My Personal Maunderings on Israel and Palestine

1. The territorial claims, historical and otherwise, between the Jewish and Arabic populations currently in the territories making up Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, are so entangled (and, ultimately intangible) as to be practically without any sort of clear, objective standing.

The Right of Return is as meaningless as the Biblical mandate of Greater Israel.

Sorry, Palestinian refugees — 45 years (let alone 65 years) is beyond the Statute of Limitations. You're not getting your houses and shops back, even if your keys still work in the locks. And, honestly, the term refugees is a bit of a stretch at this point.  You're not living in tents. You've had multiple generations born and die there. It is what it is.

And, sorry, Jewish settlers — the promises of Yahweh from X thousand years ago (really) are even more meaningless as a legal "right" to hold onto the territory.  As an emotional justification, sure — but there are many just-as-(il)legitimate emotional justifications. Because someone who spoke roughly the same language as you now do and worshiped kinda-sorta the same deity as you now do once ruled over this particular patch of real estate is no more meaningful than the Iranians laying claim because the Persians once ruled there, or the Italians trying to occupy the place because the Romans once held sway. Get over it.

And, sorry, Christian Evangelicals, it doesn't matter that the "Palestinians" were not perceived as an autonomous and recognized population in and of themselves prior to to the fall of the Ottomans or to the UN Partition. They were indigenous peoples, they were living there, even if they'd suffered as many centuries of conflicting outside domination as, oh, say, the Jews had. Shipping them all off to Jordan is no more viable a solution than … 

… shipping the Israeli Jews off to Baja Mexico, or back to Europe, or wherever. So, sorry, Arabists, kicking out the Israelis who've now been living there for generations would be as great a crime as kicking out the Arabs.

Bottom line, we have two populations and one hunk of real estate, and, no, nobody has a greater objective "right" to it than anyone else, save what they can hold by force of arms.  Which, sadly, is what it's been about from the beginning.

2. Palestinians, the greatest harm you do to your cause are your own, violent internal divisions, which support the proposition that you are not only incapable of self-governance, but that any agreements you come to will be abrogated by the next gang of cut-throats to come to power.

The second greatest harm you do to your cause is terrorist attacks, whether we're talking suicide bombers or crude rockets. Because, at best, you give the Israelis the (internal) justification to respond with massive retaliation. And, yeah, that won't destroy your cause, but it will kill a lot of you. And the folks who are willing to accept that calculus are not your friends.

The third greatest harm you do to your cause is embrace all Jews and Israelis as implacable enemies who, at the very least, need to be driven to the sea, and, at worst, need to be massacred in the most bloody fashion possible. When your people hold up "We love Hitler" posters, you destroy any moral high ground you hold.

3. Israelis, the greatest harm you do to your cause is letting the Palestinian extremists dictate your actions and turn you into the local bullies, tyrants, war-mongers, and _apartheid_ists.  Not only does (or should) that destroy any credibility and support you get from overseas, but it warps your own people and culture into something ugly — something that, to be honest, the survivors of German atrocities against the Jews should be appalled at even somewhat resembling.

The second greatest harm you do to your cause is build settlements. Build, build, build. Trying to take by property seizure what you cannot hold by demographics. It belies even the most ostensibly sincere overtures you make toward peace. And the claim that you cannot unilaterally stop such settlements is bullshit.

The third greatest harm you do to your cause is to assume that the US will always be there as a Pavlovian-reflexive defender, thus allowing you to thumb your nose at the rest of the world in defiance. Because someday that will not be the case, and then, oh, brother …

4. Europe, your condemnation of Israel would ring a lot more true if anti-Semitism didn't keep welling up through the cracks of your arguments. Anti-Semitism that aided and abetted and culminated in the Holocaust, which led directly to the founding of Israel. You broke it — you need to pony up to buy it.

America, your support of Israel would ring a lot more true if it didn't require turning a willful blind eye (let along celebrating) the more grotesque of the Israeli actions, and to subsuming your own national interests to that of Israel. Internal Jewish pressure groups and geopolitical arguments aside, blindly supporting whatever Israel does because, well, heck, it's Israel, serves as a deep betrayal of the principles America claims to stand for.

Russia, STFU. No, really. Your history of oppressing the Jews is worse than the rest of Europe's. You're no more an honest broker in this than anyone else in the world, and the only reason anyone pays attention to what you say is as a left-over from the Cold War and all the reality-distortion that caused.

5. I don't have any magic answers.  

A two-state solution might work — it would have worked a lot better 20-30 years ago, but American knee-jerk support and Israeli settlement growth and Palestinian in-fighting have weakened any such solution. It could still work, if there was a desire by the Palestinians to live in peace and a desire by the Israelis to do the same. But whether it's the populations as a whole, or their leaders who maintain power by fomenting conflict, there's no sign of lions lying down with lambs anywhere to be seen.

A one-state solution is almost entirely out of the question, not only because of decades of hate and bloodshed, but because demographic trends can only terrify the Israeli/Jewish population.

6. To ignore the hatred, the bloodshed, the crimes committed against Israel and the Israelis would be a horrible injustice.

To ignore what Israel has done to the Arabs within its 1967 borders, and what it continues to do through military, police, and occupational excesses would also be a horrible injustice.

Anyone who tries to put a white hat on one side and a black hat on the other is part of the problem, not the solution. As long as either side feels justified by what's been done to them to do whatever they feel is necessary back — and as long as there are folks out there on the sidelines egging them on — this conflict will continue in blood and pain.

7. I don't want to see a massacre, or a genocide. And I don't want to see that from or against any contingent of the populations in question. But I don't see any of this ending well. In many ways it is an existential battle between the "sides", and as long as they see themselves as "sides" it will end in blood.

And I generally mistrust the "a pox on both your houses" assessment of moral equivalence, because that's always a dicey proposition at best, and a great excuse to wash one's hands of a moral dilemma. But, damnation, there are far too many on both side (again, with "sides") of this who make me want to just wall up the entire region for a century, cut off from the rest of the world, and declare whomever survives that point the winners.

Regardless of who "wins", whether soon or over the course of decades, I just simply cannot see this ending well.

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