The Iron Wall

[Princess Perfume]

What then are parties of the centre-left to say and do about the plight of the Palestinian people? My view (based on many years of reading on this subject) is that Palestinian national identity is a recent invention, and the claim that Israel was founded by dispossessing or displacing a pre-existing Palestinian nation is historically bogus. But that does not alter the fact that there are now something like ten million people (estimates vary greatly) who identify as Palestinian. Their condition of statelessness and their sense of grievance is a constant source of conflict and destabilisation in regional and indeed world politics.

The Palestinian question needs to be resolved. But it cannot be resolved by requiring the abolition or destruction of Israel. Apart from the inherent injustice of such a demand, it is also futile, because Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot be coerced, let alone destroyed, by any conceivable force that can be arrayed against it.

There is no easy solution to the Palestinian question. But the least difficult solution is the most obvious one – to create a Palestinian state in those parts of Mandate Palestine which have not since been absorbed, de jure or de facto, into Israel. That means about 80% of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, plus whatever other land can be acquired through negotiations with Israel (and possibly also with Egypt.)

What proportion of the Palestinian diaspora could realistically be settled in such a small state would be a matter for the Palestinians to resolve, but the international community would have to accept an obligation to resettle elsewhere those who could not be accommodated there, and to provide them with appropriate financial compensation. The bill for this should fall mainly on the wealthy Gulf Arab states, who have encouraged the Palestinians in their illusions for so long.

The main obstacle to achieving such a solution is not the Jewish communities now living in Judaea and Samaria (the so-called “settlements”). Most of them are living in fairly compact blocks around Jerusalem and a few other places, and it would not be difficult draw a border that allows for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Any solution which requires the eviction of 600,000 Jews living in the historic heart of the Jewish homeland, in places such as Hebron where Jews have lived for three thousand years, will be a non-starter.

The main obstacle has been the absolute refusal of the Palestinian leadership, aided and abetted at various times by the Arab states, the Soviet Union and Iran (among many others) to accept any agreement which recognises the right of the Jewish people to exercise sovereignty in any part of the land they choose to identify as Palestine. This attitude goes all the way back to the report of the Peel Royal Commission in 1936, which was the first to recommend the partition of Mandate Palestine into sovereign Arab and Jewish states.

The Palestinians have had several opportunities to achieve statehood, most recently the Clinton-Barak plan offered to Arafat at Camp David in 2000, followed by Olmert’s even more extensive offer to Abbas in 2008. They have rejected them all because acceptance would have involved the recognition of the permanent existence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

The policy of a centre-left party such as British Labour or Australian Labor should therefore be one of support for Palestinian statehood, to be achieved through direct negotiations with Israel (rather than imposed by international fiat), and involving explicit Palestinian acceptance of the legitimate and permanent existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Any suggestion that such a Palestinian state would be merely an interim step towards the “liberation of Palestine, from the River to the Sea” would have to be renounced. The Palestinians would also have to renounce the “right of return” for the Palestinian diaspora, and accept demilitarisation and whatever other security safeguards Israel chose to insist upon.

These are harsh terms, but harsh terms is what you get when you choose to go to war rather than accept compromise, and then lose the war, which is what the Palestinians have been doing for over a century. The paradox of the Palestinian situation, which they have created for themselves, is that they will have to accept defeat before they can achieve any kind of victory.

Much of the left wing of the parties of the centre left will loudly proclaim the unacceptability of such a policy position. My perhaps intemperate reply will be that the parties will be better off without people who are unable to accept such a policy, and that they can go and join one of the sects of the far left, and see how far they get.

But I think in practice most party members and supporters will sooner or later be reconciled to this policy. The fate of the Palestinians is hardly the most pressing issue facing British Labour, Australian Labor, the US Democratic Party or other centre left parties. Even in the field of foreign policy there are much more important questions to face, such as the hegemonic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party. Only a small minority would ultimately find it impossible to give up “anti-Zionism”, and we really would be better off without them.

[ljadw]

What is being a Jew, one might ask. It is hardly related to genetics anymore. It is also not a language. It is also not a common history of a certain group of people. It is also not a religious group with a unified system of dogmas. It is also not a way of life or a spiritual practice. Yet, it can be either or all of the above.

Being a Jew is very hard to define. Most of the Jews are living on some level of assimilation. In fact, most of their lives are not related to Israel as much as to their home country; ie they are not foreigners or aliens at home. They are at home already. Being a Jew nowadays is mostly a cultural affiliation, very similar to that of Christianity.

