Palestinians began a mass exodus Friday from northern Gaza after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory.
The Palestinians absolutely have legitimate security concerns. They are also, in no universe, ever going to be able to resolve them by violently overthrowing the Israelis, and no amount of winning the moral argument will change this fact. This notion of establishing a Palestinian state through violent resistance must be abandoned - no matter how righteous it may or may not be - because Israel will defend itself down to the last Jewish life before allowing another Jewish diaspora, and it will win. If Egypt, Jordan, and Syria were all defeated in 1967 in six days, it is simply not in the realm of possibility that some loosely organized Palestinian resistance is going to be re-taking Jerusalem.
There is a plausible, though still mostly confined to dreams, path to peace that involves the Palestinians de-militarizing, Israel abandoning all settlements and withdrawing to the 1967 borders, the establishment of a joint security force between Israelis and Palestinians that has zero tolerance for nationalistic violence, and a gradual opening of economic and cultural integrations over time. There’d probably need to be some land-swaps, and Jerusalem would probably need to be governed by some kind of joint administration as well, but there does exist a framework where peace is imaginable.
Key to this, though, is that Israel stops settlements and that Palestinians completely abandon any consideration of violence. Under no circumstances will Israel make any steps towards peace if it feels its security is threatened, and seeing as they’re the ones with the guns, anyone hoping to see peace simply must accept this fact. So long as aggressive violence is seen as a way to solve the conflict, there will never be peace.
The West Bank has seen minimal Palestinian-initiated conflict, and in exchange, Israel has built more settlements, let them burn fields, and kicked people out of their homes. It’s not security that drives the settlement projects. They want the land.
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I’m speaking to pragmatism.
The Palestinians absolutely have legitimate security concerns. They are also, in no universe, ever going to be able to resolve them by violently overthrowing the Israelis, and no amount of winning the moral argument will change this fact. This notion of establishing a Palestinian state through violent resistance must be abandoned - no matter how righteous it may or may not be - because Israel will defend itself down to the last Jewish life before allowing another Jewish diaspora, and it will win. If Egypt, Jordan, and Syria were all defeated in 1967 in six days, it is simply not in the realm of possibility that some loosely organized Palestinian resistance is going to be re-taking Jerusalem.
There is a plausible, though still mostly confined to dreams, path to peace that involves the Palestinians de-militarizing, Israel abandoning all settlements and withdrawing to the 1967 borders, the establishment of a joint security force between Israelis and Palestinians that has zero tolerance for nationalistic violence, and a gradual opening of economic and cultural integrations over time. There’d probably need to be some land-swaps, and Jerusalem would probably need to be governed by some kind of joint administration as well, but there does exist a framework where peace is imaginable.
Key to this, though, is that Israel stops settlements and that Palestinians completely abandon any consideration of violence. Under no circumstances will Israel make any steps towards peace if it feels its security is threatened, and seeing as they’re the ones with the guns, anyone hoping to see peace simply must accept this fact. So long as aggressive violence is seen as a way to solve the conflict, there will never be peace.
The West Bank has seen minimal Palestinian-initiated conflict, and in exchange, Israel has built more settlements, let them burn fields, and kicked people out of their homes. It’s not security that drives the settlement projects. They want the land.