily because we were evil and wrong - it's that it was a really hard problem to solve.

I really don't think the narrative we're taught that "the UK gave Israel to the Jewish people to make up for the Holocaust" is helpful. We no more did that than we gave Iraq to the Shia Muslims and Jordan to the Sunni Musllims and forgot about the Kurds. We made some borders, which had consequences - especially for ethic minorities within those borders, given the amount of inter-ethnic violence in the whole area. Then different groups variously tried to make that work/initiated armed conflict to make something that suited them better.

There had been a Jewish political movement trying for decades to negotiate an autonomous state. So when the Ottoman empire was partitioned into states, a Jewish state was obvious. The Kurdish people didn't have a political movement, so they got split up (and so suffered a genocide)

Seeing the Jews and Palestinians as exceptional isn't helpful. There has been huge bloodshed, huge displacement and huge suffering throughout the region. The best hope for future generations is to create a stable peace, based on real security for all ethnic groups. However that can be achieved.

Aren't all lines on a map (e.g. Baltic states) the result of some conflict along the way and "design by committee"? Are any of them fair?

Militant Islam seems to place a lot of emphasis on territorial expansion...? Is that the problem? (genuine question and not intended as goady)

@Scirocco

I think the harsh reality is that you have to be pragmatic if a lasting peace is to be acheived. Gaza may take a long time to become economically viable and therefore for the next generation of Palestinians to have anything that remotely looks like life chances the unpalatable needs to be considered. I don't think you can have a peace with an aggrieved population living in ruins and the young men without hope may once again take up arms and the terror continues?

I'd imagine Israel stealing land and homes from Palestinians is the problem. The Palestinians just want their land back.

That's obviously part of the problem, but it doesn't seem to be just that...?

Peace has to be predicated on the existence of Israel as a state and this includes long term normalisation of relations with Israel's neighbours. That is a challenge.

A two state solution may be capable but there has to be acceptance of geographic realities and a point where grievance is buried for both parties. I think entrenched grievance leads to scenarios where it becomes difficult to find peace.

@EmberLight

after the collapse of the Soviet union is it reasonable for Russia to get its land back from Ukraine? Is it reasonable for Argentinians to demand the Falkland Islands or Spain Gibraltar?

A lasting peace obviously requires acknowledgment of the state of Israel and it's right to exist. The question is where the state boundaries should lie.

Hence, Israel should, in my opinion, pay reparations to help rebuild what the IDF has destroyed.

In addition to giving back the land illegally occupied in the West Bank.

Do you not acknowledge that Israeli settlers, backed by the state, steal land, and are stealing land right now, in the West Bank?

When discussing the illegal occupation of the West Bank land, that's not comparable and you know it.

Extremist 'settlers', at times actively aided by the IDF, came and seized that land by force, killing and driving out innocent civilians. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be ok to just accept it if that happened to you, so perhaps you could explain why you don't think innocent victims of those crimes should be entitled to have their homes and land returned to them?

The main stumbling block to peace is that when the Palestinians hear the self appointed arbiters of morality, in the west, talk about universal human rights they mistakenly think they are included.

Universal human rights (excluding Palestinians, Muslims and minorities deemed inconvenient)

I pragmatically think that it's both wrong and impractical to remove people from an area where they have been born and brought up in. I don't think it necessarily needs to be in a Jewish state, or the state of Israel as it currently is, if the safety and rights of the current inhabitants are respected. My concern is for the human rights of individuals only.

I think citizens of Israel (I don't give a monkeys who is what religion) have as much right to self determination as Palestinians do. And it's the Palestinians whose basic rights are being most abused right now

Not sure why you have written this post to me? I was just pointing out that yourself and anyone here or in the real world that says what you did in that post is a Zionist because that is in fact basic Zionism. People just confuse it with political Zionism /the Zionist movement.

Oh and the self determine thing isn't just about Israel. It is that Jewish people around the world have the right to freely as Jews without prejudice. It is something that has also been part of Judaism/prayers said for a few thousand years, long before 1948 etc

Anyway sorry to disturb you conversation on this thread. It was just that your post struck me as a good example of how some posters believe what the average Zionist does without even realising it. I just had to comment on that.

I honestly try to avoid the word "Zionism" for ... basically the reasons you mentioned, among others!

Beyond the basics (essentially, summarising quite crudely: "Jews are a nation as well as a religion and, as such have the right to national self-determination - ideally in Mandatory Palestine due to historical ties"), it can really go any way!

"Religious Zionism" (the party of Smotrich; though I think they have now merged again and have a new, longer name ...) is certainly "Zionist". It is also openly racially supremacist and far-right!

On the other end of the "zionist" spectrum, you will find folks that, essentially, advocate for a two-state solution within the 67 borders and vocally oppose the occupation.

And anything in between.

Honestly, I just do not find the term particularly useful for this reason!

I asked my child a few questions about capitals of countries. I asked her what the capital of Israel was and she correctly said Jerusalem as passed by law.

I think simply acknowledging a states capital is a start