The holy book of the Christians also have some claims on Jerusalem, Betlehem, etc. It does not mean that there should be a Christian state there, oppressing Muslims and Jews.

Israel is not oppressing Christians and Muslims .
The question :what is being a Jew is irrelevant as it is the person in question who determines if he is Jewish or not .Being the son of a Jewish American (there are no American Jews ) makes you not a Jewish American .

The parents of Soros and of Marx did not /no longer consider themselves as Jewish, neither did Barry Goldwater .Neither did Trotsky .
So called Marxist Jews ( better Jewish Marxists ) as Chomsky and Bernie Sanders hate Israel .
Rathenau was hostile to Jewish Germans .

[ljadw]

What then are parties of the centre-left to say and do about the plight of the Palestinian people? My view (based on many years of reading on this subject) is that Palestinian national identity is a recent invention, and the claim that Israel was founded by dispossessing or displacing a pre-existing Palestinian nation is historically bogus. But that does not alter the fact that there are now something like ten million people (estimates vary greatly) who identify as Palestinian. Their condition of statelessness and their sense of grievance is a constant source of conflict and destabilisation in regional and indeed world politics.

The Palestinian question needs to be resolved. But it cannot be resolved by requiring the abolition or destruction of Israel. Apart from the inherent injustice of such a demand, it is also futile, because Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot be coerced, let alone destroyed, by any conceivable force that can be arrayed against it.

There is no easy solution to the Palestinian question. But the least difficult solution is the most obvious one – to create a Palestinian state in those parts of Mandate Palestine which have not since been absorbed, de jure or de facto, into Israel. That means about 80% of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, plus whatever other land can be acquired through negotiations with Israel (and possibly also with Egypt.)

What proportion of the Palestinian diaspora could realistically be settled in such a small state would be a matter for the Palestinians to resolve, but the international community would have to accept an obligation to resettle elsewhere those who could not be accommodated there, and to provide them with appropriate financial compensation. The bill for this should fall mainly on the wealthy Gulf Arab states, who have encouraged the Palestinians in their illusions for so long.

The main obstacle to achieving such a solution is not the Jewish communities now living in Judaea and Samaria (the so-called “settlements”). Most of them are living in fairly compact blocks around Jerusalem and a few other places, and it would not be difficult draw a border that allows for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Any solution which requires the eviction of 600,000 Jews living in the historic heart of the Jewish homeland, in places such as Hebron where Jews have lived for three thousand years, will be a non-starter.

The main obstacle has been the absolute refusal of the Palestinian leadership, aided and abetted at various times by the Arab states, the Soviet Union and Iran (among many others) to accept any agreement which recognises the right of the Jewish people to exercise sovereignty in any part of the land they choose to identify as Palestine. This attitude goes all the way back to the report of the Peel Royal Commission in 1936, which was the first to recommend the partition of Mandate Palestine into sovereign Arab and Jewish states.

The Palestinians have had several opportunities to achieve statehood, most recently the Clinton-Barak plan offered to Arafat at Camp David in 2000, followed by Olmert’s even more extensive offer to Abbas in 2008. They have rejected them all because acceptance would have involved the recognition of the permanent existence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

The policy of a centre-left party such as British Labour or Australian Labor should therefore be one of support for Palestinian statehood, to be achieved through direct negotiations with Israel (rather than imposed by international fiat), and involving explicit Palestinian acceptance of the legitimate and permanent existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Any suggestion that such a Palestinian state would be merely an interim step towards the “liberation of Palestine, from the River to the Sea” would have to be renounced. The Palestinians would also have to renounce the “right of return” for the Palestinian diaspora, and accept demilitarisation and whatever other security safeguards Israel chose to insist upon.

These are harsh terms, but harsh terms is what you get when you choose to go to war rather than accept compromise, and then lose the war, which is what the Palestinians have been doing for over a century. The paradox of the Palestinian situation, which they have created for themselves, is that they will have to accept defeat before they can achieve any kind of victory.

Much of the left wing of the parties of the centre left will loudly proclaim the unacceptability of such a policy position. My perhaps intemperate reply will be that the parties will be better off without people who are unable to accept such a policy, and that they can go and join one of the sects of the far left, and see how far they get.

But I think in practice most party members and supporters will sooner or later be reconciled to this policy. The fate of the Palestinians is hardly the most pressing issue facing British Labour, Australian Labor, the US Democratic Party or other centre left parties. Even in the field of foreign policy there are much more important questions to face, such as the hegemonic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party. Only a small minority would ultimately find it impossible to give up “anti-Zionism”, and we really would be better off without them.

I think that you are much too optimistic :the left will never accept the existence of Israel and the presence of people who consider themselves as Jewish, because the left is fundamentally antisemitic, especially after the fall of communism some 30 years ago : they needed new lenders ans a new (better :old ) ideology .
I said :especially,because the left was already antisemitic before WW2 and WW1 : see FDR ,Lloyd George .

[Princess Perfume]

Ian, It is true to say that most of the hatred of Israel is proxy for hatred of the USA as well as bitterness about the failure of the socialist world and the large extinction of that obsolete ideology from the 19th century.

[wm]

There is no easy solution to the Palestinian question. But the least difficult solution is the most obvious one – to create a Palestinian state in those parts of Mandate Palestine which have not since been absorbed, de jure or de facto, into Israel. That means about 80% of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, plus whatever other land can be acquired through negotiations with Israel (and possibly also with Egypt.)

So, in the end, a bantustan where the survivors are expected to herd themselves into willingly.
Although there are examples of such successful conquests (for example, today's Russia and its vast colonial empire or the Native American reservations), they were all executed against vastly less developed and powerless cultures.

The plan may be called reasonable, but it's against human nature. The history of all the European nations held in bondage by the Ottoman, Russian, and German Empires shows that it's impossible in the long term because there always will be "natives" believing "that under certain conditions, it is not worthwhile to live."
And for many Israeli Arabs and for Palestinians, it always will be "not worthwhile to live."
After all, the Poles had to wait 100+ years for their moment, and the Czechs and the Serbs more than 300. In the modern world, time is on the "natives" side.

[Princess Perfume]

There is no easy solution to the Palestinian question. But the least difficult solution is the most obvious one – to create a Palestinian state in those parts of Mandate Palestine which have not since been absorbed, de jure or de facto, into Israel. That means about 80% of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, plus whatever other land can be acquired through negotiations with Israel (and possibly also with Egypt.)

So, in the end, a bantustan where the survivors are expected to herd themselves into willingly.
Although there are examples of such successful conquests (for example, today's Russia and its vast colonial empire or the Native American reservations), they were all executed against vastly less developed and powerless cultures.

The plan may be called reasonable, but it's against human nature. The history of all the European nations held in bondage by the Ottoman, Russian, and German Empires shows that it's impossible in the long term because there always will be "natives" believing "that under certain conditions, it is not worthwhile to live."
And for many Israeli Arabs and for Palestinians, it always will be "not worthwhile to live."
After all, the Poles had to wait 100+ years for their moment, and the Czechs and the Serbs more than 300. In the modern world, time is on the "natives" side.

If you are using the tiresome leftist/Arab "Israel = the Crusader states", it is a well-worn analogy - and indeed, is comforting to the Arabs - but a false one.

[wm]

It seems lots of Jews refuse to see reality, the same way the Russians do today, although the reality was perfectly clear to Mr. Jabotinsky a hundred years ago.

In return for the moral and material conveniences which the Jewish colonist brings with him, is a childish notion, which has at the bottom a kind of contempt for the Arab people; it means that they despise the Arab race, which they regard as a corrupt mob that can be bought and sold, and are willing to give up their fatherland for a good railway system.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."

Calling them names; idiots, Nazis, enemies of America will change nothing.
It's against our human nature to give up our fatherland for a good railway system.

[wm]

Ironically Israel, as envisioned by Herzl and the Zionist Organization, was going to be thoroughly a socialist state (called the New Society by Herzl) full of kolkhozes and cooperatives where land ownership was forbidden.
And they say Israel was quite socialist, full of Soviet-style bureaucracy, till the eighties.

The idea that people would give up their culture, their nationalism for a good life is thoroughly socialist too.
From the utopian "Altneuland" by Theodor Herz (1902):

Those who had nothing stood to lose nothing, and could only gain. And they did gain: Opportunities to work, means of livelihood, prosperity.
Nothing could have been more wretched than an Arab village at the end of the nineteenth century. The peasants' clay hovels were unfit for stables. The children lay naked and neglected in the streets, and grew up like dumb beasts. Now everything is different. They benefited from the progressive measures of the New Society whether they wanted to or not, whether they joined it or not.

Would you call a man a robber who takes nothing from you, but brings you something instead? The Jews have enriched us. Why should we be angry with them? They dwell among us like brothers. Why should we not love them? ...
Our houses of worship stand side by side, and I always believe that our prayers, when they rise, mingle somewhere up above, and then continue on their way together until they appear before Our Father.

[Princess Perfume]

Well, as I stated, a necessary precondition for a Palestinian state is that the Palestinians admit defeat in their war against Israel and accept whatever terms the Israelis are willing to give them. That would obviously include demilitarisation, disarmament of the various militias, an end to anti-Israel incitement and propaganda, and probably a long probation period of limited sovereignty. I can't see the Palestinians ever accepting those terms, so I expect the current stalemate to drag on. The longer it drags on, the stronger Israel's demographic position becomes and the less viable a Palestinian state in J&S would be.

[Globalization41]

If Hamas militants are "freedom fighters", then they are only fighting for 50% of the population, because under Islamic ideology, women are not free.

Globalization41.

[wm]

Although it's a religion, not an ideology - a religion that unapologetically values family life over the unrestrained hedonism of Western liberalism.
In Arab countries, women, more or less, have their freedoms. It's family and (to a lesser degree) social pressure, not the government, that requires certain behavior.

And I thought Mr. Jabotinsky had explained it already:

Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.

Craig Murray:

A paroxysm of resistance by the oppressed always ends up portrayed by the Imperialist as evidence of the bestiality of the colonized people and in itself justifying the “civilizing mission” of the colonizer.

Jonathan Cook:

[Y]ou can't destroy the urge to be free.
Crush secular, more moderate forms of resistance [i.e., the PLO], as Israel did, and you get Hamas. Destroy Hamas, and you will get something worse: a real death cult like Islamic State.

[Globalization41]

Germany and Japan were crushed in WWII and it didn't result in ISIS, although it did create a power vacuum for the ISIS-like Communists to fill. ... In the war against colonialists in S.E. Asia, Cambodia was crushed by the "oppressed" Communists. ... Would the oppressed native-American Indians be more free if the western U.S. had not been taken from them? Would they now be better off under the Mexican mafia? ... How far back in history do you go? Should Cuba be returned to the U.S.? Would the Cubans like that? ... Gaza should have opened cassinos along the coast and accepted free protection from Israel. That would have been more strategic than killing Israelis in the name of God.

Globalization41.

[wm]

Unfortunately, the examples of Germany and Japan are irrelevant. The "natives" knew from day one that the occupation would not last that long and that their countries would be handed over to them eventually.

But the American Indians (and, for example, the numerous behind-the-Urals tribes Russia conquered) are quite interesting.
It seems if culture is sufficiently backward (in these cases, basically a stone-age one) and numerically weak (the tribes didn't form a nation and were naturally fragmented), it could be subjugated and pacified.

But the Muslim culture wasn't inferior to the Jewish one, and it isn't today - despite the claims of Jewish chauvinists:
- "The Arabs' laziness and primitivism turn a flourishing garden into a desert" (1941) - (the first president of Israel) Chaim Weizmann,
- "Culturally, they are five hundred years behind us" (1923) - Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

Additionally, if both sides of the conflict don't share common morality and values, no amicable solution is possible, especially if the conquered people were allocated unequal political status in a single-race state. In such a case, only force and genocide would work.
That was noticed by Meir Kahane in 1985:

As long as an Arab singing the national anthem would have to sing "the Jewish soul yearns," he cannot be equal to Jews.

As long as Independence Day represents the defeat of the Arabs, he cannot celebrate it.

As long as a Jew might be prepared to allow an Arab to become a general in the army but not the chief of staff, let alone prime minister, the Arab cannot feel at home.

As long as the Law of Return applies only to Jews, the Arab cannot feel that the State of Israel is his.

As long as a Jewish Knesset member does not accept the Arab's right to be a majority here, you are surely holding him in contempt when you try to convince him that he is a citizen with equal rights.

[wm]

The longer it drags on, the stronger Israel's demographic position becomes and the less viable a Palestinian state in J&S would be.

However, 4.4 million Palestinians live in the Palestinian Territories, 1.3 in Israel, and 4.9 in the diaspora (mostly in neighboring Arab countries).
That's almost 50 percent more than the Jewish population of Israel and more than, for example, the population of Sweden, Greece, or Portugal.

[COmentator]

Note Jews are forbidden by the L-D to set a King over them who is not Jewish [see Deuteronomy 17;14]